Quotes from Rosamund Stone Zander

It is to be present to the way things are, including our feelings about the way things are. This practice can help us clarify the next step that will take us in the direction we say we want to go.

the capacity to be present to everything that is happening, without resistance, creates possibility

If we include mistakes in our definition of performance, we are likely to glide through them and appreciate the beauty of the longer run.

Will you give me two quarters?" conveyed a vibrant new world, one in which asking, giving, and receiving were all easy, generous acts. Possibility has its own music, its own gestures, its own kind of radiance, and the attendant caught the spark. How could we help but be joyous that we had the means among us to make everything work?

So, the practice of enrollment is about giving yourself as a possibility to others and being ready, in turn, to catch their spark. It is about playing together as partners in a field of light. And the steps to the practice are: 1.  Imagine that people are an invitation for enrollment. 2.  Stand ready to participate, willing to be moved and inspired. 3.  Offer that which lights you up. 4.  Have no doubt that others are eager to catch the spark.

In the legal sphere, fault and blame play an important role. The law-abiding driver is entitled to sue the perpetrator to cover his losses, however they be construed. But we are talking about access to possibility, not to victory or remuneration. Gracing yourself with responsibility for everything that happens in your life leaves your spirit whole, and leaves you free to choose again.

Abstractions that we unwittingly treat as physical reality tend to block us from seeing the way things are, and therefore reduce our power to accomplish what we say we want.

I presented this game to one of the accomplishment groups after we had been working together for several months, and I gave them the choice, collectively, to fill out the phrase, so they could set the ante for themselves. Together they decided that "sex" was the only word in the entire English language worth putting in the blank. So, "Have the Best Sex Ever" became the game of the week.

June looked around, with a mischievous smile, "We're all in agreement, aren't we, that Mark has a narcissistic personality disorder, and will never change?" No one knew what to say. June laughed. I realized I had been taking myself pretty goldarn seriously. "Why can't you have the Best Sex Ever with a self-centered guy?" I said to myself. "Lighten up.

June added, "You know, I realized after that one amazing evening I could have walked away from the marriage, and Mark and I would have stayed the best of friends. I could have said, 'I'd rather not,' without feeling resigned or embattled. I finally had a choice.

He doesn't communicate with us; he's put up an impenetrable wall that excludes us from his life.

Both parents turned toward their son and waited. The boy said nothing. "You see?" said his father, and went on to elaborate the image; the boy had closeted himself, and the father wanted more of something—more information, more contact.

What freedom! Unencumbered by the obstacles that the calculating self tackles daily, the central self can listen in innocence for who we are, listen for the whole of it, inquire into what is here. The

But the central self is open and aware because it need only be the unique voice that it is, an expression that transcends the personality that got it out of childhood alive.

Every bit of communication from then on related to the "wall"; every silence was evidence of its enduring presence.

Where is the electric socket for possibility, the access to the energy of transformation?

a universe of possibility—the only place from which you can enroll other people.

BEN: "Waiter," I said, in an exuberant mood, "I have a perfect life, but I don't have a knife.

It's All Invented A shoe factory sends two marketing scouts to a region of Africa to study the prospects for expanding business. One sends back a telegram saying, SITUATION HOPELESS STOP NO ONE WEARS SHOES The other writes back triumphantly, GLORIOUS BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY STOP THEY HAVE NO SHOES

I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and big successes. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work from individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water, yet which, if given time, will rend the hardest monuments of human pride. —WILLIAM JAMES

As a species we are exquisitely suited to thrive in an environment of threat where resources are scarce, but not always ready to reap the benefits of harmony, peace, and plenty.

Speaking in possibility springs from the appreciation that what we say creates a reality; how we define things sets a framework for life to unfold. A practice of this chapter and of the book as a whole is to distinguish between talk in the downward spiral and conversations for possibility. The question one asks is: *

Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side.

You look for thoughts and actions that reflect survival and scarcity, comparison and competition, attachment and anxiety. Notice that the question is not, "Are my thoughts . . ." which is a question of assessment, but, "How are my thoughts . . ." which is a true inquiry.