Quotes from Rosamund Stone Zander

She had the kind of radical confidence about her own highly personal expression that people acquire when they understand that performance is not about getting your act together, but about opening up to the energy of the audience and of the music, and letting it sing in your unique voice.

Every problem, every dilemma, every dead end we find ourselves facing in life, only appears unsolvable inside a particular frame or point of view. Enlarge the box, or create another frame around the data, and problems vanish, while new opportunities appear.

I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.

If I cannot be present without resistance to the way things are and act effectively, if I feel myself to be wronged, a loser, or a victim, I will tell myself that some assumption I have made is the source of my difficulty.

Michelangelo is often quoted as having said that inside every block of stone or marble dwells a beautiful statue; one need only remove the excess material to reveal the work of art within. If we were to apply this visionary concept to education, it would be pointless to compare one child to another. Instead, all the energy would be focused on chipping away at the stone, getting rid of whatever is in the way of each child's developing skills, mastery, and self-expression.

Recognizing Pablo Picasso in a train compartment, a man inquired of the artist why he did not paint people "the way they really are." Picasso asked what he meant by that expression. The man opened his wallet and took out a snapshot of his wife, saying, "That's my wife." Picasso responded, "Isn't she rather small and flat?" 5

On the whole, resources are likely to come to you in greater abundance when you are generous and inclusive and engage people in your passion for life.

We keep looking so hard in life for the "specific message," and yet we are blinded to the fact that the message is all around us, and within us all the time. We just have to stop demanding that it be on OUR terms or conditions, and instead open ourselves to the possibility that what we seek may be in front of us all the time.

Who am I being that they are not shining?

I am the framework for everything that happens in my life.

Being present to the way things are is not the same as accepting things as they are

I began to write a different narrative: that my husband did indeed know me and love me, and was offering me the best he had to give. Then when I talked with him, I spoke from within the framework of the A, to someone I had defined as able and willing to hear me. As long as I practiced in this manner, I found that virtually all the conversations we had were productive in a way I had never before imagined they could be. A

There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

Presence without resistance: you are now free to turn to the question, "What do we want to do from here?" Then all sorts of pathways begin to appear:

WHEN ONE PERSON peels away layers of opinion, entitlement, pride, and inflated self-description, others instantly feel the connection.

When you give an A, you find yourself speaking to people not from a place of measuring how they stack up against your standards, but from a place of respect that gives them room to realize themselves.

when you declare yourself an unwilling victim of a known risk, you have postured yourself as a poor loser in a game you chose to play.

The foremost challenge for leaders today, we suggest, is to maintain the clarity to stand confidently in the abundant universe of possibility, no matter how fierce the competition, no matter how stark the necessity to go for the short-term goal, no matter how fearful people are, and no matter how urgently the wolf may appear to howl at the door. It is to have the courage and persistence to distinguish the downward spiral from the radiant realm of possibility in the face of any challenge.

The history of transformational phenomena—the Internet, for example, or paradigm shifts in science, or the spread of a new religion—suggests that transformation happens less by arguing cogently for something new than by generating active, ongoing practices that shift a culture's experience of the basis for reality.

The rain in Florida may be bad for us and good for the citrus crop. A canceled flight may wreck our schedule and bring us face to face with our future spouse in the airport lounge. A forest fire may seem to destroy an ecosystem in the short term, yet renew it with vigor for the long term. When a splendid osprey eats a beautiful fish, it is neither good nor bad. Or, it's good for the osprey and bad for the fish. Nature makes no judgment. Humans do.

VISION IS A powerful framework to take the operations of an organization of any size from the downward spiral into the arena of possibility. Yet, while most organizations use the term "vision" liberally, we have found that few have articulated a vision in such a way that it serves that purpose.

the secret is not to speak to a person's cynicism, but to speak to her passion.

I know now that music is not about fingers or bows or strings, but rather a connective vibration flowing through all human beings, like a heartbeat.

Imagine how profoundly trustworthy you would be to the people who work for you if they felt no problem could arise between you that you were not prepared to own. Imagine how much incentive they would have to cooperate if they knew they could count on you to clear the pathways for accomplishment.