Paradigms: flea in a jar

Martin talks about paradigms, exploring how your thinking could be limiting you.

"You may have heard of the flea in the jar metaphor, so if you put a flea in a jar and put the lid on, the flea will go crazy. It'll jump around. It'll hit his head on the lid of the jar. It'll do this for a certain period of time, but then what it does is it learns the boundaries of the jar. So actually after a certain period of time you can take the lid off the jar, and the flea will never jump out again because it's learned to be conditioned by its environment.

And what I'm suggesting to you is that human beings are exactly the same, so our thinking has conditioned us to operate and live a certain way based upon all of the thinking that we've had during our life. We talk about paradigms. So paradigm is the reality that you've created for your thinking over time, so you're existing within the paradigms that you've got about everything, which is like being in the jar.

So you'll have paradigms about yourself, about your partner, about your work, about your life, about your house. You'll have paradigms about your boss, you'll have paradigms about the market, the economy, Brexit, all sorts of things. Those paradigms are shaping you in all sorts of ways and restricting your behavior. Now don't get me wrong. There'll be certain paradigms that you've got that will have helped you be incredibly successful and get to where you've got to in your life and in your career, but there's all sorts of paradigms going on that are also limiting you and keeping you within the jar.

I had a situation recently with a client called Steve. He had paradigms about his boss. He had all sorts of thinking going on about his boss, what his boss was like, that he didn't trust him, that he didn't care for people, and so on, and so on. And what was very apparent was that when Steve existed within that thinking, when he showed up in a meeting with his boss, he would show up in a certain way, he wouldn't be fully expressed and relaxed. He would be guarded, defensive, not really being his true self. And of course, that paradigm is pretty dangerous to operate within when you're working with your boss because you'll never end up with a really great connection.

I had another situation recently with a lady called Andrea. She had some paradigms about her life and her work. A very common paradigm is she wanted to be great at home as a great mother, and have great life balance, and also be great in her work, but she had a paradigm that she existed in which that wasn't possible. She couldn't do both roles really, really well. Now think what it's like to live within that paradigm. You're never going to win.

The point of this video is simply to have you reflect a little bit on your own paradigms. What are the paradigms that you're conscious of? And what are the paradigms that are driving you and influencing you that you're not even conscious of yet? And what would it be like if you could blow those paradigms away, and break out from the jar?

Видео Paradigms: flea in a jar канала Unbounded