The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life

by Rosamund Stone Zander

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.

Experiments in neuroscience have demonstrated that we reach an understanding of the world in roughly this sequence: first, our senses bring us selective information about what is out there; second, the brain constructs its own simulation of the sensations; and only then, third, do we have our first conscious experience of our milieu.

We perceive only the sensations we are programmed to receive, and our awareness is further restricted by the fact that we recognize only those for which we have mental maps or categories.

‘In reality the very opposite happens. It is theory which decides what we can observe.’”

Recognizing Pablo Picasso in a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people “the way they really are.” Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man opened his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, “That’s my wife.” Picasso responded, “Isn’t she rather small and flat?”5

Our minds are also designed to string events into story lines, whether or not there is any connection between the parts. In dreams, we regularly weave sensations gathered from disparate parts of our lives into narratives. In full wakefulness, we produce reasons for our actions that are rational, plausible, and guided by the logic of cause and effect, whether or not these “reasons” accurately portray any of the real motivational forces at work. Experiments with people who have suffered a lesion between the two halves of the brain have shown that when the right side is prompted, say, to close a door, the left side, unaware of the experimenter’s instruction, will produce a “reason” as to why he has just performed the action, such as, “Oh, I felt a draft.”6

“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.”

if there are absolutes, we have no direct access to their existence. The mind constructs. The meanings our minds construct may be widely shared and sustaining for us, but they may have little to do with the world itself. Furthermore, how would we know?

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.

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.

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?

All the manifestations of the world of measurement—the winning and losing, the gaining of acceptance and the threatened rejection, the raised hopes and the dash into despair—all are based on a single assumption that is hidden from our awareness. The assumption is that life is about staying alive and making it through—surviving in a world of scarcity and peril. Even when life is at its best in the measurement world, this assumption is the backdrop for the play, and, like the invisible box around the nine dots, it keeps the universe of possibility out of view.

Keeping our armor intact is of critical importance as well, which means resisting any challenge to our personal viewpoint.

Life in the measurement world seems to be arranged in hierarchies: some groups, people, bodies, places, and ideas

seem better or more powerful than others.

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.

There are moments in everyone’s life when an experience of integration with the world transcends the business of survival—like seeing a grandchild for the first time, witnessing an Olympic record broken or the uncommon bravery of an ordinary citizen.

These are moments when we forget ourselves and seem to become part of all being.

This is what Brené Brown referred to as a path to true Belonging in Braving the Wilderness.

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.

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.

True scarcity and scarcity-thinking are different phenomena as well.

scarcity-thinking is an attitude as prevalent among the well-heeled as among the down-at-heel, and remains unaltered by a change in circumstances. It is a fatalistic outlook, as profiled by the English economist Thomas Malthus in his 1798 “Essay on the Principle of Population” that predicts that supplies—which appear fixed and limited—will eventually run out. This attitude prompts us to seek to acquire more for ourselves no matter how much we have and to treat others as competitors no matter how little they have.

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

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we were to apply this visionary concept to education, it would be pointless to compare one child to another. Instead, all the energy would be focused on chipping away at the stone, getting rid of whatever is in the way of each child’s developing skills, mastery, and self-expression.

This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.

Standards can help us by defining the range of knowledge a student must master to be competent in his field.

We give the A to finesse the stranglehold of judgment that grades have over our consciousness from our earliest days. 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 the 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.

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.

Although we would have played a more than respectable performance without the full participation of Tanya, the engagement of that extra 1 percent caused a disproportionate breakthrough because once she and I were in relationship, I too could be fully present. When I had been viewing her as an unimportant casualty, I had to pretend it did not matter that for some reason she was not engaged. Meanwhile, I wasted energy both watching and ignoring her.

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.

WHEN HE RETIRED from the Supreme Court, Justice Thurgood Marshall was asked of what accomplishment he was most proud. He answered, simply, “That I did the best I could with what I had.” Could there be any greater acknowledgment? He gave himself an A, and within this framework he was free to speak of errors of judgment, of things he would have done differently had he had access to other views.

The freely granted A lifts you off the success/failure ladder and spirits you away from the world of measurement into the universe of possibility.

All we hear is that the young woman was smiling and serene, and that she moved in the pattern of a dance. Absent are the familiar measurements of progress. Instead, life is revealed as a place to contribute and we as contributors. Not because we have done a measurable amount of good, but because that is the story we tell.

A child

comes to think of himself as the personality he gets recognition for or, in other words, as the set of patterns of action and habits of thought that get him out of childhood in one piece. That set, raised to adulthood, is what we are calling the calculating self. The prolonged nature of human childhood may contribute to the persistence of these habits long after their usefulness has passed.

Enrollment is the practice of this chapter. Enrolling is not about forcing, cajoling, tricking, bargaining, pressuring, or guilt-tripping someone into doing something your way. Enrollment is the art and practice of generating a spark of possibility for others to share.

So, the practice of enrollment is about giving yourself as a possibility to others and being ready, in turn, to catch their spark. It is about playing together as partners in a field of light. And the steps to the practice are: 1. Imagine that people are an invitation for enrollment. 2. Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired. 3. Offer that which lights you up. 4. Have no doubt that others are eager to catch the spark.

Yet, were we to take a “no” less personally, and ourselves less seriously, we might hear something else. We might hear someone saying,

“I don’t see any new possibility here, so I think I’ll stick with my usual way of doing things.” We might hear within the word “no” an invitation for enrollment.

Not even mine. Persuasion is typically used to get the thing you want, whether or not it is at someone else’s expense. Persuasion works fine when the other person’s agenda matches yours or when the transaction somehow benefits them as well. We call that “aligning interests.” But in this case there was nothing in it for the two men, at least from the world of measurement, except to see me on my way.

The practice of enrollment, on the other hand, is about generating possibility and lighting its spark in others. It is not about the quarters.

Ordinarily we equate accountability with blame and blamelessness, concepts from the world of measurement. When I blame you for something that goes wrong, I seek to establish that I am in the right—and we all know the delicious feeling of satisfaction there. However, inasmuch as I blame you for a miserable vacation or a wall of silence—to that degree, in exactly that proportion, I lose my power. I lose my ability to steer the situation in another direction, to learn from it, or to put us in good relationship with each other. Indeed, I lose any leverage I may have had, because there is nothing I can do about your mistakes—only about mine.

“If I cannot be present without resistance to the way things are and act effectively, if I feel myself to be wronged, a loser, or a victim, I will tell myself that some assumption I have made is the source of my difficulty.”

Grace comes from owning the risks we take in a world by and large immune to our control. If you build your house on a floodplain of the Mississippi River, you may be devastated when the waters overflow, and you may rail at the river. However, when you declare yourself an unwilling victim of a known risk, you have postured yourself as a poor loser in a game you chose to play. Out of a sense of self-righteousness, you will have given away your chance to be effective. Perhaps to gain other people’s sympathy, you will have traded your own peace of mind.

Because, in the world of measurement, we live in the illusion that we have only ourselves to rely on, our need for control is amplified. So, when mistakes are made, and the boat gets off course, we try to get back in control by assigning blame. The “shoulds” and “oughts” from the blame game give us the illusion that we can gain control over what just went wrong, and that’s an illusion of language again.

“I told my boss what I thought and he did not take my advice.” Now you can draw a conclusion that gives you leverage. You can say without fear of contradiction, “My boss did not take my advice because he was not enrolled in it. It is up to me to light the spark of possibility. So if I want to make a difference, I had better design a conversation that matters to him, one that addresses what and how he is thinking.”

The “leader of possibility” invigorates the lines of affiliation and compassion from person to person in the face of the tyranny of fear. Any one of us can exercise this kind of leadership, whether we stand in the position of CEO or employee, citizen or elected official, teacher or student, friend or lover.

THE PRACTICE OF framing possibility calls upon us to use our minds in a manner that is counterintuitive: to think in terms of the contexts that govern us rather than the evidence we see before our eyes. It trains us to be alert to a new danger that threatens modern life—the danger that unseen definitions, assumptions, and frameworks may be covertly chaining us to the downward spiral and shaping the conditions we want to change.

The steps to the WE practice are these: 1. Tell the WE story—the story of the unseen threads that connect us all, the story of possibility. 2. Listen and look for the emerging entity.