How to achieve happiness in work, life and play.
Happiness cannot be grabbed – principally. If you want to achieve it by grabbing it – that’s impossible. Try it and you lose it. So think about what you feel when you feel happiness. You feel all kinds of positive feelings. You feel little or no negative feelings. And this play of what you feel Read the full article…
Deepest motivation is an ocean of energy
The more one goes into motivation behind motivation, the more one gets into an area of the human mind that is different from the surface. It’s a bit like diving into the depth of an ocean. At the surface, one can get the impression that there is nothing but surface. Getting deeper, truth reveals itself. Read the full article…
Coaching is everywhere
Communication is three things: spontaneously expressing oneself, providing information, influencing others. Plus: being-communicated-to, of course. Look closely and you see coaching. When people really communicate, they coach each other and themselves. They invite some deeper meaning to be considered. They motivate towards change from inside out. This is not hard or heavy. On the contrary, Read the full article…
There are no extrinsic or intrinsic motivations. There are inner motivations.
There is a well-known difference between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The latter is seen as being much more truly motivating. One more step to inside may be needed though. This is related to ‘subconceptual processing’, being mental processing that happens beneath the level of what can readily be put into concepts. It cannot easily be Read the full article…
Can Tango Teach Us Empathy?
Tango as art… Historically seen, thinking about empathy originates from thinking about experiencing art. Someone looks at a painting and experiences through this something meaningful deep inside. The viewer feels deeply, empathically touched ‘as if from inside the work of art.’ In most cases it’s difficult to express in words really what this is or Read the full article…
Why there is no leader in tango
Tango is a dance of leaders and followers. Yet if leadership has anything to do with bossiness, there is no place for it in tango. It is foremost a dance of subtlety and invitation. This way – as in many ways – tango also has a lot to say about life in general, about leadership Read the full article…
Love wisely and you will not burn out
People who are prone to burn out are often people who have the gift of love to a huge degree. Yet they forget to let their love pass through their own funnel. They look to the outside, to where their love flows. They see little of their own inside and what this act of loving Read the full article…
Symbolism lost. Symbolism regained.
If an analogy is horizontal, a symbol is vertical. An analogy is ‘played out’ at one plane. A symbol transcends all planes. An analogy can elucidate something. It cannot deeply touch someone. X analogically represents Y, whereby Y is equally conceptual as X. An analogy has no depth. It is played out at only one Read the full article…
Psychosomatics in $$
This text contains crude approximations. Nevertheless, the information may altogether give some idea that, according to me, is realistic. (numbers are taken from Health System Tracker, a trustworthy source if ever there is one) Fact: the projected healthcare costs in the US accrue to $17000 per capita in 2027. There are +/- 330 million citizens Read the full article…
About ‘Subconceptual’ (From My PhD Thesis)
The brain is continuously undergoing plastic remodeling through dynamically changing neural networks. This is about processing at the subconceptual level. [Please read first: ‘About Concepts’] Subconceptual processing (SP) deals with the way that we perform any mental action as seen in fine detail. Small elements (neurons, dendrites, synapses…) in our brain act together to form Read the full article…
About Concepts (From My PhD Thesis)
When talking about the ‘subconceptual’ [see About ‘Subconceptual’], it is also important to understand what is meant by ‘conceptual’. This is not a straightforward discussion. According to the classical view of concepts, the definition of a concept is “a proposition that gives a set of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for being in the Read the full article…
Ethical A.I.
A.I. is almost here. No doubt about it. Once mature, it will answer its own ethical questions. Right now, we can still give some guidance to this near future. Time scale It’s easy to misjudge the time scale in which this will become hugely relevant to us. It will be so to our children or, Read the full article…
What Is Your True Self?
‘True self’ is the idea of an essence that resides in a person and that is ‘more true’ than other, more changeable parts. But is this truly real? People change with age, in body and mind. Especially at the surface, these changes can be quite visible. Then the question is logical: am I still the Read the full article…
What is Ultimate Truth?
We don’t know whether ‘ultimate truth’ exists. Although we think to know something about our universe – when it started, where it ends – we don’t know whether this universe is only a blink in a much wider space and time… or maybe in something completely different. And then what about ‘God as creator of Read the full article…
Tango is Meditation With Two
One definition of meditation is to not let distinct thoughts obstruct an underlying current of thinking without thoughts. Many tango dancers may recognize this in their dancing now and then. If you are not a complete beginner, you probably do so too. It may realize itself in different ways. The feeling of unity as a Read the full article…
1 Psyche and Soma, Two Sides of One Coin
‘Body-mind unity’: necessary vision for further scientific development of medicine. Psyche and soma and a lot of questions Psyche and soma: mind and body. They are both important, so we learn during our student years and also after that in and through practice. But how do we give to the psyche a proper place in Read the full article…
A Demagogue Is an Abuser
A demagogue is like a train, not stopped by things that would stop other people. Take care. In due time, he can go harder and faster. A resemblance strikes me with the Pied Piper of Hamelin, luring children away into a cave, to never be seen again. The tale’s pied piper did so out of revenge. Read the full article…