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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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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

 

© by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com. From the book “The Soul Box

intuition, sensing, common senseanalysis skillshuman sensing

Intuition and instinct are a part of our ancient brain skills. Sensing is something that culture tries to hide and wipe out from people, and repressive society hopes you lose quickly, to reduce your power, to let you forget your “animal past” that recognizes threats immediately, to force you to look at tv instead that living as an “animal present”. Your instinct skills, your sensing, are the most powerful human factor resource you really have.

And you don’t need any certificate to get them. They were there with your DNA, they are probably just covered with cultural dust. A dust that a warrior learns to recognize, a dust that a free soul learns to remove.

We wish to explore what science brings us to open the dam of this river, but also to dig inside the secrets of the Sensing Skills and Positive Thinking that pervaded ancient wisdom, a wisdom that has no written code but must be uncovered from proverbs, mottos, rather than in easy to find official literature.

You don’t need to “analyze” an incredible amount of statistical data to understand if you like someone. You just “sense it”. You don’t need to use complex questionnaires to measure the climate and communication quality in a group. Just look at their faces and the way they walk and you will have a very good “sensing” of what is going on.

Many modern companies use “psychological assessment” to evaluate psychological fitness and readiness by means of questionnaires, instead of shadowing them while they are in real working conditions. Sensing, as a skill, is lost. We must recuperate it.

A real holistic approach needs to merge modern scientific findings with ancient Greco-Latin thoughts, Modern “Positive Psychology” findings often point to the same “stars and gods” the Greco-Romans looked at.

Lots of modern researchers look for new ways of self-expression, often forgetting that some golden rules have already been set.

So let’s start with one of the first pearls of wisdom.

Aut viam inveniam aut faciam

I’ll either find a way or make one

The phrase has been ascribed to the Carthaginian General Hannibal; in 218 B.C. When his generals told him it was impossible to cross the Alps by elephant, to fight the Roman Army, this was his response.

This motto seems to anticipate of 2000 years the modern approach to Positive Psychology and many fields such as NLP (a pseudo-science) and several other approaches that sell “magic” and tell you they have invented the wheel. The balance of scientific evidence reveals NLP to be a largely discredited pseudoscience. Scientific reviews show it contains numerous factual errors[1], and fails to produce the results asserted by proponents[2].

If we really want to make achievements in personal development, we should stay away from sects and look in a holistic manner to seeds that the ancients wisdom left, together with modern results of communication science and neuroscience.

[1] von Bergen, C. W.; Gary, Barlow Soper; Rosenthal, T.; Wilkinson, Lamar V. (1997). “Selected alternative training techniques in HRD”. Human Resource Development Quarterly 8 (4): 281–294.

Druckman, Daniel (1 November 2004). “Be All That You Can Be: Enhancing Human Performance”. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 34 (11): 2234–2260.

[2] Witkowski, Tomasz (1 January 2010). “Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?”. Polish Psychological Bulletin 41 (2).

Sharpley, Christopher F. (1 January 1987). “Research findings on neurolinguistic programming: Nonsupportive data or an untestable theory?”. Journal of Counseling Psychology 34 (1): 103–107

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© by Dr. Daniele Trevisani – http://www.danieletrevisani.com. From the forthcoming book “The Soul Box

ROMANSOLDIERStoxic-leaders-workplace

© 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 fight for Human Potential is a hard one. One must remain faithful to Human Potential Research, no matter how hard it is.

In arduis fidelis

Faithful in adversity

This value has intangible enemies. One of the most powerful enemies of Human Potential is the psychological climate, and leaders are the main responsible of this climate.

Toxic leadership as a concept is making its way especially in the literature on Army Leadership. A toxic leader is a person who has responsibility over a group of people or an organization; he/she abuses the leader–follower relationship by leaving the group-members or organization in a worse-off condition than when s/he first found them.

Rome_HBO_Series_a_true_leader_bleeds_1

It is already clear that a Toxic Leader brings his people to mentally starve, to die and suffer either physically or for stress.

It is the same type of leadership based on lies and superficiality, a “great packaging and empty values” style. This style brought to corporate disasters such as Enron, and it is present in any world failure. This problem is everywhere. It is so widespread that US Army revised its leadership bible, Army Doctrine Publication 6-22, to detail what toxic leadership means for the first time.

Top commanders in the U.S. Army have announced publicly that they have a problem: They have too many “toxic leaders” — the kind of bosses who make their employees miserable. Many corporations share a similar problem, but in the Army’s case, destructive leadership can potentially have life or death consequences.[1]

The manual defines Toxic Leadership clearly and states its dangers:

   “Toxic leadership is a combination of self-centered attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that have adverse effects on subordinates, the organization, and mission performance. This leader lacks concern for others and the climate of the organization, which leads to short- and long-term negative effects. The toxic leader operates with an inflated sense of self-worth and from acute self-interest. Toxic leaders consistently use dysfunctional behaviors to deceive, intimidate, coerce, or unfairly punish others to get what they want for themselves. The negative leader completes short-term requirements by operating at the bottom of the continuum of commitment, where followers respond to the positional power of their leader to fulfill requests. This may achieve results in the short term, but ignores the other leader competency categories of leads and develops. Prolonged use of negative leadership to influence followers undermines the followers’ will, initiative, and potential and destroys unit morale.”

Let’s look at leadership and leadership styles in Companies. Today’s leaders are unreachable, perimetrated by filtering yes-man, they don’t know anything of what happens in the real life of workers and normal people, they float on an ocean of which they ignore the depth, they do not know the fishes that are swimming underneath, and they feel them as distant as another galaxy. They live in the top floors of prestigious buildings and don’t even know how the day of an employee is, and the real problems of the clients.

The world as an interconnected entity is a “freak” concept to them and what happens in other countries is not of interest unless it touches their personal profit. They are faithful only to themselves and their personal interest.

This is quite the contrary of what we would expect, right? We need to be loyal and responsible not only to ourselves, but to mankind advancements.

Loyalty and dependability are not an option. They are a must.

Semper fidelis

Always faithful

Let’s see the distance from the model of the Toxic Leader and the model that emerges from the words of a great Roman Leader, Emperor Maurizio, General of the Eastern Roman Empire in the 6th Century:

The lifestyle of a General must be linear and simple as that of his soldiers; he must show a paternal affection towards them, he must give orders calmly and always try to give suggestions and discuss important topics with them face to face. His concern should be their safety, their nutrition and the regular payment of the salary…[1]

Strategikon. By Emperor Mauritius Tiberius (581-602 AD.)

How many companies lost this face-to-face contact with their people and clients? But let’s not think that Emperor Maurizio was only a good and wise “father” of his troops. In his treaty on Strategy, he also affirms that a good General, at the first emerging signal of lack of discipline must act to solve it immediately, without postponing it up to the point of letting it grow bigger.

Every time you see a corporate disaster (airplane crashes, ships, nuclear disasters as Three Miles Islands, Fukushima, Chernobyl, chemical, pollution, the Columbia Shuttle disaster, Lufthansa-Germanwings air crash, etc) we see that those companies wrote “Safety First” on every page of their internal manuals and external ads, and had never practiced for real.

The top management of almost any company treats corporate values of social responsibility as mere propaganda, assigned to PR companies and campaigns, but has an enormous internal deficiency of real values.

The ability to communicate well and lead well is not just a gift from nature but is something that can be learned, achieved, produced by exercise, by coaching and feedback, and mostly, the will to improve.

You almost never hear a top manager or CEO to give any real advice and coaching to leaders and manager on the fact that safety depends on a positive lifestyle, a clear mind able to perceive situational awareness, and Mental Training. Simply following procedures is never enough.

Procedures applied in conditions of mental chaos, are completely useless, all the disasters that happened where in companies and organizations whose “procedures” where so many that it was needed a “procedure” even to use common sense.

Getting back to a healthy communication style and generating healthy relationships is a must for every leader and every team-player that refuses to live in a box or in a psychologically filthy environment.

[1] Maurice’s Strategikon. Handbook of Byzantine Military Strategy, Translated from Greek by George T. Dennis, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1984.

Strategikon. Manuale di arte militare dell’Impero Romano d’Oriente, a cura di G. Cascarino, Editore Il Cerchio, p. 92

[1] http://www.npr.org/2014/01/06/259422776/army-takes-on-its-own-toxic-leaders

https://evolution-institute.org/article/us-army-ambushed-by-toxic-leaders/

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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

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Being a Fulbrighter means more than being a gifted researcher. It means to look for ways to improve Humanity, Learning, Development, and Human Potential in Science, in Sports, in Arts, in any field of Human Expression.

Some thoughts from the book “The Soul Box”

Author of the article: Dr. Daniele Trevisani, Fulbright Scholar www.danieletrevisani.com

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From lost ancient wisdom to a new wave of human energies

You live of your energies. Without mental energies, you are dead

in your body. A free soul, instead, can shine immortal.

Daniele Trevisani

 Personal energy is what moves us, what nourishes us, especially when faced by the highest life challenges. As such, it is not only necessary, it is vital.

Are you sure of having your best mental energies at your complete disposal, whenever you want? Are you sure that you are contributing to something really important, something that can improve the world for real, no matter how little you can do in your lifespan? Do you think that this level of energies and awareness can or cannot be increased?

If these questions are not easy to answer, if you hear some “inner feelings” that tell you that these questions are important, let’s go ahead.

When we look at the traditional literature on Personal Growth and Human Potential, we mainly find “fast & easy” cures, approaches that promise happiness, success, money, becoming persuasive, admired, anything, in a miraculous way, as something you can “buy”. Believe me, it’s a fake promise.

The truth about any human achievement is based firmly only on inner advancements in awareness and knowledge, in exercise and training.

And not only “usual” training, but also and especially mental training, new approaches, varied approaches, generating unexpected situations, the ability of “dealing with the unexpected”, to produce open minds and people ready to face any type of threat, increase perception, take advantage and sense opportunities when they arise, and even generate positive conditions for them and others.

Only continuous daily work on the self and the body can generate and sustain real and lasting results. And the real result is not what movies, ads and commercial programs tell you. It is something intangible that has to do with becoming a free soul. A free soul knows and distinguishes real results from fake targets, and this is one of our main goals.

 Temet nosce! (Variation: Nosce te ipsum!)

Know thyself, or know yourself

 This phrase is visible above the Oracle’s doorway in The Matrix movie.

Its origins go way back to Greek and ancient culture. The Ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” was inscribed in the entrance of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

This phrase means something deeper than knowing obvious things as our name, or residence, or weigh and height, it means to understand how we make our judgments, how we reason, how we choose, how we decide what is to achieve and what is not worth our energies.

It means the ability to look inside our mind and decide how to clean the mess and refresh it with new fresh air, liberating our soul.

1.1. What is a “result” for you?

The very concept of “results” needs to be redefined. If you live in a society that tells you that you are a loser if you are not a superman, remember that this sick and ill message is wrong. Ancient wisdom knew it.

Impossibilium nulla obligatio est

There is no obligation to do the impossible

You should try to achieve your goals, for sure, but what if those goals are fake goals that someone did put in front of you to let you lose focus?

The first thing you have to do is to throw away most of what has been presented to you as a “result” from your surrounding society, and substitute it with something that is more pure, more genuine.

Which are the parameters you use to evaluate what is a real result and distinguish it from a fake result?

Among what you conceive as “results”, are you sure that everything in your mind is really yours? And what if we could find beliefs that you were forced to incorporate when you had not enough mental counter power to analyze what you were mentally fed with?

So, how does it feel whenever you are able to detect and eradicate a fake concept from your mental state? Better. Lighter. More “radicated” and stronger, a process that in Bioenergetic Analysis is called “grounding”.

The ability of “focusing” is a really new tool to achieve, as much and as fast as possible. Focusing, also with some help from an illuminated guide (coach, counselor, mentor, trainer), can drive you to perceive better and distinguish fake results from real results, fake targets from real targets.

  • Is it a result to work more and more hours a day?
  • Is it a result to stay in line for transportation or sit in a car for hours?
  • Is it a result to have no energies left for taking care of your body?
  • Is it a result to forget about the real needs of your soul?
  • Is it a result to have less and less time for your loved ones?
  • Is it a result to be caged within a mental agenda that is conceived to set you in strict boundaries, concepts that are rarely deeper than the wish to buy the newest phone?

Aren’t you sick of feeling fooled by a system that is meant for you to be a part of the produce-consume-die cycle? A system that measures what car or house you have instead of looking at the depth of your thoughts and feelings?

Why are people who work so unhappy on Monday morning when going to work? Why are idiots, hypocrites, cowards or arrogant, in top-paid management positions, and why do you seek for their approval? How did you come to the point of considering them “arrived”? Arrived where?

A company should and must be a place where people with some common values meet to achieve something great and useful for humanity. A group of people united in a purpose, in a vision, in a value.

Unanimi cum ratione

United in Purpose[1]

I personally think that a Fulbrighter should look for other Fulbrighters in order to share a holistic view and perspective on which contributions are most needed now in the world. And than, look for way to share views, and contribute, not only within our narrowest research fields, but with a unified view of what is most needed to improve our World and Humanity.

Is there any other way to give honour to the talent and the effort that brought us to become Fulbrighters?

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[1] This motto is adopted widely, both in organizations and social groups. See on example the Canadian Joint Operations Command, http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/his/ol-lo/vol-tom-4/449-mts-eng.asp, and the online community of Star Trek gamers http://www.starfleettaskforce1.com/

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Author of the article: Dr. Daniele Trevisani, Fulbright Scholar www.danieletrevisani.com

Fear and other demons

Credit NASA

(Interview to Luca Parmitano). One of the questions I am often asked is: “Are you astronauts ever afraid?” It is a question that always surprises me and I find it difficult to answer the question in just a few words.

The temptation to answer simply “no” is great, everyone would breathe a sigh of relief and go on knowing that there are out of the ordinary men and women in the world who work without fear: astronauts. But super humans do not exist – and it is better this way.

My humble opinion is that only fools say they are never afraid – and they are lying when they say it. Fear is a series of sensations, a primordial mechanism that has developed over millennia of evolution to preserve our lives. It would be a waste not to use such a tool. But like any tool, it can be used well or badly: a scalpel, in the expert hands of a surgeon, can save a life while the same scalpel can be lethal when used without skill and knowledge.

Similarly, fear has a physiological effect that can be used to respond better in critical situations. Our heart rate increases, bringing more blood flow to the muscles, making them ready to react. The adrenaline released makes us stronger and less sensitive to pain and fatigue. Fear is a form of stress that can be channelled to bring our performance to its peak, a form of positive stress called ‘eustress’. The important thing is not to enter distress or panic, which immobilizes people and makes us unable to respond in critical situations.

Credit Aeronautica Militare

The best way to learn how to manage fear is preparation, training and study. In the end, it is what we do not know that scares us. On an orbital or suborbital flight the best way to eliminate fear is to know your aircraft and procedures the best you can. Gaining experience is the indispensable and irreplaceable way to handle situations for which we are not trained. It is impossible, and not always useful, to anticipate all scenarios.

A military or civilian pilot knows that flying is risky. The probability of something serious happening is very low, but the consequences can be disastrous. The pilots’ task and the teams working behind them is to minimize this risk. The same applies to any other working environment, including in aerospace. If I think back to some of the riskiest moments in my life, I realise that fear is a feeling that lies quietly without disturbing me: during my launch, my concentration was focused on the procedures and tools. During my spacewalks, my attention was absorbed by the experience itself. In both cases everything was enhanced by the trust I have in science and the engineers that build the machines we use and the teams of men and women who, from afar, support us to form a formidable ‘tetragon team’.

Luca familyOther questions I am asked that require complex answers concern my family. More importantly to being an astronaut and an officer in the air force, I am a son, a husband and a father. Somewhere on Earth flowing below us at 28 000km/h, there is a mother whose heart throbbed with each take-off and landing and a father with stoic strength whose smile hides his concern. My wife did not choose my job but deals with the daily issues of life and always appears with a serene face with two girls who still cannot understand why their daddy does not come home every night like their friends’ dads. I am aware of that. Thinking of my fellow pilots in the air force, everyday heroes running missions all over the world, puts myself in perspective and I realise how privileged I am. Compared to their sacrifice, my efforts are insignificant but necessary. It is my tribute to those pilots, working away from home and family, carry out their duty, in foreign countries under many horrors and other demons, without asking for anything in return, not even gratitude from their country.

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Note of the blogger. Very few people know that the Astronaut Luca Parmitano faced death during a Space-Walk (Extra vehicular activity) in which water filled his helmet at the point of not being able to breathe anymore. He nearly drowned in space!

Her are some videos that show what happened

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXunHkZHu1o&feature=youtu.be

 What do Organizations require from a Talent Management Specialist?

A selected list of skills and attitudes

  • Leadership. Effectively communicates and guides teams to complete programs and tasks and implement strategies. Embraces and drives the development of corporate professionals. Influences team to achieve defined objectives and strategies
  • Continuity. Continuously leads in progressive Talent Acquisition and Training strategies; combines traditional Talent Acquisition and Training techniques (applications, cold calls, classroom and internal promotions) with innovative strategies (social media, e-job fairs, College Forums, Closure/Merger onsite meetings, Employee Referral Programs, etc).
  • Measurement. Tracks and monitors all metrics associated with Talent Acquisition and Training develops a scorecard for weekly review with business partners and the team.
  • Executive Presence. Establishes credibility, informs and influences executive leaders
  • Training. Create training delivery standards of functional curriculum (IT, Marketing, CSA …) and build systems to ensure that property delivery mechanism meets or exceeds standards.
  • Benchmarking. Leads research initiatives to bench mark best-in-class training structures, programs and systems and introduces new practices in a systematic approach.
  • Initiative. Creates and seizes opportunities to win, even when faced with ambiguity. True passion for results.
  • Environmental Radar. Understands how to get things done and when to involve others
  • Range of Influence. Builds and leverages networks across various levels and functions
  • Internal Consulting. Analyzes needs and provides options, recommendations, and council
  • Effectiveness. Effectively manages work to meet timelines and goals
  • Problem finding. Sees around the corners. Anticipates the unexpected
  • Analytical Prowess.  Gets to the root of issues
  • Creativity. Generate new perspectives
  • Business Intelligence. Stays current. Understands how what happens in the world affects us, our marketplace and our competition
  • Entertain your Best. Demonstrates integrity, authenticity, and candor. Embraces inclusion and employee engagement
  • Outside In. Systematically seeks information on wants and needs of employees
  • Problem Resolution. Decisive and timely. Adapts with changes
  • Ability to attract. The Director of US Talent Acquisition (TA) will be responsible for developing a cohesive staffing strategy to attract and hire the best talent for Lam, ensuring consistency with the hiring and assessment processes, in line with the coherent global processes being developed, and in compliance with local laws and requirements.
  • Holistic Approach. S/he will develop holistic solutions, quantitative and qualitative, including defined goals, processes, metrics, communication plans and delivery methodology with defined hand-offs. Must be able to routinely exercise independent judgment in developing ways to achieve objectives.

Attitudes. What Talent Management requires

  • a smart, on-your-feet thinker with impeccable follow-through
  • like to create tailored solutions to everyday problems, and handle unique ones with aplomb
  • flexible, dynamic and can change in time with business
  • nimble at capturing, engaging and advancing the “secret sauce” of a company culture
  • can create learning experiences that have never existed before, and engage a diverse organization
  • love challenges and never assume you know it all
  • thrive on developing the big picture strategy and seeing it through to reality
  • balance an inexhaustible curiosity with experienced business acumen
  • read like a fiend and stay up to date on all sorts of cool leadership and management ideas
  • lead by example, relates to all walks of life, a person everyone can trust, and takes pride in setting the tone to create an awesome corporate culture environment

© 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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Emotional Literacy was noted as part of a project advocating humanistic education in the early 1970s.[1] The term was used by Claude Steiner (1997) [2] who says:

Emotional Literacy is made up of ‘the ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathise with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively. To be emotionally literate is to be able to handle emotions in a way that improves your personal power and improves the quality of life around you. Emotional literacy improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes co-operative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community.[3]

He breaks emotional literacy into 5 parts:

  1. Knowing your feelings.
  2. Having a sense of empathy.
  3. Learning to manage our emotions.
  4. Repairing emotional problems.
  5. Putting it all together: emotional interactivity.

Having its roots in counseling, it is a social definition that has interactions between people at its heart. According to Steiner emotional literacy is about understanding your feelings and those of others to facilitate relationships, including using dialogue and self-control to avoid negative arguments. The ability to be aware and read other people’s feelings enables one to interact with them effectively so that powerful emotional situations can be handled in a skillful way. Steiner calls this “emotional interactivity”. Steiner’s model of emotional literacy is therefore primarily about dealing constructively with the emotional difficulties we experience to build a sound future. He believes that personal power can be increased and relationships transformed. The emphasis is on the individual, and as such encourages one to look inward rather than to the social setting in which an individual operates.

  1. “Recognizing emotions in self and others”
  2. “Regulating and managing strong emotions (positive and negative)”
  3. “Recognizing strengths and areas of need”
  4. “Listening and communicating accurately and clearly”
  5. “Taking others’ perspectives and sensing their emotions”
  6. “Respecting others and self and appreciating differences”
  7. “Identifying problems correctly”
  8. “Setting positive and realistic goals”
  9. “Problem solving, decision making, and planning”
  10. “Approaching others and building positive relationships”
  11. “Resisting negative peer pressure”
  12. “Cooperating, negotiating, and managing conflict nonviolently”
  13. “Working effectively in groups”
  14. “Help-seeking and help-giving”
  15. “Showing ethical and social responsibility” [3]