From the earliest days of my working life I have been hearing that I could do anything I set my mind to. Perhaps you have too. For me though it didn’t always turn out to be immediately true .
That’s because I always seemed to run into things.
They’re called barriers.
I got to thinking about the mindset of all these people, many of whom are ordinary career employees, who are struggling to make sense out of the economic rubble around them. Seems like every time I look into one of those on-line forums the complaints pour out like a torrent out of a ruptured dam.
I hear a lot of them center their complaints around the lack of belief they now have in themselves because of the bind they find themselves in. They seem to feel that, as economic downturn victimitis sets in, their sense of control over their family’s future is weakening. They sound rather helpless like they’re all on the verge of falling into the chasm of despair and hopelessness.
A good example of this was an interview on TV one night with a news reporter and some autoworkers from Oshawa Ontario. This particular family had two generations who had followed the heard and went to work at the same GM plant every day collectively for several decades. One was a retired worker and the other was his son. Both looked like deer caught in the headlights of the new reality.
In this the final installment of this series. ( Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4)
I’d like to introduce you to yet another scientist. He’s a recognized pioneer in the field of stress research. In fact the first usage of the term “stress” to describe an effect on humans was first used by him. The idea of the “fight or flight response” to describe a reaction to a stressor comes from his work. He’s a contemporary of Dr. Maxwell Maltz’s.
Let me present: Dr. Hanz Selye.
We’ve been talking all along about a mysterious energy within humans that has shown itself to be a real phenomenon. Again, in Dr. Selye’s work, the concept of a mysterious energy is mentioned. Selye called it “adaptation energy” because “it is that which is consumed during continued adaptive work and to indicate that it is something quite different from the surface or caloric energy derived from the foods we eat“.
The two men seen to agree that this energy plays an important role in healing the body from an injury, adapting to a stress effect, and even that it “touches on the fundamentals of aging.”
I was excited.
Meet Max
This is Part 4 of a series. ( Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 )
For years he’s been a practicing cosmetic surgeon who spots an unusual trend. He can’t help but notice that, even though he performs hundreds of very successful operations, many of his patients remain depressed as if the physical improvements made to their faces had never happened. He decides to author a book and in it he describes his observations as well as his impressions about such things as self-image. He also details his thoughts about the unseen world of energy within us that he believes somehow directs the healing process.
This is part 3 of a series. ( Part 1 / Part 2 /)
In my last post I introduced a quote by Aristotle where he expressed his opinion about the origin of thought in the human body. The re-occurring thing that seems to crop up is a reference to the “gut” as a place where intelligence seems to have some root.
I mentioned the findings in 1996, some 2300 years later, of a “gut brain” in humans by cell biologist Dr. Michael Gershon.
Today I’d like to take you back in history once more, about 450 years to be exact, and introduce to you to a guy who also had something radical to say about the human body.
The year is 1558 and Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci works diligently away in his studio in Milan Italy.
Oh, you’ve heard of him?
Not surprising, since today he is regarded to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. He explored the fields of science, mathematics, engineering, inventing, and anatomy just to name a few.
Leonardo was a man of conviction and, even though he lived in a time when the church was the real power in society, when he had an opinion he gave it voice. He once declared that the human physiology, the “human machine” as he called it, could be improved. That got him into some serious hot water with the church brass. He was given an order to keep such comments to himself… or else!
He may have toned it down a bit but he moved forward anyway by making a few sketches in an attempt to try a few ideas out. One at least looks remarkably similar to today’s hang glider. Poor Leonardo, although he was right he was wrong. He concentrated on physical add-ons not inner-skills. What seemed to have escaped his enormous genius was simply the nature of the improvement that could potentially be made.
He may have been close about his observation of the physical body as a machine though. Others have since come to reference it in similar ways. In fact, how the modern day computer ‘thinks’ could qualify, however loosely, as another mirror reflection of ourselves as a machine.
But hold on to that thought because, if you can stand it, I’m going to quickly whip you forward again to 1960 and another man skilled in matters of medicine who also had similar impressions about the human body as a machine.
I’ll tell you more about him in my next post.
More power to you my friend.
David Parsons (aka Mobiusman)