The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

by Rosamund Stone Zander

A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES The other writes back triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES

“It’s all invented anyway, so we might as well invent a story or a framework of meaning that enhances our quality of life and the life of those around us.”

The frames our minds create define—and confine—what we perceive to be possible. Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.

This practice we refer to by the catchphrase, it’s all invented, is the most fundamental of all the practices we present in this book. When you bring to mind it’s all invented, you remember that it’s all a story you tell—not just some of it, but all of it. And remember, too, that every story you tell is founded on a network of hidden assumptions. If you learn to notice and distinguish these stories, you will be able to break through the barriers of any “box” that contains unwanted conditions and create other conditions or narratives that support the life you envision for yourself and those around you. We do not mean that you can just make anything up and have it magically appear. We mean that you can shift the framework to one whose underlying assumptions allow for the conditions you desire. Let your thoughts and actions spring from the new framework and see what happens.

THE PRACTICE A simple way to practice it’s all invented is to ask yourself this question: What assumption am I making, That I’m not aware I’m making, That gives me what I see? And when you have an answer to that question, ask yourself this one: What might I now invent, That I haven’t yet invented, That would give me other choices? And then you can inven...

Just as virtually everybody adds the clause within the square formed by the outer dots to the instructions for the nine-dot puzzle; virtually everybody, whether living in the lap of luxury or in diminished circumstances, wakes up in the morning with the unseen assumption that life is about the struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources. “Hey, bring some lines out here!”

It may seem that this chapter sets up a simplistic dichotomy between being successful and living a kind-hearted, feel-good life. Nothing could be further from our conviction. In fact, we are saying that, on the whole, you are more likely to extend your business and have a fulfilled life if you have the attitude that there are always new customers out there waiting to be enrolled rather than that money, customers, and ideas are in short supply. You are more likely to be successful, overall, if you participate joyfully with projects and goals and do not think your life depends on achieving the mark because then you will be better able to connect to people all around you. On the whole, resources are likely to come to you in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive and engage people in your passion for life. There aren’t any guarantees, of course. When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks. You may give away short-term profits in pursuit of a bigger dream; you may take a long view without being able to predict the outcome. In the measurement world, you set a goal and strive for it. In the universe of possibility, you set the context and let life unfold.

How are my thoughts and actions, in this moment, reflections of the measurement world?

In the absence of a vision, we are each driven by our own agenda, finding people whose interests match ours, and inattentive to those with whom we appear to have little in common. We automatically judge our players, workers, and loved ones against our standards, inadvertently pulling the wind from their sails. But with our new practice of granting an ongoing A in all our relationships, we can align ourselves with others, because that A declares and sustains a life-enhancing partnership.

Why should I bother to go to class today? I already have my A. And I’ve got so much to do; I really need to practice on my own. Anyway, it’s such a large class, he probably won’t even notice. I tell the students that this is the first symptom of a widespread disease called “second fiddle-itis,” popularly known as “playing second fiddle.” People who perceive their role in a group to be of little significance (second violins for example) are particularly vulnerable to its ravages. The string players in an orchestra often see themselves as redundant foot soldiers, virtual cannon fodder for the egotistical whim of the conductor. Many other players, after all, duplicate their part. This is not true for the lead trumpet or the main wind players, who are soloists within the orchestra. A string player just entering a new position in an orchestra will often start off with great enthusiasm, take his part home at night, and continue to do careful and regular practice in his spare time. However, when it begins to dawn on him that his stand partner stopped practicing years ago and that the conductor does not seem to care or even to hear when players are out of tune, he too quickly begins to show signs of the onset of the disease. A first oboist, on the other hand, is unlikely to give up making reeds or to miss a rehearsal. It is simply too noticeable. In all my years of conducting, I do not believe I have ever known a first oboe to be late for a rehearsal. Is it because the oboe has to...

“So,” I tell the class, “the next time you hear the little second-violin melody in your head that says, ‘I’m not going to class because I’m too tired,’ or ‘I have too much to do, and I know it won’t make any difference anyway’—remember that you are an A student. An A student is a leading player in any class, an integral voice, and the class cannot make its music without that voice.”

When we give an A we can be open to a perspective different from our own. For after all, it is only to a person to whom you have granted an A that you will really listen, and it is in that rare instance when you have ears for another person that you can truly appreciate a fresh point of view. In the measured context of our everyday lives, the grades we hand out often rise and fall with our moods and opinions. We may disagree with someone on one issue, lower their grade, and never quite hear what they have to say again. Each time the grade is altered, the new assessment, like a box, defines the limits of what is possible between us.

Strolling along the edge of the sea, a man catches sight of a young woman who appears to be engaged in a ritual dance. She stoops down, then straightens to her full height, casting her arm out in an arc. Drawing closer, he sees that the beach around her is littered with starfish, and she is throwing them one by one into the sea. He lightly mocks her: “There are stranded starfish as far as the eye can see, for miles up the beach. What difference can saving a few of them possibly make?” Smiling, she bends down and once more tosses a starfish out over the water, saying serenely, “It certainly makes a difference to this one.”

Until the splash of cold water. My second wife walked away from the marriage midstream. At the same time she asserted—though at first I did not listen—that we would always be in relationship, and that it was up to us to invent the form. Clearly the family had not been thriving under the arrangement we’d had. “Let’s invent a form,” she said, “that allows us to contribute to each other, and let’s set a distance that supports us to be fully ourselves.” Going down for the second time, I understood and grabbed hold. I saw the whole thing was made up and that the game of success was just that, a game. I realized I could invent another game.

When I began playing the game of contribution, on the other hand, I found there was no better orchestra than the one I was conducting, no better person to be with than the one I was with; in fact, there was no “better.” In the game of contribution you wake up each day and bask in the notion that you are a gift to others.

leaving his reluctant mother and aunts behind. The women who refused to leave were killed in the camps. I once asked him why he wasn’t angry. He said, “I discovered a person cannot live a full life under the shadow of bitterness.”

“There is no such thing as bad weather,” he used to say, “only inappropriate clothing.”

Now, in the light of my “discovery,” I began to shift my attention to how effective I was at enabling the musicians to play each phrase as beautifully as they were capable. This concern had rarely surfaced when my position appeared to give me absolute power and I had cast the players as mere instruments of my will.

He can look in the eyes of the players and prepare to ask himself, “Who am I being that they are not shining?”

“Rule Number 6 is ‘Don’t take yourself so g—damn seriously.’”

How do we learn to recognize the often-charming, always-scheming, sometimes-anxious, frequently conniving calculating self? One good way is to ask ourselves, What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled? The answer to this question will clue us in to the conditions our calculating self finds threatening or even intolerable, and we may see that our zeal to bring about change may benefit from a lighter touch. The intolerable condition may be a place or a situation, but very often it is another person.

“Spring Dream” (“Frülingstraum”), from Schubert’s Die Winterreise,

Transformation, for our central selves, is a description of the mode through which we move through life. A transformation is a shift in how we experience the world, and these shifts happen continually, often just beyond our notice. As soon as a person sets out on an adventure, or falls in love, or starts a new job, she is likely to find herself feeling and thinking and talking like a new person, curious as to how she could have felt the way she had just days earlier. From the perspective of the central self, life moves with fluidity like a constantly varying river, and so do we. Confident that it can deal with whatever comes its way, it sees itself as permeable rather than vulnerable, and stays open to influence, to the new and the unknown. Under no illusion that it can control the movement of the river, it joins rather than resists its bountiful flow.

I thanked him for everything. “Oh, no,” he said, winking at my last-ditch efforts to find some parity. “The pleasure’s all mine.”

WHEN WE FOLLOW Rule Number 6 and lighten up over our childish demands and entitlements, we are instantly transported into a remarkable universe. This new universe is cooperative in nature, and pulls for the realization of all our cooperative desires. For the most part it lies a bit above our heads. Angels can fly there because, as you may have heard, they take themselves lightly. But now with the help of a single rule, so can we.

Being present to the way things are is not the same as accepting things as they are in the resigned way of the cow. It doesn’t mean you should drown out your negative feelings or pretend you like what you really can’t stand. It doesn’t mean you should work to achieve some “higher plane of existence” so you can “transcend negativity.” It simply means, being present without resistance: being present to what is happening and present to your reactions, no matter how intense.

Say, for instance, you are on your annual winter vacation in Florida, and rain is pouring down steadily. Surely you won’t like it. You came here expecting sun and warmth, rounds of golf, and lots of time on the beach. The question is, can you be with the whole thing, the rain and your feelings about the rain? If you cannot, you might spend entire days bracing against the truth, complaining how unfair it is, how nobody warned you about the weather patterns, how the hotel ought to refund your money because the brochure showed sunny skies, how wrong your spouse was not to take your advice to go to the resort in Tucson. You might find yourself railing at the heavens, asking why you, personally, are being punished. You would be stuck—and unable to go on from there.

However, there is another choice: letting the rain be, without fighting it. Merely exchanging an and for a but may do the trick: We are in Florida for our winter vacation, AND it’s raining. This isn’t what we planned; it’s very disappointing. If we wanted rain at this time of year, we would have visited our friends in Seattle. AND, this is the way things are. Presence without resistance: you are now free to turn to the question, “What do we want to do from here?” Then all sorts of pathways begin to appear: the possibility of restin...

MISTAKES CAN BE like ice. If we resist them, we may keep on slipping into a posture of defeat. If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.

A young man goes to see his rabbi. “Rabbi,” he asks, “you told us a story—something to do with praise?” The rabbi responds, “Yes, it is thus: when you get some good news, you thank the Lord, and when you get some bad news, you praise the Lord.” “Of course,” replies the man, “I should have remembered. But Rabbi, how do you actually know which is the good news and which is the bad news?” The rabbi smiles. “You are wise, my son. So just to be on the safe side, always thank the Lord.”

The more attention you shine on a particular subject, the more evidence of it will grow. Attention is like light and air and water. Shine attention on obstacles and problems and they multiply lavishly.