The Art of Possibility

by Rosamund and Benjamin Zander

You need a "catchy" catchphrase, so that you can recall them instantly when the time comes.
Once you are in the habit of using them, these practices will reliably land you back in the boat, reoriented in a universe of possibility.

1. It's All Invented
A shoe factory sends out 2 marketing scouts to Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying:
SITUATION HOPELESS. NO ONE WEARS SHOES

The other writes back triumphantly:
GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY. THEY HAVE NO SHOES.

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

Eg. Picasso's paintings.

Most people already understand that, as with cultural differences, interpretations of the world vary from individual to individual.

Eg: 9 dot puzzle -> Think out of the box!

Enlarge the box, create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.

Every story is founded on a network of hidden assumptions.

The puzzle "assumes" you must draw within the square formed by outer dots.

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 conditions that support the life you envision for yourself.

The Practice

Ask yourself:

What assumption am I making, that I'm not aware I'm making, that gives me what I see?

Then ask yourself:

What might I now invent, that I haven't yet invented, that would give me other choices?

Since it's all invented, why not invent something that supports your goals instead of against it?

2. Universe of Possibility

World of measurement

We grow up in a world of measurement, and in this world, we get to know each other and things by measuring them, and by comparing and contrasting them.

And just as virtually everybody adds the clause "within the square formed by the outer dots", virtually everybody, whether living in the lap of luxury or diminished circumstances, wakes up in the morning with the unseen assumption that life is about struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources.

Universe of Possibility

In the realm of possibility, we gain our knowledge by invention. You attract your label.

The action in a universe of possibility may be characterised as generative/giving - producing new life, creating new ideas. The relationship between people and environments is highlighted, not the things themselves.

You are more likely to be successful , if you participate joyfully with projects and goals and do not think that your life depends on it, because then you will be better able to connect to people all around you. Resources are likely to come to you in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive. When you are oriented to abundance, you care less about being in control, and you take more risks.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing. =P

3. Giving an "A"

"Each student in this class will get an A for the course. However there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade. Sometime during the next 2 weeks, you must write me a letter dated next May, which begins with the words, "Dear Mr Zander, I got my A because.... " and in this letter you are to tell me, in as much detail as you can, the story of what will have happened to you by next May that is in line with this extraordinary grade. Phrases like 'I hope', 'I intend' or 'I will' must not appear"

" I am especially interested in the person you will have become by next May. I am interested in the attitude, feelings and worldview of that person who will have done all she wished to do or become everything he wanted to be."

The art of music, since it can only be conveyed through interpreters, depends on expressive performance for its lifeblood. Yet it is only when we make mistakes in performance that we can really begin to notice what needs attention. In fact, I actively train my students that when they make a mistake, they are to lift their arms in the air, smile and say, "How fascinating!"

The Secret of Life

The student, in a brilliant flash, had realised that the labels he had been taking so seriously are human inventions. The label C is invented, and the A is invented, so we might as well choose to invent something that brightens our life.

Give yourself an A

When asked what accomplishment he was most proud of, he simply answered,

"That I did the best I could with what I had."

Really, can anyone ask for more?

Giving yourself an A is not about boasting or reciting your accomplishments. 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. It is a framework that allows you to see all of who you are and be all of who you are.

Reconstructing Our Past

Re-evaluate the grades we gave others when we were children, the grades we gave our parents. As soon as you have the grace to give people A's, all sorts of thing are revealed that were as though hidden behind a veil. Letters pop out, memories return. There are new openings.

The adage "You can't change people" is true in the world of measurement, where people and things are fixed in character. But in the universe of possibility, you certainly can. They change as you speak. Who is doing the changing? The answer is the relationship. Because in the arena of possibility, everything occurs in that context.

4. Being a contribution

Let's settle on a game called I am a contribution. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side. In this new game, it is not important how much money you make. Those concerns are packed away in a box in another dimension. Life operates on a different set of rules.

Describing things as a game is twofold. You shift the context from one of survival to one of opportunity for growth. You also have the choice of imagining other games you'd rather be playing in these realms. Naming your activities as a game breaks their hold on you and puts you in charge. If the rules don't light up your life, put it away, take out another one you like better and play the new game wholeheartedly. Remember, it's all invented.

Like ripples in a pond

Make it a habit to recollect how you made a contribution each day.

There is an aspect of psychological practising in these exercises parallel to the technical practising on the piano. It is a discipline of the spirit.

In order to be a great performer, you have to be unfettered by stage nerves. These exercises in contribution are a way of oiling the machinery to make one a more effective vehicle to convey the message of Brahms or Beethoven.

Imagine you are a pianist and you meet someone who has never heard the E minor Prelude by Chopin. You might want to sit down next to him at the piano and say, "Listen to this". As you get caught up in the excitement of explaining and sharing the music, you would have little time left to be nervous.

5. Leading From Any Chair

Leaders can be anywhere, not necessarily at the podium.

6. Rule Number 6

Don't take yourself so seriously!

Lighten up! Laughter and humour are perhaps the best way we can "get over ourselves".

Remembering Rule No. 6 can help us distinguish and remove the part of ourselves that developed in the competitive environment of the "measurement world", our "calculating self", which lobbies to be taken very seriously indeed. Rule No. 6 coaxes the "calculating self" to lighten up and break its hold on us.

"What would have to change for me to be completely fulfilled?" You recognise your own "calculating self" in action. You stop taking yourself and "your story" so seriously and suddenly able to distinguish people/situations from the diagnosis that you label them.

When somebody gives up their pride/ego to reveal a truth to others, we find it incredibly moving. When one person peels away layers of opinion, entitlement, pride and inflated self-description, others instantly feel the connection. Now with the 'calculating self' revealed and humoured, the 'central self' shines through.

Central Self

Inscribed on five of the six pillars outside the Holocaust Museum at Quincy Market in Boston are stories of survivors. The sixth pillar is about a little girl named Ilse, a childhood friend of Guerda Weissman Kline. Guerda remembers that Ilse, who was about six years-old at the time, found a single raspberry one morning somewhere in the camp. She carried it with her all day long in a protected place in her pocket. That evening, with her eyes shining with happiness, she placed the raspberry on a leaf and gave it to Guerda as a gift. It was the defining moment of Guerda's life. She said, "Imagine a world in which your entire possession is one raspberry, and you give it to your friend."

Calculating self will never be able to appreciate the beauty of nature and the simple things in life. Its attention is on comparison and schemes. But the central self is open, and aware, remarkably generative, prolific and creative nature. An attitude of wholeness and sufficiency.
Rich, free and compassionate.

When we follow Rule No. 6 and lighten up over our childish demands, we are instantly transported to a remarkable universe. For the most part it lies a bit over our heads. Angels can fly there because they take themselves lightly =P

7. The Way Things Are

Being the way things are by clearing "shoulds" and judgements.

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.

8. Giving Way to Passion

Giving way to passion has 2 steps:

i) Notice where you are holding back and let go. Release those barriers of self that keep you separate and in control, and let the vital energy of passion surge through you, connecting you to all beyond.

ii) Participate wholly. Allow yourself to be a channel to shape the stream of passion into a new expression for the world.

Long Lines

..... the performer lose his connection to the long line of the music when his attention solely lies on perfecting individual notes and harmonies. Like the person who, mindless that she has all of nature in her fingertips, blocks the expression of life force, so does the musician interrupt the long line of passion when she limits her focus to the expression of personal emotion, local colour or harmonic events.

Leon Fleischer said that playing a piece of music is an exercise in antigravity. The musician's role is to draw the listener's attention over the barlines - which are but artificial divisions, having no relevance for the flow of the music - toward a realisation of the piece as a whole. In order to make the connections between the larger sections of a piece, the player may find herself moving the tempo at a faster pace than if she were putting her attention on highlighting individual notes or vertical harmonies.

One-Buttock Playing

Allow your body to flow sideways, to catch the wave of the music with the shape of your own body.

Even at six, Jacqueline du Pre was a conduit for music to pour through. She had the kind of radical confidence about her own highly personal expression that people acquire when they understand that performance is not about getting your act together, but about opening up to the energy of the audience and of the music, and letting it sing in your unique voice.

BTFI

Beyond the F--- It

I was so pissed of and I said f--- it, I'm going to Madrid to play the audition for the principal cellist, and I won it, at twice the salary!

9. Lighting a Spark

The practice of enrollment is about generating possibility and lighting its spark in others.

i) Imagine that people are an invitation for enrollment

ii) Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired

iii) Offer that which lights you up

iv) Have no doubt that others are eager to catch the spark

A "no" can often dampen our fire in the world of downward spiral. It can seem like a permanent barrier that presents us with limited choices. In other words "no" can seem like a door slamming instead of merely an instance of the way things are. Yet, were we to take a
"no" less personally, and ourselves less seriously, we might hear something else.

10. Being the Board

When "The Way Things Are" offers no possibility, when you are angry and blocked, and for all your efforts, others refuse to cooperate, when "enrollment" does not work and you are at your wit's end - you can take out this next practice. In this one, you rename yourself as "the board on which the whole game is being played". You move the problematic aspect of any circumstances from the outside world inside the boundaries of yourself.

Declare: " I am the framework for everything that happens in my life."

"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 risk we take in a world by and large immune to our control.

Gracing yourself with responsibility for everything that happens in your life leaves your spirit whole, and leaves you free to choose again.

.... Besides I know full well that every time I step onto a podium, I take a risk that things won't turn out exactly as I anticipate them in my ear......

The type of responsibility we are most familiar with is the sort that we apportion to ourselves and others. Dividing obligations helps us keeping life organised and manageable. Because the model is based on the assumption that life will be under control if everyone plays his part, when things DO break down, someone or something naturally gets blamed.

The next step: ask yourself, "how did this get on the board that I am?"; "How is it that I have become a context for that to occur?"

You will begin to see the obvious and the not-so-obvious contributions of your "calculating self", or of your history, or earlier decisions. And then you will be standing freely and powerfully once again in a universe of possibility.

You look around and say "It's nothing personal that xxxx. It's a certain statistical probability that...... "

"Being the board" is not about turning the blame on yourself.