It’s safe to assume that anything useful in this book is someone else’s idea, and that my main contribution is to put the mosaic of what I’ve learned from others who came before me out there for the world.
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If I’d been better schooled back then in the art of accompaniment, I would have
understood how important it is to honor another person’s ability to make choices. I hope I would have understood, as good accompanists do, that everybody is in their own spot, on their own pilgrimage, and your job is to meet them where they are, help them chart their own course. I wish I had followed some advice that is rapidly becoming an adage: Let others voluntarily evolve.
If there is a tagline to my life, it is “Mastering the best of what other people have already figured out,” and this book is a tribute to that belief.
It’s easy to take comfort in the fact that other people agree with us. As legendary investor Warren Buffett pointed out, though, “The fact that other people agree or disagree with you makes you neither right nor wrong. You will be right if your facts and reasoning are correct.”
The people executing established practices say they want new ideas, but they don’t want the bad ones. And because they so want to avoid the bad ones, they never deviate enough to find good ones.
As Seneca said, “Happy is he who can improve others not just when he is in their presence, but even when he is in their thoughts!
I once had a coworker who was also a friend. One day he walked into my office with some news. “I figured out what I’m doing wrong,” he said. "I’m so busy trying to prove to everyone I’m right that I can’t see the world from their point of view.