BY ROSAMUND STONE ZANDER & BENJAMIN ZANDER
(Harvard Business School Press, ISBN–10 0875847706, $14.00)
Do you remember what it was like to look at the world through the eyes of a child with wild imagination, not tainted by expectations, assumptions, or life experiences? We wanted to be astronauts, ballerinas, ninjas, superheroes – the sky was the limit, and we just knew that we had the power inside us to leap tall buildings in a single bound! Our experience of life was one of wonder & discovery. And then somewhere along the line, something happened. We grew up conditioned by cultural influences, the media, our family, our peers – and through those layered "filters" we learned to see the world as we believe it is.
This book is a treasure, for it shows us how the very same circumstances can occur differently depending on the "filter" we choose, and how our experience of life is entirely within our control. It's all invented! For most people, that is revolutionary. Unlike the genre of how–to books that offer strategies to surmount the hurdles of a competitive world, the objective of this book is to provide us the means to transcend that world of struggle into a new way of looking at life, filled with possibility. It introduces a new paradigm for "being" – the art of the possible! Simple but profound, the chapters are divided into "practices" that build the foundation for a whole new way of operating in the world, free of scarcity–thinking and anxiety.
Benjamin Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic and Rosamund Stone Zander is an executive coach and family therapist – which offers a balanced approach that somehow seems to work, with each sharing artful and compelling stories that underscore each chapter's theme.
This is the kind of book you will want to keep in your personal library to read over and over again. Culturally, we are conditioned to survive and compete, but in that realm we tend to get caught up in "achieving" vs. celebrating the journey and who we become in the process of pursuing our personal best. As a result, most of us get trapped inside the thinking that we are never enough, never have enough, and simply don't measure up, and thus get in the way of our own potential. This book is about getting out of your own way. We each have something unique to contribute in our own form of self–expression, and the Zanders invite us all to become passionate communicators, leaders, and performers whose lives radiate possibility into the world.
The secret of life and personal leadership is revealed here, a priceless gift that can transform your entire world.
