Give an “A”
There has only ever been one conductor for the Boston Philharmonic.
Benjamin Zander.
We can all learn a lot from Mr. Zander, author (along with Roz Zander) of The Art of Possibility.
In this video from Teachers.tv, he shares three key insights:
1) It’s all invented
2) Standing in possibility
3) Rule #6 – Don’t take yourself so goddamn seriously (that’s the only rule)
In his TED talk below, he tells the story of two salesmen sent to Africa in the 1900’s to determine if there was any opportunity for selling shoes. Two very different telegrams came back to Manchester, England.
Salesman #1: “Situation hopeless! Stop. They don’t wear shoes.”
Salesman #2: “Glorious opportunity! They don’t have any shoes yet!”
(Which salesman would you rather hire?)
He also converts an entire room of people who thought they didn’t like classical music.
Ben Zander has changed thousands of students who pass through his class and millions of others who have seen him present, either live or through videos like these.
Ben was also very generous in contributing a story to our upcoming fear.less e-book. In his fear.less profile, Ben explains why, if you’re clear about what you’re doing, fear has no place there. He also explains how love supersedes fear and how when we conquer our fear, we can truly ‘lift off’.
THE DOORS CLOSED BEHIND ME
“When I initially went into the ashram, the first thing that entered my mind was the fear of living in a strict environment and leaving my family. Perhaps because of a deeper commitment to my soul, which seemed to give me enough courage to follow my heart, I keep them at bay for a little while. It wasn’t until the doors actually closed behind me that all the stuff hit the fan!”
-Rev. Tom Kelly, monk and spiritual seeker for over 40 years
Pushing Himself to New Limits
“I always believe that we should do what we’re most afraid of in life. If you look at my career, I had to confront any fear I had about switching fields. It was a huge decision because my job as a book designer was great. But I had reached a level of success where there wasn’t a job above me to aspire to.
I knew I wanted one more job in my life where I was frightened every day that I’d be fired. I wanted something that pushed me as a designer, to see if I could jump off another bridge and swim.”
John Fulbrook keeps climbing mountains and pushing past his fear, it’s what helps him excel in new and necessary directions. He currently uses his master storytelling skills at Collins Agency, an innovative, brand-building agency.
Read more about how John battles his fear (and wins) in fear.less, coming in July.
Michael Paterson chooses sunlight
In his own words:
I’ve always been creative, even as a kid; always had an interest in art, but my previous job was a business management job where my creative side wasn’t engaged at all. The transition when I gave it all up was a huge moment. Really, it was like the sun coming out after a huge long period of darkness. I thought to myself, “You only live once,” and to me it meant, “Why not actually live?”
Michael is now Associate Creative Director / Art Director at powerhouse agency Ogilvy and Mather in New York City and has directed top campaigns for clients such as IBM, Motorola, Cotton Inc. and SAP.
We’d like to thank Michael for participating in our fear.less e-book. Look for his profile when we launch in July.
A generous genius
Happy birthday to a generous genius. Can you believe that this is all Tim O’Reilly has accomplished?
- 1992. Published The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog, the first popular book about the internet, which was later selected by the New York Public Library as one of the most significant books of the twentieth century.
- 1993. O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator site (GNN, which was sold to America Online in September 1995) was the first web portal and the first true commercial site on the World Wide Web.
- 1998. The term “open source” was formally adopted at a summit of key free software leaders hosted by O’Reilly. Tim is honored with Infoworld’s Industry Achievement Award for his role in open source advocacy.
- 2000. O’Reilly introduces Safari Books Online, the first web-native service for online book content.
- 2000. Tim’s “Open Letter to Jeff Bezos” in protest of Amazon’s 1-Click patent is signed by 10,000 supporters in four days, leading to joint lobbying for software patent reform by Amazon and O’Reilly.
- 2003. O’Reilly holds the first Foo Camp, a private gathering at its Sebastopol, CA campus, where, as Business 2.0 noted, the alpha geeks were “…hard and happily at work moving the entire economy of the Web forward, to good end.”
- 2004. The Web 2.0 Conference, hosted by O’Reilly, John Battelle, and MediaLive, introduces the Web 2.0 meme to a sold-out crowd.
- Tim has served on the board of trustees for both the Internet Society and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, two organizations devoted to making sure that the internet fulfills its promise. He was on the board of Macromedia up until the recent merger with Adobe. He is currently on the board of CollabNet.
- If after all that, you think Tim is just a tech geek, he graduated from Harvard College in 1975 with a B.A. cum laude in Classics. His honors thesis explored the tension between mysticism and logic in Plato’s dialogues.
- An archive of Tim’s online articles, talks, and interviews can be found at Tim’s archive page.
All Tim has done is change the world for the better. If you use the Internet (and apparently you do), you’ve been impacted by O’Reilly’s brilliance.
I want to thank Tim for participating in our e-book. The amazing fear.less profile of this generous genius shows that he hasn’t lost his philosophy chops, he has honed them.
Of course.
-Clay and Ishita
“Welcome to the White House.”
World-renowned photographer, Platon, talks to us about giving the best of yourself.
“Last week, I photographed Michelle Obama in the White House for her first iconic session. On meeting her, I held out my hand and said, “Mrs. Obama, it’s an honor to meet you.” She brushed my hand aside, put her arms on my shoulders and gave me a kiss on both cheeks and said, “Welcome to the White House.” Now that’s a devastatingly beautiful thing. That’s someone who has something to give. Of course people can abuse that, people can choose not to be bewitched by that charm, but I found it incredibly beautiful. From that moment on, we connected.”
How often do we worry about how we’re perceived and what people think of us, instead of just connecting honestly with the person on the other end?
We’ll never know, and the media doesn’t have a clue, but perhaps Ms. Obama touching the Queen’s shoulder was a good thing; a little honest affection goes a long way.
Thank you Contributors!
Clay and I are honored to bring to light our courageous contributors, each of whom have devoted time, energy, and authenticity to the stories within fear.less. We obviously couldn’t create something like this without their insight and wisdom, and the support of people like Howard Zinn, Immaculee Ilibagiza, Platon, Seth Godin, Marshall Goldsmith, and Tom Kelly. (Click here for full list.) They’ve shared personal stories, tools that they’ve used to overcome fear, and lessons we can all take something away from. Everyone has something to give. Our contributors have shown that they’re willing to give above and beyond what’s necessary.
Negotiate with your Fear
Don’t argue with William Ury. You’ll lose.
One of the world’s top negotiators, Ury co-founded Harvard’s Program on Negotiation where he currently directs the Global Negotiation Initiative. He is the author of The Power of a Positive No: How to Say No & Still Get to Yes.
In the last 30 years, Ury has mediated in conflicts from corporate mergers to ethnic wars in the Middle East and the former Soviet Union. With former president Jimmy Carter, he co-founded the International Negotiation Network, and during the 1980s, helped the US and Soviet governments create nuclear crisis centers designed to avert accidental nuclear war. He’s served as consultant to the Crisis Management Center at the White House and recently was enlisted as a third party to help to end a civil war in Aceh, Indonesia, and to prevent one in Venezuela.
“Fear generates a type of holding on. The more you hold on, the more fearful you get and vice versa. You need to learn how to break the cycle and let go. For me, it’s much easier to let go if I’m in nature and I steady myself in order to gain a larger perspective around the fear. To realize that there’s a larger world, a larger presence, it allows you to see what you’re going through at that moment and shows you that no matter what, it’s quite small thing in the grand scheme of things.”
Read how Ury confronts his fear as he meets with President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela in fear.less.
Your life still has meaning
Danielle LaPorte on worst-case scenarios:
“I’m a huge fan of doing worst case scenarios in any kind of visioning or planning because you realize that even if you have to waitress, or sling beer, or live on a credit card, you’re not going to die. You’re still talented, and you still have passion, and your life still has meaning, even without the gigs.”
Danielle’s got perspective. She knows how often we relegate meaning to the bigger, more concrete things in our lives, relatively unaware that they have nothing to do with the real meaning of things. Usually it takes a worst case scenario to realize where meaning comes from in our lives. Hopefully we learn early on to make (and take) meaning from every experience we have.
Hear Danielle drop more useful honesty at WhiteHotTruth.com and check out her story in fear.less.
Impossible to the Human Imagination
Immaculee Ilibagiza in the bathroom where she hid for three months during the Rwandan genocide.
After reading her book, Left To Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust, I knew I wanted to share Immaculee Ilibagiza’s story in fear.less. It’s difficult to imagine how she survived the genocide by hiding in a bathroom with seven other women as killers lurked outside the house. The bathroom was so small that they couldn’t sit or stand at the same time, and Immaculee entered weighing 115-pounds and emerged after 91 days weighing only 65-pounds.
Here she describes the moment she realized that God had answered her prayers, that the killers not find them hiding a few feet away.
“How can hundreds of people, searching specifically for us, miss one door out of 4 bedroom house?” They searched and searched and didn’t see the bathroom door behind the wardrobe that we used to covered it. That’s impossible even to the human imagination! Many times they came back again to search and still, they never found the door.”
I spoke with Immaculee to find out how she lived through her experience and how her inner strength now allows her to share her message with millions of people worldwide.