296: It's All Invented – What's the Life Story You're Telling Yourself?
Program note: In putting this episode together, I learned that Roz had died in a swimming accident in September of 2023. See the details here: https://www.pressherald.com/2023/10/08/obituaryrosamund-roz-stone-zander-2/ It was my honor to have met with her for this interview and to have read her two books. I loved the way her mind worked.
“So we are saying everything that you do and talk about – aside from something that everybody agrees is just happened or is true – is a story. And if everything is a story, you can retell the story that’ll make a different life for you. There is enormous power in realizing that and then saying, ‘Okay, let me just take the same circumstances I’ve just dealt with, and make up a new story about it that helps; that is enlivening to me and enlivening to you and enlivening to everybody else.’”
Today on Getting Unstuck
Today we are deeply fortunate to sit down with two amazing guests: Benjamin Zander and Rosamund Stone Zander. Ben is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Youth Orchestra. Rosamund is a therapist and an accomplished painter. They are the authors of The Art of Possibility what can be a life-change book if you practice its twelve practices. Roz is the author of a follow-up volume, Pathways to Possibility.
The Essential Point
Some readers and listeners may have the tendency to place these two books in the category of “self-help.” But as the authors point out early on in The Art of Possibility, “the practices presented in this book are not about making incremental changes that lead to new ways of doing things based on old belief, and they are not about self-improvement.” The practices are more transformational. This is not about playing better in old constructs, it’s about playing in new constructs of our own making.
Consider:
How might Roz and Ben’s respective roles – Roz as a therapist who listens for the stories that clients tell and Ben as a conductor who helps musicians break through barriers – apply to the roles that educational leaders and teachers play?
How people live in what they think is reality when it’s really just their interpretation. It’s an invention.
Why living with a spirit of possibility has to be created and practiced.
Ben’s and Roz’s explanation of one of the practices, “The giving of an A.” In the book they write, “This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into.” The ownership of the “A” shifts from the traditional bestower, the teacher, to a co-created relationship with the student. How might this apply to education in our schools?
What “Being a contribution” is dependent on.
How Ben defines “leadership.”
What leaders who follow the practice “Lead from any chair” believe in.
How “Being the board” eliminates the need for blame.
“There’s that moment before you speak or before you react when you get a chance to recalibrate because the downward spiral, the habit, the thing that we do automatically, that is a reflex. It’s always there – you don’t have to create it each time. The possibility model, the idea of radiating possibility, stepping into power is something we have to actually activate each time. You have to create it. And the reason we use the word “practice” is because it’s just like practicing. It’s like learning an instrument, or like religious practice or any kind of practice. You develop an ability and a mastery of that moment of choice. ‘it’s entirely up to you’ is not a bad mantra for life.”
“Tyringham,” 1981 by Rosamund Zander
Connect with Ben and Roz
Book: The Art of Possibility
Video: Ben’s TED Talk
Video: Ben on “Giving an A”
Book: Pathways to Possibility
Could a book on how to effectively lead change in schools be any more timely?
We’re pleased to announce …
…that our book Shifting: How School Leaders Can Create a Culture of Change is now available from Corwin Press or Amazon. If you purchase from Amazon, please consider leaving us a rating and review. Thank you!
From our publisher:
In Shifting, educators and leadership experts Kirsten Richert, Jeff Ikler and Margaret Zacchei empower educational change leaders to proactively and coherently navigate complex change in schools to achieve the desired outcomes.
Using a three-part framework—Assess, Ready, Change—this book leads educators to examine a school’s imperatives and readiness for change, identity the tools and abilities required to manifest change, and take action by defining the roles and processes necessary to effectively implement both sweeping change and smaller day-to-day adjustments.