Paradigme reflections

Last night I read the first chapters of Steven R. Coveys world bestselling book "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People". Actually I bought it quite a while ago – mainly because I was fascinated about the fact that the book has been sold in 200.000 copies in Denmark and more than 15 million copies worldwide… What’s with all the fuzz?

Normally I never start reading a book like that - just the title is kind of creepy to me. It’s not that I am against personal development, but my life should not be run like a company. I really believe you can have too many goals and plans for your future. In my experience, what give meaning to my life are the people around me and those journeys we are on together. If I should make a great plan for my life, shouldn’t I make it with them?

Anyway… With all those reservations I read the first chapters. And it was inspiring, of cause, because it gave room to reflect upon my own life and situation, although much was really basic stuff. Like when the author talks a lot about paradigm shifts. “To make large changes in our lives, we must work on the basic paradigms through which we see the world.”

And here’s my point:

Travelling makes me feel so alive because it is the way I am pulled from my well known comfortable life and thrown into a context where everything is different. I open up to the world. My senses get focused and everything blossoms. I am in travelling mode.

Meeting people in this mode, makes me open to paradigm shifts and great changes. Maybe I have prepared the journey for a long time. And almost certainly it lasts long becayse I keep fysical memories, souveniers and pictures.

To me that is the perfect design of an experience. It changes me.

But how the h... do you communicate that? That is interesting!
We almost certainly can't get people to feel what we felt outhere. But could we make a greater room for them to have their own experience?