Hello, this is Dr. Reed Tuckson and welcome to another edition of our spirituality and health podcast Which we call decide and for those that have been with us the premise of this show has been that we can make choices to decisions About our lives to be able to live the best possible life that that we really want to live and in past shows We have tackled the the D for diet. We've talked about exercise community development inner development Dreams is what we did the last episode and today we will conclude our season two experience with talking about Emotional development and we're pretty excited to be able to bring that to you As I mentioned what we're trying to do is to be a support system for those of you who are Making the choice or who are trying to make the choice to be the best possible person They can be fulfilling the maximum of your potential and really being in touch with your true self your inner self your spiritual self We also in find it important to remind Ourselves as we have this conversation as we take this journey that sometimes, you know We don't always do what we want to do even with sincere intent and sometimes it needs you need a little support that says, you know I may not have done what I wanted to do yesterday But today I could make that choice and so if we choose to sincerely step by step We can make the choices that will give us much better much more fulfilling and enriching lives And so thanks for taking the step with us as we go forward The premise of of what we've done also is very grounded in this definition of health by the World Health Organization And I think that it's good to always remind ourselves that health is not the absence of disease But it is in fact the physical the mental social and what I call spiritual well-being Of the individual of the community of the country and of the world And so we really see health in its holistic complete Context and I can't think of anything that's more important to the experience of being healthy than having a healthy Emotional outlook on life a very healthy emotional interior as we go forward well Gonna talk about emotional development. So I guess it's best to start with what our emotions What is this thing that we seem to all you know I think sort of understand But emotions really are as defined by the dictionary a strong feeling derived from one's circumstances one's mood or relationship with others the Effective the experiential aspect of consciousness a state of feeling a conscious very important word a Conscious mental reaction such as anger or fear that's subjectively experienced as a strong feeling Usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by really Physiological and behavioral changes in the body and so I think you get the idea that emotions are really all about feeling Unfortunately in America today, there are an awful large number of people who are feeling badly who are feeling sad We have shown this This slide in previous shows only to emphasize that there is a significant a number of people in this nation Who are dying from diseases of despair people? More than 175 people die from drug overdoses on a typical day in the United States of America We have some real work to do if we're going to get at the emotional health of the people that live in this nation And of course we're seeing so many people Exposed to the opioid epidemic and ruining people's lives, but we're also seeing That this sense of despair which people I think often used to think were visited by inner-city people Now is so prevalent across rural America. And in fact, it's become a national issue and one of great concern as a physician. I Understand that many people who we meet may have significant psychiatric challenges that may prevent them from Doing some of the things we're going to talk about today They may need more help than then than the advice that we can give on this show And so I hope that as you encounter those people in your life And if you're one of them Seek the care that you need and let the rest of us make sure that we're pouring Compassionate loving kindness over those people because they deserve it and they need it. Similarly My experience in the world also reminds me that many people are living in such dire socioeconomic Circumstances that they too may simply lack the emotional free space Necessary to implement some of the things that we're talking about today And so I would remind us again as we meet those people in our lives Let's give them every bit of our loving kindness Let's pour our compassion into them and let's take the social action that's necessary That we talked about in our show and community engagement that will help everyone have the opportunity to live the lives that they want to live However, the overwhelming majority of us really can and should do it make the decision to consciously develop our emotional health I know in my own life when my when I have faced those moments when Everything just looked hopelessly bleak and my future was uncertain It was the decision that I made to consciously take charge of my my attitude To control my emotions to take responsibility for growing my resolve to change my life That was what turned everything around for me And I hope that that kind of decision and the resolve to act on that decision will change your life for the better as well So good luck to to you as we go forward Well as we go through life's inevitable challenges What's our goal? And I think our goal is that we seek to find Joy and we seek to find the joy that comes from being emotionally balanced. I love this picture Someone on a high wire clearly excited about their life taking chances I don't think I want to take that particular risk But this person seems to find joy in a very unusual way, but the Sun is shining. It's very bright and clearly This is a person that's engaged With their sentence. They're certainly mindful in that they are in the moment, but they're clearly a very balanced person Well, why are there so many people who are so unhappy with all this despair about it? And why is our so many people struggling with their emotional balance and well-being? part of it is that we live in a society where so many people are alone that they're isolated Living by themselves or not connected in with others. Some of that becomes because of the collapse of Family life and unhealthy family relationships that provide tension and stress Day-to-day as we try to please those who are our family members Many people are sad because in our present society so many are disconnected from spiritual roots and religious roots Who suffer from an absence of meaning in life? That's really tragic when you have people who just feel like life is meaningless It has no purpose and of course that will affect their emotional well-being Others are sad because of oppressive or abusive work environments And we see that a lot in the news today as people are reporting on how terrible it is to be in some of these Work experiences and work environments others are sad because of the lack of steady well-paying jobs Especially for people without college degrees and again so many people living in inner cities in rural America But it's it doesn't really matter what kind of geography that defines your community There are lots of people living without well-paying jobs and and so there are many many people who have a sense of pervasive Hopelessness no concept of the possibility of a meaningful future Others of us are sad because our society is so tribal so Segmented so you know we have so much a concern about the the rise of racism and sexism and and just Almost a celebration of I'm different and I'm distinct from you and we're not connected and we're not one And so there's tension and anger that comes up all the time and of course that tension and anger is fed by the 24-hour news cycle people who make lots of money celebrating or Exploiting the differences between us and causing us to tune in to see which group is yelling at what group today And so there's that stress and tension always in our lives And of course one of the premises of all of that segmenting and tribalism is fear We're encouraged to be afraid of the other afraid of this horrible threat That's about to happen or that threat that's about to happen And so we're always on alert and of course our physiological our body reacts to those things by producing Chemicals that make us think that we're under attack and they have their secondary consequences Many of us are sad because we're so addicted to things the material Possessions and needing to acquire and so there's always this race to get more and more and more and more And of course that leads us to jealousy and envy of others because we can see what others have and we don't have it And we think our lives aren't great because I don't have what the other person has and and now I feel badly And I'm sad and I'm and I'm tense and I'm anxious And then we have the rise of mental health disorders and people that are treating their mental illness with substance abuse So lots of reasons to date Why people are sad and of course what that means lots of ways in which we can overcome it and lots of ways We can find joy and balance and happiness in our lives I like to think about what then would be a healthy emotional person and sometimes that's called Emotional intelligence and the way that I think most people that have studied this issue think about it is Emotional intelligence or being well-balanced emotionally means that you have the capacity To be aware of and to control and express your emotions and to be able to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and then be able to Interact with the people around you people with a high degree of emotional intelligence. They know what they're feeling They know what their emotions mean in the moment and they know how those emotions can affect other people Now let's be clear emotions are not necessarily always good or always bad I love this little picture of this young man who's got so many different expressions And you can't always tell whether or not that one one particular face is a face of Exalting happiness or absolute terror What he's really happy or really sad is he amazed in a good way or amazed in a bad way? Emotions are not all you know very rarely are they just one thing or another. It's up to us To be able to to understand our emotions life would be very dull and empty without emotions Imagine yourself or your life without joy without excitement without sadness without anxiety without sorrow Or any of the emotions that give life its contours its textures its colors What if all there was to life was happiness without the balance of sadness that opens the door to experiencing? Compassion for others or compassion for yourself or that leads us to the tender expressions of our hearts so much of our music and our painting and our written Artistry comes out of the feeling of difficult emotions that give depth and richness to the experience of being human What if you never experienced the warning signs of fear such as you were then unable to protect yourself from danger? What if you never were touched by the anxiety that motivates us towards creative solutions and challenges you get the idea? Emotions in and of themselves aren't necessarily good or bad But what's important is that we don't become ruled by our emotions that we don't get caught up in our emotions or Lost in emotions when we think about emotions I think we'd be very good to remember we have a choice either our emotions will control us Or we will control our emotions. I love the teaching that I have taken to heart that says my emotions are not me They're mine My emotions are not me They are mine and I'm in the position if I choose to be the one to control them Well, I try to think about a visual. What if unhealthy emotions were visible and you could see them You know and this picture really shows it You know we carry so much weight so much unnecessary baggage on our backs Weighing our lives down because we don't take control and let our emotions build up and then we carry and lug these things around So we have to learn to set down the unhealthy Negative negative feelings put that down somewhere and let ourselves breathe and be free There's a wonderful quote by the teacher Ilchi Lee that I really enjoy and he suggests that we have to choose for ourselves Will we live our lives? Continuously troubled by regretful emotions, or will we release them and be free? Do we cut that cord and let those that balloon of negative emotions just float up into the sky and we can let our spirit soar You can choose to walk away from an emotion the same way you can choose to walk from out of a room It's about whether we will neglect or whether we'll solve the problem If you want a life that is truly without regret If you want true freedom, if you want peace for your soul, then you choose the latter and actively explore solutions So let's think about some of the solutions and see what we might be able to learn What does emotional development then entail if we're going to have this emotional intelligence? What does it mean then that we will have to focus on well? I always begin with sincere intent. What's our motivation? Why do you know? I want to have a more peaceful joyful balanced well-fulfilled life and that's that means that you need to spend some time with yourself asking yourself that question Have a pure and sincere intent for me. It always comes back towards I want to be so connected with divine intelligence with the creative forces that created this earth that my spiritual life It means so much to me and anything that gets in the way of that I need to deal with because I know the joy that waits on the other side So I try to approach my emotional development with sincere and pure intent I'm willing to embrace change in order to improve as I mentioned earlier I have had my moments of being deep in the valley of despair unhappy and sad But what saved me was not only my intent But a willingness to embrace change to improve this that i'm doing now ain't working So to keep doing the same thing when it ain't working doesn't help very much I have a good friend of mine who always challenged me by saying, you know after I maybe expressed Something that didn't work out well and said, you know, how's that working for you? And I always say, you know, it ain't working too well Okay, well, maybe I need to be willing to change and have the courage to change and have been The flexibility to change and that's so important to be willing this to be flexible Cultivating giving without expecting a return is a great great way to build on this motivation, you know I find so often that when you give a gift of yourself to someone else You just feel so much better Not because you're expecting somebody to be nice to you when you pay it forward in the in the in the uh In the coffee shop and you pay for somebody else's coffee. Who's behind you and they didn't know it boy Emotionally, you just feel so good. I wasn't expecting any return. I just felt like Cultivating the sense of giving and I try to practice that every chance I get emotionally. It's terrific Generosity then is a key to emotional development being generous with others But it also means and this is the hard lesson that I've had to experience Being generous with myself and not feeling guilty being Kind and showing loving kindness to others and to yourself And then of course I ended with the most important probably of all Because compassion is almost always the doorway out of any problem being able to show and experience Compassion really does allow you to regain your own equilibrium for sure the second area of Getting to a good emotional development is being self aware And and and I think I love this picture with this young lady Out in the garden and she's paying attention to and I don't see this picture as someone who is narcissistic Or focused only on their own, you know beauty and and so forth I think what we're trying to show here is always knowing Always being able to identify Always being able to interpret how you are feeling in The moment at that moment. So be self aware if you're feeling crappy and bad and and miserable Look at what it was that caused you to feel that way and then ask yourself Is this working for you? If it isn't working for you, maybe you need to change up. So Being self aware only you can do that kind of survey in your mind third What does emotional development entail? self Regulation you are in charge my emotions are not me They're mine. And so really we have to have the goal of staying In control of ourselves take responsibility for your actions except accountability and then Let it go if you've done something that makes you unhappy that makes you unbalanced that gets you sad Uh, uh despondent unhappy Take responsibility and sit beyond yourself. You know, I didn't do that very well I know next time I'm going to do it differently and then Let it go Don't carry it back. Don't you know, some of us grab that bad feeling and we put it in our backpack And we walk around and then we add another thing and we put it in the backpack and we walk around And by the time the end of the day our backpack is so heavy you can hardly walk and you certainly can't smile Let it go put the bag down love yourself enough to be able to forgive yourself And just don't make the same mistakes the next time Have grace under pressure. What does that mean? Grace under pressure. You may be working in very challenging Uh, uh, high pressure involvement, but always try to stay Calm stay graceful Stay wonderful. Don't let them see you sweat. Just be the best you under that pressure Please above all don't harbor negative thoughts from past insults.  Let it go So what you were insulted when you were in kindergarten? Hey, you're an adult now.  Or would you like to go outside and plant some roses? It's up to you and then of course keep Focused on gratitude. I still do every day my gratitude journal It has changed my life so much because it reminds me no matter what problem is going on There still is that ray of sunlight that's bouncing off of the leaf on the little flower In my garden and if I'm not grateful for that little ray of sunlight and that flower and the reflection shining into my eye Making me happy, you know shame on me There's so much to be grateful for and the stuff that we have to be grateful for doesn't cost any money And you don't have to go to hawaii on an 8000 ballot vacation to see it Keep your set of gratitude and finally emotional development entails empathy Caring about other people's feelings as much if not more than your own This little girl just seems so You know interested in this little cut on that boys finger and together They're sharing such a beautiful simple experience being interested in others lives You can't imagine how good it is for your life when you do that So we've talked about some of these things with emotional intelligence and we hope that Some of these concepts will make sense, but let me just sort of end up with What I call the dozen Tips for your consideration, which is what we do With at the end of every show and we by the way really appreciate our audience for sending us suggestions for Topics and things that we should talk about and tips and suggestions that we should share With others who are taking this journey with us. So here's my my 12 tips for emotional development That I just want to leave you with succinctly number one Keep working to find your true self cultivate the brightness of consciousness the power Of your soul Sit quietly take the time to meditate Take the time to be in a quiet space and be in touch with the inner you It's so beautiful to do It's so beautiful in and of itself if there was no purpose other than just sitting and being in touch But in this case for this show it also turns out that it has great benefit for emotional development number two Never forget your emotions are not you They're yours You are the charge of them and you can be the one to decide how you feel about any particular element that happens in your life Only you can do it and you can do it. It's your choice. Make a decision decide number three Cultivate the ability to observe your feelings make a conscious decision to reprogram the negative information you're receiving And observe as your mind transforms in the moment that negative to a positive So be attentive right now. How do I feel and then decide I'm going to put some new information in and get rid of the bad information number four Don't wait to release stress The best way to manage stress is to deal with it in the very moment that it comes up Learn to identify your stress signals that are happening in the moment and then stay in control when the pressure builds Really important. Don't say well. I'm stressful now. I'll I'll deal with it when I get home tonight. No, no, no, no deal with it right now breathe take the time and And by the way the best part of breathing to relieve stress I found it's the exhale Pay attention to the exhale long exhales release Everything when you breathe so breathe in And breathe out I was feeling a little stressful. So I had to do that uh five delete victim mentality from your brain's hard drive You are in control of you look within and not the external environment Just because something happened bad a long time ago. Don't play the victim You don't need to be a victim be in charge of your life So delete that from your hard drive. So you never play the victim mentality again Number six remember the principles of acceptance forgiveness and then letting go Nobody is perfect. We all make mistakes. It's okay Accept responsibility for your action then forgive yourself And then let it go then pledge not to do it again. Number seven make a sincere commitment to stay true to your goals Know what you want out of life And don't let anybody get in the way if you're going to choose to be emotionally well developed and happy Focusing on the things that matter like your spiritual health being compassionate to others loving kindness Then go and do that Don't let anything get in the way and practice doing the things you need to do every day number eight Cultivate your allegiance to your values of gratitude and compassion Avoid jealousy greed attachment to material things Hatred and absolutely bigotry when you see those things walk away. Just escape say I want anything to do with this I'm going to focus on gratitude and compassion number nine in the heat of the moment Sit or lay quietly and just control your breathing without doing anything else as we talked about By the way, one good thing to to do that is one minute exercises are great every hour One minute do something physical that'll help to reset your emotional thermostat And when you get upset number 10 go for a walk go outside take a walk don't have the argument right there I'm upset and I'm gonna have a problem with my spouse or my partner or my coworker because I'm mad No, when you feel those emotions say, excuse me I'm not at my best right now And I'll come back and resume this conversation a little later. I need to take a walk I'll tell you it works so well But if you try to have the argument why you're angry It never goes well Again, keep doing the same dumb things and it doesn't work. Why keep doing it. Is this working for you? No, what works for me I take a walk and I decide I'm sorry. I really can't have the conversation. I really care about you I'm not ignoring you, but I'm not at my best right now I need to take a walk and then I'll come back and give you a better me and they will have our conversation number 11 Grow your joy and don't let anyone take that from you Nobody on the tv news not one of these people on msnbc and fox and seen They can't have your joy unless you give it to them So turn off that tv. Don't let anybody have your joy number 12. Keep a journal Write down your thoughts. How are you feeling? What did you do that made you feel badly write it down that way you can avoid it change your behavior I'll give you a last freebie 13 As in a dozen, this is a 13 be careful what you feed your brain Turn off the note ways from tv Popular culture the things that are engendering in you bad feelings that you know aren't healthy for you Don't water those seeds. Well It's been really fun to think about this idea of emotional development And so as we end up as we go through life's inevitable challenges Seek to find the joy that comes from being emotionally balanced Life is so beautiful so wonderful I hope that every day that you put your feet on the earth and walk among it That you have the chance to let your Your your your whole being completely Immerse yourself in joy and happiness Transform the world around you so that it can be consistent with the vision that you have for your life You can do it. It's under your control and everything you need You already have inside Hey, thanks a lot for joining us and see you on the next part of our spiritual health Journey and please contact us with your suggestions We love hearing from you to tell us the things that you want us to talk about and until then Happy meditating. Happy walking. Happy peace. Take care. Bye. Bye


Now, the answer that I think we can give, the reason why I think this is, we can possibly recapture this, is that I think Inran has given us, the philosopher, the novelist, Inran has given us an idea of the self that actually is more compatible and, in fact, builds on that Enlightenment tradition. So many of you probably have heard of Inran, she wrote the books, Alice Shrugged, The Fountainhead, etc., some of you have probably read them. But it's her idea of the self, I think, that transcends a lot of these errors, that builds into the idea of self-making, and there's a great line that she has, one of her characters and one of her novels in Alice Shrugged says, and this is a brilliant example of how she brings together the idea of the self in a way that hadn't been done since the Enlightenment. As man, she writes, is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul. By soul, she simply means character or what you are, your consciousness, who you are as a person. As man is a being of self-made wealth, he is a being of self-made soul. In a sense, what she's saying is that human beings, by their nature, have a very, very deep set of requirements of how they have to go about living their lives. Number one, obviously we have our physical sustenance to attain to. We have to go after proper nutrition, proper physical culture. You need to be healthy, you need to do the things that maintain your physical self, and you have to do that yourself. Famously, there's another line where she explains, you can share a meal, but you can't digest together. We can sit down and split a steak. I'd love to do that. Hey, somebody wants to break out a steak, let's go. But you can't eat that steak and say, oh, I'll digest it for you. That's an individual operation. Ultimately, getting that steak, how we acquire it, whether we earn the money to go to the store to buy it, or whether we hunted ourselves, or whatever it happens to be, or whether we steal it from lions after they've made a kill. If you guys have seen this National Geographic video, these Bushman and Africa, they actually steal from lions. It's amazing stuff. No matter how you do that, you have to do that. This is the perspective, you ultimately are responsible for your own physical survival. Whether that means earning the money by working for someone else in order to pay for the housing, the clothing, the shelter, all of the things, the food that provide your sustenance, the workout sessions, whatever it happens to be. Like that, she says, you have a psychological self that is also self-made.  Now, this idea that she has fits right in with Franklin's idea, that passage that I read. And Rand calls this moral ambitiousness, right? She calls it the virtue of pride, it's moral ambitiousness. The idea that you set up your own set of values, you're not born with those values, right? As an infant, borrowing Locke's phrase, she says, you're born tabula rasa, you're born as a blank slate, right? You don't have any values that are automatically given to you. You have certain needs, right? Physical needs, psychological needs, etc. But how do you attain those? You have to figure that out. And you have to figure out what values you want to attain. Believe it or not, people can pursue different values, right? People can have different goals in life. We don't all have to be engineers, or we don't all have to play basketball, we don't all have to do the same thing. What I ran says is you have to define what you want. Figure out the means of getting it, and then pursue it. And pursue it not just half-heartedly, but as she says, with this moral ambitiousness. To define what type of person you want to be. And to do so with reference, not just to the internal, as the subjectivists often do, right? As they say, just go find yourself, man. If you need to drop some acid to do that, or if you need to just sit around for a while, or do whatever, find yourself, right? She says, find yourself within the context of something that's actually successful for your life. Figure out what values that you can pursue that are consonant with the life of a rational being that you want to pursue. Who are you? Going back to that question, who are you? When you tell someone your career, your values, your interests, that's what she means. And crucially, she says, those things are subject to, in a sense, your dominion. You get to have say over those. You, in a sense, are the ultimate arbiter of yourself.   It would be much better than biography, because you get to pick and choose. What did those crucial moments along the path of your life mean to you? When did you choose those values? How did you overcome the background, right? Everybody gets those values, right?   There's a point in your life where you ultimately have the choice to say, is this who I am? Do I accept or reject it? Does this make sense for me? And guess who this standard is? The standard is not your parents, your church, your school, whatever. The standard is you and your view of how that works in reality. Reality is the ultimate arbiter. Can you do this and be successful? Can you make a self that's vibrant? Or as Aristotle used to say, the philosopher Aristotle, the idea of flourishing, you don't just want to succeed in life. You want to flourish, bear physical survival, bear career survival, right? There's a lot of people that are just going on autopilot, right? They're healthy enough, they're happy enough. They have a decent enough relationship. They have a decent enough set of career goals. But are they really flourishing? No, why not? Because those goals, those relationships, that health, all of those things basically have been determined from the outside for them. They have no autonomy. True happiness, true fulfillment, true flourishing, Fine Rant says, comes from making conscious decisions about all of those issues in our lives.


Cell dysfunction and insulin resistance are hallmarks of type 2 diabetes, which is exacerbated by chronic hyperglycemia and ROS, leading to atherosclerosis development. This article was authored by Hideaki Kaneto, Naoto Cutakami, Myunhide Matsuhisa, and others.


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What's up everybody? Jayce here for jayspeakscasebricks.com 19-20 and T-Basco Pikachu number 16 random number block for the Lakers Bulls Heat Wizard Celtics Warriors Bucks Cav 76 just T-Wolfs Suns Spurs Pistons and Nets and again works like any other random number block break on our website But only for these teams in this specific break. There are 10 total spots in this format and again Every spot gets a random number for the break either It's a zero through nine and as an example if you get number three randomized to you You'll get all the hits from the teams above with three being the first number next to the dash on the left side of the dash So for example, we pull a card that has 243 out of 299 as a serial number number three will get that slot get that cards are 13 out of 99 will get that Three out of 25 43 out of 49 93 out of 99, etc The number three block will get all those cards as you can see it's the first number on the left side of the dash So again all redemption cards for these teams will go to spot zero even if we know it's a one-to-one It'll still go to spot zero and if in the instance there is any unnumbered cards We'll randomize them to the group customers in this break. So good luck Let's do it. Let's roll it and we got ourselves a three and a six nine times. Good luck one two three four five six and Then nine times so three more seven eight Or with the top spot and Brandon at the bottom. So there you go right here, and then we got nine times here on the numbers or three nine one two three four five six seven eight and nine eight down to two So aren't you have slot eight Steven with number seven Robert with five Steven with nine Stephen K Got zero any in our redemptions or with three Joshua with six Joe with number one so any one-on-ones will be yours Steven with four and Brandon you have two So there you go guys Coming up next now is the break appreciate it


In this video, we're gonna be taking a look at change events. So specifically for this video, we're gonna be looking at how can we execute some code, a runner macro based on or when a workbook opens. So the benefit of this, just to name a couple, could be welcoming people as they open a workbook. It could be obviously to give them instructions, or it could also be anything to update within that sheet. I'm making sure formatting maybe has been reapplied in case someone saved the workbook and had made a change. So obviously when this workbook opens, you may wish to execute some code. That's just gonna do some reformatting or entering dates or any kind of amendments that you want to make sure are enforced every time someone opens this workbook. So it's very simple code. And all we need to do is rather than insert a module, we just need to put this into this workbook. So if you haven't got the coding panel open here, from your Excel sheet, you can either go into the view and then go into macros, or alternatively, as my favorite as well, just go alt, f11, and then it'll bring up this pane on the left-hand side here. And then once you've done that, just double-click this workbook and you're all set to start entering the code. So we've not used private before, but for this one we're going to be using a private subroutine, sorry. So it's exactly the same as previously, it's just got that additional word. So we're gonna just put in here private, and then we're gonna go sub, and we'll do workbook open, and then open and close brackets. And that is the essence of the subroutine we need to do to execute this code. So this is just basically saying, on workbook open, obviously execute all the code that is in this section here before the end sub. We're gonna simply just use a really simple message box, and we're gonna use, again, another sub function we've got available to us in Excel, to display the user's name. So obviously it will look at the Microsoft account for the user openness, and it will take out their username. Just makes it, or gives it a nice little personal touch when someone opens it. So we're gonna simply do end message box, hello, leave a space, and there we go. And environ, open username, close brackets, and symbol, and we'll just do a little exclamation mark at the end there as well. Let's just click away, and you can see it's reformatted for us. So what we can do is let's go down this sub open test, and you can obviously do this as well, or in the Zara scenario now, or this is also a good way of just testing your code before you obviously close it and open it again. If you just run a normal subroutine, then you can see this is the pop-up box we're now expecting to see. So it's just literally gonna say hello, it's gonna get the username, and then do the exclamation mark in there, so you can see for me, it said hello Ben, the exclamation mark. So this is obviously the message box we'll see when we open this workbook. We can just remove this just to avoid any confusion. Once we've got that in there, if we just now save this workbook, we can now close both parts of that. Now if we go into this file I've already got here, and I did skip a step there, obviously you just need to save your workbook, and obviously save it as a macro enabled, so you can see the extension we have at the end here is Excel SM. So this is available to you when you choose the file type you wish to save the file as. So I obviously did that without recording it, but all you need to do is just save that workbook as a file, obviously it was easily accessible. And then when you go to open up that file, double click, you can see that we now get this message box here upon open it, so it says hello Ben for us here. Alternatively, we can just change that to LF11 again, go back to this workbook. Maybe the message box isn't so great, you obviously can get lost or whatever. So all I'm gonna just do is go sheets, open brackets, go sheet one, and then dot range, and go A1, dot value equals, and then I was gonna copy this code out of here, put that there, and we'll just comment this out using the app symbol, obviously not the app symbol, but the same button just without having to push shift. So we can see this time it's gonna go into sheet one and actually paste this value into cell A1. So if you didn't want to use a message box and you wanted to update a value within a cell, this would be the code you use. So once again, we just need to save this file and close it because obviously it's only gonna execute when the file is opened. Double click, and there you can see it's now been updated for us in this cell here. And obviously we can just give it another test. Let's say we changed that to something else like hello Tim, so you can see clearly it is a different value, or let's put goodbye Tim. So we can see it's completely the wrong phrase but saying goodbye in someone else's name. Save that. Now when we open up the workbook, you can see it's been overwritten with our hello Ben quote that we want to show upon opening the workbook. So I hope you enjoyed that short video. If you have any questions about that at all, please just drop me a comment below this video and I will get back to you as soon as I can. If you did enjoy the video as well, please do give the video a like, not only a grade that I appreciate by myself, but obviously it helps that all important YouTube algorithm so more people can find this video. So thank you very much for watching and we'll see you in the next video.


Today's video is brought to you by Picmonic.  Don't answer that. We all have. Well, in this episode, we're going to talk about exactly how to overcome a bad lecture and still get the grades you always wanted. Let's get into it. Hey guys, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine physician. And here at the MD journey, we make content to help people like you succeed on whatever journey you're on doing it with less stress. Now, one of the most stressful situations you can have in school, whether it's in medical school like myself or in any academic setting, is to have a professor that just flat out sucks. And so today we're going to break down exactly what you can do to overcome that bad lecture and still get the grades you always wanted. And just as a quick reminder, if you want better grades and not quite getting them just yet, click down below to check out our free study rehab course. Basically breaks down the three steps that you'll need to get more free time and better grades. Go ahead and click that below. Now, step number one is to essentially evaluate your options. And whenever I'm working with the student one-on-one and they tell me, like, the lectures are so bad and I don't know how to use them. The first question I ask them is, do you even have to go to lecture that a required part of your grade or your attendance? Or if you have online lectures, do you have to still show up and log in? If the answer is yes, later in the episode, we'll talk about a few strategies you can do to better prepare yourself for a bad lecture so you can still get all the information that you need from the actual material. Question number two that I ask students is how important is lecture to doing well on the quizzes and exams? Now, there is easily a spectrum to those answers where on one side a student may say that lecture is terrible, so are the slides, so are the syllabus. And we have to use external resources to even have a chance of doing well on our quizzes and tests. But on the other end, a student may say that the material is not comprehensive and thus they have to go to lecture because sometimes what the professor says actually ends up showing up on the quizzes and tests. So step number two is a high yield resource plus or minus the stacking technique. Now, once you decide on the spectrum of where you are, on one side you have somebody who doesn't have to go to class and the lecture material is not that useful for the final quizzes. On the other end, you have a student who has to go to class and or there's material covered in lecture that not really presented elsewhere. On one end, you can just use the high yield resources. On the other end, you can do a high yield resource plus the stacking technique. So let's break down each one by one. And one of the biggest issues with a bad lecture is just that baseline. Even with a good lecture, it's very hard to know what's important and what's not. And most of us have a tendency of trying to remember every single detail and high yield point at the same time or really just confuse at the end of it. And then once you throw in a terrible lecture to that equation, it's just a disaster. And that's why using a high yield resource can first help you delineate. OK, this is really what's important. If I hear it again in a lecture, even if it's from a bad lecture, I at least know that I need to pay attention to that. Now, to highlight how to effectively use a high yield resource, I'm going to focus specifically on those students who have to go to class and or there's material that is fair game from lecture and everyone else that has it a little bit nicer where you don't have to go to class or the material may not be fair game, you can just using the high yield resource and not have to do what we call a stacking technique. Now, to highlight how to effectively use a high yield resource, usually the first thing that I would recommend to a student is to keep in mind of what lectures they'll be covered the next day or ideally throughout a week by looking through the syllabus chapters or PowerPoints or whatever schedule your class or institution may give you. And then you can transition to multiple or ideally just one high yield resource that covers that material and cover it at least the night before so then you're ready for class the next day. So, for example, if you're using a video platform as a high yield resource, then you can essentially say, OK, tomorrow I'm going to cover these three topics over three hours of lecture. I'm going to try to see if I can find related videos in my online resource to help cover those. I'm going to try to watch them the evening before. And during this pre-reading or pre-watching session, your main goal is I'm going to try to absorb as much as possible without stressing myself out because my ultimate goal is to go to lecture tomorrow and say I've heard that before. And if you're wondering what high yield resource you possibly use, it's a great time to bring up today's sponsor, which is Picmonic. Now, if you're in any form of medical journey, whether it be medical school, nursing, pharmacy, et cetera, you can essentially use Picmonic and there are hundreds and hundreds of videos to help you do essentially what we're talking about in today's video, which is to help quickly prepare a lecture tomorrow, especially a bad lecture. And if you take a class, for example, that has a tendency of being very difficult, such as microbiology, you can use Picmonic's library and go to the microbiology section and find the relevant videos. So if I was going to have a lecture tomorrow about grand positive cocci, I can go in and say, OK, what type of videos are available? And then you'll be able to see the various high yield topics and videos that Picmonic has on that relevant topic. So for example, in tomorrow in class, if you're about to learn about staff or is which is a really common bug that you have to learn as a future medical professional, but you know, the lecture is terrible or the slides look super confusing, you can go into Picmonic and say, let's learn about staff or is and go ahead and watch the entertaining videos that has images and a story to help you learn stuff not only for tomorrow, but for the long term. And one of my favorite parts about Picmonic videos is that they're super, super time efficient. This video right here is only a minute 59. I can quickly watch it and also quickly just do a quiz to see how I retained it before I even go in to lecture the next day. And with literally hundreds and hundreds of videos on any topic you'll need on your medical journey, Picmonic is a great resource for any student who's struggling and still wants an all in one resource. So once again, if you're on your medical journey, if you're looking for that all in one resource to help you improve your studying, that's both time efficient and helps you both learn and quiz yourself. Definitely consider checking out Picmonic. And if you're interested in giving Picmonic a go, if you click the link down below in the description and use the code that MD journey at checkout, our friends at Picmonic have also nicely and included an extra 20% off for all of our listeners and readers. And so as always, thanks to Picmonic for being today's sponsor. Now, whatever resource you end up using is completely up to you, whether it's an all in one resource like Picmonic or other resources in the medical field or using free tools such as YouTube videos to essentially look up a specific topic, learn as much as you can and watch the video. Now, once you have your high old resource, let's talk about the stacking technique. Now, stacking technique is one of my favorite things that I recommend to students, especially my one-on-one students that tell me, here's a bad lecture, I still need to do well in this class, what do I do? Essentially what I'll say, okay, you found your high old resource or you found your go-to resources. First thing you do is figure out all your topics for the week so that way you can just expedite your learning and then find those topics on your high old resource. That way, if your high old resource doesn't have it, you know to already look elsewhere. So as a quick example, if I was taking microbiology and my lectures were terrible, I can quickly just go through my syllabus or course outline or the individual slides and saying, these are the different bugs I should be learning. Here's the different drugs I've been covered. I'm gonna see if I can find those relevant videos in my all-in-one resource or through YouTube videos. And then throughout the week, the night before the actual lecture, I'm gonna designate a specific time where I'm going to watch those videos over the span of ideally 20 to 30 minutes so it's not overwhelming. And again, during the session, my main goal is to try to obtain as much as I can without making overwhelming. So either I can passively listen or I can write notes down or you can use a tool like Picmonic to just do the quizzes afterward and saying, I overall get the gist and then go to lecture to mainly pay attention to what type of things were covered in the high old material that's also covered in the lecture. That tells you that even though this is a bad lecture or really confusing slides, that is something I should pay attention to.  High yield, lecture material that's not so great and high yield. Using the strategy, you can easily identify one, what's important. Two, what is included in a lecture that it actually is high yield. And three, actually make sure that the end of your stacking which is going through the high yield resource again helps you actually solidify that knowledge. So now you remember free quizzes and your test. And yes, this does require a little bit of backward planning where you have to look ahead to make sure you have the material ready the night before. But I argue that it's much less stressful than going through three hours of lecture and saying that was utterly useless and I'm still confused and I still have to learn this for the quiz and test. Now, in addition to step one and step two, step three, to just wrap it on the bow, put a cherry on top on the ice cream sundae of how to prepare for a bad lecture is to include practice questions in your daily studying. Now, even if your lectures are amazing, I'm definitely a big proponent of doing some kind of questions on a daily or often basis throughout the week. But particularly if your lectures are bad, having practice questions from one high yield resource that you can be doing, it can be from your all-in-one resource like we talked about the Picmonic or any other resource that has questions, but doing them on a daily basis again helps you understand here are the connections of how high yield materials should be looked at and how they'll be asked. And so not only do you get practice answering those high yield material, you also start to get the interconnection, the web of how all this information is related. If you're a student who tends to struggle with, I can kind of remember facts, but once you ask how everything is interrelated, interconnected, I struggle, particularly like second order and third order questions. If that's your issue, definitely start including practice questions in addition to the stacking technique that we talked about earlier in the episode. And if you want my recommendations and my favorite sources for practice questions, I'll link down below a video I did on my favorite step one question banks, which tends to cover a majority of the initial material covered in medical school. And so after going through those three steps, if you can start to see the gears turning inside your head of like, okay, I can start to see how I can overcome a bad lecture and you're still not getting the grades you want, I do still recommend checking out our free course called the study rehab. It's absolutely free. It's three steps that all of our coaching students go through on how to not only improve their studying, but have more guaranteed free time.  It's essentially what I use to help myself go from 10 to five hours of medical school and still get Bs and As throughout the process. And if you're somebody who's saying I need results and I need them ASAP, definitely recommend checking out our level up your studying program. It's our six step program basically walks you through understanding what you're doing wrong, what top students are doing that you're not and how to put those together to ultimately have the most perfect but personalized study schedule for yourself. And if you click the link down below, you'll be able to see the results at hundreds and hundreds of students, just like you have gotten the span of just days to weeks after using those six steps. And so again, if you're wanting better grades but ideally doing it at last time, either check out their free study rehab course or the step-by-step six step program through our level up your studying program. And as always, my friends, if you have any questions to do something we covered in today's episode, go ahead and drop it in the comments section down below. If you're watching this on YouTube and you enjoy the content, all I really ask in the return is of a thank you is to hit that like button. It definitely supports the channel.  If you're new to the channel or if you've just been lurking around, definitely recommend hitting that subscribe button and notification bell. Be notified when we put out two videos just like this one on a weekly basis. If you're listening to this as a podcast on our TMJ show, definitely consider hitting that subscribe or follow on your favorite listening platform as well as leaving an honest review on iTunes. But as always, my friends, thank you for being a part of my journey. Hopefully that was a little help to you guys on yours. If you enjoyed this video, definitely check out this video right here on how you can use Anki like a pro step-by-step as well as this video right here on how to study for step one. Now that it's past fail, I'm sure you'll guys will enjoy those videos and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.


Good afternoon. Welcome to Finding Happiness in Hard Times. I'm Ken Birdness and I'm coming to you from Haleiva out at the North Shore. Today we have a great show coming for you. Our guest is Cherie Magnus and she was with us back in May and she told us in May about the joy of dance and I'm really happy to have her back because we're going to take it in a different direction today. Welcome to the show, Cherie. Thank you so much. So happy to be here in Los Angeles where it's cooking. Well here it's about ready to storm. I don't know how we're both going to do but hopefully the gods will be with us and make us feel okay for the next hour. That first show in May was just, I think it certainly made me feel the joy that you've felt in dancing and I think it made the audience feel the same thing too. And you wrote three books about it, this great trilogy that took us through your life with dance and it was wonderful and then all of a sudden there's a fourth book which is much different. It's not non-fiction, it's fiction and it's not about dance, it's about climate change and in it are two very different interesting heroes and it's just a wonderful book and during the last show we mentioned it briefly at the end of the last show and I was hoping that might be a good place to start, Cherie, just to pick it up and for you to tell us a little bit more about that fourth wonderful book about Lincoln and Rachmaninoff walking into a bar. Oh yes, well it brought me a great deal of joy to write it and the idea came to me kind of midway through the pandemic like three years ago and you know we were all doing a lot of fantasy then because we had to just stay inside and couldn't live our lives fully as we were used to and so I was thinking a lot, well I always think a lot but somehow I mean Rachmaninoff has always been my favorite composer, I love all the Russians, but Sergei Rachmaninoff is number one to me and Abraham Lincoln has been my hero my whole life. So I was thinking about both of those men for some reason and then the thought occurred to me well what do they have in common because they were both very very tall and they were both depressed and so I started researching and found out all the things they have in common and the more I found out about them the more that I wanted to they were still my heroes but I wanted to put them in a story and I thought wow my goodness if anybody can save us can save the world from climate change it can be these iconic heroes and since I live in California and Los Angeles and we have such beautiful nature and countryside and cliffside and beachside here I pictured that they were going to ride in a Lincoln Continental starting an angels flight in downtown LA driving north and along the way meeting the ghosts of indigenous peoples archangels getting their mission from God and yeah so the more I thought about it the more I researched it the more fun I had with the fantasy and I ended up writing this novella. Wow it was a wonderful read I can tell the audience that for sure. Oh thank you. Cherie is a librarian and she did a lot of research for this and I'll rock Mononof and Lincoln are favorites of mine as well. There was a lot I learned in this book that she brought to me not only about the facts of their life but Cherie you made them come to life you gave them a personality with the way they talked and the way they interacted and it was like okay they sort of came off the page and they were people and that was the wonderful thing about the book. That was my goal Ken because I tried to use as many of their own words as possible later on in the story they meet Ulysses S Grant and so he comes into the story and he has a lot to say also but I use their own words from their letters and their speeches and I like to think that the characters were alive on the page you know that that was their true personalities coming out even if those events never happened in terms of going up highway one and in a Lincoln Continental. So you certainly succeeded that was for sure and that's the wonders of library we had the joy of libraries on a number of months ago and it's one of my favorite places and interestingly enough there's a lot of books being written about libraries now libraries is a central focus and to be honest with you the library the local library that I volunteer at over at Wailua is not only a place to find books but it's a place to think it's a place to imagine it's a place to walk in and people know your name and it's like a second home and libraries are are magical and you certainly use that magic to to bring these two people to life and it was it was a wonderful trip so tell us about the trip especially the Blue Continental now there's a famous there's a car that I love so and that must have been fun writing in that at least through your your main character who's sort of well I hope they had fun um there's a front of the car that they they all write in and they pick up a couple of people along the way yeah I thought the Lincoln has to write in a Lincoln right yeah exactly exactly well I would like to say too that um because the first three books were memoir nonfiction every single word had to be true um maybe a conversation was remembered but the essence of it was true the events were true maybe I changed a few names but it's all true now when you're writing fiction and especially if it's fantasy you can just put whatever you want it's so liberating it's so joyful can exactly and I had never written fiction before and I love the freedom of it hey I want they can do this or they can do that it doesn't matter it's all you know it also makes a point so I had a great deal of fun it kind of saved me from the depression I had the funk that I was in during the pandemic years so well I think that's the real key I think that and that's what we're hoping to do on on all my shows is to get people out of that dark space that the pandemic uh COVID and all the other things that are depressing us today from the war to certainly climate change uh into everything the mass shootings uh and people need to get out of that they need to find that freedom um and that's the subtitle of our show today is the uh you know is the magic of a free imagination and your book freed my imagination as it did yours and I hope the certainly uh when the audience reads it they should feel their imagination being freed as well uh it's just a wonderful way to to do that the fiction has always been one of my key favorites because it allows us to go beyond the depressing into the hopeful and I'm a hopeful type of person and your book certainly may be hopeful oh well I I I mean it did feel hopeful to me to write that it wasn't dueling gloom so I hope other people I mean maybe it's not the perfect answer um but it's one way to approach it you know um Rachmaninoff really believed in the power of music and Lincoln did too and Lincoln had such a way to work with people he could get people to work together you know even people on a posi or the north and said eventually they work together and I think if they were around today they knew the trouble that we were in they could do something to help but there's all kinds of ways to help and we can't just say oh well what can I do I'm just one person I'm nobody everybody can do something and if we all do something then maybe we can save the world I don't know and I think we do it by example and I think your example of letting your imagination go and and thinking not negatively about climate change like you say not thinking that this is a problem we can't solve but let's think about it and let's think about it differently and that's what imagination does it gives us a different perspective a different idea tell us about the joy you've built when you were along with your characters traveling down that that highway going north and seeing things and hoping about the the future with new music and new words to go to that music to inspire people well I do believe that music can change people music can change the world we spoke last time about the power of music in my personal life so that's not to say it doesn't have power across across the world you know it's how we harness it but fantasy fantasy thinking about what I go to the LA Phil at Disney Hall and I'm sitting there listening to Stravinsky or whatever is being played I'm in another world I'm fantasizing you know because fantasy you can escape you can find solace you can reflect on different things is inspiring and liberates our minds it opens our minds to other possibilities and it also unites us in a community and I even though I don't especially read a lot of fantasy myself you know because today in the library fantasy is extremely popular but it's fantasy of zombies and dragons and witches and things like that and so but there's all kinds of fantasy and I think it's very healthy I know the first book that I remember reading and I read very early and enjoyed reading first my first reading was comic books and little Lulu and Scrooge McDuck and stuff but the one my first real book was Ozma of Oz no that's I mean no that's pure fantasy of course but I became obsessed and I collected all the 14 original Oz books at home you know I knew every character by heart and that was the the start of my love of those worlds and then when I went to the bookmobile I got ready to pick books and the lilac fairy book and all that but then as I matured I didn't read fantasy so much anymore right I know you you're a real fan of fantasy movies aren't you? Well fantasy books and I started the same place you did you know not with Ozma of Oz but with the Wizard of Oz the first book in the series and and I too have the whole set in fact I used to belong to the Wizard of Oz club which was an international club and so yeah it's uh and they took us places that we never thought we'd go not only the first one which was of course the most popular but the the road to Oz which Tiff started out with and wound up at the end of the book to be Ozma at the end of the land of Oz which was the second book and it was an amazing journey through Oz and opened up opened me up to so many different thoughts and fantasies um I can tell you a very embarrassing story now that you mentioned it about the L.I.R. the LA Philharmonic uh when I was young um to give you an idea of the fantasy that I got into uh which was very early on and although I lived in the valley uh they had a special program that would bust be bust kids into the L.I. Philharmonic for a matinee performance and especially for the kids in this city schools in Los Angeles so I did that first when I was in the fifth grade and took the travel from the valley into the L.I. Philharmonic and we that was the first symphony I attended at in fifth grade and uh it was a wonderful experience so I and my friends are sitting in a row I'm on the aisle seat and uh I close my eyes and I let the music flow through me and I imagine things that the music brings and one of my compatriots says hey bernice is sleeping you know wake him up and I said no no you got it wrong I'm not sleeping but what you do if you close your eyes you can put a fantastic story you can unfold guided by the music that you're hearing and they said oh really so they all tried it so I'm sitting there and all my friends there was about five of them were sitting there with their eyes closed listening to the music and unbeknownst to us uh LA Times photographer was there photographing the audience and took our picture and uh wrote a story for the LA Times about uh the L.I. Philharmonic's uh you know work with young children introducing music to young children they still do and they showed lots of pictures of children just looking wrapped at the the symphony and just getting into it you know and and then they came to us ours was the last picture and it showed us with the eyes closed and there was a caption that had all z's in it like oh these kids are bored they're sleeping through the thing you know and I was you know I was flabbergast I was saying no we weren't sleeping we were imagining but they the photographer of course didn't ask us what we were doing they just assumed we were sleeping it was a good shot yeah and it made a good story but uh you know it's not true that was a little non-fiction a little fantasy in their story because we weren't sleeping we were and it was beautiful music you know I was just sitting in that uh the civic auditorium at that time you're just listening to the L.I. Philharmonic was incredible yeah I'm so grateful you see who I'm wearing here here's dude him out he's leaving us yeah so um um the first classical piece that I remember hearing I don't know if I mentioned it before but um I had a record called Sparky's Magic Piano it was an album 78 you know 78 right I don't know how many there are three or four of them in in a folder yeah and so it was about a little boy who had a magic piano he wanted to practice piano and so his piano said okay you don't have to worry about practicing I'll play for you so he takes the piano on tour and then he does all these amazing performances and then the piano decides not to play anymore so what I remember mostly is and there were a lot of different excerpts of classical pieces on there but I remember Rachmaninoff played in C sharp minor I was five years old and I just you know it just uh shone a light on me and started me off my journey my Rachmaninoff journey or as I call him Rocky yeah Rocky I like it they've already used that title in a different kind of movie but yeah I like the well it's Rocky with an eye yeah yeah and he certainly uh you know he certainly scored a knockout with a lot of his uh you know his pieces just incredible stuff but do you know what his music was considered hacked Hackney uh in the mid-century and um he was out of favor they didn't want to program his music at the symphony and they wanted him to write for movies which he refused to do and so they hired other people to write similar music but uh now he's completely back in favor and every season has Rachmaninoff and as a matter of fact next week is Rachmaninoff playing at the Hollywood Bowl and uh yeah so I guess if you wait long enough if you don't die too soon you know you can get your fame and fortune eventually yeah and even if you die uh that you know you can come back and uh you know like yeah and save the world be famous yeah save the world and he and Lincoln got along you know once they got to know each other yeah I can imagine they were both outliers they were both different and you know and I I certainly related to that because I was an outlier in school you know uh so was I yeah and I think that's why we uh had such a good time together because uh you know it wasn't that I didn't like the people in the other you know in the in-group I didn't you know the athletes and all that other sort of you know the stuff the people with money and people with power and uh all that sort of stuff the people who were in it was just that I was okay just being with everybody and that's what my folks taught me and my mother taught me started reading to me when I was an infant and started playing music on you know on there 78 rpm a little phonograph uh to me and she didn't do a lot of uh kid stuff though she did a lot of adult stuff I started with you know for one of the first authors I remember is Oscar Wilde not usually not usually a kid so he did the yeah any poetry is poetry and just uh just wonderful stuff so but they played a classical music from the beginning and the first time I heard a classical piece was when I was about three or four and I didn't understand it but I just it made me soar it was uh Edvard Grieg uh in the pier against wheat and he was playing uh in the hall of the mountain king and uh when that piece started and uh it starts slow and then builds up and gets build it up and and then to this thunderous climax and you know and I can just remember feeling joy but not understanding at all and then by the time you know like when you talked about about five years old I knew that by then I had heard the story and knew the story and had built my own story I had decided that I would be the person who tackled to go into the mountain and tackle the troll king and save the damsel you know and uh that's what I was doing at five years old and the music just carried me right through it that's wonderful yeah it made me you know it music makes me soar and uh and rock not enough makes me want to feel in love you know what he said he said music is everything music is love yeah and I certainly felt it you know if I wanted to uh you know be romantic with a lady that I was dating I couldn't rock not enough you know nothing like it you know just uh wow funny sorry yeah rock bottom up yeah I don't know if you take a look at the second or third symphony you know the movements in there some of that stuff are the most beautiful pieces that he was a great melody writer great yeah writer yeah so so nobody ever tried to seduce you with the classical music nope well they took me to concerts and that was the death yeah speaking of which the first time I heard rock not enough live was LA Philharmonic was at the shrine auditorium I was 17 years old and they were doing what they called uh uh the concert where they play first and then they have dancing afterwards um oh I can't remember what they what what that kind of an evening is they don't do them anymore but one of the pieces they played at the shrine auditorium was uh Rhapsody on the Theme of Paganini by Rachmaninoff yeah I said oh my god oh my god what is that so yeah then I heard it a hundred times in movies you know is a very favorite love theme in all kinds of different movies but he did it he did quite a memorable job when he wrote that he made Paganini you know famous yeah but you know something really interesting about him and I I learned I mean I knew a lot about both men but now I know a lot more because of all the research I did but once he escaped from Russia and he came to the United States he only wrote one piece so he had all those decades here when he played all his concerts he had to make a lot of money to pay for his caviar and his Russian lifestyle but he didn't compose he wasn't inspired until the year before he died and he composed symphonic dances but all the other pieces he composed in Russia or Rome or Switzerland so we just didn't inspire him here you know he was rushing to the core he wanted to go home he wanted to be buried there and he wasn't allowed to be so he had a very sad life and so did Lincoln actually with all of his success he still has a sad life and so they talked about together about their regrets yeah along with Ulysses Grant's regrets too so I guess we all have those after we die we can look back and regret but that's alongside the alongside regrets are also joys and it's psychologically it's much easier to remember the negative than it is the positive it takes work to go back in and remember those wonderful times like you were talking about it you know and we you know it's not easy it's easy to go back and think of things that we did wrong or things that we regret but it is you know but it's worth the time and speaking of time we're sort of running out of time here and you know I wanted to talk a little bit about you know what you might recommend for the audience to be inspired to open up their imagination and and hope that's one of the things we really push in this show is hope for the future and hope for itself so any last any last thoughts on that we certainly we certainly covered our talked about music giving us hope whatever some of the other things that gave you hope when you look back and started opening up your imagination of the possibilities of traveling down in that blue Lincoln well I think that we have to look we can't just look for big things we have to look for little things we have to see the little things that come across our past every single day that we can make a difference by doing by being kind to some homeless person by shutting off the water when we brush our teeth just recycling our stuff and voting I think voting for the right person is very important and to make sure once that we have our candidate elected we keep after them and make sure that they're following through with their campaign promises because we need big things done with big powerful people and lots of money but we also need little things done by the little people like you and me I mean when you think about it the world really doesn't need oil we don't need oil but we need water ultimately we need water yeah so it comes down to the basics doesn't it it does and unfortunately uh if there's any time discrepancy if we say to ourselves well you know we'll deal with that later you know which we've been doing for a long time yeah uh we we're going to wind up in a place that's untenable and uh that's why what you're saying is the place to start and the place to be a role model for people is to do the small things that help so that everybody gets together and does those small things and then it becomes a much much bigger yes exactly so well said yeah well thank you so much for being with us uh Cherie it's just so good being with you and uh it's fun yeah and smiling and laughing and uh and I think that's a key thing to to deal with all this stuff is to uh to sit back and let things let the laughs come and let the imagination open up and uh and life will be much better for us and a lot of people around us too so thank you again and find your find our happy place yes whether it's the library whether it's uh disney hall with ellie someone might whatever it is find a happy place for you and go there and fantasize about how you can make the world a better place absolutely and libraries are a great place and and thanks not only for being with us but being a librarian and helping people find that magic in the library I love it every day thank you and thanks to all the people at think tech of white jay and pailey and michael and carol and ash and all those people uh we really appreciate your help and support in this as well and especially we want to thank the people in the audience here who tuned in and been with us and spent some time with us because we've enjoyed being in your living room wherever you're at uh and I hope that to see you in two weeks uh back at the same time same uh day and uh we're gonna have a topic that I think you'll enjoy a lot because it's gonna be on the joy of hiking here in Hawaii hope to see you then thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii if you like what we do please click the like and subscribe button on youtube you can also follow us on facebook instagram and linkedin check out our website think tech hawaii.com mahalo


I remind members of the Covid-related measures that are in place and that face coverings should be worn when moving around the chamber and across the Holyrood campus. The first item of business is general questions, and at question number one I call Neil Bibby. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the NHS recovery plan. Cabinet Secretary, Humza Yousaf. As the NHS recovery plan states, we committed to reporting progress against commitments in the plan on anio basis. The plan was published at the end of August this year, therefore we would aim to provide the first official annual update next summer. Neil Bibby Under this Government, 1,300 beds have been cut over the last 10 years. That's one in six beds at the Inverclyde Royal Hospital, one of five beds at the RAH in Paisley. Before the winter crisis struck the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said that Scotland needed 1,000 extra beds. Is it this Government's intention to reverse the cuts to beds numbers that have so by? How much and when? Cabinet Secretary, I can say that this Government has an impeccable record in terms of ensuring that NHS is well resourced. Of course, we will hear more and no doubt about that in the finance secretary's budget later this afternoon. We have record staffing under this Government but also the highest-paid staff anywhere in the UK. What I would say about beds of course is that pre Covid it was very much this guidance determination and continues to be that patients and people are treated close to their home in the community as best as they possibly can. That would have meant a reduction in beds within our hospitals. What I would say to Neil Bibby in closing is that we are desperately trying to work with local authorities, health boards and HSCPs to remove people who are in our acute sites, who can be clinically safely discharged into our community and reduce that number of delayed discharges. If we do that, that frees up hospital beds. I spoke to Jane Grant, the chief executive of Greater Glasgow and Clyde this morning. She offered, if any member, including Neil Bibby, I would like to speak to her about any of the pressures in greater Glasgow's acute sites, including the RAH, that she would be happy to speak to any member at all. To ask the Scottish Government for an update on providing general practice with increasing support from a range of healthcare professionals, including pharmacists and physiotherapists. That is an incredibly important point. We know just how vital the contribution of our multidisciplinary teams are, particularly to again that point about keeping patients within our community and keeping the public within our community as opposed to having to go into hospital and acute sites. In addition to the £155 million that is provided to health and social care partnerships to recruit multidisciplinary teams this year, our winter action plan has also made additional funding available to assist the recruitment of extra pharmacists to help with patients, repeat prescriptions and medicine reviews, as well as physiotherapists to treat musculoskeletal issues in the community, thus further accelerating our aim of having board-delivered pharmacy and nursing support in all 925 Scotland's general practices. John Mason To ask the Scottish Government what its response is to the resolution at the recent SNP conference reportedly calling on the Scottish Government and COSLA to work together to ensure that the pay and conditions for councillors will significantly improve. Ben Macpherson The Scottish Government is committed to fair pay and conditions for our councillors, which is why I reiterate that I am open to discussing with COSLA about how we might support them to further consider this issue, including considering making improvements that will help to increase the diversity of councillors in Scotland. For context, we introduced a new mechanism in 2017 that ensures that councillors pay is increased annually, in line with the percentage increase in the medium annual earnings of public sector workers in Scotland, and I look forward to working with COSLA further on this important issue. John Mason I thank the minister for that answer, and I accept that he has relatively recently in his post. However, the issue has been dragging on for quite some time, and I would have hoped for a little bit more urgency than, quote, open to discussing, unquote. Therefore, could he say that perhaps in April 23 there will be a serious uplift in councillors pay? Ben Macpherson For context and fairness, it is important to state that my predecessor, Mr Stewart, looked at the issue very seriously. Of course, we had the pressing issue of the pandemic in recent times, as a factor in those considerations as well. I understand that COSLA's barriers to elected office special interest group is due to publish their findings shortly. As soon as that information is available, I will consider it carefully and arrange a meeting with our partners in COSLA to jointly review and discuss what steps we can take to address the matter. Ariane Burgess A recent evidence session of the local government housing and planning committee on this issue heard that under-representative groups like women and young people are particularly affected and put off standing for local government because of low remuneration. Therefore, how can a local councillor remuneration be reviewed and will the minister please meet me to discuss the process further? Ben Macpherson It is absolutely vital that, collectively, we encourage a wider range of people to seek election, including more women and younger people, so that councils can better reflect the society that we live in. Of course, councillors pay is important, but it is not the only barrier to the lack of diversity among councillors in Scotland. However, as I have said, it is an important issue, it is a recognised issue, and that is why I am certainly open and enthusiastic about exploring this important matter further with COSLA, who, as I have said, has been reviewing the issue as part of their barriers to elected office special interest group, and I look forward to engaging with them shortly. Jenny Minto To ask the Scottish Government how it is ensuring that the views of our Gail and Butes diverse communities are taken into account in the development of its policies. Shona Robison Thank you. It is critical that we involve communities in the development of our policies, so we regularly engage with partners, including local government, community groups, third sector colleagues and young people through, for example, our young islanders network. The Scottish Government carries out all appropriate impact assessments when developing or updating policy strategies or services, including equality impact assessments and island communities impact assessments that are in line with the Island Scotland Act 2018. Jenny Minto I thank the cabinet secretary for that answer. Our Gail and Bute is a place of beauty and isolation but also of many diverse communities that depend on local jobs and services. Infrastructure needs investment and there has been an acceleration in the price of housing, perhaps as a result of the pandemic. Without intervention, it may become more difficult for local people to stay in their own communities. How will NPF4 reverse that? What advice does the cabinet secretary have to ensure that my constituents' voices in our Gail and Bute are heard? The cabinet secretary makes some important points. Of course, we have committed to delivering 110,000 affordable homes by 2030 to 10 per cent of which will be in remote rural and island communities. That is part of a £3.44 billion investment in this parliamentary term to deliver that. 30 million of that investment will support the continuation of the Rural and Island Housing Fund, which has been described in a Scottish Land Commission report as game changers for community-led housing development. We are also investing £30 million of capital through the island's programme. Of course, the draft national planning framework 4 supports the repopulation of rural Scotland, including an updated approach to providing quality homes and embeds an infrastructure-first approach into development planning. I encourage members to highlight to their constituents that the public consultation and engagement opportunities to help inform NPF4 will run until the end of March next year. 4. Liam McArthur Thank you to the Scottish Government for what progress is being made on the roll-out of superfast broadband in Orkney. 3. Kate Forbes Work is under way through the reaching 100 per cent north contract to bring subsea cables to ED, flota, hoi, rhause, sandy, shafnsea and strawnsea, with survey work now complete and build currently scheduled to begin next summer, whether conditions are permitting. In the meantime, the reaching 100 per cent Scottish broadband voucher scheme will ensure that anyone on Orkney can access superfast broadband. We recently announced a three-month extension to that interim voucher portion of the scheme, so that the closing date is now 31 March 2022, to ensure that everybody, particularly those in the north of Scotland and our islands, can have more time to take advantage of that scheme. 4. Liam McArthur I thank the cabinet secretary for her response, but also for her willingness to meet me, Orkney Islands Council and HIE, over the summer to discuss how 100 per cent broadband coverage might actually be achieved in the islands that I represent. Recall from those discussions concerns that the proposed fibre roll-out will leave many households and settlements in Orkney unconnected and that the voucher scheme's risk being too piecemeal to plug the gaps. Can I ask the finance secretary what progress has been made in identifying ways to allow local co-ordination of the resources needed to ensure that every household in Orkney does indeed get access to the superfast broadband promise? I thank the cabinet secretary for that question and also for his constructive engagement as part of two meetings that I have had this year with him and his officials from Orkney Islands Council and Highlands and Islands Enterprise. The minute detail will probably take longer than you would like, but now that we have the certainty of what the R100 north contract will deliver, we are keen to work strategically with Orkney Islands Council to maximise the reach of the voucher scheme and to work with, for example, some of the suppliers. We have around 70 suppliers currently registered to deliver superfast broadband services through the scheme to ensure that we maximise the reach as far as we possibly can. Any specific issues that are raised, I am happy to look at in more detail. Can the cabinet secretary confirm that the numbers of premises that will be reached by 2026 under the lot 1 contract have fallen by more than a third? Can she further confirm, as her Government appears to be giving both dates, whether the target for delivery of lot 1 has been delayed from the end of this year to the end of the 2026 calendar year or actually to the end of the 2026-2027 financial year? That is a good opportunity to remind the member that, of course, telecoms and broadband is a reserve matter reserved to the UK Government, but the Scottish Government has stepped in to deliver the reaching 100 per cent programme because of the failure to date. As of 2 December 2021, superfast coverage in the Orkney Islands stands at 66 per cent up from 11 per cent in 2014. In terms of the figures in the £384 million R100 north contract, it is expected to deliver 59,276 connections in total with build expected to be completed by 2026-2027. 5. Maggie Chapman To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update— Sorry, Ms Chapman. I would like to hear Ms Chapman's question, please. I would be grateful for your co-operation. Maggie Chapman. To ask the Scottish Government whether it will provide an update on the actions under way to tackle the reported inequalities experienced by ethnic minority communities in the north-east. Cabinet Secretary Shona Robison We are determined to play our part in eradicating structural and systemic racism across Scotland, informed by the views and lived experiences of minority ethnic people. Through our immediate priorities plan for race equality, we aim to ensure an equal and anti-racist recovery from Covid-19. That is backed by our £21 million Equality and Human Rights Fund. The fund has enabled the Grampian Regional Equality Council to carry out valuable work in gathering lived experiences alongside quantitative data, providing the evidence needed to develop strong and effective anti-racist policies to improve outcomes for minority ethnic people in the north-east. I thank the cabinet secretary for that response. Grampian Regional Equality Council Grec has recently highlighted significant racial inequalities across housing, health, education, employment, justice and more. For example, ethnic minorities have suffered worse job losses during Covid, Africans have the highest percentage of degree-educated people but the highest unemployment rates. Hate crime is up 14.5 per cent in Aberdeen and 23 per cent in Aberdeenshire, and asylum seeker men recently accommodated in an Aberdeen hotel will have minimal support provided by a private company with only £8 a week to live on in the initial stage of the application process. Can the cabinet secretary outline what more we can do to ensure that vulnerable people are not further marginalised? On the issue of asylum seekers and refugees, the important issue that my chairman raises, I am happy to write to her with more information about the work that we are doing under no recourse to public funds and preventing destitution. She also mentioned hate crime and I am happy to write to her with more details. It is concerning rising hate crime, which we should all take very seriously indeed. Just finally, on support during the pandemic, we supported the development of the ethnic minority resilience network to help individuals, families and organisations during this time. We provided over £312,000 to support minority ethnic communities, and there was a particular focus on young people and older people experiencing isolation. Again, I am happy to write to her with more detail. To ask the Scottish Government how it plans to improve the support that is available for people who are suffering from strokes. The Scottish Government is committed to ensuring that people who have had a stroke receive the best possible care as quickly as possible. We are delivering our programme for government commitments on stroke, including the delivery of a national thrombectomy service, which to date has received over £9 million investment. A national service is expected by 2023. We are developing a progressive stroke pathway document that will set out our vision for what stroke services across Scotland should deliver across the patient pathway, including access to stroke rehabilitation and access to support for people who have experienced a stroke. I thank the minister for that response. A vision report on stroke is one thing, whereas delivery on real change on the ground is quite another. What additional funding will be attached to the progressive stroke service? Who will be held accountable for its delivery? Will the minister put in place a reporting framework to ensure that necessary improvements take place? The member is absolutely correct. We have invested a great deal of money. I already mentioned the £9 million that has gone into delivering a thrombectomy service. We have a stroke improvement programme, which delivers an annual report that describes very accurately what is happening on the ground. The key findings from the most recent report is that, despite the immense challenges that our NHS is facing, we have delivered some actual increases and improvements in delivery of care to stroke standards. We should take this opportunity in this chamber to commend all those people working on the ground to deliver improvements in services, despite the immense challenges that we face. Question 7, Mark Griffin. To ask the Scottish Government when the self-referral breast screening programme will resume for non-symptomatic women over 70 who have had breast cancer. The breast screening programme in Scotland currently routinely invites women aged 50 to 70 for screening, in line with the recommendations of the UK national screening committee. Those are based on the best available evidence by the benefits and risks of breast screening for women at different ages. The option for women aged 71 and over to self-refer into the breast screening programme is paused so that, while Covid-19 continues to impact capacity, services can prioritise appointments for women for whom the benefits of screening are already clearly established. The pause applies to women over 71 who have previously had breast cancer and who have completed the recommended period of annual surveillance. Self-referrals will resume once the time between screening rounds for eligible women is 39 months across all screening centres. We continue to emphasise that it is important for women of all ages to be breast aware and to report any possible symptoms of breast cancer to their GP as soon as possible so that those can be investigated. Mark Griffin. I have been contacted by three different women in the 70s who have all previously had breast cancer and were advised by their clinicians that they needed regular screening. Now they have been told that the only way for anyone over 70 to be screened is if they find a lump. Does the cabinet secretary understand how worried those women are at not being screened regularly? That does not go away when they turn 71. Their fears of our current breast cancer have been missed and what he plans to do to reinstate the screening programme to give those women the protection and reassurance that they deserve. Cabinet Secretary. Mark Griffin wants to write to me with the details of his constituents. He has written to me with details of one constituent, which I am due to reply back to shortly. What I would say is that for any woman who is a breast cancer survivor, she would have increased post-treatment screenings and annual screenings and annual surveillance for a period of five years post-treatment. We would expect that to continue regardless of whether they are under 70 or over 70. I would reiterate what I have said before for any woman who is concerned about any of the symptoms that should go speak to their GP and the clinical pathways should be available for them in order for those symptoms to be further investigated. As I say, if Mr Griffin wishes to write to me with the further details of the constituents that he references, I would happily look into those cases.