The Art of Possibility

"Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams.
Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled
potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in,
but with what is still possible for you to do."
-Pope John XXIII

One of my newsletter subscribers wrote to share how profoundly she was affected by thinking about three questions I asked in my last article, The Power of Acknowledgement.

Perhaps these questions deserve further reflection:

1. Are you affected by what happens to you?
2. Do you affect what happens to you?
3. Which would you prefer?

In The Art of Possibility, authors Rosamund and Benjamin Zander remind us of our tremendous ability to attract what we want in our lives by being purposeful. In addition to being co-author of this wonderful book, Ben Zander is also the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a teacher at the New England Conservatory of music. After 25 years of teaching, Ben Zander recognized that students would be in such a chronic state of anxiety over the measurement of their performance that they would be reluctant to take risks with their playing. One evening Ben brainstormed with his wife, Roz (she is a therapist), to see if they could think of something that would dispel students' anticipation of failure. Here's what they came up with.

Ben had a class of 30 graduate students taking a two-semester exploration into the art of musical performance, including the psychological and emotional factors that can stand in the way of great music-making. He announced at the beginning of the semester that each student in the class would be getting an A for the course. However, they were asked to fulfill one requirement to earn this grade.

Sometime during the next two weeks, each student was asked to write him a letter dated for the following May, which began with the words, "Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because...". In the letter they were to tell a detailed story of what would have happened to them by next May that was in line with them receiving an A in his class. In other words, Zander asked the students to place themselves in the future, looking back, and to report on all the insights they acquired and milestones they attained during the school year, as if those accomplishments were already in the past. He asked them to write about the person they would have become by next May.You'll have to get The Art of Possibility to read some of the amazing letters Ben Zander received from his students.

Zander tells us that "the A is an invention that creates possibility for both mentor and student, manager and employee, or for any human interaction. The practice of giving an A allows the teacher to line up with her students in their efforts to produce the outcome, rather than lining up with the standards against these students. In the first instance, the instructor and the student, or the manager and the employee, become a team for accomplishing the extraordinary; in the second, the disparity in power between them can become a distraction and an inhibitor, drawing energy away from productivity and development."

Doing Things the "Right" Way

"You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way,
the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Those in charge often fall into the trap of identifying their own agendas and standards, along with a message that "my way is the only right way." Virtually everybody wakes up in the morning with an unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources. This limited view squelches innovation and creativity, and it also trains people to focus on what they need to do to please their superiors by doing things the "right" way -- whether that way works for them or not.

As a youth I had planned on a performance career as a coloratura/lyric soprano, so I was thrilled when I was offered admission to Eastman School of Music -- a very competitive and top-rated music conservatory in New York. I vividly recall one of my lowest moments during my freshman year at Eastman...

My roommate was a bassoonist, and we were both giving recitals near the end of our freshman year. She needed a scheduled break in the middle of her recital to rest her embouchure (the