OMSH

Your ambiguity is vaguely familiar…

Do tell. Do tell. To what shift are you referring???

Chew as much as you want. Be as broad and sweeping as you need to.

What is a paradigm shift? If it’s thinking that you maybe should be admitted to a psychiatric hospital, then I’m there, yes.

ps. I love that photo of Emelie.

Is that what I’ve been going through? It sounds much nicer than “mid-life crisis.”

Troy and I called it a paradigm shift when we started dating. We were great friends, and we’d both recently ended long-term relationships and were enjoying not dating anyone, and certainly weren’t interested in each other. Then people started asking us when we’d started dating. At first we laughed about it, but after the 5th or 6th person asked (and these were friends, people who knew us well), we decided maybe God was trying to tell us something. So we shifted our paradigm and opened ourselves to the possibility of something more than friendship. A few weeks later, we knew we were going to get married. I went from being a college sophomore who had every intention of staying at the same school, working as an RA, till I graduated, to marrying a Navy officer and being content to go wherever his job sent him.

With my husband deployed for the last year, the last year forced a paradigm shift onto all of us. And a new one is emerging now. I’ve been chewing on that in my head for the last month, and I’m not sure how exactly it’s going to be…but it’s coming, it’s a work in progress. So I get it. :)

With losing my husband to cancer in March, my entire life is a paradigm shift right now. Raising two small boys on my own, figuring out a routine, deciding how and when it is appropriate to move on – all shifts. And each day the shift changes directions.

KEEP BELIEVING

Must be the time of paradigm shifts. My youngest is in Kindergarten this year (1/2 days). It is clear he will need more academic support than my daughter and that staying close and involved will be a must. Not that I wouldn’t be anyway, but it has gone from optional to mandatory. Not full time by any extent, but a close eye needs to be kept. (This must sound odd to a homeschooler, but trust me all is good, I just want to be sure it stays that way).

I closed my last business in June because the passion was gone. I thought I knew what was next, but it turns out I hadn’t a clue. I am a planner and a logistics person by nature this meandering and jiggling doorknobs to see if that is the door that is meant to open is simultaneously driving me nuts and soothing a part of my soul I didn’t know needed to be soothed.

Slowly, with the help of friends, family, my journal and two books (Guide for the Advanced Sout and Life Organizing). I feel as though a dim light is beginning to illuminate the path I am meant to take. I too am a work in progress.

I bid you peace on your journey!

Paradigm shift. So that’s what’s been going on around here!

My world-tilting event happened when my step-sister (on the faculty of our local community college) asked me to teach a session on Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales for her. Se also offered (vigorously) to help me get a part-time position at the community college. What does this mean for me? Am I now to become a teacher? I have been at home with my kids for eighteen years!

The world feels a little tippy on its axis to me right now.

Are you kidding me? I *just* started a new blog that revolves around turning my life upside down. You know what I’ve learned so far? Opening up to the possibility of change (and not being afraid of the ugly stuff that might come with it) brings amazing things your way.

Good luck in your journey!

Be it a beacon or train, you can trust that you are in total control of your response to it.

I love your blog. Thank you for taking a little time out of your days to pop in and inspire.
:)

Paradigm shift…hmmm…. it’s that feeling of “why not?” But I think I need a push to go toward it… Kind of in the line of what bethany shared… wish me luck!

Interesting…

I’ve labeled this fall the autumn of my introspection.

I am participating in Mondo Beyondo (highly recommend) and started reading The Artists Way and I Thought it was Just Me (great read along on the author’s blog).

I chalked all of this up to turning 40 in about six months. Decided I wanted to be free of old baggage.

Hope your shift feels like it is heading in the right direction.

I think mine is.

I am stuck in a rut, so a shift sounds GREAT! I fight it. Because I’m stubborn and think I don’t need help. Never mix independance with stubborn. It’s fatal and it almost always ensures no growth. This I know about myself. This I’m trying to change….
I try to remember what EInstein said, -Crazy is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results – or something like that!

I’m feelin’ ya. :)
Something’s in the wind, I think… I think it’s good…

Yes, well, you know mine partially. My paradigm shift is realizing I’m a total tool betimes and trying to remedy that.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot of classics and there are people in Austen’s work nobody is supposed to like or relate to, and I think — Oh dear, act like that sometimes.

Not good.

Le sigh.

ALSO, I hope you’re framing that shot.

I am waiting, twiddling my thumbs. Wordpress is yelling at me for posting to fast, so lah de dahhh, doo dee doo, doobie, doobie, dooooooo.

I know what you are saying, it all makes sense to me. I’m looking at life differently and thinking things are shifting. I basically am working on remaking myself. I’m working on loosing weight, growing my hair out, changing my style of clothes I wear, even redecorating my house. Heck I’m doing yoga! I’m only homeschooling my daughter now, my son already graduated from his stuff and is trying to find his place in this world, but you know, at 45 so am I.

Hmm… I don’t know if I’ve had any lately, but I’m looking to hearing about yours. Mostly what’s been deep on my heart lately is feeling a call from the Spirit to a closer and deeper walk with God, and at the same time wondering how I’m going to accomplish that and still pay attention to my job as a first time mom to this little two month old boy.

first i have to admit that i needed to look up the definition of paradigm shift to make sure i had it right. now that that’s out of the way…

yes! many! my life turned upside down about two and a half years ago and since then, everything i thought i knew? i didn’t.

right now the biggies…faith well not exactly, i’ve always had faith and never lost it. but maybe spirituality and where exactly i fit in to it. my marriage which has always been a bit tumultuous. and my girls, they are at an age that is hard to figure out-younger but older.

needless to say, there are lots of deep thoughts in my mind these days.

The change in weather must cause us to turn inwards and do some introspection. Curious.

I think things are going to be changing in my household too. For the better. I’ve taken some steps that I hope will remedy some problems and I’m also trying to change MY behavior and achieve some different results. I find myself really wanting to hone and fine-tune who I am and become MORE of myself instead of just vaguely myself. Does that make sense? I’m not sure it does even to me but it’s what came to mind.

Good luck to all of us on our shifts. May we all come out the other side better and stronger!

So in the same place right now.

I don’t want any shifts, changes or otherwise. I like my life the way it is thank you very much…having said that out loud I am sure that it will certainly change…holding on and hoping for the best! Kim

Firstly, I think the use of the coat hanger in that picture makes it awesome :)

As a person of routine, change is not something I care much for. Change often barges in unannounced, and unwelcome. Taking that for which I am most comfortable with, and flipping it upside down. But for personal growth to happen, change is often a necessity. When we trade our comfort zones for things that might be scary, we take the opportunity to see things we hadn’t seen before, often opening avenues that would not be available if it weren’t for the change.

I hope your changes bring you continued blessing and success.

Hey, Scott, thanks for pointing out the coat hanger. I had missed it.

I think that this is exactly the stuff I’m afraid to blog about and why I haven’t been reading blogs, let alone posting to mine.

It’s hard to find the words to share what I’m going through without theTMI that I will not post to teh interwebs. So I avoid discussing it which keeps it all bottled up inside and, ugh, that is not good. Guess it’s time to try to find the words. Thank you for the gentle nudge.

> So I avoid discussing it which keeps it all bottled up inside and, ugh

A blank piece of paper and a nice writing pen has been known to do wonders for many. Today is a day of rest. Carve out some quiet time, and let it rip. (coat hanger optional)

I’m a little late on the conversation…

I guess I wouldn’t say it’s an earth shifting paradigm by any means. More of a small introspective one of sorts. I’ve come to learn (and am still learning each day) about what freedom in Christ is all about. What it all means to be free to be me. Don’t know if it’s ’cause I turned 40 or if I’m just now starting to grow up but it’s well, freeing. A little bit every week here and there I can look back and see how God is moving in my mind and how He continues to show me through other women what being real, transparent and imperfect is all about. And more importantly, how vital it is to other women, (especially those younger than me) to put our real junk out there for others to see. Also, I’ve learned so much about our talents and gifts and how we should use them now, today, instead of waiting until they’re “perfected” or whatever that means. I’ve been waiting so long, comparing myself to others seeing where I need improvement and not doing what God created me to do in the meantime and I’ve come to see that when we are doing what He created us to do, that’s where the joy comes in. And not because it’s perfectly executed or the best ever.

Now I don’t know if this made any sense at all to you but it’s been quite cathartic to me thank you very much.

I’m a month and a half late to this post but commenting even if just to get my own thoughts down…

I’m 54, I’ve been single since 1996 and happily so being a bit of a lone wolf, working from home (rural home on 8 acres 15 miles from “town”)… When well meaning friends have suggested that I “get out there” and “date”, my typical response has been that I’m very happy on my own and anyway, since I don’t go “out”, a man would have to show up on my doorstep.

And then one did – I hired some work done in my woods and Steve was one of the men. During the course of the day we discovered a mutual interest in photography and the outdoors. He has been single for 10 years after 30+ years of marriage.

That was Sep 26, 2009 – we are being married next week, December 18 – on the spot where we met.

Paradigm shift indeed!

We are both Christians with strong, everyday faith lives. The confidence to make this shift comes from a mutual feeling that our meeting and everything involved with it was engineered by God. Not to say there haven’t been brief moments of sheer panic :)!

And like all of His timing, I came to this post – a week and a day before I am to be married to a good and Godly man – and it seems just one more affirmation.

Peace and serenity to all who are shifting!