Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander have written a manual for transforming professional and personal life. The book, published in 2000, is called “The Art of Possibility.”

The contents are a useful tool in what I consider health-building. I feel my job is to awaken what is possible in my patients for their health, and in so doing, awaken what is possible in their lives.

Are you looking at your life as possibilities? Let’s see how to do that.

In the video above, Benjamin talks about what he does in the music classes he teaches. At the beginning of the class year, he tells all his students that he is giving them an “A.” What the students must do for this grade is to write a page, dated at the end of the school year, telling the teacher, in as much detail as possible, the story of what will have happened by that time that is in line with this extraordinary grade.

They are to place themselves in the future and report on all the insights they acquired and milestones they attained during the year as if those accomplishments were already in the past. They may mention goals accomplished and awards won, but more importantly, they must tell of the person they have become by that time. And Benjamin tells them that they are to fall passionately in love with the person they are describing in their letter.

This giving an A is giving a possibility to live into. It is a way of examining how your thoughts and actions are a reflection of the ideas of survival, scarcity, comparison, competition, attachment and anxiety. Instead of believing those thoughts when you start a new endeavor, you are free to see what is the best you can imagine to be and go for it. It is a way of letting your natural creative juices to come to the fore and imagine life as you would want to live it.

It is not resistance to the way things are, or assumptions of what can happen. By being present to the way things are now, we can ask what do we want to do from here? If we are present to the way things are, including our feelings about the way things are, we do not have to resist what is happening or what we are feeling about what is happening. There is no judgment about the way things are. There is no denial, no blame, no escaping the way things are. We are simply then directing our attention to where do we want to go from here. This opens up the world of imagining.

The only way to learn is to make a mistake. Benjamin recommends that the next time you “make a mistake” raise your hands up and say “How fascinating!” That defuses it. That allows you to go on without judgment, without blame, without having to escape it. And go ahead and see what you want to create from here on out.

This giving an “A” also recognizes a universal desire to contribute to others. It throws you into life as someone who makes a difference, even though you may not understand how or why. And to know that everyone is making a contribution, making a difference.

Why not make up something that lights up your life?

I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House then Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of Eye –
And for an Everlasting Roof –
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands –
To gather Paradise –

– Emily Dickinson

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