People tend to underestimate the power of their paradigms.

They think using their willpower is enough to change habits they have had all of their life.

We see evidence of it all the time:

A man decides to get in shape. He forces himself to go to the gym five days a week, run three miles on the weekend, and eat smaller portions. Then, his boss gives him a big project. He immediately puts most of his attention into his work and stops going to the gym. He works longer hours and soon starts eating a lot of junk food to reduce the stress.

A woman wants to feel better about herself. She starts getting up early a few days a week to read and do yoga. And she makes sure she looks good from head to toe each time she leaves the house. She gives up after a couple of weeks because “it’s not working and she has too many other things to do.”

To ignore the power of paradigms to influence your judgment is to put yourself at risk when exploring the future. Your future will look much the same as the past until you understand the power of your paradigms and what it takes to change them.

To get started, let’s look at what Buckminster Fuller said:

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

So, when it comes to paradigms, what is the existing model?

• It’s succumbing to the mental programming that you inherited.
• It’s allowing the power of your mind to use you instead of choosing to use it.
• It’s accepting surficial thought, which is trivial, commonplace, “outside in” thinking, as the Truth.

Here’s how you build a new model:

• Study the Great Laws of Life often, and make an effort each day to do some deep thinking, which engages your higher faculties and is associated with the understanding of those Laws.
• Form a clear and definite idea (image) of what you want to be, do, and have, and hold that image in your mind.
• Act as if you are already the person you want to be (strive to be on the outside what you idealize on the inside).

If we had been taught to develop our higher faculties in the first place (rather than letting our physical senses control our thinking), we would understand how and why all things are possible.

Choose one or two limiting ideas that are part of your paradigm and, through study, replace them with ideas that represent freedom to you. Consciously keep these new ideas in your mind, and act as if those thoughts were already embedded in the foundation of your life.

Do that and you will build a new model that makes your existing paradigm (or a part of it) obsolete. And, before you know it, your life will begin to change—and dramatically.

To your success,

Bob Proctor