7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens–paradigm shifts
One of the books that plays a big role in the treatment program at Triumph Youth Services is “7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens” by Sean Covey (the son of Stephen Covey who wrote the book “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”). Over the next several weeks we’ll be highlighting some of the points in the book that we teach to the boys who go through treatment at Triumph. As Sean Covey points out in the beginning of his book, the principles build on one another. There is some foundation work that has to be understood and done before moving on to the 7 habits.
The first is understanding a paradigm. A paradigm (or perception) is the way you see something. It’s your point of view or frame of reference. “Paradigms are like glasses. When you have incomplete paradigms about yourself or life in general, it’s like wearing glasses with the wrong prescription. That lens affects how you see everything else.”
We have paradigms about ourselves, about other people, and about life in general. Negative self-paradigms can limit us, while positive self-paradigms bring out the best in us.
Some teens can have such negative paradigms it can cause real problems in their lives. Which raises the questions “If my paradigm of myself (or other people, or the world) is contorted, what can I do to fix it?”
One way is to spend more time with someone else who believes in you already. Someone who builds you up, encourages you, and cheers for you. Sometimes it takes another person to help us see our negative paradigms and change them.
At Triumph we teach the boys about paradigms and perceptions and how our paradigms of ourselves, of others, and the world can sometimes be skewed. Sometimes a paradigm SHIFT is necessary to living a happier more functional life. We identify their paradigms and their paradigm shifts as their view of themselves, others, and the world starts to change.
A paradigm shift can make all the difference in their (and our) life trajectory.
