The Pair of Glasses That Changed My Life: What a Paradigm Really Is

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I remember coming home from work when I was newly married.

I'd sit down in the recliner in the living room of our 1984 single-wide mobile home, kick back, and open the book on my lap. The home business opportunity I was a part of at the time had a recommended reading list, and the book I was working through was called Rich Dad Poor Dad.

Then I hit a page.

I read something on that page, and it felt like someone had reached a hand inside my brain and flipped on a light switch.

It was an aha moment. Suddenly I could see something I had never seen before, and something shifted inside of me. A new path opened up, one that simply had not been there a moment earlier.

I ended up taking that path. It led me to retiring debt-free in my early 40s.

What happened to me in that recliner, I now know, was a paradigm shift. And once you understand what a paradigm is, you start seeing them everywhere, beginning with your own.

Up until that page, I believed there was only one way to make money. Get a job. Show up to work. Punch the hourly clock. Somebody pays you for the hour.

I never chose that idea. Nobody sat me down and argued for it. It was just how the world worked, as far as I could tell, and I never questioned it because I couldn't see anything else.

What I read on that page was different. Wealthy people don't earn money that way, it said. Instead, they build businesses that produce cash flow. Then they take that cash flow and put it into investments, which produce even more cash flow.

And the idea that stopped me in my tracks was a visualization of a pipeline. A pipeline of money running from the marketplace to your bank account.

The pipeline would take work. I won't pretend otherwise. But once it was built, it did something a paycheck never could: it disconnected my time from my money.

That one idea changed the entire course of my life's future. Had I not had that paradigm shift, my life today would be radically different than it is now.

The page didn't hand me anything. I still had to walk the path, one step at a time. But I never would have started walking if I hadn't seen it first.

One of my favorite quotes is from Jim Rohn. He said, “Your philosophy is the major determining factor in how your life works out.”

A philosophy is a paradigm. It's the way you see the world.

We all live in the same world, but we all see that world differently. It's as if each of us is wearing a different pair of glasses.

Blurry. Some people aren't wearing glasses, but they're nearsighted, so everything is blurry. Opportunities drift right past, and they can't quite make out what they were.

Spotted. Other people are wearing glasses, but the lenses are spotted, so they're missing parts of reality. And here's the tricky part: a missing piece doesn't announce itself. You don't see the spots. You just don't see what they cover.

Darkened. Still others are wearing sunglasses darken parts of reality. “That's not for people like me.” “That never works.” The light can't get in.

Clear. And some people are wearing a set of glasses that fixes their vision, so they can see clearly. They see what is actually there.

That's all a paradigm does. It lets two people look at the very same thing and see it in a different way.

Why does this matter so much? Because of what happens next.

What comes in through your eyes, what you perceive, feeds what you understand. What you understand leads to what you do or don't do. And what you do or don't do leads to the results you have in life.

So the paradigm is step number one. It feeds the map inside your brain. When we first adjust how we see the world, the right information can come into our minds, and then we can build a more accurate map of reality.

The map matters because of this. Say you have a map that shows you how to get to China, but you want to go to New York City.

It doesn't matter how diligent you are. It doesn't matter how fast you go. Following the wrong map is going to get you to the wrong destination.

And if you have the wrong set of glasses on, you're going to end up with the wrong map. The wrong map leads to the wrong actions, and the wrong actions lead to the wrong results.

That's why, if you're working hard and not getting where you want to go, the first thing to check usually isn't your effort. It's your glasses.

Here's a modern example, and it's happening right now.

Some people in the world are leveraging artificial intelligence in ways that are unlocking massive doors for them. They're accomplishing things that seem almost magical.

Other people have the paradigm that artificial intelligence is somehow evil or dangerous. So they resist it and move away from it. And if you're moving away from it, you're going to be limited in what you can accomplish, compared to the people using it and moving forward in much faster and more efficient ways.

That is literally a paradigm difference. Same technology. Different glasses. (I wrote more about this in Want to Build a Business Around AI? Here’s the One Skill That Actually Matters.)

The good news is that glasses can be changed. Mine were. Here's where I'd start.

A recommended reading list changed my life. One page, in one book, on one evening in a recliner. If I had never opened that book, I'd likely still be punching a clock and wondering why working harder wasn't getting me anywhere.

Look for authors who are further down the road than you are. Read for how they see things, not only for what they did.

Seek out people who have the results you want, or who understand things you don't yet understand but want to. Ask how they think about money, time, and risk.

Don't argue with them. Just listen for the thing you can't see from where you're standing.

Pick one belief you hold about money, work, or what's possible for you, and ask where you got it. Did you choose it, or did you inherit it? Spots on a lens are hard to find until you hold the glass up to the light.

The people around you shape your paradigm more than you'd guess. Find the groups and communities where people talk about what's possible instead of why things can't work. Their glasses start to rub off on you.

I still think about that recliner and that little single-wide living room. One page. One idea. One new pair of glasses. And everything that came after started right there.

I didn't get smarter that night. I didn't suddenly start working harder. I just saw something I had never seen before.

So let me ask you what I wish someone had asked me back then: What pair of glasses are you wearing right now?

If you'd like help trading in a pair or two, come keep learning with us at The Home Business Academy. I'd love to have you.