Alison's original post:
EMDT Month 11 – Alison Oprea
The Art of Possibility Chapters 1-4
April 13, 2012
As I read the first four chapters of The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander, I started to reflect on how their ideas impact me. As I was growing up, there was an unspoken expectation that I was going to do “right” – go to college, get a good job, get married and have my 2.5 kids. I was afraid to fail. Because I was afraid to fail, I took no risks. In college, my viola professor was desperately trying to get me to play a piece I was working on more passionately, but I just didn’t get it. Trying to get me to open up, she told me to yell. Yell anything. Scream. But I couldn’t do it – in fact, I couldn’t even make a sound. To me, that was so wrong, and definitely NOT proper. However, over time I started to realize that
that was exactly what I needed. All these ideas of what were right and wrong and what was expected of me were all things I had conjured up myself. I was hurting myself in this “safe” place I kept myself in. I began to take risks, and I began to see the world differently. While I allowed myself an A in many things, I realize now that there is so much more I should be giving myself an A in. Not only that, but giving others around me an A. Changing that perspective and opinion in others, be it students, colleagues, friends or family, I can only begin to imagine the difference in changing my life as well as others.
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You can see my comment to Alison's post here:
Alison,
I can definitely understand the "unspoken expectation that I was going to do “right” and not wanting to take risks because of that expectation.
However, my own life and experiences FORCED me to take risks, if i wanted to continue with what was expected of me. Eventually, I was able to separate myself from what was expected, and came to conclusions about what I wanted and started taking risks based on what *I* wanted.
But those initial issues in my life forced me to become comfortable with making (and assessing) risks.
Reading everyone's posts about this book has made me *really* think about how different experiences radically change people's outcomes on life and continues in a spiral to continue to affect how we think and act. This seems to be part of the central thesis of the book, along with how to stop that spiral.
I may not agree with all parts of this text, but it has definitely made me think and assess my own ideas, ideals, experiences and outlooks on life.
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