The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

THE POWER OF A PARADIGM SHIFT
Perhaps the most important insight to be gained from the perception 
demonstration is in the area of paradigm shifting, what we might call the 
“Aha!” experience when someone finally “sees” the composite picture in 
another way. The more bound a person is by the initial perception, the more 
powerful the “Aha!” experience is. It’s as though a light were suddenly 
turned on inside.
The term 
paradigm shift
was introduced by Thomas Kuhn in his highly 
influential landmark book, 
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Kuhn 
shows how almost every significant break through in the field of scientific 
endeavor is first a break with tradition, with old ways of thinking, with old 
paradigms.
For Ptolemy, the great Egyptian astronomer, the earth was the center of 
the universe. But Copernicus created a paradigm shift, and a great deal of 
resistance and persecution as well, by placing the sun at the center. 
Suddenly, everything took on a different interpretation.
The Newtonian model of physics was a clockwork paradigm and is still 
the basis of modern engineering. But it was partial, incomplete. The 
scientific world was revolutionized by the Einsteinian paradigm, the 
relativity paradigm, which had much higher predictive and explanatory 
value.
Until the germ theory was developed, a high percentage of women and 
children died during childbirth, and no one could understand why. In 
military skirmishes, more men were dying from small wounds and diseases 
than from the major traumas on the front lines. But as soon as the germ 
theory was developed, a whole new paradigm, a better, improved way of 
understanding what was happening made dramatic, significant medical 
improvement possible.
The United States today is the fruit of a paradigm shift. The traditional 
concept of government for centuries had been a monarchy, the divine right 
of kings. Then a different paradigm was developed—government of the 
people, by the people, and for the people. And a constitutional democracy 
was born, unleashing tremendous human energy and ingenuity, and creating 

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a standard of living, of freedom and liberty, of influence and hope 
unequaled in the history of the world.
Not all paradigm shifts are in positive directions. As we have observed, 
the shift from the Character Ethic to the Personality Ethic has drawn us 
away from the very roots that nourish true success and happiness.
But whether they shift us in positive or negative directions, whether they 
are instantaneous or developmental, paradigm shifts move us from one way 
of seeing the world to another. And those shifts create powerful change. 
Our paradigms, correct or incorrect, are the sources of our attitudes and 
behaviors, and ultimately our relationships with others.
I remember a mini-paradigm shift I experienced one Sunday morning on a 
subway in New York. People were sitting quietly—some reading 
newspapers, some lost in thought, some resting with their eyes closed. It 
was a calm, peaceful scene.
Then suddenly, a man and his children entered the subway car. The 
children were so loud and rambunctious that instantly the whole climate 
changed.
The man sat down next to me and closed his eyes, apparently oblivious to 
the situation. The children were yelling back and forth, throwing things, 
even grabbing people’s papers. It was very disturbing. And yet, the man 
sitting next to me did nothing.
It was difficult not to feel irritated. I could not believe that he could be so 
insensitive as to let his children run wild like that and do nothing about it,
taking no responsibility at all. It was easy to see that everyone else on the 
subway felt irritated, too. So finally, with what I felt was unusual patience 
and restraint, I turned to him and said, “Sir, your children are really 
disturbing a lot of people. I wonder if you couldn’t control them a little 
more?”
The man lifted his gaze as if to come to a consciousness of the situation 
for the first time and said softly, “Oh, you’re right. I guess I should do 
something about it. We just came from the hospital where their mother died
about an hour ago. I don’t know what to think, and I guess they don’t know 
how to handle it either.”
Can you imagine what I felt at that moment? My paradigm shifted. 
Suddenly I 
saw
things differently, and because I 
saw
differently, I 
thought
differently, I 
felt
differently, I 
behaved
differently. My irritation vanished. I 
didn’t have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart 

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was filled with the man’s pain. Feelings of sympathy and compassion 
flowed freely. “Your wife just died? Oh, I’m so sorry! Can you tell me 
about it? What can I do to help?” Everything changed in an instant.
Many people experience a similar fundamental shift in thinking when they 
face a life-threatening crisis and suddenly see their priorities in a different 
light, or when they suddenly step into a new role, such as that of husband or 
wife, parent or grandparent, manager or leader.
We could spend weeks, months, even years laboring with the Personality 
Ethic trying to change our attitudes and behaviors and not even begin to 
approach the phenomenon of change that occurs spontaneously when we 
see things differently.
It becomes obvious that if we want to make relatively minor changes in 
our lives, we can perhaps appropriately focus on our attitudes and 
behaviors. But if we want to make significant, quantum change, we need to 
work on our basic paradigms.
In the words of Thoreau, “For every thousand hacking at the leaves of 
evil, there is one striking at the root.” We can only achieve quantum 
improvements in our lives as we quit hacking at the leaves of attitude and 
behavior and get to work on the root, the paradigms from which our 
attitudes and behaviors flow.