Guest review by Ignaty Dyakov: THE ART OF POSSIBILITY by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

"There are many books on self-development ... What is different here is the angle, the point of view and the calibre of stories, parables and personal experiences which fill this book."

Ignaty Dyakov wears several hats (apart from a deer-stalker and a faux-fur Russian hat). A Chartered Linguist, he has authored a series of unconventional Russian and ELT textbooks, which help students learn grammar and vocabulary through fun-to-read detective stories. They are now used at universities and schools all over the world, US, UK and France being the biggest markets. Ignaty is currently on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors, where he also chairs the Educational Writers Group.

In recent years, after he qualified as a life coach and Ayurvedic consultant, he has set up a health and wellbeing coaching practice in the Midlands. He works on a one-to-one basis, delivers talks and workshops and writes articles on a holistic approach to health, complementary therapies and coaching methods. More information can be found on www.lifesensei.uk or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/lifesenseiuk/

In his spare time, he loves writing and reading short stories, walking, vegan cooking and a bit of DIY.

There are many books on self-development written by motivational speakers, business performance coaches, and inspirational gurus. Some will be considered classics, some will have merit, many will be vanity projects. Among them one finds a book co-authored by a conductor. A conductor, I hear you ask, a conductor? What can an orchestra conductor teach us about life, mindset, positive thinking? Admittedly, the usual ideas, mostly, what a well-read person with at least some analytical inclinations would know anyway. What is different here is the angle, the point of view and the calibre of stories, parables and personal experiences which fill this book to its cover.

Two authors: an introvert and an extrovert; a wife and a husband; a psychotherapist and a conductor; a quiet, more theorising voice with the narrative of case studies and personal childhood stories and a full-bodied brass ensemble of… to appreciate Benjamin’s impetus, one might want to watch a talk or two of his on YouTube. Authors of each story in the book are clearly identified, but we would probably feel who has penned it – Ben or Roz.

The Zanders’ mindset is pretty much summarised in the first line of The Art of Possibility: “Waiter,” I said in an exuberant mood, “I have a perfect life, but I don’t have a knife” (that is, of course, Ben talking). It is all here: harmony, mischief, directness, positivity. What follows is the explanation of twelve practices, which can either work altogether, or be picked up individually – whatever each of us, readers, might find useful. There are chapters on passion and igniting a spark, on creating frameworks for possibility or being a contribution; my favourite ones are ‘it’s all invented’, ‘rule number 6’, and ‘giving an A’.

It is indeed all invented. We don’t see the world, but a map of the world, one of many. The world seems to us sorted and packaged, with the help of the culture we live in, the education we get, the personal journey we make. The famous experiment, in which Me’en people in Ethiopia were presented with photographs for the first time and were unable to ‘read’ them, proves that without the conventions of modern life we wouldn’t see anything but a shiny piece of material. The frames our minds create define (or rather confine) what we think to be possible, what solutions we find. If we remember that we are the inventors, we can create new frames.

This leads us nicely to the practice called ‘Rule Number 6’, which reads, “Don’t take yourself so goddamn serious”. It is based on a widely publicised story of two prime ministers, in which one PM observes remarkable and instant transformation in staff behaviour every time his counterparty announces ‘Remember Rule Number Six’. There aren’t any other rules, by the way. If we follow said rule and lighten up over our demands, caprices and entitlements, the Zanders point out, we will be transported into a new universe, co-operative in nature.

Grades rarely say much about the work done, they are just matching one student’s work against another’s. We then take the same approach to life and assign different grades to people, events, or places. This doesn’t offer any reflection on them, but creates a strain of competition and, often, a blow to morale. The practice of assigning an A to anyone and anything at any time gets you to a place of respect, which, in turn, provides said people, events, or places room to realise themselves. The Zanders say, “This A is not an expectation to live up to, but a possibility to live into”.

A book on developing a positive mindset could easily be indigestible: king-size in many hundreds of thousands words, ideally simmered in small font, boiled with a pinch of patronising, over-spiced with guru-style ‘revelations’ and professional jargon. The Zanders created quite a different type – simple, concise, yet versatile and full of real-life examples. How fascinating!

The Art of Possibility is published by Harvard Business School Press.