Paradigm Paralyzed

When I got that piece of paper saying that I had to go for a training, I wasn't excited. The name bores me even before me attending it - "Cross Functional Mapping Workshop".

What is that? I asked for project management training and this is what I got?

Blaaahhh...

What made me even heavier to attend the training was that I was instructed to take up a new post, and I was battling with myself to accept that change. And I was battling with myself that the training will not do me any good, being me in that new post and all.

As the week approached, I was finding reasons not to go.

But I went anyway.

Training was smooth, I was always looking forward to coffee and tea breaks. Day one went real quick and I expected day two to be the same.

Training spoke of things I can apply back in the office - but being one who was in a battle to accept the new change, I wasn't too bothered.

Until...

Towards the end of the second (also the last) day, the instructor played a video by Joel Barker - the man who made famous the idea on paradigm. The video caught my attention from the very beginning. He spoke of how we all need changes, how we all need to adapt quickly to changes, that changes come whether we want it or not.

I felt like I was slapped on the face. Hey, he wasn't talking about an organization; he was talking about ME! I was the one going through this change, and I was resisting it emotionally and mentally. Just because I fear of the connation the title brings, and fear that I would not grow in my career from here onwards.

I had tonnes and tonnes of unjustifiable fears that no one could help answer. I was resisting the change causing me to lose control over my emotional being.

Then, Joel Baker, who had not stopped slapping me on my face since the beginning of the video, spanked me again with the term "paradigm paralysis" - the inability or refusal to see beyond the current models of thinking.

Like I was taken out of a tunnel, the light suddenly hit my eyes. My nerves stopped firing for the longest time, my heart stopped pumping. The only thing I could hear at that moment was: "Dang! That's ME!!"

And so I became the 'paradigm invalid'. Bedridden too long in the previous state of mind that I was unable to accept changes or new ideas. I was paralyzed the moment I was thrown a new notion.

But I pray that I don't stay as a paradigm-paralyzed individual for long. It consumes too much of my mental state of being...

:)