Pardigms

Time and again, both with myself and with clients, I find that one of the most important and complex pieces of the puzzle when it comes to making progress towards a goal is our paradigms.  Here is a quick definition of the word and concept:

...the term is used to describe the set of experiences, beliefs and values that affect the way an individual perceives reality and responds to that perception. (Wikipedia)

So a paradigm is like a map that we use to interpret our reality.  Just as a map is not the actual system of roads that it represents, our paradigms are not our reality, but the tools that we use to navigate it.  This has important implications for training towards a goal.

At the start of the journey, our paradigms serve to set the stage.  This is where we often have to reprogram the road map to allow us to Think Big.  Sometimes it is hard to envisage ourselves in our future state as someone who is... muscular, lean, agile, mobile, pain-free, successful in business, affluent, etc.  This usually takes a paradigm shift in order to reevaluate what is possible.  In this, we are often caught under estimating our capacities.  This is more applicable to the macro, long-term, overall picture of development.

However, on the day-to-day micro level, sometimes we run up against the opposite situation.  We become the victims of our own success.  This happens to me all the time and I have discovered that it happens to many people that I train as well.  Every now and then you absolutely obliterate a plateau.  You have a training session that is just so awesome that it puts you on cloud nine.  Everything feels perfectly grooved, you feel so strong you could carry the world on your shoulders.  Somehow, it seems like an event like this come somehow twist your paradigms so that you actually project upon yourself an inflated version of your progress.  So even though you busted your previous performance by a long shot, your mind sets you up as having performed even better that you did.  Then, the subsequent training sessions you feel as if you somehow are experiencing a backslide.  So even though you are still performing up to the standards of that plateau-busting session, your paradigms have already leapt past you and are leaving you feeling like you something is wrong.

The best solution for the leaping paradigm is record keeping, including rates of perceived effort, perceived technique and perceived discomfort (known in CST as Intuitive Training).  By keeping track of what you do from session to session and how you perceived that work, you can easily go back and sift through the reality of how you are doing now.  This will set you straight as to whether you actually have had a backslide or whether you are just living a serious paradigm twist.  So although the sword (or the Clubbell) may be mighty, it is less effective without the pen...