Embrace Possibility Robert Chen About
About2026-08-25T18:05:21-04:00

About Embrace Possibility

What else might be possible?

The life you can imagine today is not necessarily the limit of the life you can build.

The story behind it

I didn't always think this way.

For a long time, I assumed a good life followed a fairly predictable script.

Growing up, I thought passion was reserved for a select few and everyone else more or less followed the same script: get good grades, graduate from a good school, find a stable job, start a family, and eventually retire.

Finding work and a life that genuinely fit you seemed more naive than practical.

That started to change after I read The Pathfinder by Nicholas Lore and What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Bolles. They opened my eyes to a different possibility: that you could actively learn about yourself, explore what fits, and make more intentional choices about the life you want to build.

Once you have your own dreams, you stop spending your life chasing everyone else's.

I began studying people I admired, testing their ideas in my own life, noticing what worked, and collecting the lessons that kept proving useful.

Naturally, I wanted to share those lessons with other people. Over time, I realized that much of what holds us back isn't a lack of ambition. Often, we simply don't see all the choices available to us — or haven't yet developed the tools to turn what we want into action.

Embrace Possibility became the place where I could organize that ongoing exploration and share what I was learning along the way.

Embracing possibility is a practice, not a promise.

It doesn't mean believing anything is possible.

It means remaining curious enough to question your assumptions, explore alternatives, and learn through action.

01

?

Question

What am I assuming?

02

+

Explore

What else could be true?

03

Try

Test a possibility.

04

Learn

Use experience as information.

05

Adjust

Keep what works. Change what doesn't.

Five areas. One life.

The Embrace Possibility mark reflects another idea behind the site: relationships, health, meaningful work, finances, and personal growth don't exist independently. Together, they shape the whole.

From the archive

A conversation with William Zinsser.

In this short clip, William Zinsser asks me about my passion and what success means to me.

Read the full conversation →

Robert Chen with William Zinsser

About Robert Chen

I started Embrace Possibility before I was doing most of the work I do today. In many ways, the site became a place to explore questions that later shaped much of my career.

Since then, I've gone on to coach executives and professionals, teach leadership and communication at Wharton, write the Wall Street Journal bestseller Selling Your Expertise,
and found Vana Lab, where I help young people develop real-world capabilities.

Those paths may look different, but they keep bringing me back to the same questions I explore here: What matters? What helps us grow? And how do we turn what we learn into action?


More about Robert →

Put it into practice

One useful idea each week.

Join the free 52-Week Success Habits series for one short, practical reminder each week to help you think more clearly, take action, and keep growing. Plus a digital copy of [Insert Dream Here].

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