MAC Week 2 - Response to Karl Peterson

MAC Week 2 - Post 1 Reading

The Art of Possibility (or should it be the Art of Perspective?)

I have noticed on a reoccurring basis, throughout these last 10 ½ months that I have been in the EMDT program, a reoccurring theme. That theme has been the importance of looking at things from a different perspective. After reading the first four chapters of “The Art of Possibility: Transforming Professional and Personal Life” by R. Zander & B. Zander (2000), that is the major theme that I walked away from the reading with. In fact I am a hard time looking at this book in any other light than that. That isn’t a bad thing, this I am certain of. As I have gone through course after course, and run into countless challenges, I have always had something occur that has forced me to take a step back and reevaluate the situation from a different perspective. Every single time this has happened, I have managed to find a way to work through or around the issue as a result. The four chapters of this book have only served to open my eyes to new ways or ideas on how to do this more frequently in my everyday life. I really like the ideas of “give an A” and “game of ‘contribution’”. I think these are fantastic ideas. My hope is that if I am able to implement some of these ideas into my life, I can reduce much of the stress that exists in my life and to try to view more things in life, thusly opening up more possibilities as a result.

Thanks for reading,

Karl Peterson

 

Response:

@ Karl

I did get that feeling as well when I started reading this book. Everything we have been going through in the EMDT program has been about looking at things from different perspectives or 'thinking outside the box'.  We all have been trained to only see from one specific perspective for most of our lives that we need to re-train ourselves to get out of that habit, to push beyond what we see in front of us and use a different approach to tackling things. Once we can do that, we can then teach our students to do the same so they too can grow more as individuals.  The EMDT program has indeed opened my eyes to more possibilities that I and the others in the course I teach are already making changes to better reflect this view. It has made for better students overall, though we must continue tweaking it to make it better and never fall back into the rut that has been taught to us for many years.  Good post Karl!