The Art of Possibility
Presenting twelve breakthrough practices for bringing creativity into all human endeavors, The Art of Possibility is the dynamic product of an extraordinary partnership. The Art of Possibility combines Benjamin Zander's experience as conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and his talent as a teacher and communicator with psychotherapist Rosamund Stone Zander's genius for designing innovative paradigms for personal and professional fulfillment. The authors' harmoniously interwoven perspectives provide a deep sense of the powerful role that the notion of possibility can play in every aspect of life. Through uplifting stories, parables, and personal anecdotes, the Zanders invite us to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world
Stats for nerds
3recommend
7mentions
3people
2018–2024years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- You may be interested in "The Art of Possibility" by Ben and Rosamund Stone Zander. Ben has a unique way of grading students. Quote below.
> “Each student in this class will get an A for the course,” I announce. “However, there is one requirement that you must fulfill to earn this grade: Sometime during the next two 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, 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.”
- Here are some of the most popular ones:
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Zero to One by Peter Thiel The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber Good to Great by Jim Collins The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson These books cover various aspects of entrepreneurship, from idea generation and innovation to leadership and management. Each one offers a unique perspective and valuable insights that can help entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and opportunities of starting and growing a business.
- >much better off than any of my family before me
How so? I doubt it. That sounds like a terrible life, with no enjoyment in it of any kind. A life worth living doesn't build itself! Really sounds like you are torturing yourself. Being very mean to yourself. It's easy to do - we aren't taught that you are someone in your life you have to be kind to, the most important person in fact, as it's virtually impossible to love others while being so mean to yourself. I had to learn about loving myself. Treat yourself like you would treat someone you really love.
Imagine someone you really really love, then you forcing them to live how you are living. Doing a job they hate, no friends or family visits, not involved in anything, no joy or pleasure in life.. It would be obvious that it's a very cruel way to treat someone, amounting to torture. People don't enjoy those things, or being deprived of so many things. What things do people enjoy? Imagine a rich, fulfilling life, and work on giving that to the person you love - yourself.
Self-help books helped me a lot with this stuff. They're the main thing that helped, I guess, apart from being directly inspired by other people and inspiring books. Everyone has their own favourites, but some that helped me - SARK's first half-dozen books, Paul Kurtz Exuberance, Carol Lloyd Creating a Life Worth Living, Joanna Field/Marion Milner's books starting with A Life of One's Own, Richard Bach books, Austin Kleon books, Zen and the Art of Making a Living, Tristine Rainer The New Diary, Ben Zander The Art of Possibility, Gracian's The Art of Wordly Wisdom. Montaigne. Plutarch. Emerson. Susan Faludi's Stiffed may help you understand yourself, your world, your work, your life better than any of these. Good luck!
To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance. – Oscar Wilde
- You should read the article I linked to! Sadly it was a bit too long to paste the whole thing.
When I was younger, my father gave me a thick and nauseating compendium labelled The University of Success, filled with extracts from vacuous books of the kind Chesterton talks about. I guess he thought I wasn't 'successful', and it would teach me how! By then I'd already read and got a lot from some of the useful books in the field - Awaken the Giant Within, Life 101, How to Win Friends and Influence People, The New Guide to Rational Living, Effortless Mastery, The Art of Possibility etc. For the kind of success I value most, I've been inspired for decades by, and owe the most to, writers such as Robert Fulghum, SARK, and most of all, Emerson.
- Zinsser's On Writing Well. (i.e. on writing non-fiction)
The first half of To The Finland Station (1940) was absolutely fascinating (the second half is the story of Marx, Lenin etc which I know more about so didn't read) - about 19th C French historians, and the origins of socialism. I had no idea that 'socialisms' was the name given to those experimental farms/communities all over the US in the early-mid 19th C - that's what the word meant at the time - there's a lot on the history of those. Brilliantly written.
Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics - the history, science and philosophy of comics. Plus it's a comic.
Crucial Conversations - I added this to You Just Don't Understand on my 'Essential Guides for Anyone in a Relationship' list. Equally important for other areas of life.
Deep Work on different ways people like/need to work.
On Not Being Able To Paint (1950) by Joanna Field (Marion Milner). I read her A Life Of One's Own and An Experiment in Leisure (both from the 1930s) 25+ years ago, and loved them dearly. A Life Of One's Own is about her using her diary to learn about herself, something I'd started doing at the time. I owned a copy of On Not Being Able To Paint for many years, but never read it through until very recently. It's surprisingly great. It's about her learning to paint, or rather, learning what painting is, and I found she learns pretty much exactly the things I learnt when I spent 5 years writing orchestral music. (after having been a pianist and painter for many years) Well, maybe I was too young to appreciate it before.
Books I'd read before, but read at least twice more this year: the Zanders' Art of Possibility, Austin Kleon's Steal Like an Artist and Share Your Work!. Various essays of G.K. Chesterton and Robert Louis Stevenson.
- All these had a huge impact on me. The descriptions are inadequate, I've just tried to mention the subject matter.
Deborah Tannen, You Just Don't Understand - how males and females talk different languages.
Lakoff & Johnson, Metaphors We Live By - how our language and thoughts are built from a fabric of conceptual metaphors. Philosophy In The Flesh is about the conceptual metaphors that philosophy is built from.
Jonathan Glover, Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century - WWI, WWII and other wars, nazism, communism etc
Plutarch's Lives - biographies and stories from famous ancient Greeks and Romans. Amazing how little's changed.
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Understanding - introduced me to ancient Chinese philosophers. The Importance of Living - introduced me to ancient Chinese writers, poets and the Chinese way of life.
Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, Bach - read it when I was 14, and I was into music, art and programming, so it blew my mind.
Susan Faludi, STIFFED - men, work, jobs, masculinity, 20th C
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion - media, war, propaganda, democracy
Noam Chomsky's political books
E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful - the world, development, government, planning, organization, humanity, sustainability
J.R. Saul, Voltaire's Bastards - power, history, democracy, technocracy, reason, rationality, history from late 18th C until today.
Raymond Williams, Culture and Society 1780-1950 - the anti-industrialist tradition, politics, culture, society and the new language describing these things
Clifford Pickover, Computers, Patterns, Chaos, and Beauty - programming, mathematics, art, fractals, dynamical systems etc
Ben Zander, The Art of Possibility - hard to explain, kind of advanced self-help, the magic of changing attitudes, expectations, habits.
My favourite non-fiction books of all time, though, are the essays of Emerson, Hazlitt, RL Stevenson, GK Chesterton, Santayana, Bertrand Russell. And the books of Nietzsche, SARK and Robert Fulghum.
