A few weeks ago, a client walked into my office frustrated and defeated.
He sat down, sighed, and said, “Beatriz, everything is against me — my boss, my wife, the holidays are coming, the traffic… I just can’t catch a break.”
I listened quietly and then asked, “If everything outside of you is the problem, what’s left inside of you that can change it?”
He stared at me, shook his head, and said, “What?!”
I believe that was the question he needed to realize he had been living as if life was happening to him, not through him.
We often believe our outer world — our job, our relationships, our circumstances — shapes our happiness. But the truth is the opposite: the outer environment is only an effect, never the cause.
What we see around us is simply the physical expression of what’s happening inside — our beliefs, emotions, and paradigms.
We’re not limited by the world we live in. We’re limited by the lenses through which we see it.
We are limited because of our paradigms — those deeply rooted patterns of belief that quietly dictate how we think, what we notice, and what we allow ourselves to receive.
Paradigms are sneaky. They wear the disguise of “reality.” They whisper, “That’s just how things are.” And because they live below our level of awareness, we often mistake them for truth.
Our paradigms — those invisible mental programs built from years of repetition — filter every experience and determine what we believe is possible. They are the reason two people can face the same situation and one sees a challenge, while the other sees an opportunity.
The tragedy is, most of us can’t see our paradigms because they live in our blind spots. We repeat the same patterns and call it “reality,” when in truth, it’s just our conditioning replaying itself.
Transformation begins the moment someone asks a question that makes us say “WHAT?!”
That’s the spark of awareness — the moment we begin to see the pattern instead of being the pattern.
When we stop blaming the outside world and start asking, “What within me is creating this?” — that’s when we reclaim our power.
Because the truth is:
The world doesn’t shape you. You shape the world through the thoughts you choose, the emotions you cultivate, and the actions you take.
So the next time you feel stuck…
Pause. Reflect.
And simply ask yourself:
What within me can change?
That question alone can open the door to everything you’ve been searching for.
To Your Triumph,
Beatriz Martínez-Peñalver