A Health Paradigm Shift, Part 3:
The Power to Change!

The idea of experiencing a health paradigm shift can be unsettling. But here’s the story Stephen Covey tells of a paradigm shift he experienced.

"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 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, I felt differently, I behaved differently. My irritation vanished. I didn't have to worry about controlling my attitude or my behavior; my heart 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.

"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."

(from Stephen Covey's book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People)

Get the information you need to make a real health paradigm shift!

This powerful change of attitude and behavior flowed from Covey’s profound paradigm shift. The shift itself was the result of his discovery of information that he hadn’t known before. Once he understood the situation, his attitude became caring and his behavior became helpful.

We can apply this principle to our health and the health paradigm shift we may very well need. Once you discover new information about health and wellness, you will probably want to change the way you protect your and your loved ones’ health and handle your health challenges.

We’re not going to achieve real health if we’re just hacking at symptoms instead of addressing the underlying causes. We have to have a health paradigm shift that changes the way we see things, changes the way we behave, as well as change our attitudes towards health and life in general.

Here at NaturalHealthStrategies.com our goal is to provide insights into traditional and natural health remedies and healing strategies as well as providing resources such as important up-to-date news and research. We hope in this way to help give you some of the tools you need to make informed decisions. Remember the first step may very well be to have a health paradigm shift or change.

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