Emanuele Pani (00:01.048)

So yesterday, me and Dad were driving in the car, and we were having a conversation. And he told me, well, this could be a podcast as well, which made us think that we should do a podcast. Maybe we should do more than one.

This is CEO Mindset. I'm Emmanuel Pani. My friends call me E. Let's get into it. As I told you, I was going to bring you guys guests soon. And since I'm here with dad, who has been one of my mentors, one of my teachers, and has known me my whole life, obviously, being my dad. And I think as men, as boys, we always admire our fathers.

And I have a particular level of admiration for mine. And it's been one of my best kept secrets, how brilliant my dad has been, and how much of a champion he's been for me in my life. And he has shared philosophy and teachings and psychology with me my whole life. So I've been sitting.

around the kitchen table and the dinner table hearing my dad help people my entire life. And so it's kind of no surprise once you hear that, that my Dharma, my mission in this life has become to also help people. And so without further ado, I welcome Luca Pani on the show. Thank you, my son. Yeah. I can say this.

Absolutely. It's a great honor and a privilege. A father never knows whether or not the thing that he does, because that's the first consideration we should start with, is not what you say. It's rarely what you say, actually. I mean, you can say, remember, don't smoke with your cigarette.

Emanuele Pani (02:12.662)

It's bad for you. Don't do like me. That has no, no grip on a young mind. Is the silent observation of what people that are around you that you eventually will call mentors, but people that give an inspiration can be even, even a stranger on a road. And that gives you,

that sparkled, that moment, by the behavior. The human brain observes, elaborates, chooses, and acts. And so this is what you witness, me and your mother, of course, that, you know, when you were very small. That's another thing. People don't realize this. This happened very, very early.

You're not able to quite elaborate what's happening. By early, I mean three, four years. Between three or four years, the human body is challenged with other things. I need to walk. I need to speak. These guys are doing things and I'm gibberishing around and I cannot get water. What the hell? I'm thirsty and I cannot get water. The only thing I have is crying.

But after that, you know, two to three years, then other things happens. And so the observation, the frontal cortex develops and the observation of behaviors becomes one of the stronger mold for the development. That puts a lot of responsibility, by the way, to the parents. do not. When you hurt around, know, parenting is the most difficult job in the world.

It is, because of the responsibility it carries. that is through acting to do things. philosophy has always been part of your life and has always been part of my life. And we're now at grandpa's house. If you guys are watching this on YouTube, you can see part of our backyard.

Emanuele Pani (04:39.022)

One of the stories that you always share with me about grandpa is that you wanted to be a philosopher. You wanted to be a writer. And one of the things that no, no told you is like, look, philosophizing doesn't buy your food. And so you decided to become a psychiatrist, which in a way is the closest thing that you can find of merging those two worlds. so give the listeners a little bit of a

of a background before we get into the meat and potatoes of like what we're going to talk about of what your life has been, what your journey has been throughout medicine, science, philosophy, and now.

how you've mixed all of those things together. So that's funny because that's exactly a segue to what we're discussing. So your grandfather, my father, I just finished saying how the example of fathers and so on was important. And I still remember this vividly like it happened yesterday. And this is 50 years ago to this day. because it was July, in fact, you got out of college and you had to decide where to go. We are in Italy.

Sardinia, I need to go out and enroll in university. So I'm going out of the house and he's sitting one of his big frown chairs and breathing as usual. Now you have those chairs. I said, so I'm gonna go and, dad, I'm gonna go and enroll in college. Okay, what is your subject? I think I'm gonna go with philosophy.

History and philosophy. I had a very high score in philosophy in my high school in the classical studies, so I loved reading all that stuff, so I thought it was natural for me to do that. And that's another thing, you tend to do things that are natural for you because that's what is easier and you have less resistance, okay? Are those the right thing for you? Not necessarily. That's an interesting first teaching in life.

Emanuele Pani (06:49.642)

Not everything that comes easy for you is the thing that you should pursue. In general, it might happen, but don't think that since this is difficult, I cannot do it. It's actually the foundation. So I said, I learned philosophy and history. And he was reading it, now with the newspaper, with the glasses like this, and he goes, just remember, even philosophers need to eat.

I went out, I took my little scooter and I enrolled in medicine instead. And I enrolled in medicine instead. But of course, the thing that are inside you, they grow in you. It's like a seed. they, they stayed. So I was kind of, of, of pleasing. I knew he would love for me to be a physician. Absolutely. So I became one, not only.

He loved me to be a surgeon. So that's, that's, that's what I intended to do. But then that's another interesting thing that happens and speaks volumes about the concept of mentors. While I was going into this category, can you imagine you want to be a philosopher? Now you're becoming a surgeon, possibly a cardiac surgeon. The two things are far away. I had the misfortune of knowing cardiac surgeons because of my...

particular health journey and they are very good, very sharp, but clearly not of philosophical, you know, fabric. They don't have that. So I was going into the, in the fifth, between the fifth and the sixth year, the last year of medicine to tell you my journey, I encountered these other men, which was, which was my mentor, Athanasios Koukopoulos.

a Greek from Levadia that born and raised in Greece, a study in Italy, a psychiatrist back in those times, already established. It was an absolute sliding door. It was a situation where I was in America doing my usual exchanging periods and a friend of a friend

Emanuele Pani (09:18.702)

needed a particular... We didn't have all the things that we have now. There was no internet, so you could not download. And some of the books that were very old that Athanasio wanted to study for a series of conferences that he was going to give in the US in October. We are now in September, August of my fifth year.

At serious conference he needed these very old books and some copies of a particular chapter in this book from Arateus of Cappadocia, which happened to be at the National Library of Medicine and the National Library of Congress. And I was there and so...

this friend, with the, with the phone call, we didn't have mobile phone email. You have to understand the context of all this said since, but I know there is a guy, one of my colleague Luca is there. Uh, I asked him, so I went to, to pick up this thing. I succeeded. I got this. I paid $2 for the photocopies and I'm on, on, on the train, uh, coming back. And I started reading this, this thing that

Koukopoulos asked me to bring him. There was Arataeus, was Krepelin, there was Krashman, there were several scholars in the field of Sakha, really philosophers. said, damn, this thing is good. This thing is fascinating. They understood the way mood will move and energy and the cognitive ability. This is very...

It is philosophy in a sense, but it's medicine, but it's philosophy. so long story short, I come back, I go to Rome, I give this to Athanasius, he's elated. He says, you know, this is fantastic. Do I owe you anything? And I said, no, no, I don't owe you anything. Thank you. This was very fascinating. Let me, let me show you. Shane, we have go to dinner. I see the fascinism with this man, real mentor that influenced all my life. What was fascinating about him?

Emanuele Pani (11:42.179)

Because I know him, right? Like, I know the stories and his personality. The death of his culture. This man, this was the first man. Then I would encounter other men like this, there was not too many. But this was the first man that could speak five, six languages like this. That was already, you know, I was managing my English and he was already...

Greek, French, German. He would read the original psychiatry in German. I suspect he knew some Russian, course, English, Spanish, Portuguese. It was amazing. And the death of his culture was fascinating. He would join things that apparently... I saw the infinite power of knowledge.

with him, which is and also and this is what really is the most fascinating thing about him the love for this knowledge, the love per se, not the love to show, not the love to pretend, not love to be arrogant, the love and then it hit me and says well isn't this the very basic fundamental meaning of Philosophia?

which means the love of wisdom. That is what Athanagia transmitted. So I gave all this and he says, no, we go to dinner, more fascinating. And I said, you know, I'm starting these conferences in a few weeks. Why don't you come with me? I was a student. I was a student going into the sixth year, sixth and final year of medicine.

And so, well, I don't know, don't have, you don't have to pay anything. Just pay your trip. Everything else, I would pay. Everything else, everything else. So we would go out for like 10 days in this series of conference in the tops of the NIH, know, name it, the university in Memphis where one of the other big scholars, Argo Pactisco was teaching. you don't have to, so I go back to my father.

Emanuele Pani (14:10.006)

And I said, I said, I'm well, you know what? met this man is I'm very fascinated. think there is a psychiatrist can be a choice. I need to go in this series of conferences. It will pay for everything but the trip. And my father says, okay, so what can you pay the trip? No, you just came back. You could have stayed. Well, I don't have money to pay. I remember that the

Back in those days, the economy ticket was $300. You don't even go to Washington, Miami for $300 now. The economy ticket from Rome to Washington, because we landed in Washington, was $300. And I said, no, I don't have this money. Well, you have the little rubber boat that I gave you for your graduation, remember?

You can sell that if you really mean to do what you want to do. And I did. But the teaching was, are you going to put your money where your mouth is? And I was 23 and a half, 24. And that that trip changed my life forever because those 10 days...

Now you have the mentor teaching with others, with all the others. And remember, psychiatry and clinical psychiatry in the course of medicine in Italy comes the last year. So I haven't even started to study psychiatry formally. And I was already listening to top of the world lectures on this.

And that is the story that got me into what I've been since then. Then I made many other things, pharmacology and things like this. But the beginning of all this, which relates to what you were saying in the coaching and so on, started there. Such a fascinating story, which I didn't know because this is the first time you told me. And what's funny in terms of how life plays out,

Emanuele Pani (16:37.408)

It reminded me of a conversation when I was 14 years old. Very different situation, but very similar kind of feeling. I went to a tennis camp and I met these kids from Rome for the first time. A very wealthy part of Rome. And I remember sitting there as a kid from Calgari, which is a small town, 150,000 people now, a lot less back then.

And I remember sitting there and realizing the level of culture that was there. And that was the time that I came home from that vacation and I told you and mom, cannot, I cannot stay here. Like this is, there is so much more. Yeah, there's so much more and I need, I need to go. And now I understand where the championing came from because again, was a very shared experience without me.

without me knowing. Where I want to take us next. And again, there's been a lot of teachings that you have shared with me. You write a lot. You study a lot, which has helped me learn and study a lot. But there is a specific thing that you have shared with me many years ago, which is the six pillars of wisdom. And so we are going to go, we're going to do six episodes. So this is episode one, a little intro for you guys so that you know who that is.

and then you get to meeting more throughout the next six episodes and maybe we'll see what happens. But we're gonna start with pillar one and I have a specific piece of it, right, a specific quote and pillar one from the six pillars is generosity. And that line from this writing that I wanna take us to, to kinda start the teaching is seek no gains, embrace

pure altruism with no strings attached. Through success is when you remain unacknowledged.

Emanuele Pani (18:44.014)

Let's talk about it. Where did the pillars come from? What does this mean to you?

The pillars are among the teachings of Buddhism. I cannot call it a religion, but Buddhism, philosophy and the way of life. They are universal. They will resonate with any human that is intellectually honest and self-centered but also aware.

of the limitation and humble to accept teachings that come from thousands of years away. I don't know because I'm by no means... Buddhism's culture needs hundreds of years of study. So I'm not a scholar by any chance of this. So I don't even know if they come in a particular order. But...

For my particular experience in life, I got for all these six pillars to some that were apparently more difficult, like the transcendental knowledge, before I got to others, like patients. I guess it's individual. But it's interesting what you read. You can see generosity. And one thing in this world...

immediately would resonate with people about generosity would be money. okay. I'm generous because I give you money. There is no mention of money. Altruism, of course, be experienced through money, through giving money, but it's really the concept of altruism, of doing something above and beyond the self and without any expectation of any kind.

Emanuele Pani (20:46.446)

for reward or response. Actually, to go a little bit deeper in this conversation, if you're generous, you may experience not really gratitude. You would think that if I'm generous, you'd be grateful. It's not exactly like this. It's complicated by the fact that altruism gives you, considering this, a lot.

It will make you a better person. It will give you a sense of pleasure. And if it's true generosity, not because you are above the others. in a sense, if it's generosity is not received by people that are, again, center whole with themselves, it will, and think about this, it will generate a sparkle of humiliation.

right? Sparkle of envy, a sparkle of forever. But doesn't matter. You should not take this into any consideration and you should never ever expect anything out of your generosity. If you even if you keep a ledger on your generosity, you are already, you know, but I pay you dinner. You're exchanging. Yes. Not generosity. So you're you're you're expecting something. It's what is the most important thing?

about generosity, you might find this funny, is the generosity of the most precious thing that we have. What is it? Time. Time. You're good, my young man. You have learned well. It's time. So you, your podcasts are incredibly illuminating for a lot of people, me included. And one of the things that you always...

teach and guide and illustrate is what, relationship, how you can really address what is the person next to you, the right one, your choice and so on. Look again, look at the behavior. Are they generous with their time? And without any, so you're doing something and I come up and you are busy and I said, can you help me? No, you know, I'm doing this now.

Emanuele Pani (23:13.422)

You can not do it. I'm doing this now. It's very important. What you're doing is true. And you're doing something more important than me. That's it. Can you hold this screwdriver? Because I'm doing this. Dad, come on. I mean, I was doing a podcast. The most important thing in my life. And now you come in for a screwdriver. Come on. That is the measure of generosity. you if you are generous with your time. So every time, you know, somebody and of course, it's easy with people you love. Generous with your time with people.

that don't mean anything to you is another level of generosity. Also because remember, it's not true that anybody does not mean anything to you. Everybody means something to you. Even strangers, full strangers, complete strangers, they gave the sense of community that we humans have. We thrive in community. It's very, very difficult.

This is one of the saying of Aristoteles, right? It's very difficult to be alone. Yeah, you have to be, or, Aristoteles used to say, if you live alone and choose to be alone, you have to be either a savage beast or a god. Okay? Nothing else, nothing in the middle. So we are creature, social creature, creatures that goes into the community.

The generosity of your time versus a community is the first pillar. It's the beginning of your... And think about this. Now you're mastering, you're mastering, if you are really generous indeed, the gift of time.

The flow is only in one direction, never comes back. So it's gone. This conversation is now and recorded, but this time, it will not come back. A day wasted is a day wasted. Yes. So that makes me think about two separate things. One, it's very interesting. One of my favorite quotes.

Emanuele Pani (25:28.462)

Tony talks about it a lot too, is living is in the giving. And I think a lot of people misinterpret that in terms of what you just said, the financial aspect of it. Whereas instead, I think is a much deeper conversations around you want to receive kindness, love, and community. You get to start giving kindness, love, and community to other people. I also find interesting now because time

and attention have become such a intertwined kind of conversation. And I believe that the greatest thing that you can give to people and that I think where a lot of people go wrong in terms of being generous with their time is they're generous with their time, but they don't give you attention. And so a lot of people that I know spend time with their family and you can see them, right? Like I can see them at the beach and you're spending time with your family, but you're not given attention.

Exactly. So in reality, you're not given, you're not being generous with your time. You're physically there, but you're mentally checked out. 100%. And this is only getting worse because of what all these systems we are completely entrenched in are moving on. know, the TikTok, was Facebook back in the day, Instagram.

YouTube, the continuous video. And by the these are all videos. And the reason why they are videos, they move your attention away because your frontal cortex, ocular cortex, the cortex that is innervated with seeing is 25 times more powerful, powerful than hearing. So...

to hear a podcast, a pure podcast, even with the monotone voice, unless you're an actor or somebody that is an expert, is very difficult because the attention drifts away. And this is why these videos are very short. It's not because of the bandwidth or the amount of computing power that it needs. It's because our attention then moves away. It's captured and then it moves away. And this is where the real value...

Emanuele Pani (27:50.709)

of the future value it's a big word where everybody is invested commercially wise is to to clip your attention and maybe in that moment add a little piece of commercial information a little you don't need is subliminal you are not even completely aware of that you pop up and then before you know you go as you know you go into the grocery store and now you're buying that thing that

Why am I buying golden kiwi? I didn't even know they existed. I have nothing against golden kiwi, by the way. that's what really happened. So this is going to be the commodity of the future. Yeah, attention. Only attention. has been a time the commodity was oil. Now again with the Ormuz mess and everything. Before that was salt. Salt,

Before that was pepper, black pepper. And then salt and then data, a lot of data. And now, even this big data hype and everything is not really significant. You can do things with less data and now it's attention. Your attention. Think about it. So the generosity of giving your attention. There is something...

humans automatically know if you are giving me your attention because it's linked to the survival instinct. Tell me more. does that mean? Like how? I need you to be eyes to eyes because I'm telling you something that is important. There is a tiger. You can't say, what do you say? There is a tiger, tiger, gone, bing. So the attention...

as an invisible physical thing. So we recognize like our wired, our subconscious knows. You know exactly. Look, it's so powerful that you can guess the attention of another guy on the phone with you on the phone, not on the video call on the phone with you 10,000 miles away and having a conversation, you know, he or she's distracted. They're doing something else. You know, are you with me?

Emanuele Pani (30:13.474)

Say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing? Maybe depending on, say, no, sorry, was, you, you, how did you get it? You are 10,000 miles away. You're not even seeing me. It's, it's pitch in the voice. It's so essential because if you don't give me your attention and I'm saying something that is essential for my and your survival, I need to change strategy. I have to grab you and take you away. Of course. So I was wired from, for hundreds of thousands of years in a selective module.

that does follow the attention. This module has been hacked now by this thing. And artificial intelligence does this in an incredible good way. Because he the algorithm that tells me where your attention is going. Because you are selecting your attention. You scroll, you go, then I give you that. I give you that. And then you reinforce. You reinforce and I give you that. And I overfit and I give you that.

You might say, okay, it's good. They're showing me all the things that are good. And guess what? This is the quintessential opposition of evolution. We evolve and we become better because we make mistakes. We go in places we should not be. Okay. And that's what happens. Some will die. That's the problem with evolution. know, that's a pressure. Some will die.

Some will stay alive. But we go in places. So people are not evolving as much? No, not at all. Because the access to information is actually becoming damaging. Yes, and is secluded. I give you more of the same, minimal variables, more of the same. I don't give you the outliers.

Which is a comfort zone, a different level. It's the Gaussian curve. You know the Gaussian curve of the normal distribution? The normal distribution gives you the normal distribution of whatever, attention, objects. The two outliers here, there are three standard deviations out of the norm, is the way you should go. But you don't go because you are bound to the same scrolling. You know, there are kids, and not only kids, are all of them, like me, 60 and 65.

Emanuele Pani (32:33.422)

Yeah, yeah, no, all age. The scroll for hours. And when they see in the phone, the phone has the screen time. You spend 16 hours on 16 hours. wasn't even awake 16 hours. You were. You were. The other thing that came to mind as you were sharing about generosity.

which is not a pillar, but I feel that it's interesting because I can see it intertwined with all the pillars, is a concept of kindness. Because a lot of the time, I believe that generosity has an undercurrent of kindness. And the kinder you are to other people, the more generous you are. In terms of also lending generosity that is not just financial, because I think kindness...

and financial generosity don't come from the same people. The people that are heavily financially generous sometimes do so for other reasons. Instead, there is those people that are kind and they're generous with a smile. They're generous in understanding people's energy and lending a generous look, a generous moment to somebody else.

So what's the value of kindness and generosity? As you were saying, in some, it's a sub-product. It comes with it. But I suspect that kindness comes first. So in other terms, you can be generous and not kind, okay? But you cannot be kind and not generous.

the kindness as a superimposing, overriding level because it's almost, I would say something heavy here, it's almost spiritual. Kindness is the kindness of the heart, is the fundamental of the cuddling of mammals, you know, that's what we call mammals by the way, because mama is what...

Emanuele Pani (34:59.022)

We need a mother. The quintessential kindness is with the mothers. And also, there's something interesting. The quintessential meanness also to be mean is with the mothers. If the mothers becomes mean, sometimes it may happen. These are very, very sincere and not very politically correct, but very sincere podcasts and video. And we should say this. It's rare.

is rare, it's not very common, but there is not a single creature that can be more mean than a mother. And of course, not one that is more kind than a mother. So again, you see about evolution, bringing you in places that are not always so to say, this is very spiritual and it's very fundamental and is inborn with our ability to

carry life, to give life. Think of the kindness that you need, the devotion that you need to be a parent, above all a mother. That is what kindness is above everything else. But it's not enough if you're not generous. the generosity is like this is it became a pillar.

leave is that is the execution operation of kindness you know because you can you can choose to be kind to ants and mosquitoes not that they care really they don't they never think but but and give a lot of time mm-hmm yeah the question would be why are not you giving your time to somebody else you're very kind

Emanuele Pani (37:00.566)

I wanted to ask where kindness, how kindness can get developed, right? So if you're working on yourself, and I'll share my story, because I was thinking about that question. I've always been sweet and kind towards my people. But I think in life, I became kinder through pain and struggle.

So I became more aware of other people's pain and suffering through my own pain and suffering. I became more aware of being, because when I was young, and I don't know if there is a kindness to time ratio that we become kinder as time goes on as well. But for me, it was, there was a time in my life where I was young and arrogant and just clearly not kind. And then life, life.

experiences happen, which carved out kindness. And now I find myself being very aware and very kind and very generous in kindness towards other people. 100%. And the reason is that when you're young, the complexity of your own development, and young, I mean, until

part of your brain mature, is about, give or take, 20 years, because humans are not perfected, it takes a long time. It's so complex, so challenging, everybody that has gone through adolescence, have all of us, remember all the things and the mistakes we made. And it's so complex that you are so concentrated on yourself.

To be kind you need to acknowledge the existence of others. At least not the other people. It's not gonna happen when you are 14. There's nobody else. Yeah, yeah, I know your friends, your girlfriend and your little... But there's really nobody else. It's only me, me, me. That's why. Me, me, me. So that, let alone that prevents generosity of course.

Emanuele Pani (39:20.334)

You're gonna be generous with anything, but you're not even kind. Okay, then it's true. You said, how can I teach and I can develop kindness? It's the exercise of empathy, of recognizing others. And what's more important is this, there is a saying, every time you meet anybody that you know, you don't know.

You should assume that these individuals have problems that you are not aware of.

challenges, opportunities, situations, conditions, health related, money related, relationship related, you know. Even if everything is good under the sun, and by all means this girl or guy is doing wonder, there could be a little black spot. And that could be an issue. You should recognize. That's what kindness comes, okay?

be kind people that are all perfect assuming there is anybody perfect it would be useless but in this case you should really assume that in general you don't know anything about others but let's not get into this now but even even if you if you do that's why I say people that you know your your your your parent your sister your brother yes and and why you might not know about this because they might not know

Guess what? They might not know. And actually, the part of the iceberg that is unknown is much bigger. It's much bigger. So see the syllogism, how it goes, and that's the beauty of the philosophical reasoning. So follow me. And now you realize by this reasoning that for sure you don't know about what is going on. About anything, really? About anything.

Emanuele Pani (41:30.062)

And that is what comes. But if you have a kind attitude, if something comes up, then you are ready. It's natural to you. And I said, come and help me. And then you come and help me.

Emanuele Pani (41:48.771)

Well, this has been fascinating. It is my goal to keep this under 40 minutes. And so we're right at that mark. 40 minutes? Yeah. So we're going to do Pillar 2. We're here together for another couple of weeks. I go to the side of France next week to see a friend. But it is my goal to record all six of these while we're together. So next week, I am excited because next week is Pillar 2, which is

Discipline and so it's going to be fascinating because I talk a lot about discipline. I have a beautiful relationship with discipline and so I'm looking forward to talking about that. Any last-minute thoughts that you want to share with the people listening about kindness, about generosity, about killer one? As I said, I think everybody has a seed for any of these pillars and

And the most important, if I may advise, is if you don't, if you realize that in your inner dialogue, kindness and or generosity are things that don't come easy for you and you build your own narrative of why that would be because I've been the most common, I know I'm being unfortunate in my life, I had a lot of trouble and look what happened to me while you're asking me to give money or time or...

Tension to stop making excuses and try to understand why really you are making those excuses because that will lead you to another level of yourself. And this is exactly what mind coaching, what you do is. You become a better person to allow others to become better persons. Absolutely. It's that easy apparently.

Thank you. Ciao guys.