I had the privilege of meeting Bill a few years ago when I interviewed him for the Modeling Success Series. In addition, to the wonderful insights from that interview, we built a relationship that has been invaluable to me. I'm sadden by the loss of this great man to the world. His spirit and teachings live on.

Here are three lessons he taught me with both his actions and words:

Follow your passion

The first advice Bill gave me was to stop trying to please everyone and to do what you are made to do. Only when you do what you love can you convey a real sense of enjoyment in working. What's compelling about Bill's advice is that he leads by example. He gave up the comfortable success of taking over his family's business and pursued his passion for writing. His attitude of enjoyment, focus on excellence and fearlessness around failing not only made him wildly successful but also timelessly inspirational.

Be generous

Agreeing to be interviewed, allowing the interview to span a few hours and being a mentor afterwards are all testaments to Bill's generosity with both his time and advice. Throughout his career, he empowered others by giving them permission to write about themselves and cling to their originality.  Around the age of 90, he continued to proactively reached out to others with a letter offering help for "writing problems and stalled editorial projects and memoirs and family history; for singalongs and piano lessons and vocal coaching; for readings and salons and whatever pastimes you may devise that will keep both of us interested and amused."  This snippet really shows the type of person that he was.

Explore and learn continuously

If you've ever read Bill's books or articles, you know that he enjoys traveling and broadening his horizons.  He mentioned to me that the more you learn and stretch your comfort zone, the better your ability to generate uniqueness. That's how others connect to you. By doing something you've never done before, you'll learn something about yourself that you didn't know before.

Bill had a magnificent obsession to help others be who they were meant to be through his writing and teaching. I aspire to follow his lead and help others live their best life by sharing not only my experiences but showing by example.

Thank you Bill for stepping into my life. It has made all the difference.

(For more of Bill's insights and to hear some of his actual responses from the interview on audio, click here)

Photo by madnessofart

The post Life Lessons Learned from the Late William Zinsser appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

(Sadly, William Zinsser passed away on May 12, 2015)

For the second interview of the Modeling Success Series, I had both the honor and pleasure of interviewing William Zinsser, the renowned American writer. It was a philosophical, inspirational and educational experience.

I first met Mr. Zinsser (telemarketers call him William) when I read On Writing Well, a widely accepted primer for writers. I enjoyed his practical tips and how he emphasized simplicity as a strength in writing.

As I learned more about Mr. Zinsser from reading his award-winning blog on American Scholar, I realized his success is not only attributed to his accomplished writing career (19 books and countless published articles) but also the way he leads his life. Besides being a writer, a teacher and a jazz pianist, Mr. Zinsser is also a permission-giver (to be explained).

My appreciation for Mr. Zinsser’s way of thinking and life deepened when I finally met him in person for this interview. He is a true connector and genuinely interested in other people. During this interview, there were several times when I felt like he was interviewing me.

I have included audio snippets of the actual interview throughout this article.

Enjoy!

It’s hard to believe Mr. Zinsser is turning 90 this year. The only sign of his age is the wisdom he imparts. His memory, which he equates to his identity, is fully accessible and we start the interview discussing the virtues of “letting go”. Mr. Zinsser comments that at his age “you let certain things fall away that is not important.” He recognizes that many of the things that were important to him have moved to the background and that “the smallness of life” has moved to the foreground.

Audio - On Letting Things Go - 4:05 

After quoting some insightful lines from one of his favorite books, Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Mr. Zinsser elaborates on what is important. He reflects on his experiences as a soldier in World War II and his difficult decision to give up a cushy position lined up in the family business to follow his dream to work as a “newspaperman” for the Herald Tribune. Here is what I took away from his message:

“You should not follow any expectations that are not the right ones for you”

William Zinsser was expected to go into the family business but he knew he wanted to write for the Herald Tribune from a young age where he had to spread that newspaper on the floor because it was too big for him to open in his arms. It was not easy for him to decline his father’s offer for a set job in the family’s business but it was the right one.

This has encouraged me to do what is right for me not what is right for other people. Disappointing other people may be painful but it's much worse to disappoint yourself. Do what you want because you're only given one life.

Check out Mr. Zinsser’s commencement address at Wesleyan University that inspired a few professors there to quit and pursue their own dreams.

“Whatever you’re doing, try to convey a sense that you’re enjoying what you do”

Although this was mentioned in On Writing Well, this surprised me when I heard it during our interview. I always thought “the struggle” was a necessary part of paying my dues and rarely focused on enjoying myself to get what I want. Mr. Zinsser drove the point home by saying he doesn’t write for other people, he writes for himself and that's the reason people choose to read his work.

For those familiar with Mr. Zinsser’s writing, you know that he never writes about anyone's life that he doesn't approve of and he doesn't write to “debunk or destroy” others. Rather, he bears witness to people he has been following and writes to build people up and for his own enjoyment.

If you don't enjoy what you do, what's the point?

“Must have a belief in your own uniqueness”

There is nothing wrong with listening to experts and emulating the greats but what is wrong is losing your own identity along the way. This happens when you lack confidence in your own abilities. You are unique when you were born and you have to remember that. When I asked Mr. Zinsser what happens if you don’t feel unique, he said you must generate it.

So how do you generate uniqueness?

• Question your life – Most people don’t think about their lives actively and they end up sleepwalking through it. Challenge your beliefs and assumptions. Challenge the beliefs and assumptions of your parents. Start asking yourself "What if".
• Have a sense of ego – be a rebel and have a “sense of own limitless possibility” – Mr. Zinsser wasn’t drafted for the war, he volunteered.
• Broaden your horizons – your experiences make you unique and the mix that comes from combining your unique experiences is what will set you apart. Travel to different places. Read different books. Listen to different music.
• Keep stretching yourself – don’t stay in your comfort zone. If you want to generate uniqueness, keep stretching and do something you've never done before. I've found that a twinge of fear or self-doubt is usually a good sign that what you're pursuing is a good stretch. Embrace it.

Audio - On What's Important in Life - 5:24

Audio - On Generating Uniqueness - 6:44

During the interview, we had an interesting discussion about how difficult it is for people to give themselves permission to do great things and to be great. One of the major roles Mr. Zinsser plays is that of a permission giver. When teaching his memoir writing class, his students frequently lament “but who would want to read my memoir. Who is going to care about my life?”

He empowers them by saying “I would. I care.” and he finds that this helps them move forward.

When I work with my clients, I see the same issue. People, who are stuck in life, are really just waiting for permission to move on. Once they have it, I've seen them make excellent progress.

Audio - On Giving Permission - 2:33

Bottom Line: You don't need Mr. Zinsser or me to give you permission. Give yourself permission to be great.

On Success

When asked about his definition of success, Mr. Zinsser doesn’t give a dollar amount or describe the typical retirement scenario involving some island in paradise. He simply says after pausing for thought:

“Success is doing what you want to do and doing it well.”

This resonates with my definition of success – I’m successful as long as I’m pursuing my passion to help people move towards what they want in life. One of the most common issues I see with my clients is that they don’t know what they want. How can you move forward when you're not sure where you are going? If you’re in this group, I recommend checking out my Know What You Want Workshop.

Audio - On the Definition of Success - 1:17

As Mr. Zinsser recounts the story of his son’s rise to being a successful artist, the message I took away is to be happy in what you do and let your vision guide you. If you’re not sure how to get there, it’s better to just start somewhere and no matter where you are, do excellent work.

“Don’t feel like you need to work for a magazine that your mother’s heard of” said Mr. Zinsser as he impressed upon me the adage that there are many paths to where you want to go and to be flexible in life. He also emphasizes the value of great mentors and the skill of figuring out what your audience wants.

We end the interview with a discussion about the keys to success. Mr. Zinsser attributes his success to:

• Optimism – the kind where you feel confident you can get a taxi on a snowy night
• Consistency – doing what you say you’ll do when you said you'll do it
• Ability to Get Things Done - this one doesn't need much explaining
• Humor - being light and getting along with everyone

If you want to hear more of this interview and learn why William Zinsser doesn’t use email or how he is able to build such great relationships, sign up for my mailing list to get free access to the other audio files for this interview.

So What Will I Model? (There is a good amount)

1. Conveying enjoyment in my work and stop trying to please everybody
2. Cultivating optimism, humor, and consistency
3. Giving myself permission to cling to my originality and knowing that it is good enough
4. Not waiting and taking action - just starting somewhere and being excellent at what I am doing
5. Continuously broadening my horizons by traveling and experiencing new things
6. When people come to me for X, giving them X+1
7. Dropping in on people (sign up for the mailing list to hear the audio excerpt with this idea)

What will you model?

The post Modeling Success Series – William Zinsser – #2 appeared first on Embrace Possibility.

I came across this commencement address while writing up a recent interview I had with Mr. Zinsser. He told me about this speech in our interview and how it inspired several professors attending the commencement to quit and pursue their own dream.

I was intrigued and after reading it, amazed. If you don't want to have a fire lit under you to pursue your own passion, don't read this speech because you won't be the same after. This speech will give you courage to live YOUR best life. A fair warning: If you value stability, you'll be offended. If you want the easy life, you'll be disgusted. If you've blamed bad luck for your situation, you'll be ashamed.

There are many great lessons and I'll let Mr. Zinsser teach them in his own words. (I've bolded and underlined some parts that really resonates with me.)

The sportswriter Red Smith was one of my heroes. Not long before his own death he gave the eulogy at the funeral of another writer, and he said, "dying is no big deal. Living is the trick." Living is the trick. That's what we're all given one chance to do well.

One reason I admire Red Smith was that he wrote about sports for 55 years, with elegance and humor, without ever succumbing to the pressure, which ruined many sportswriters, that he ought to be writing about something "serious." Red Smith found in sportswriting exactly what he wanted to do and what he deeply loved doing. And because it was right for him he said more important things about American values than many writers who wrote about serious subjects--so seriously that nobody could read them.

Another story.

When I was teaching at Yale, the poet Allen Ginsberg came to talk to my students, and one of them asked him: "was there a point at which you consciously decided to become a poet?" And Ginsberg said: 'It's wasn't quite a choice; it was a realization. I was 28 and I had a job as a market researcher. One day I told my psychiatrist that what I really wanted to do was to quit my job and just write poetry. And the psychiatrist said, "why not?" And I said, "Well, what would the American Psychoanalytic Association say?" And he said, "There's no party line." So I did. We'll never know how bit a loss that was for the field of market research. But it was a big moment for American poetry.

There's no party line.

Good advice. 

You can be your own party line. If living is the trick, what's crucial for you is to do something that makes the best use of your own gifts and your own individuality. There's only one you. Don't ever let anyone persuade you that you're somebody else.

My father was a businessman. His name was William Zinsser, and he had a business called William Zinsser & Company that had been founded by his grandfather, also named William Zinsser, who came to New York from Germany in 1849 with a formula for making shellac. He built a little house and a little factory way uptown at what is now 59th Street and Eleventh Avenue. I have an old photograph of those two buildings, all alone in an open field full of rocks that slopes down to the Hudson River. That business stayed there until 15 years ago--a 125 years. It's very rare for a business to stay in the same family on the same block in mid-Manhattan for a century, and I can assure you that it builds a sense of family continuity. One of the most vivid memories of my boyhood is how much my father loved his business. He had a passion for quality; he hated anything second-rate.

Seeing how much he loved his work and how good he was at it, I learned very early what has been a guiding principle of my life: that what we want to do we will do well. The opposite, however, is also true: what we don't want to do we won't do well--and I had a different dream. I wanted to be a newspaperman.

Unfortunately, my father had three daughters before he had me. I was his only son. He named me William Zinsser and looked forward to the day when I'd join him in the business. (In those Dark Ages the idea that daughters could run a company just as well as sons, or better, was still 20 years off).

It was a ready-made career for me--lifelong security--and maybe I also owed it to my mother and my sisters to carry on that hundred-year-old family tradition. But when the time came to choose, I knew that that just wasn't the right thing for me to do, and I went looking for a newspaper job, and got one with the New York Herald Tribune, and I loved it from the start.

Of course, that was a moment of great pain for my father--and also for me. But my father never tried to change my mind. He saw that I was happy, and he wished me well in my chosen work. That was by far the best gift I ever received, beyond price or value--partly, of course, because it was an outright gift of love and confidence, but mainly because it freed me from having to fulfill somebody else's expectations, which were not the right ones for me.

The Herald Tribune at that time was the best written and best edited newspaper in America. The older editors on that paper were the people who gave me the values that I've tried to apply to my work ever since, whatever that work has been. They were custodians of the best. When they made us rewrite what we had written and rewritten, it wasn't only for our own good; it was for the honorableness of the craft.

But the paper began to lose money, and the owners gradually cheapened their standards in an effort to get new readers (which they therefore couldn't get), and suddenly it was no longer a paper that was fun to work for, because it was no longer the paper I had loved. So on that day I just quit. By then I was married and had a one-year-old daughter, and when I came home and told my wife that I had quit she said, "what are you going to do now?" which I thought was a fair question.

And I said, "I guess I'm a freelance writer." And that's what I was, for the next eleven years. It's a life full of risk: the checks don't arrive as often as the bills, or with any regularity. But those 11 years were the broadest kind of education; no other job could have exposed me to so many areas of knowledge.

Also: In those eleven years I never wrote anything that I didnt' want to write. I'd like you to remember that. You don't have to do unfulfilling work, or work that diminishes you. You don't have to work for people you don't respect. You're bright enough to figure out how to do work that you do want to do, and how to work for people you do want to work for. 

Near the end of the '60s my wife said she thought it might be interesting to live somewhere besides New York and see what that was like. Well, to suggest to a fourth-generation New Yorker that there's life outside New York is heresy. But I began to discuss the idea with friends, and one of them said, "you know, change is a tonic."

I didn't know that.

I was afraid of change; I think most people are.

But I seized on the phrase "change is a tonic" and it gave me the energy to go ahead. I had always wanted to teach writing: to try to give back some of the things I had learned. So I started sending letters to colleges all over the country--big colleges, small colleges, colleges nobody had ever heard of, experimental colleges tha I actually went and visited; one was in a redwood forest in California and one seemed to be in a swamp in Florida--asking if they had some kind of place for me.

And they didn't, because I was not an academic--I only had a BA degree, like the one you'll have in about five minutes--and it was very discouraging. But finally one thing led to another. It always does. If you talk to enough people about your hopes and your dreams, if you poke down enough roads and keep believing in yourself, sooner or later a circle will connect. You make your own luck.

Well, one thing led to another, and one day I got a call from a professor at Yale who said he would take a chance and let me teach an experimental writing course for one term (by the way, that was almost two years after I had started sending all those letters). And on that slender thread we sold our apartment in New York and moved to New Haven, a city we had never seen before, and started a new life.

Yale was totally generous to me, though I was a layman from out of nowhere--a journalist, god forbid. I was allowed to initiate a nonfiction writing course, which the Yale English department later adopted, and I was also allowed to be master of one of Yale's residential colleges. So those were rich years for me--years of both teaching and learning--because they were unlike anything I had done before.

Now the fact that Yale let me do all this is the reason I'm telling you the story. I didn't fit any academic pattern. But finally, being different was not a handicap. Never be afraid to be different. Don't assume that people you'd like to work for have defined their needs as narrowly as you think they have--that they know exactly who they want. What any good executive is looking for is general intelligence, breadth, originality, imagination, audacity, a sense of history, a sense of cultural context, a sense of wonder, a sense of humor, far more than he or she is looking for a precise fit.

America has more than enough college graduates every year who are willing to go through life being someone else's precise fit. What we need are men and women who will dare to break the mold of tired thinking--who just won't buy somebody saying, "we've always done it this way. This way is good enough." 

Well, obviously it's not good enough or the country wouldn't be in the mess it's in. I don't have to tell you all the areas where this wonderful country is not living up to its best dreams: Poverty. Inequality. Injustice. Debt. Illiteracy. Health care. Day care. Homelessness. Pollution. Arms-spending that milks us of the money that should be going into life-affirming work. There's no corner of American life that doesn't need radically fresh thinking.

Don't shape yourself to a dumb job; shape the job to your strengths and your curiosity and your ideals. I've told you this story of my life for whatever pieces of it you may have wanted to grab as it went by... If I had to sum up why my work has been interesting it's because I changed the direction of my life every eight or nine years and never did--or continued to do--what was expected.

I didn't go into the family business; I didn't stay at the Herald Tribune; I didn't stay in New York. And I didn't stay at Yale. In 1979 I made a resume, like every Yale senior (they showed me how to do it--how to make it look nice), and went job-hunting in New York, and got a job with the Book-of-the-Month Club, which was still another new field for me, and in many ways those eight years were the most interesting years of all. So don't become a prisoner of any plans and dreams except your own best plans and dreams.

Don't assume that if you don't do what some people seem to be insisting that you do, in this goal-obsessed and money-obsessed and security-obsessed nation, it's the end of the world. It's not the end of the world. As my experience with my father proves, something very nourishing can happen--a blessing, a form of grace. Be ready to be surprised by grace.

And be very wary of security as a goal. It may often look like life's best prize. Usually it's not....For you, I hope today will be the first of many separations that will mean the putting behind you of something you've done well and the beginning of something you'll do just as well, or better. Keep separating yourself from any project that's not up to your highest standards of what's right for you--and for the broader community where you can affect the quality of life: your home, your town, your children's schools, your state, your country, your world.

If living is the trick, live usefully; nothing in your life will be as satisfying as making a difference in somebody else's life. Separate yourself from cynics and from peddlers of despair. Don't let anyone tell you it won't work. Men and women, women and me, of the Wesleyan Class of 1988:

There's no party line.

You make your own luck.

Change is a tonic.

One thing leads to another.

Living is the trick.

Thank you.

What are you going to do now? Is it time for you to make your own luck?

The post William Zinsser’s Commencement Speech at Wesleyan University 1988 appeared first on Embrace Possibility.