 ast Christmas my sister Jan, a California Teacher of the Year, gave me a book titled “The Art of Possibility,” which, because she is my sister, I ignored for the next six months. When I finally read it, I immediately had our EXHIBITOR Conference staff contact the author to be the first keynote speaker in our 18-year history.
Possibility is a long-time interest of mine. I spent the six years from l964 to 1970 living in San Francisco — an ideological Petri dish of counter-culture trial-and-error. Of all the slogans from those times, only one ever made enduring sense to me: “A World of All Possibilities.”
The concept came from an early 20th century Russian mystic named George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, whose practical philosophy called “The Work” caught the attention of several hundred locals, including me, who loved his weird cosmology.
I experienced the power of possibility firsthand, along with 100 other people who had never held a pitchfork and couldn’t tell the difference between a pinot and a chardonnay grape, as we turned 160 acres of stone fields and poison ivy into a working vineyard. I also joined an entire group of rank landlubbers who had never set foot on a boat to sail a 180-foot, two-masted schooner across the Pacific Ocean with less than a week’s training in celestial navigation. We lost three men overboard,
saved them all at high seas, and arrived on schedule from Hawaii to San Francisco Bay.
The next time I saw my sister, I asked her about the book. Does she really like the book that much? Yes. Would she like to meet one of the authors? YES!
Now I’m excited. I get to introduce my sister and everyone at the conference to our speaker Rosamund Zander who — with her husband Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic — co-authored the “The Art of Possibility.” It’s a book of practices that can change people … and do.
One such practice is what the Zanders call “Give an A.” Each year 30 graduate students gather in Benjamin Zander’s musical performance class at the New England Conservatory. “Each student in this class will get an A for the course,” he announces. “However, there is one requirement you must fulfill to earn this grade: Sometime during the next two weeks, you must write me a letter dated next May, which begins with the words, ‘Dear Mr. Zander, I got my A because … ,’and in this letter you are to tell, in as much detail as you can, the story of what will have happened to you by next May that is in line with this extraordinary grade.”
The authors explain another practice, called “Rule Number Six,” with this story. “Two prime ministers are sitting in a room discussing affairs of state. Suddenly a man bursts in, apoplectic with fury,
shouting and stamping and banging his fist on the desk. The resident prime minister admonishes him: ‘Peter,’ he says, ‘kindly remember Rule Number Six,’ whereupon Peter is instantly restored to complete calm, apologizes, and withdraws.”
This scenario repeats two more times with two different people.
“When the scene is repeated for a third time, the visiting prime minister addresses his colleague: ‘My dear friend, I’ve seen many things in my life, but never anything as remarkable as this. Would you be willing to share with me the secret of Rule Number Six?’
“‘Very simple,’ he replies. ‘Rule Number Six is ‘Don’t take yourself so g-damn seriously.’
“After a moment of pondering, the visitor inquires, ‘And what, may I ask, are the other rules?’
“‘There aren’t any.’”
Except this: Give yourself an “A” and come see Rosamund Zander in person and hear how her other practices work at EXHIBITOR2006 in March in Las Vegas. (Save $200 when you sign up early). See you there. 
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