“You can’t escape from a prison until you recognize you are in one. People who have chosen to live within the limits of their old beliefs continue to have the same experiences. It takes effort and commitment to break old patterns.” 

– Bob Proctor

I can hear my father’s voice booming from the stage as I write – “A paradigm is a multitude of habits – and just about all of our behavior is habitual.” 

Your paradigms are your programming, and they are the software running your life for better or for worse. This collection of habits and beliefs has been reinforced over time with repetition. 

Your paradigms have formed how and why you do what you do… including how and what you eat, work, relax, exercise, sleep… everything. However, many of your paradigms didn’t originate with you. Everything you were exposed to as a child also became part of your paradigm.

Your paradigms are the accumulated inheritance of other people’s habits, opinions, and beliefs.

That’s right: they originated elsewhere and weren’t even yours to begin with, yet they remain the #1 guiding force in your life.

Paradigms dictate your logic, how you use your time, your perceptions, and they control your effectiveness in life.

Your actions and reactions happening in your life over and over without any thought are a result of your paradigm. If you are not getting the results you want in life, it is because limiting paradigms are in control.

I want to be clear that we also have paradigms that are good and do serve us well, too. Maybe we were lucky enough to grow up in an environment surrounded by self-aware adults with good habits, and we adopted those. But there is always room to improve; improving is what life is about.

I laugh when I think of my wife, Cory, who is very disciplined. If anyone says to her, “‘You really know how to get things done,” she always answers — “‘I like that about myself.”‘ She has shared with me that sometimes, she thinks those comments are meant to be critical or judgmental, and I remind her that those are her paradigms controlling her perception.

Changing your paradigm will require commitment to change, persistence, repetition and discipline, just as anything worth pursuing does.

By understanding this, you put yourself in the driver’s seat of your life.

To begin building new, positive, and productive habits to support new positive and productive paradigms, first, examine your results and identify where you want growth and change.

Wherever you are in your life is a reflection of what you believe to be possible for you in this world. So, if you’re not upgrading your beliefs to match your current and future goals, you’re going to remain stuck where you are.

What you can do with your mind is a power most fail to recognize. 

The easiest way to explain how the mind works is to use an image. And as a student of Bob Proctor’s, you will be familiar with the stickperson image that he used to demonstrate that the mind operates on two levels: the conscious and subconscious, and then the smaller representation of the body, which is an expression of the mind and your thoughts.

“We must understand there are two parts of our mind: the conscious and the subconscious. It’s the subconscious that controls our behavior. It’s the conscious mind where the intellect is resident. So, the conscious mind is understanding information, but it’s not internalizing it.”

– Bob Proctor

Conscious Mind: Your conscious mind is the ‘tip of the iceberg.’ It is what you are currently aware of and thinking about. It’s also where your free will lies — where you decide what you want to do and what you want to focus on. Your sensory factors live in your conscious mind and allow you to correspond with the outside world through sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. 

It is the conscious mind that accepts or rejects. No person or circumstance can force you to think thoughts you do not want. This is important to understand because the thoughts you choose — will eventually determine your results in life. When you believe a thought as fact, you have attached emotion to it, and it is impressed upon your subconscious mind. It becomes part of your paradigm.

Subconscious Mind: The subconscious (or unconscious) mind is your conditioned mind, where your memories and habits are stored. Your subconscious is driving much of what you feel, think, do, and believe — it is where your paradigms live. Your subconscious is the largest part of your operating system, and it knows no limits except the limits you have given yourself through your thinking, beliefs, and habits.

You must understand that your conscious and subconscious mind are in constant dialog. So, pay attention to the thoughts you attach to with belief and emotion. Pay attention to your self-talk.

Body: Your body is the instrument of the mind, and the thoughts or images you consciously choose will become fixed in your subconscious mind when reinforced with repetition. It will become who you are through the actions your body takes. This determines your results.

A tool I like to start with when I have identified my tendencies and I’m working to manage my habits is Affirmations. 

Affirmations harness the power of repetition to embed new ideas into your subconscious to build new beliefs and influence new actions.

They work because your subconscious mind sets the vibration you are in through feelings and expresses that vibration as an action through the body. That is where your results are coming from. 

Do you see why choosing thoughts that align with your desires and goals is so important?

Mindlessly choosing thoughts that are in harmony with your current paradigms will get you the same results until you actively work to change the thoughts and habits responsible for those results. By actively, I mean you deliberately choose your new productive thoughts and actions. If you don’t, you risk forming another bad habit to take the old habit’s place. 

You create change by choosing new, higher-level thoughts that align with the change you are working to create.

Cory said something recently about a person we both know. She said, “‘He is so busy being worried about someday getting sick and dying that he is not living.”‘ That struck me – how many people do we know that do this?

So, let’s use an example of being worried about your health. Sit quietly and identify the feelings you are experiencing.

Is it fear and worry? First, acknowledge that these thoughts are not making you healthier. Tell yourself you are ready to do the work each day to be your best self and have perfect health, and affirm it:

“I am so happy and grateful now that every day, I am my best, strongest, and healthiest self, and I make choices that support this.”

Repeating this affirmation will reinforce it, and you will notice yourself making better choices and taking positive actions regarding nutrition, exercise, and daily habits that will make it so. You are managing your habits. 

When you engage your affirmation with positive emotions and behaviors, you will begin to feel differently — you will feel better and make better choices. Your actions will change.

Remember that feeling is conscious awareness of the vibration you are in – it is the language of the subconscious mind. So, if I were to ask the ‘old you’ in this example, “How are you feeling today?” you would likely answer with something like, “Well.. not so good. I think I might be coming down with something.” You see, your old paradigm is choosing thoughts that line up with your fear and worry vibration. And you are using language that supports that paradigm.

Now let’s ask the ‘new you’ in this example the same question – the you that has eliminated fear and worry over health and aging and has been using a positive affirmation that has led to positive and supportive thoughts and actions.

“‘How are you doing today?”‘ “I’m doing great! I’ve been getting great sleep, finding ways to move, and caring for myself each day. I have more energy than I did a year ago, and I expect to continue getting better and better.” Language matters!

You can’t go into the future holding onto habits and emotions from the past.

The above is just one example. Identify where your current thinking is limiting you and pour all your focus, attention, and energy into a vision of what you want to be rather than what you no longer wish to be. 

Affirmations are more than words. When you use the strength of your WILL and repeat it regularly with intent, you are changing the neural pathways in your brain. Your thoughts are changing and strengthening your mind, increasing the speed at which thoughts become things.

Understand that the paradigms you have been living with will require time and effort to change because they align with memories or beliefs stored deep in the subconscious part of your mind. Creating lasting change will involve conscious discipline to embrace change, face fears, and pursue. Each time you forgo a habit you identified as not serving you and instead use discipline to engage in your new chosen habit, you make yourself stronger! You are creating awareness, understanding, and expanding your belief about what is possible.

Give yourself a command and follow it! And, please share your new command below and help inspire others.