Rosamund Stone Zander - The Art of Possibility Transforming Professional and Personal Life

The Zanders book of practices has made my life one of infinite possibility. Each day, since reading it, has been perfect. The implications for corporate and political life are extraordinary.

WARREN BENNIS, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and Author of Managing the Dream and On Becoming a Leader

This is a wise, uplifting, and important work, a seamless blend of insight and inspiration, personal revelations, and stories drawn from the worlds of art, psychology, business, and politics. Ben and Roz Zander make an extraordinary teamtheir energy, passion, and fundamental commitment to humane values are absolutely contagious.

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN, Historian and Pulitzer Prizewinning Author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II

In the presence of either Zander, ones spirit soars. Now they reveal their secrets in a deeply satisfying book. I guarantee youll be inspired.

GAIL SHEEHY, Author of New Passages and Hillarys Choice

The passionate energy permeating The Art of Possibility is a true force for every reader for self-development and life fulfillment.

KLAUS SCHWAB, Founder and President, World Economic Forum

Rosamund and Benjamin Zander bring their conspicuous energy to bear on those possibilities, latent in us all, to make a life and not just a living. In music as in life, practice is what it takes to get it right, and with the insightful tutelage of the Zanders, practice may indeed make perfect.

REVEREND PETER J. GOMES, Pusey Minister in The Memorial Church, Harvard University

The Art of Possibility makes a humane and brilliant future possible. I truly want everyone to read this bookit opens us to the treasure of our great human capacity for creativity. These practices are simple yet extraordinarily effective for tapping into the unlimited energy of the human imagination.

MARGARET J. WHEATLEY, Author of Leadership and the New Science, Coauthor of A Simpler Way, and President, The Berkana Institute

I love this book. It is provocative, instructive, and uplifting. The ideas and practices in it are about creating and engaging new possibilities in life. It is a boon to readers as a guide to their personal development, as well as a resource for helping them to lead others. The Art of Possibility is a gem.

PETER J. FROST, Edgar F. Kaiser Chair of Organizational Behavior, University of British Columbia

For one relatively brief period in the history of philosophy, namely, the Hellenistic age, philosophers saw their job as a practical one: they wanted to help people think about their lives and the world in a way that would make them happier and more fulfilled. The Zanders are clear about the fact that they are offering tools rather than answers, and stimulation rather than comfort. But their project has much in common with that now almost abandoned therapeutic strain in philosophy, and no shortage of new ideas.

ANTHONY GOTTLIEB, Author of The Dream of Reason: A History of Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance, and Executive Editor, The Economist

This elegantly written book presents a series of practices that begin with acceptance and harmony rather than strategy and maneuvering. The Art of Possibility is also a chronicle of a unique life partnership, told in colorful parables. Ben and Roz Zander are innovators, and they are generous with their secrets. All musicians learn that they must do more than survive defeats and rejections they must transform them. The Zanders open bright new avenues, leading us into a less driven, more habitable world lit by humor, patience, and compassion.

JOHN HARBISON, Pulitzer Prize-winning Composer

Reading The Art of Possibility is like completing a series of music lessons for the soul. Readers will recognize not only that they can create wholly new life forms for themselves, but that these forms actually alter the audiences for whom they play. And the great thing is, no one is tone deaf. The Art of Possibility has captured me, and I embrace it!

THOMAS J. COTTLE, Psychologist and Professor of Education, Boston University

Some of the names of real individuals have been disguised to protect their confidentiality or privacy. In all other cases, real names have been used with authorization.

I Dwell in Possibility by Emily Dickinson is reprinted by permission of the publishers and the trustees of Amherst College, from The Poems of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, editor, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, copyright 1951, 1955, 1979 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Quotation from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is reprinted by arrangement with The Heirs to the Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., c/o Writers House, Inc., as agent for the proprietor. Copyright 1963 by Martin Luther King, Jr., copyright renewed 1991 by Coretta Scott King.

Quotation from the movie Babe is from Babe, directed by Chris Noonan, produced by George Miller, Doug Mitchell, and Bill Miller. Copyright 1995 Universal City Studios Inc.

Quotation from the movie The Shawshank Redemption is from The Shawshank Redemption, directed by Frank Darabont, produced by Niki Marvin. Copyright 1994 Castle Rock Entertainment.

Copyright 2000 Rosamund Zander and Benjamin Zander

All rights reserved

First eBook Edition: January 2001

ISBN: 978-0-875-84770-2

I dwell in Possibility

A fairer House than Prose

More numerous of Windows

Superiorfor Doors

Of Chambers as the Cedars

Impregnable of Eye

And for an Everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky

Of Visitorsthe fairest

For OccupationThis

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise

EMILY DICKINSON

BEN: Waiter, I said, in an exuberant mood, I have a perfect life, but I dont have a knife.

I was having breakfast with a friend on one of my periodic visits to London to conduct the Philharmonia Orchestra. I heard giggles behind me and, turning around, caught the eye of a girl of about twelve with a typically English pudding-bowl haircut. We exchanged smiles, and then I went back to my conversation and to my breakfast.

The next day, I passed the young lady again in the breakfast room and stopped to speak with her.

Good morning. How are you today?

She drew herself up ever so slightly and, with a tilt to her chin and a sparkle in her eye, answered me.

Perfect, she said.

Later, when she was leaving with her parents, I called out mischievously, Have a perfect day!

I will! she responded, as though it were the easiest, most obvious choice in the world.

And with that, she sailed out into a universe of possibility.

THIS IS A HOW-TO BOOK of an unusual kind. Unlike the genre of how-to books that offer strategies to surmount the hurdles of a competitive world and move out ahead, the objective of this book is to provide the reader the means to lift off from that world of struggle and sail into a vast universe of possibility. Our premise is that many of the circumstances that seem to block us in our daily lives may only appear to do so based on a framework of assumptions we carry with us. Draw a different frame around the same set of circumstances and new pathways come into view. Find the right framework and extraordinary accomplishment becomes an everyday experience. Each chapter of this book presents a different facet of this approach and describes a new practice for bringing possibility to life.