From 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
To try to change outward attitudes and behaviors does very little good in the long run if we fail to examine the basic paradigms from which those attitudes and behaviors flow.
The more aware we are over our basic paradigms, maps, or assumptions, and the extent to which we have been influenced by our experience, the more we can take responsibility for those paradigms, examine them, test them against reality, listen to others and be open to their perceptions, thereby getting a larger picture and a far more objective view.
In other words our view of certain things, certain behaviors, certain people, our paradigm, may not be exactly correct because we are only seeing those things through our filter. Trying to change outwardly does not really last unless we change inside first. Why do we think that. Why do we feel that. You must try to understand and then be understood. Let’s get all the facts first. Let’s try to see things from several sides before we jump into our judgement seat and tell someone their paradigm is wrong.