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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

human potential, freedom, courage, motivationprsonal energy

Searching deeply inside Latin Culture, we see a culture that inspired apparently opposite phenomenon as the pioneering scientific discoveries of Leonardo da Vinci or Galileo, as well as the Gladiators fights for life in the Coliseum and the unmatched fighting abilities of the Roman Army.

Despite the differences, it is easy to find a deeply rooted acceptance of “challenge” as noble goal, the fearless search for the unknown and the impossible, and “training” for improving personal strength, getting ready for life fights.

Per aspera ad astra!

Through difficulties to the stars!

(Latin Motto)

 

This habit that found a high expression in D’Annunzio (Italian Poet and Warrior) and his motto “Memento Audere SemperRemember to Always Dare).

The capacity to fight can bring to the ability to fight in life for your values and requires an alchemical transformation. This is a great opportunity which is denied to many, by “labels” that consider any combat or martial training something “violent”, forgetting that peace requires people of goodwill and mental energies willing to engage to achieve it. Anything can become violent, even playing a guitar, depending on the spirit that is used by the players. We need therefore to focus on the “spirit” and the “emotional side” of the game of life and how a good training can help us in an alchemical transformation.

Mental Coaching can help to explore how to get rid of negative emotions and discover the secrets that a good Mental State combined with Physical State can generate. These inner attitudes can produce higher compassion, relaxation, deep consciousness, removal from unnecessary aggressiveness, and ability to focus in battle and under stress.

You can accept a challenge only if you are mentally prepared for it. Emotional challenges and physical challenges are so great, that either you decide to make your life a constant laboratory of self-improvement, and prepare for it, or you give up. We are not among those who give up.

 

Qui audet adipiscitur

S/he who dares wins

 

In this world we have the opportunity to do a good journey, and leave a positive mark at the end of your trip. And that’s not all. The ancient Latin culture helps us to understand that we can generate our own journey, we are not forced to “absorb” what the destiny or our culture of origin has prepared for us.

But for every stretch of road, you need some form of energy.

So, we need to focus on the mental energy you need to make this journey, examine and find some secrets that lie within the ancient Latin culture, and combine old Latin wisdom with modern science. A great challenge!

Energies are everywhere. How can you let them grow in you? How can you measure it, how to understand at which level you are in a given moment? We must find ancient secrets and merge them with modern science to find and how to prepare for the battles and to regenerate ourselves.

We must find a way to go ahead despite the difficulties, and to exploit the opportunities which sometimes appear in front of us.

It is a battle without limits and without end. The only purpose is to improve oneself and the world.

Working out combining physical and mental training, forces the brain to reconfigure itself[1]. In Martial Arts and Combat Sports, some mental dynamics and emotional dynamics of the combat rituals produce a unique quest of reconfiguration, working on both the intangible self-image and the real body structure.

The creation-removal of synaptic connections is accelerated and directed towards different configurations, a different “archetype” that can go towards the “warrior”, the “magician”, the “alchemist”, and reduce archetypes of victimization and helplessness.

Becoming more powerful, more resistant and resilient is not only a matter of pride, it is a matter of what you can do with the energies you earned on the ring, on a “tatami”, or in the gym, and bring them in the ring of life, on the tatami of a family difficult moment, in a company during a meeting, and also to face the highest challenges of life: growing a family, making new discoveries, try to improve humanity. The more energy you will have, the more you will able to contribute to others, and to fight against your inner daemons.

Working on this endless dream helps us to rediscover the pride and reason to exist. Start working out today on a balance of what you received from the world and what you would like to leave to this world. It will inspire you for the rest of your life.

[1] Foster PP, (2015), Role of physical and mental training in brain network configuration, in: Frontier in Aging Neuroscience. 2015 Jun 23;7:117

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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

The holistic approach: taking care of human communication, soul and body

The Greek Aristotle was the first real communication scientist, much earlier than the opening of any Department of Communication or Psychology. In his treaty on “Rhetoric” he taught us that a persuasive message must contain:

  • ethos”, strong values, a call for ideals and sense of purpose,
  • logos”, a nice language structure, a nice organization, be well structured, and
  • pathos”, the ability to fire emotions and generate feelings.

aristotle ethos logos pathos

Modern research says he was right. We tend to judge a speech and the speaker against our own values, as Aristotle said, ethos is the effect of feeling in the message the presence of wisdom (phronesis), virtue (arete), and good will (eunoia);

There is now high consensus in the scientific community on the Power of Communication derived by emotions, with many of empirical findings:

“affectively valenced words show an advantage in processing with respect to neutral words, as revealed in word recognition tasks (e.g., lexical decision, Kousta et al., 2009; Kuperman et al., 2014), in naming tasks (Kuperman et al., 2014) or in memory tasks (e.g., Herbert et al., 2008; Talmi, 2013; Ferré et al., 2014), among others”. [1]

What does this all mean? It means that we have to learn the Power of Communication, the ability to motivate, to inspire, to share deep meanings, instead of swimming in a pool of banality and empty gossip.

Many phrases from the ancient world shade light, and we have to look for them where the Greco-Latin Culture left its seeds. But also in several modern thoughts found in the Anglo culture, at least on its best humanistic side, and for sure not in its materialistic side.

The power of some words and mottos is so great that they are still used today after 2000 and more years.

Mens sana in corpore sano

A healthy mind in a healthy body[2]

But there is more. Human Potential expression requires not only a good and healthy communication environment (ecology of communication), but a healthy mindset that keeps a positive psychology inside our soul, and a strong attention to our bodily machine, its nurture, its well-being, obtained via physical exercise, good nutrition, and a clear mind.
All the three aspects are intrinsically correlated.
In this Holistic view, wellness and performance depend on the degree to which we are able to set these conditions, despite what the environment presents us as “given state”.
To go beyond the “given state” and look for our Full Potential enables the expression of incredible performances and contributions to mankind, and this is our sacred mission.
Dr. Daniele Trevisani holistic model mind body relations

A healthy mind in a healthy body is not only an ancient motto.

It is a way of life that is ordinarily unpracticed from ordinary people, and managers in the companies, where the number of hours spent in the office becomes the benchmark, rather than the real intellectual contribution, the quality of your ideas and energies you generate in your working environment. Your real energetic contribution to your company is completely lost, confused with “hours spent inside”.

You even lose the ability to distinguish the people that are around you (coworkers, consultants, trainers, friends) in terms of the real energies the can provide and bring and you start measuring sick parameters, things as age or career level or the car they have or where they live. Well, let me tell, you, Albert Einstein – in this evaluation system – would have never come out of his desk as clerk, since he was not in the academia and was not a well-paid, well dressed manager with a fancy car. But his ideas changed the world.

So, where do you want to be? On the side of the material or on the side of the immaterial world? Or in a good balance between them, and if so, where?

Are you able to spot people with great ideas? How do you measure them?

Latins believed that since we are born we are fully involved in a journey. We run, whether we like it or not. We stop, whether we like or not the stopping areas and landscapes we encounter. And in this world we need to feed our soul and our body with positive energies.

Spa as modern structures where originated by the Romans and made free for all the “citizens” in Rome. A Spa is a location where mineral-rich spring water is used to give medicinal baths. Spa towns or spa resorts (including hot springs resorts) typically offer various health treatments. The belief in the curative powers of mineral waters goes back to prehistoric times. Such practices have been popular worldwide, but our culture is so spiritually poor that – despite the Roman habit of having them free and used for meeting, socialization and conversation places – now it has become an elite costly service and not a public service. This is just one of the thousands of “ways of living” that we can and must recuperate.

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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

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[1] Pilar Ferré, David Ventura, Montserrat Comesañ, and Isabel Fraga (2015), The role of emotionality in the acquisition of new concrete and abstract words. Frontiers in Psychology, 2015 Jul 2;10(7).

[2] This Latin phrase – as many more that we will not examine – has been adopted widely, showing how deeply Latin Culture pervaded European and US culture. The following list shows some examples:

(list source http://www.thefullwiki.org/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano) :

  • The phrase was a favorite of American President Harry S. Truman.
  • Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville, Georgia uses the phrase as its motto.
  • Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Virginia uses the phrase as its motto.
  • S.C. Anderlecht uses the phrase as its motto.
  • Teacher’s College of Columbia University has this phrase engraved on its Horace Mann hall, on 120th street in New York City.
  • Motto of the Turners Organization American Turners and their local organizations like the Los Angeles Turners. The Turners promoted gymnastics and introduced PE to schools in America
  • ASICS, company name derived from the phrase.
  • Carlton Football Club uses the phrase as its motto.
  • Army Physical Training Corps (APTC) uses the phrase as its motto.
  • Asociacion Atletica Argentinos Juniors, uses the phrase as its motto.
  • The Israeli Institute of Technology athletics teams use the phrase as their motto.
  • It is the motto of Grant Medical College and Sir J.J. Hospital, Mumbai
  • PERI (Physical Education & Recreation Instructors), which is part of the Canadian Military use this as their motto
  • Widener University and the State University at of New York at Buffalo use the phrase as their motto.
  • The phrase appears in stone on the western facade of the HPER (School of Health, Physical Education and Recreation) at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
  • It is the motto of Dhaka Physical Education College in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
  • It is the motto of Sparta High School in Sparta, New Jersey.
  • It is the motto of Roger Bacon High School, St. Bernard, Ohio
  • John Locke (1632-1704) uses the phrase in his book ‘Some thoughts concerning education’.
  • Is the motto for Bjelke-Petersen School of Physical Culture, Australia.
  • Mens Sana Basket, a prominent Italian basketball club.
  • Motto of Beale Gaelic Football Club from County Kerry.
  • Used in the film Agantuk by Satyajit Ray.
  • Is the motto of Bridgewater Junior Senior High School in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.

 

 

© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

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Neuroscience research tells us that our brain is like a muscle. The parts that are more often used do enlarge, get fitter, and become more agile and fast. The parts that are underused become smaller, slower, as if they were mummified.

The stimuli that change our brain can be those that come from any day, any hour of the day, any moment in life. Scientific studies that show how plastic the brain is, responding quickly and changing its structure in response to both real-life stimuli and artificial stimuli (magnetic stimulation)[1].

So what should we do? Human brain has a Left Prefrontal Cortex that has the ability to perceive positive things in our world and in what surrounds us (positive perception) and a Right Prefrontal Cortex that is very good at detecting what is wrong, negative, and the ability of feeling pessimistic emotions. The continuous flow of anxiogenic news, movies, messages, the continuous subliminal message to “become rich and famous or you are a loser” are lies that pump your right cortex and kill you. We must stay away from these messages, as if they were toxic, radioactive, and poisonous.

Even talking about negative topics and bad news during a dinner can pump your “negative” side of the brain while a dinner or eating should be a pleasure and a restful pause.

But besides specific moments, your whole life is constellated by messages, ads, movies, and people that are lying to you.

The very fact of telling you that money and status will decide whether you made it or not, is a lie that trains your right prefrontal cortex every minute of every day. You become extremely good at feeling what you have not yet done.

You start to believe that people that are on tv or became famous or very rich “have made it” without realizing that their inner experience of life can be miserable, most of them are severely depressed and unhappy people.

We could make a huge list of rich and famous people (artists, movie stars, entrepreneurs) who killed themselves or died from self-intoxication from drugs and alcohol, at the peak of their career and money possession.

Michael Jackson in music, Marilyn Monroe among actresses, the cyclist champion Marco Pantani, the member of the richest Italian family Edoardo Agnelli (Fiat) who, despite the richness and enormity of opportunities, suffered from depression and jumped from a highway. Should we judge these unlucky people “arrived”? “Arrived” where? Who has the arrogance decide for you and to tell you what makes you “arrived”?

The more you think about bad news and consider the wrong part of existence, the more you train to suffer.

You also become insensitive towards the little good things that you did or happened in your day, even the most subtle positive things. You need more and more results to feel happy, more and more money to feel rich, and at the end you always you feel that “something is still missing to be really happy”

This system can make you anxious and feel always inadequate, always out-of-place in your world, always poor. A system designed to make you feel a loser is sick, is a lie.

If you look at the lives of the richest people in terms of money, so many of them are so depressed and so many of them do suicide and are into drugs, that you should wonder if they really “made it”. Made it to get insane and unhealthy and miserable? Yes, they made it. But when it is the turn to see if they made it in being good people, good fathers or mothers, people with a sense of love for life, a strong spiritual life, an inner and self-sustaining force inside, they “didn’t make it” at all. They are miserable inside.

When you lose sight of the miracles that life provides to a living soul, even the mere fact of being able to “think” should surprise you, and make us incredibly happy. The very fact of waking up, being alive, breathe once again, is a miracle.

Don’t spit on miracles. Live them.

[1] Zhang ZC1, Luan F2, Xie CY3, Geng DD1, Wang YY4, Ma J5. Low-frequency transcranial magnetic stimulation is beneficial for enhancing synaptic plasticity in the aging brain. Neural Regen Res. 2015 Jun;10(6):916-24.

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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

 

Leadership in practice71

© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

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The reality between what you see inside companies is very different from what has been tought to you. Nice ties and dirty mindis, expensive clothes dressing miserable souls, are the average truth you find inside most leaders in most organizations.

We too often seen companies leaded by arrogant people, without values, without ideals, idiots who would sell their mother just to get ahead in the hierarchy, to escalate the pyramid of the company or society. Put in front of them a choice between a mildly lower compensation, and a compensation increase of 20% in the next term, requiring a solution that will endanger people of a remote country, or within their country, the second generation after them, and you will see. Sometimes they even do things that might endanger their first generation’s future in 20 years, even their sons, but they do not care.

The 7 Generations principle seems not to apply to them. The “Great Law” of the Iroquois states that it is appropriate to think seven generations ahead (about 140 years into the future) and decide whether the decisions we make today would benefit our children seven generations into the future.

Ancient wisdom seems lost in face of a trimester data, a quarterly revenue, or a dental care insurance, or the possibility of having a larger pool in the penthouse.

These are not our reference points. Really, they are not. They are not “a career”, but an illness.

Isn’t there anything else or different? Well. There is!

A very ancient world, a world that seems lost, holds this secret. The Greek-Latin World is a “time window” in mankind history, a space that gave birth to places like the Library of Alexandria, where the best thinkers met and lived their life as a community of enlightened individuals,

Their passion: to shared ideas and advanced knowledge both in science and self-consciousness.

The flow of personal energy and human research is a way of life and not something you can “buy and get done” in a weekend. The search of soul and advancement, the “sacred fire” of human research, are still breathing. All we need to do is to take the spirit of Alexandria, Athens, Sparta, and Rome, and bring it alive, breathe with it and feed our souls in our very own lives.

A spirit that brought to mankind concepts of freedom. A spirit that had the noble purpose of having people to join and share, rather than only fight and battle against each other.

Communitate valemus

(Latin for “Together we are Strong”)

What could the human race achieve if it embraced the motto “Together we are Strong”?

The search for the soul and the best of human energies has no place and no time. There is not a fixed place in history or in a single geographical point. This spirit is an entity, an “Egregore”, a positive Egregore, an energetic entity of human power. It appears and disappears from time to time as a precious flower. It is a flower that we want to let grow in our inner garden, now, and forever. A leader is one who seeks constantly to implant “positive egregores” within his/her group or community.

Let this way of being be a part of our lives.

Egregore[1] (also egregor) is an occult concept representing a “collective state of mind” or “collective consciousness”, an autonomous psychic entity made up of, and influencing, thoughts of a group of people. In this perspective, I think it applies perfectly to the concept of “Group Thinking”, “Group Atmospherics”, “Group Moods”, “Group Feelings” that are the Center of Gravity of any Group Performance.

Positive Egregore do exist (e.g. the search for Human Potential) and we must feed them against negative Egregore (e.g. cultural arrogance, religious movements that oppress free thinking, “memes” that propagate wrong “missions” and sick communication styles in organizations).

A real leader is one who is able to bring “positive egregores” inside his team, passion, real values, real help, real sense of mission, real closeness, and eats the same shit that the others eat or the same cakes the others eat, feeling that he/she is not above the group but in the group. But these leaders are by far less numerous than those who bring inside their team thinking styles pervaded by “burocracy for burocracy”, closure to different experiences, narrow-mindedness, lack of time-perspective, and wrap up all this with a packaging made of “distance” and fake superiority.

Positive search is a way of thinking and being. The same way of being that gave birth to concepts as “Democracy” in Greece, the creativity of Leonardo da Vinci in Italy, the Genius of Archimedes in Sicily, and tangible buildings that are still unmatched as the Pyramids in Egypt.

What enabled this level of human advancement? And how far could we go if we could reach again that level of sensibility, both as a species, but also and especially in our very own personal lives? We can start here, now, and let this river flow forever in our lives.

[1] The first author to adapt “Egregore” in a modern language seems to be the French poet Victor Hugo, in La Légende des Siècles (“The Legend of the Ages”), First Series, 1859. The word is the normal form that the Greek word ἑγρήγορος (Watcher) would take in French. This was the term used in the Book of Enoch for great angel-like spirits. Source: Wikipedia online

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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

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It’s better to light a lamp, than to curse the darkness .
Lao Tzu

Every day you get up. And every day you fight a battle.

Sometimes you even realize that you’re fighting, sometimes you are anesthetized and do not feel it, but the fight continues, always. Deep forces face each other within us. In the depths of our hearts, two entities, two dragons, forces or titans … no matter how you want to call, are struggling for the victory. They are the Energies and the Fears.

  • The first warrior is our Personal Energy, physical and mental, our determination, ability, enthusiasm, physical power and mental toughness. This side of life also comprises good, generative, positive thoughts and ideas. It is the metaphor of the Light, the Good, and Life.
  • The other side is the land of Fears, darkness, pain, anxiety, oppressive ideologies, and the formidable challenges that life poses us. This side comprises difficulties, negative ideas, wrong beliefs that try to grab you and push you down, or make you turn back, and slow our attempt to advance. As illusory or real these forces might be, they erode our instinct towards self-expression in life and inhibit our hunger for freedom.

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In fairy tales and myths, this struggle is represented as the metaphor of the Hero’s Journey, where life becomes a series of tests that the Hero must take to assert himself in the world.

And we, tiny creatures among millions of stars in the universe, immersed in this fight, what can we do? Well, let me say: a lot! We could first install a mental radar that goes in search of the negative ideas that circulate in our minds. Negative beliefs, once exposed, identified become enemies. And you can finally fight.

Intelligence is useful for survival if we can extinguish a bad idea before the bad idea extinguishes us

Karl Popper

Another fundamental operation is to open our minds towards the entrance of good, positive ideas, new visions, new learning, and let in fresh water from a thousand brooks. It can be a journey, a book, an enlightened person to listen. Any source of learning moves our energy-balance towards the side of light and weakens the darkness.

The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to the previous dimension.

Albert Einstein

Each person accepts or not the challenges that life poses, based on the “internal state” the he/she is living, the state of physical and mental power and energy, and this is related to how our “inner balance”, works, and the accuracy of our mental radar.

Our mind weighs perceived energies and perceived fears, then decides.

Who is able to do mental cleansing and re-charge his/her energy, becomes powerful beyond measure, up to the point of actively seeking challenging projects. An energetic person will seek challenges in which to apply the energies that feels, the resources that he/she possesses.

This applies to athletes, martial artists, fighters in life, even to a couple who decides to give birth to children in this rotten world, knowing that eventually the light will prevail or at least that this possibility exists.

The challenges always teach.

Those that we accept but also those who do not accept.

Fears are growing in us. Some are motivated and useful to save our lives. Driving without paying attention to the road needs to become something that we fear, and it must be something that generates awareness of the danger. This is not a pathological fear, but fear to drive – the pure fear of driving, is a debilitating fear, something to get rid of.

 

When you are ready to die you will be ready to live.

Sitting Bull (1831 – 1890), tribal chief of the Hunkpapa Sioux (Lakota).

Those who live within completely unmotivated fears, carry exhausting rocks in their backpack. Misconceptions, wrong fears, become unnecessary weight to be disposed of as soon as possible. The fear to try a different career, fear of failure in a project, the fear of public speaking, fear of trying new roads.

As in a fairy tale, epic confrontation between these two forces never ends, within us and outside us.

We must look for some positive challenges. It becomes a positive challenge to remove the suffering to every child on the planet.

It becomes a challenge to remove from ourselves the fears of which we can do without, and learn to live fully.

Living fully means to decide what deserves to be a part of our lives and what does not. Do not let it decide to the mass, to others, to a TV program, or ignorance.

It is necessary to do this cleaning every day. It ‘a daily exercise of mental autonomy, freedom at the liquid state. A fighter does not remain standing waiting to be struck without reacting, he/she will use every technique, every energy, every tactic, to win the match. This is also true in life.

So we will fight every day this struggle for freedom.

And we are proud of this.

 

Destiny is not written, it is what we create.

(John Connor) from the movie Terminator Salvation

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© Article by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – www.danieletrevisani.com – Copyright. Adapted from the book The Soul Box. Ancient Wisdom meets Human Potential Research. Thoughts for Self-Expression, Inner Energy and Life

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