This episode was prerecorded as part of a live continuing education webinar. On-demand CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs. Register at allceus.com slash counselor toolbox. I'd like to welcome everybody to today's presentation. We are beginning our series on cultural competence. Today's webinar is really going to cover the general aspects of cultural competence. We're not going to get too deep into any particular culture. We're going to review some of those terms that may sort of escape you, or maybe they don't, and see where we go from there. This is based on the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration's tip 59. So if you type in SAMHSA tip 59, you can read the whole document online. So today we're going to define assumptions about cultural competence, define race, ethnicity, and culture. And what I really want you to take from that is not to get as caught up in what the different definitions are, but really to realize that there are a lot of different aspects of people and where they come from and their history and their learning that are going to impact the interventions that we use with them, how they will interface with us as clinicians, and our race, ethnicity, and culture will impact them. We'll explore the problems with limited cultural competence and explore the ways culture impacts the choice of therapeutic approaches, the involvement of family, and the appropriateness of self-help and or group counseling. Now we're just going to briefly touch on that last aspect because we're going to go into depth on that when we do each individual class as we go through things. So the assumptions that we want to think about, why is cultural competence important? Well, cultural competence helps us provide effective services. Counselors cannot sustain culturally responsive treatment without an organization's commitment to it. So we can do our best, but we need to have some organizational buy-in in order to actually implement culturally responsive treatment. We need to have an understanding of race, ethnicity, and culture, including our own, in order to appreciate the diversity of human dynamics and to treat all clients effectively. By incorporating cultural competence into treatment, we improve therapeutic decision-making and offer alternative ways to define and plan treatment. So again, these are just a laundry list of rules. I'm going to go through them real quick. Assumption number four is that consideration of culture is important at all levels of operation, individual, programmatic, and organizational. Assumption number five, culturally congruent interventions cannot be successfully applied when generated outside a community or without community participation. We need to actually ask people, what helps for you? How could we tailor this to better meet your needs instead of assuming that we know what's going to work? And assumption number six, public advocacy of culturally responsive practices can increase trust among the community, agency, and staff. So once we start talking about the fact that this is an issue and we're open to modifying treatment and we want to try to be as efficient and effective as possible, people start listening and going, oh, so you're not going to try to fit me into your little pigeonhole? No, that's not the way it works for culturally responsive treatment. Not all clients identify with or even desire to connect with their culture of origin, if you will. And, you know, that can kind of vary. We belong to multiple cultures, but people will adhere to it or get away from it depending on what they want. Culturally responsive services offer clients a chance to explore the impact of culture, a cultureation, discrimination, and bias, and how these impacts relate to or affect their mental and physical health. So when we talk about culture, we want to look at, you know, if you have given up a, your primary culture or a culture that you ascribe to for the dominant culture, how has that affected you if you've become acculturated? If you are of another culture other than the dominant culture, how does that impact you? How does that expose you to discrimination and bias? And how do these things relate to how you're feeling right now? Remember that stereotypes, you know, throughout these courses, we're going to talk in generalities. And, you know, I want to make sure that people understand that stereotypes are endpoints in which a decision has been made. So if I make a stereotype about a person or a group of people, I've made my decision. I want to make sure that all people in that category are like this and bada-bing, door closed. Generalizations are beginning points from which to explore. So if we say in general, Native Americans prefer blah, blah, blah, well, that's true. In general, maybe that's true, but we want to explore with each individual. And as the culture changes, which cultures do change in addition to people, you know, we need to modify our generalizations. But generalizations just give us a broad base to go, okay, this is what I may be dealing with, but I don't know. So let me test it and see if this fits here. The Affordable Care Act necessitates enhanced culturally responsive services and cultural competence among providers. They didn't really say how to do that or how they were going to measure it or what the consequences were if you weren't. But they are stepping up and recognizing that there are significant health disparities between cultures. Limited cultural competence is a significant barrier that can translate to ineffective provider-consumer communication. You know, if the client comes in and they're apprehensive or they're not trusting of the provider, it can impact provider-consumer communication. If we are communicating in different languages, if you're using an interpreter, things may not go as smoothly. If you are working with somebody who is of a different age, you may have to alter how you communicate or it won't be received correctly. So we want to make sure that we're paying attention to that so we can communicate as effectively as possible. It can result in delays in appropriate treatment and level of care. If we assume that this is just normal for this population or something, or we assume that in the general population this is how it is, so that person is probably just fine, we can delay appropriate treatment. It can also result in misdiagnosis. There are a lot of culture-bound syndromes that are in the DSM that we can look at that are culturally appropriate things that may not require a diagnosis, but they may be similar to diagnoses that we might normally get. So we want to make sure that we correctly label and differentially diagnose. There's lower rates of treatment compliance when we have limited cultural competence because clients may feel misunderstood, they may feel judged, or we may make inappropriate treatment recommendations such as recommending somebody for group therapy who is not going to participate in group therapy. My grandmother, bless her soul, she grew up in the Great Depression and she was an older woman, she just recently passed, but she was not one to share her business with other people. So putting her in a group and going, you're going to sit in a group with 12 other people in Air Your Dirty Laundry, that wasn't going to go over. She would go to confession, she would do that, she would talk about it with her sisters, but she wasn't going to tell complete strangers about all the stuff that was going on in her house. So we want to make sure that we are sensitive to age and culture when we make our treatment recommendations. That will help improve outcome. Culturally responsive practice reminds counselors that a client's worldview and ethnicity, race, culture, all shape a client's worldview. Shapes his or her perspectives about how things should be and what goals to strive for. Think about how your goals and your perspectives on how things should be and what you need to strive for are different than your parents, than your grandparents. And that's just an age thing. Think about how your perspective of things, how things should be and the goals to strive for are different maybe if you're from an urban area like New York or Washington D.C., your goals and values may be different than somebody who's Amish or who grew up in a rural area. It shapes your beliefs about why things happen. So when we're trying to understand why did this happen to me, how did I get here? When we're trying to help clients grieve, when we're trying to help them make sense of something that happened that kind of shook up their world, their culture is going to play a big part in helping them come to an understanding of how did this come to be. Behaviors surrounding addictive behaviors, such as alcohol, illicit drugs, sex, gambling, and eating disorders are going to be different among cultures. Back in the Greek and Roman times, they had the big houses where they would purge after they'd had a big meal and that was just normal back then. Obviously, thankfully, that's not technically that way now. Some cultures are more open to the use of alcohol and actually kind of promoted. Other cultures may be more promoting of illicit drugs, especially hallucinogens and marijuana. So understanding that certain cultures may have a relationship with what we would normally consider addictive substances or behaviors. It may be not an addiction for them. It may be a religious ritual. It may be something that's part of their culture. It may be not healthy or helpful for that person. So then we need to look at how are we going to help you navigate this issue you're having, maybe alcoholism, with your culture. How are the two of those things going to intervene or intertwine? Their beliefs about illness and health are affected by their culture. Eastern medicine versus Western medicine, for example, have very different ideas about illness and health. Some people view illness as a punishment from God. Some people view it as a natural progression. So we want to understand what their perspective is on how did you come to be in this state, whatever that state is. Their ability and willingness to seek help will be affected by their culture. And I mentioned the elderly before. Law enforcement and military are notoriously closed systems. They don't tend to share with the rest of the people. They don't believe that a lot of us will understand where they're coming from or what they've gone through or that we can help them because we haven't been through that. So they may not be willing to go to a practitioner who doesn't have a similar background to them. Some people, especially Generation Z, which came after Generation X and the Millennials, Generation Z really prefers virtual treatment, Skype, video sessions, texting. They would really rather not come into group or have to hold to a specific appointment. So they tend to like things on the fly as well. So those are just some things that we're going to be talking about. Culture also influences counseling expectations. I'm having difficulty talking today, people. I'm sorry. The law enforcement and military, again, that's what I did my specialization on for my doctorate. So they're near and dear to my heart. And I come from a family of law enforcement and military. And they tend to not like counseling. They tend to not think it's going to help. They tend to think it's a show of weakness, yada-yada. And that's not all, but there is, you know, that culture there. The criminally involved may also not have positive expectations of counseling a lot of times because they're being forced in there and they've been forced in before and it's been a waste of their time. So we want to hear them and we want to hear what their concerns are and try to figure out how can we work together to make this a beneficial relationship. And the communication styles, how open they are, what methods they use, whether they're high context communicators, which pays more attention to nonverbals and what's going on around and how something's said more than what is said. And then low context communicators who focus more on the words. So we want to look at all these different things. The continuum of cultural competence. And again, I'm just going to kind of run through these so you understand and you can kind of figure out where you are. Cultural destructiveness, obviously. Stage one, it's the beginners. At best, the behavioral health organization and or the clinician negates the relevance of culture and the delivery of services. It's like culture is not important. Somebody comes in, they've got depression. We're going to treat them this way. On an individual level, counselors also operate from the stance holding a myopic view of effective treatment. Thinking, for example, dialectical behavior therapy is always effective with this particular condition. Stage two, cultural incapacity. The organizational culture may be biased and clients may view them as oppressive. And agency functioning with cultural incapacity expects clients to conform to generalized services. You come, we'll put you through an assessment. You will do our 30-day residential program. You'll go to these groups just like everybody else does. So we're not individualizing treatment. We're not considering, you know, is group treatment really most appropriate for this person? On an individual level, counselors ignore the relevance of culture while using the dominant client population and or culture as the norm for assessment, treatment planning, and determination of services. So, yeah. Stage three is cultural blindness. Now, theoretically, we're getting a little bit better here. The core belief that perpetuates this stage is that all cultural groups are alike and have similar experiences. All cultural groups experience oppression. All cultural groups experience yada yada. The individual counselor upholds the belief that there are no essential differences among individuals across cultural groups. So this is still looking at using the same services, negating culture. You know, I don't see a whole lot of improvement as we're going through these stages until we get up to the later stages. Finally, cultural pre-competence. Organizations at this stage begin to develop a basic understanding and appreciation for the importance of sociocultural factors and the delivery of care. They start recognizing that, you know, single parents may need childcare assistance. They start recognizing that people who you're working with who have a DUI need to ride public transportation. So groups that go to 8.30 at night, which is after the buses stop, those aren't real helpful. So we start looking at what our clients' needs are. At an individual level, counselors acknowledge a need for more training specific to the populations that they serve. Stage 5 is cultural competence and proficiency. Organizations are aware of the importance of integrating services that are congruent with diverse populations, such as, you know, integrating treatment or into the treatment team, at least, maybe a spiritual leader or something. On an individual level, the clinician recognizes the vital need to adopt culturally responsive practices. You may not know what all of them are, but you know that when you see clients who are from a different culture, that they are going to have different experiences and have, you know, positive and negative, and they're going to be bringing different thoughts, beliefs and values to the table. So in order to help them live in a way that's authentic, we need to understand that. Now, going along with that is the racial, cultural identity development model. Now, this is really looking at both the counselor and the client as people, not as working in a relationship. But where are you at in terms of your racial, cultural identity? In conformity, the person shows a preference for the dominant culture and a disdain for the culture of origin. And they prefer a counselor from the majority. So if you're working with a client who is conformant, they're going to want a counselor from the majority group. Dissonance, confusion and conflict over the contradictory attitudes towards self and others of the same group and different groups. They may prefer counselors from a minority group and counselors may prefer clients from a minority group and perceive their problems as being related to cultural identity issues. The next stage is resistance and immersion. They actively reject the dominant culture and appreciate the attitudes of their own group. It's like, okay, we're going to start bonding here. Prefer a counselor from the same racial or ethnic group and perceive personal problems as the result of oppression. The next stage is introspection. They start questioning the harsh attitudes and rigidity of the beliefs from the last stage, but conflicts between loyalty and responsibility towards one's original cultural group start coming, keep coming up. But then there's also that dominant cultural group and they're trying to figure out where they fit. They prefer counselors from their own group but are open to counselors who share a similar worldview. Finally, synergistic articulation and awareness. That's a really long-term. Self-fulfillment with regard to their cultural identity. These clients can objectively examine and accept or reject the values of other groups. The same thing for the counselor. We're able to figure out what we believe and we're able to hear the values from other people. Obviously, in a counseling relationship, we're not going to reject our client's views. We're going to help them figure out what those views are and what they mean to them. But we can understand when our values are in conflict with theirs and look at what impact that might have. At this stage, the person has a desire to eliminate all forms of oppression. They prefer counselors with a similarity in worldview attitudes and beliefs rather than getting so hung up on racial or ethnic identity. We're all of the same mindset at this point. You're looking at people who share the desire for empowerment and understanding and authenticity is what I take from that. Thinking about where you are in terms of your own cultural identity, the types of clients you like to work with, and how that impacts the clients that you work with. Then also thinking about your clients in terms of assessing where they see their problems are coming from and how comfortable they are going to be working with you depending on where you are in your identity development and the culture and race and ethnicity that you represent. Race is a social construct that describes people with shared physical characteristics. The perception that people who share physical characteristics also share beliefs, attitudes, values, and ways of being can have a profound impact on people's lives regardless of whether they identify with the race to which they are ascribed by themselves or others. For example, I'm a white female. There's no surprise there. However, people see me and they assume that I have certain beliefs, values, attitudes, and ways of being just because of the way I look.  If I don't conform to the norm, then I've got to kind of navigate that. Racial categories also do not easily account for the complexity of multiracial identities. 3% of the United States residents are multiracial right now, and by 2050, that's expected to grow to 20%. People who are from multiracial families may experience even more conflict and even more question about what exactly are your beliefs, values, and attitudes. Many subgroups of white Americans of European Middle Eastern or North African descent have had very different experiences when immigrating to the United States. Just because we're white Americans doesn't necessarily mean that we share all the same values and beliefs and stuff. The racial designation black encompasses a multitude of cultural and ethnic variations and identities, including African-Caribbean, African-Permudan, and West African, among others. We want to make sure that we're not just assuming the cultural identity. African-American culture embodies elements of Caribbean, Latin American, European, and African cultural groups. Asian Americans comprise about 43 ethnic subgroups, speaking more than 100 languages and dialects. You want to talk about communication problems. You need to be sensitive to what's going on with your client. You need to be aware of what their culture and ethnicity are. Many of Americans at term that describes both American Indians and Alaskan natives, there are 566 federally recognized American Indian or Alaskan native tribal entities, and they all have their own unique cultures. Ethnicity refers to the social identity and mutual sense of belonging that defines a group of people through common historical or family origins, beliefs, and culture. It differs from race in that groups of people who can share common racial ancestry but have very different ethnic identities. So they can share the same genetics, they can look the same, but they may have a very different historical origins, family origins, or belief systems. So we don't want to just assume because they look a certain way, they're going to believe a certain way. Ethnicity unlike race is an explicitly cultural phenomenon based on shared cultural or family heritage as well as shared values and beliefs rather than shared characteristics. So when you're doing your assessment and you're going through and you've got to ask the question about race, ethnicity, and that's why, because race and ethnicity are not the same thing. Culture is not definable as a particular entity to which people belong or don't belong. People belong to multiple cultural groups, each with its own set of cultural norms. You may think about this in terms of sometimes you may use the word roles and we're going to talk about that in a second. The word culture can be applied to describe the ways of life of groups formed on the basis of age, for example. Baby boomers have a very different culture than the millennials who have a very different culture than Generation X or Generation Z. Generation Z are those people who grew up and they've had an electronic device in their hand since they were able to hold things. Whereas Generation X may have started growing up before all of the mobile devices became so prominent. The computers were there, but the mobile devices weren't as prominent. Professions also have their own sort of culture. Lawyers, therapists, factory workers, cops, firefighters, they have their own culture and it's important to kind of be aware of that and what that means because lawyers may have a very different view and outlook of the way things that should be and what they should strive for than maybe somebody who is a career criminal. Socioeconomic status. People who are poor, middle class and wealthy have different things that they worry about, different things that they strive for, different stressors that they endure. If somebody has a disability, people who are deaf, a lot of people who are deaf really embrace the deaf community and are quite insulted if you indicate to them, well, you could get a cochlear implant or something. Why would I want to give up my deaf culture? So we want to make sure that we're sensitive to how people identify themselves and not just assume because they're different from us that they are unhappy. People who are blind, people who are in wheelchairs, people who have schizophrenia are all treated differently and have their own issues. People who have schizophrenia are on antipsychotics which can make life really difficult because it can be slowing or dampening sometimes. Sexual orientation. So we have LGBTQ2IK which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, allies and kink. And that really encompasses the different sexual orientations of people and each area has its own unique characteristics. Geographic location. New York City, Nashville and Clarksville. If you're not familiar with Clarksville, it is a military town. It's almost all army, military. It's really centered around the military base. Nashville, Country Music Center, New York City. You have art and when I think of New York City I think of hustle and bustle and art and culture and all that kind of stuff. But they're very different and the people in those places live very different paces of life and very different lifestyles and a lot of times have very different goals. I have a farm and I love my farm. In New York City, people would never have a goal of striving to raise all of their produce on their own land. That's just not what is in their culture. They're working towards other goals. Geographic location. I covered that one. Membership, 12 step organizations have their own kind of culture. Sororities and fraternities have their own culture. We had our own songs. We had our own rituals. Clubs, any other clubs that you belong to, there's a lot of them. The Rotary Club is one I can think of. Sports, people who are on the football team in high school, that is their own little culture there. Think of, oh golly, on married with children, whatever his name was, Al, Al Bundy, just kept reliving being the star quarterback and that was kind of a focus of his life. And religion, the religion that you ascribe to will obviously affect your beliefs. So we want to think about how all of these things, you know, when somebody comes into our office, they probably have elements of a lot of these things and how do those things intertwine and mesh in order to create the person that we're seeing before us and how is that going to combine and mesh with us as a therapist? Cultural identity describes an individual's affiliation or identification with a particular group or groups. So thinking about what group or groups you identify with. Cultural identity arises through the interaction of individuals and cultures over the life cycle. So it changes. Within cultures, there are also subcultures. So, you know, for example, within Christianity, you have all kinds of different subcultures. Within different towns, you know, living in Middle Tennessee or living in the southeastern United States, people think that we have a certain set of customs and beliefs. But there are subcultures, like Nashville is very different than Louisiana, which is very different than Gainesville, Florida. So we want to be aware of that. People often reevaluate their cultural identities and sometimes resist, rebel or reformulate them over time, such as in high school, you know, you were developing your identity then and you're looking around at what culture you wanted to belong to. When you got to midlife, you may look back and go, you know, I've been, you know, doing this adulting thing for a long time. I'm just going to completely drop it and switch careers or change gears or do something different.  Your goals and everything change. They need to be home to make supper every night. It may not be as great. You know, all of the things that you normally do in your routines may get shaken up. So you want to reevaluate, what do I do now? Elements that constitute a culture and not every culture has all of these elements that are unique to them, but there are some. Identity development.  Rights of passage. Broad role of sex and sexuality. We have our own images, symbols and myths, stories that kind of support our culture. And even thinking back to my sorority, there were traditions that we passed along from generation, if you will, to generation. Religion and spirituality. You know, we have our own readings. We have our own belief systems. We have a view, use and sources of power and authority. Each culture may have a slightly different view of all those things. Now, multiple cultures can share similar views. I mean, it doesn't mean that if one culture has this particular view that nobody else can have it. So there are, that's, you know, how we can blend so well. But it's important to be aware of, you know, what your clients think about the uses of power and authority because we are in power and authority as clinicians. The role in use of language. Ceremonies, celebrations and traditions. Are they important? Which ones are important? How do you work that? Learning modalities and acquisition of knowledge and skills may be different between cultures. Some people may prefer to use an oral tradition. Some people may prefer to write it down. Interpersonal interaction differs between cultures how you talk to each other. What's okay when you have to be formal, when you have to be informal. Assumptions, prejudices, stereotypes and expectations of others. Every culture has them. About their, their own culture and about other cultures. So ideally we want to try to get rid of those and change the stereotypes into generalizations. Reward or status systems. There's hierarchies in every culture. Migration patterns and geographic location. If you look across the United States and we're going to look at one towards the end if we've got time. Different, like for example there's a place or a swath of the United States that is typically referred to as the Bible Belt. And that can be, you know, reflective of the culture of those particular areas in those states. Concepts of sanction and punishment, social groupings and perspectives on the role and status of children and families. Are they to be seen and not heard? Are they to be integrated? Is it important for one parent to be home? Is it important for children to be involved in multiple extracurricular activities? You know, your culture is going to dictate that to a certain extent. Or at least they're going to have ideas about it and then you can choose to accept or reject them. Patterns, perspectives on gender roles and relationships. Some cultures still hold very traditional gender roles while other cultures have become more flexible. The means of establishing trust, credibility and legitimacy. It's going to be different between people and between cultures. So it's important to, you know, kind of take it slow. Most people if you ask, what do I need to do to get your trust? They're going to look at you like, are they? But it's important to understand and by being culturally responsive, that's one way of establishing trust by saying, help me understand you and your points of view. And by embracing that instead of condemning that, it's a means of starting to establish trust and credibility. With some cultures, you know, punctuality and that sort of thing may be looser or more strict than in other cultures. So kind of being aware of that. Coping strategies for mediating conflict or solving problems. Some cultures believe that a spiritual leader should do it. Some believe a lawyer should do it. Some people think they should work it out among themselves. You know, we want to understand how do you mediate your conflict? Sources for acquiring and validating information, attitudes and beliefs will vary. Where do you get your information? How do you find out more about this particular culture? The view of the past and future and the group's individual sense of place in society and the world is obviously going to vary by culture. You know, in some places, Christianity is really dropping really fast. But in certain places, especially in Sahara, Africa, it is just booming right now. So the perspective on Christianity, for example, the place in society and the world, where's that going to be in 50 years, impacts the culture. And the people who embrace that culture are going to want to see their culture thrive. History and other past circumstances that have contributed to a group's current economic, social and political status within the broader culture also affects the culture. So, for example, Native Americans, how is their history impacted or contributed to their current state within the larger culture in America? And how does that affect things? Culture can be seen as a frame through which one looks at the world or a lens. Think about each culture you have being another lens or another transparency that you put up that kind of colors it or shapes it a little bit. A repertoire of beliefs and practices that can be used as needed. A narrative story explaining who people are and why they do what they do. So if you look at somebody's culture, you know, when they act a certain way or react a certain way, you know, it may be not what you would do in your culture, but if you look and say, you know, where did that come from? You may be able to understand from the narrative. A set of institutions defining different aspects of values and traditions or a series of boundaries that use values or traditions to delineate one group of people from another. So how people kind of set themselves apart. The Baptist from the Methodists from the Catholics, for example. There are boundaries. There are differences in the groups. Speak with clients about their world views, values and traditions, and seek training and consultation and specific knowledge about clients' cultural beliefs and practices. Where I came from in Florida, it was the national headquarters for the Hare Krishna's. And, you know, so many of my clients were Hare Krishna. So it took me a while to learn some of their cultures and traditions. And when I'd have a client from that culture, then it was important for me to reach out to my contacts there and navigate it a little bit more. Crosscutting factors. Verbal and nonverbal communication. We all communicate. It's just how we do it and what's appropriate. How much eye contact. How close can we get. What's appropriate to say. My son is still learning that whole filter thing. Appropriate personal space. Social parameters for and displays of physical contact.  Public displays of affection were not okay. That was not something that you were going to do.  So there are different parameters of what's acceptable. The use of silence. Some are more comfortable. Some actually need that silence as a show of respect that, yes, you heard me and you're digesting what I'm saying. Preferred ways of moving. Meanings of gestures. Degree to which arguments and verbal confrontations are acceptable. Some cultures are very, we need to get along and they want to make peace. Other cultures are fine with verbal confrontations. And it's just families talk and they assert themselves and they may be loud but it's not, it's okay. It's socially sanctioned. It's not hateful or hurtful. The degree of formality expected in communication and the amount of eye contact expected. The relative importance of nonverbal messages varies greatly from culture to culture. And high context cultural groups plays a much greater importance on nonverbal cues and the context of verbal messages. We are going to talk about a lot of this ad nauseum in the upcoming sessions on each different culture. But it is important to understand some of the basics especially of the nonverbals. A behavioral health service provider who listens only to the literal meaning of words can miss clients actual messages. Well that's true all the time. However high context cultural groups even more you need to pay attention to the nonverbals and that also may mean that they're not appropriate for tele-mental health unless it's video based counseling. And even then if you have a lag, if you don't have super high internet going both ways or if you're doing an encrypted video stream it's going to slow it down you are going to probably not have the greatest experience with high context cultural group people. Assuming that a client has a particular expectation or expression of nonverbal and verbal communication based solely on race ethnicity or cultural heritage is a big mistake. So we want to ask them what are you comfortable with? What would you prefer? Geographical factors can also have a significant effect on clients culture. Clients coming from a rural area even if they come from different ethnicities can have a great deal in common. So where I came from was right outside of Gainesville Florida which in and of itself is a suburb if you will I mean it revolves kind of around the University of Florida but there's not a lot of it's not a mecca of anything but we lived in a suburb of that. It was a rural area you know had a farm there was a nice you know place to have a couple kids. We moved to Lebanon Tennessee which is about 35 miles outside of Nashville and it's the same way you know we have neighbors around but we also have acreage so we can have farms and donkeys and all that stuff so we have a lot in common with in both places you know I came here and I felt right at home and could talk to my neighbors and you know our ways of interacting and supporting each other are very similar because it's rural to rural but that's not always the case for example somebody who comes from New York, Nashville and Miami all of those are big metro areas that have a lot of hustle and bustle and all that stuff and excitement and whatever but they're very different cultures and what they expect the way they interact the types of things they enjoy so paying attention to those sorts of things because I mean Miami being on the beach obviously the beach is more of a focus there and somebody who I have a friend who moved here from New York and he's stationed in Clarksville now and he just misses the snow so much but he misses a lot of things about New York City lifestyle which was a much faster pace and family and kinship concepts and attitudes toward family are culturally defined and can vary in a number of ways including the relative importance of particular family ties and so when we're talking about family with our clients and involving family in treatment what does that mean some clients don't think that family's important in this whole thing it's like you know I've got a problem I need to fix it and you know we're just going to leave them other families see the identified patient or see illness in the system as illness in the whole system illness in the family there's not an identified patient so much some families see the identified patient but they don't believe it's their responsibility to help that person out so we need to understand where do you see family as belonging or working whatever words you want to use in your treatment and recovery process the family's inclusiveness can vary it may be just blood relatives it may be just immediate blood relatives or it may be your sisters I don't know I have a very long family but really extended kinships I won't even go down that road that are involved in family so if you have an intervention or if you have some sort of family meeting there's going to be 27 people there as opposed to my family where we'd have 3 how hierarchical the family is some families tend to be more egalitarian other families tend to be either maternally driven or paternally driven or extremely hierarchical in nature so we want to understand where does this client fit in if we're working with an adult client who has you know kind of diverged from the way the family expected him to grow up or whatever the career they expected him to take that might have a significant impact on him if it's a very hierarchical family and he was always told he was going to follow in his father's footsteps then there might be a lot of angst there where in other situations the family might be choose what you want, what's going to make you happy and it's more up to the child who is now an adult to make decisions and family holidays who visits who there's a lot of stuff that can really become problematic if you have different understandings of what's appropriate in that family hierarchically you know if you tell your client well how about you go to your wife's families for Christmas and you go to your families for Thanksgiving that should make everybody happy and that might not be it so we need to understand what's going on in that family and how family roles and behaviors are defined who's responsible for what in recent years there's been an uptick in the number of men who've been staying home and raising the children as opposed to the woman staying home and raising the children if they were able to have you know just be a one career household so how does that work how do people feel about that what does their culture say about them staying home I remember one Bernie Mac episode my daughter was watching and Bernie Mac was raising his sister's kids and he's a comedian so even in the show he was a comedian so he was home during the day and he was you know raising the children and taking them to school and doing that stuff and he went to a work party with his wife and his wife was a vice president of a big company and all of the house husbands started congregating and Bernie was like I'm not too sure about this now I have a career I'm doing my thing but it was interesting to see the different attitudes people had in that episode towards house husbands as opposed to men who worked at a job outside the house in some cultural groups family is limited to the nuclear family whereas in other groups the idea of family includes many other blood or marital relations or even really good friends of the family you know we can have 17 uncles coming in family dynamics may change as the result of internal or external forces such as acculturation so if family X moves over here and two generations later the the youth from that generation are fully acculturated but grandma and grandpa still are not wanting to be acculturated there may be some challenges in the family dynamics there and communications and the grandparents may feel disappointed or hurt that the youth are rejecting their culture of origin and likewise the youth may feel rejected because grandma and grandpa can't understand why they have these differing beliefs so we want to look at acculturation as a big issue socioeconomic status in the united states is related to occupational prestige if you have a higher socioeconomic status you probably have a higher or more prestigious job not always if you have a higher education you typically have a higher socioeconomic status again not always and you typically if you have a higher socioeconomic status that goes along with having a higher income level socioeconomic status affects culture by a person's ability to accumulate material wealth and that also means the ability to like have a house and put food on the table and that sort of thing access opportunities if somebody who is of low socioeconomic status gets offered a job that's two states away and they'd have to move they may not be able to afford to move whereas somebody of a higher higher socioeconomic status the world is their oyster and you know yeah it might be expensive to move but if they're offered the right job they could do it and it also affects your ability to use resources so certain resources are available based on socioeconomic status acculturation there are many forces at work that pressure a person to alter his or her cultural identity to conform to the mainstream culture concept of proper identity people may feel conflicted about their identities wanting to fit in with the mainstream culture while also wanting to retain the values of their culture of origin so religions an example if somebody grows up from and they come from a highly religious family but they are not adopting as much of a religious tone in their life or they're not meshing with that culture as much you know they may be a little bit conflicted sorting through these conflicting cultural expectations and forming a comfortable identity can be an important part of the recovery process many studies have found that increased acculturation is associated with higher rates of substance use disorders and mental health issues so the more somebody becomes acculturated and leaves their culture of origin and joins that mainstream culture the more likely they are to have problems generally the more acculturated a person is the more likely that mainstream interventions will be effective well that makes sense if they've become if they're embracing more of the mainstream culture then stuff we would normally use with the mainstream culture is probably going to be more effective sexuality is also impacted by culture attitudes towards sexuality in general and towards sexual identity or orientation are culturally defined so thinking about the different subgroups that have something to say about sexual identity and orientation whether it be based on age, religion geographic area that they live in whatever that will impact our clients in their expression of their sexuality each culture determines how to conceptualize specific sexual behaviors what's okay what's not okay the degree to which they accept same sex relationships and the types of sexual behaviors that are considered acceptable if you want more of a detailed thing we do have a class coming up in January but in the meantime if you go to a provider's introduction to substance abuse treatment for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals you can get a publication from SAMHSA for free that goes over dealing with some of these issues. Now I will warn you it was published in 2001 so there are some parts of it that are woefully out of date but it's a good starting place and perspectives on health, illness and healing like I mentioned eastern medicine versus western medicine before and you know I'm happy but my personal preferences that people are becoming more open to eastern medicine approaches in the west and starting to embrace some of those concepts but you know typically western medicine and especially western medicine practitioners tend to be very closed off to eastern medicine for example different cultural groups differ in how they define and determine health and illness some cultures really view mental health as a symptom of something wrong with the body period and it's going to be treated by a medical professional cultural groups differ in who is able to diagnose and treat an illness sometimes it's a religious practitioner sometimes it's a medical doctor you know there's a variety of people there are beliefs about the causes of illness whether it's caused because you did something wrong and it's a punishment or because you ate something or because your chakras are out of alignment or whatever the case may be are obviously going to be different based on what they think is causing the problem there are complex rules about which members of a community or family can make decisions about health care across cultural groups so in those hierarchical families even if the identified patient is an adult but their parents may still need to give the nod for culturally not legally but culturally their parents may still need to give the nod for treatment any mental disorder or symptom is only considered a disorder or problem by comparison with a socially defined norm so we want to look at their culture and say is this normal in that culture it may not be typical I don't like the word normal but is this typical in our culture maybe not is it typical in their culture and if so then we might get at it from a different standpoint finally religious traditions and or spiritual beliefs are often very important factors for defining an individual's cultural background the American religious identification survey and you can google that there's a ton of really cool information on the site but reported that 47% of the respondents who identified culturally as Jewish were not practicing Jews so you've got a lot of people out there who are identify as Jewish they're filling out that demographic sheet and they're handing it to you but they're not practicing Jews so those beliefs that you would ascribe to Judaism may or may not be applicable to that particular client so we want to know how much do they practice the religion which they ascribe to let's see if I can get there really quick religion is organized with each religion having its own set of beliefs and practices designed to organize and further its members spirituality so each religion has certain goals or objectives spirituality on the other hand and a lot of people kind of get this confused when we start doing spirituality groups and like it's not religion spirituality is typically conceived of as a personal matter involving an individual search for meaning and it doesn't require affiliation with any religious group spirituality is what gives your life meaning what orchestrates, what controls the world what do you believe about how things happen and I know we're running short but I did want to show you this the religious landscape study you can look, there's all kinds of data in here but for example in Tennessee 81% Christian I said we're in the Bible Belt but then you have 14% that are unaffiliated or religious nuns those are more secular people they're not necessarily atheists but they're secular they just aren't affiliating at all on the other hand if you go back to Washington you only have 61% who are Christian and 32% are considered themselves as unaffiliated or nuns that may mean that people who are in Tennessee who are not affiliated feel more kind of out on the fringes as opposed to people who are in Washington where there may be more secular activities and more things that happen during church time on Sunday so I'll let you peruse that on your own culture, race and ethnicity are not the same thing we want to really pay attention to what are our clients world views culturally responsive services take into account the needs and preferences of the individual based upon the cultures plural to which he or she identifies it's important not to culturally assign a client based only on race, geographic location or religious orientation because not all clients choose to identify with their expected cultures that we don't want to assume increased acculturation is associated with poor mental health outcomes and culture can have a huge impact on treatment compliance and effects both individual therapy approaches and modalities so insight oriented may be better with certain clients whereas other approaches may be better with other clients the appropriateness of group therapy the appropriateness and degree of family involvement and the fit between the therapist and client like I said there are certain cultures that really prefer to have someone of their culture in order to communicate with because they even speak a slightly different language I know when my husband was still on the road I spoke in ten codes quite fluently those are the codes they use when they're talking on the radio so a resource that you can find is the cultural orientation resource sender which is funded by the U.S. department of states bureau of population refugees and migration you can google that and find more resources about culturally responsive counseling alright thank you all for sticking with me I apologize for tripping over my tongue so much today and do you have any questions I don't have any pictures of my cats but that's my boo boo and in response to a person whose parents live on a farm in Clarksville I love that area there's a park out there that I go hiking sometimes because it's a little bit more hilly I won't say mountainous but hilly than out where I'm at and it's beautiful land alrighty y'all I will see you on Tuesday and I'm not sure what we're covering on Tuesday but I'll have it figured out by then have an awesome weekend thank you for being here today if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe thanks for watching you can attend and participate in our live webinars with Dr. Snipes by subscribing at allceuse.com slash counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by allceuse.com providing 24-7 multimedia continuing education and pre-certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code counselor toolbox to get a 20% discount off your order this month


Meanwhile, the former governor of Amos State, Rocha Sokorocha, has raised the lamb over the level of insecurity in Amos State. Speaking in a word of the capital, Sokorocha says the level at which people are being killed in this place from their homes are alarming, calling on the federal government to intervene as quickly as possible. Killings in Amos State are really underreported and it's unfortunate that we are not making this known to the federal government of Nigeria to come to the aid of Amos State. There are no days that passes here or weeks that passes without killings or the treacherous that have been beheaded or a young man being shot dead or a policeman being killed, almost on daily basis and this particular, my particular concern now is to bring this to the federal government and they should do something urgently regarding the situation in Amos State. And most Nigerians do not know or the federal government may not know that Ahegebe Ma'ana is deserted and literally nobody is living around some of the communities in Ahegebe Ma'ana, in Osu, in Okigwa, in Onimo, in Idat or not. Most of the villages around this area are not deserted. No life in it because everybody has run for safety. And this is not what we ask for from democracy. So I want to appeal on President Mamed Balatinebou, the Special General of Police and all I concern to see what they can do to bring peace to bear in Amos State. Thank you.


much shorter I think. I didn't know there were that many people coming. I think last time I was at the papers we left it was like three people or something. You're here because of you. Yeah exactly, all because of me. My name draws to people. Yeah so I didn't prepare any slides anyway. And again this is going to be very brief and I think there are probably a couple of people here who know more about CPU architecture than I do. Probably most people here know more. And I guess some people have read the paper. Who's read this or the spectra paper or the Google block thing. Okay so some have looked at it. So yeah let's start this one into roundtable discussions.  So just chime in when you have something to say. Anyway, Meltdown right? It's a CPU bug. Well no that's the thing like if you ask Intel it's not a CPU bug. They work as designed. It's like maybe it's an undesired feature. An undesired side effect. And I think it's true because it's so it's well it's a side channel attack and there are lots of side channel attacks that are kind of weird and strange to think about. And this one is I think it's quite a mindfuck. It's quite interesting that this is possible. Right so how does it work in general? So generally sidechain attacks are basically exploiting side effects of say in this case of the inner workings of a CPU. So you have the desired normal effects. You feed the CPU instructions, it executes the instructions, you get back results. But there are always or there can be side effects and by sort of exploiting these side effects you can extract information that's general choice of it. Now Meltdown specifically is about out of order execution which is how CPUs, modern CPUs currently work or like break down instructions into smaller micro instructions. So you have like the CPU instructions that you all know if you know if you ever looked at assembly code or ever debug anything on low level. So you have CPU instructions they get broken down into into smaller instructions and they can get executed out of order because some parts of the CPU might not always be might be utilized on different levels. So you kind of want to paralyze as many things as possible. So you don't necessarily want to keep the order of of the instructions. So you kind of look ahead a little bit and you see what you can what you can execute in advance, particularly memory fetches which are really really take a long time in CPU terms. I think hundreds of instructions. Does anyone know? Yeah, so hundreds to thousands I think, right? And then you have about three layers of cache nowadays which I think reduce it to tens until I think single digits. Yeah, but that level one can be almost single digit instructions I think, right? Yeah, something like that. All those are magnitude different. So some of these so basically the memory fetches in particular they execute speculatively as well like they execute they may execute. Well, no, it's not speculative execution. That's what Spectre is about. So it's slightly different. But if you have say instructions that check for access and following that you have instructions that in the case that access actually under this speculative execution. Anyway, these instructions follow the instructions checking for access or any sort of like CPU features which could CPU security features we could trigger a CPU level exception. The memory fetch instruction could still be executed before it's actually checked whether it should be executed because of this out of order execution. Now in Meltdown specifically the way the exploit works is by this is called the snippet. So essentially let's go I'm not sure if they have a schema explaining the whole idea. So in the exploit you have two components. One is the component that extracts the information in this case the entire kernel memory that you can read out. The entire actually the entire system memory that you can read out because it's mapped into basically the entire address space is in operating systems nowadays is mapped. It's just you have like access controls via a specific bit. So only the kernel technically can access all the memory but again like that is sort of checked at a slightly inopportune time. Now you have the information extraction part essentially which tries to execute the instruction that fetches memory that tries to execute that tries to access a specific memory address and afterwards based on that and again this is these are all just instructions that don't officially get executed but get executed sort of out of order. You fetch a specific memory address and then you use this memory address to fetch a memory like you use that you use the content of that memory as the address of another fetch you do on your own memory and again this all gets executed and then the CPU realizes that it wasn't supposed to actually give you that memory so it kills your process but at that time you already the second fetch is already executed and the content from your memory the byte that you wanted to fetch with this address sorry the block that you wanted to fetch with this address in this byte that you originally got from the memory you were not supposed to access that part will be in memory so in the cache so now in the second process it can run technically also in a different like virtual machine everything completely independent of the first process I think you access the the same memory and check the timing exactly so that address then the address of that memory is the actual byte you wanted to like you were not supposed to read so with that it's possible to read out the entire system memory of a of a system and I think the speed I think they mentioned the speed of how quickly they can do it and it's some somewhere around 500 kilobytes a second or something which is yeah 502 502 kilobytes a second which is kind of a lot if you want to read out a couple of gigs I mean it takes a couple minutes two hours yeah it's a lot of loops so it's it's in in CPU terms yeah 502 kilobytes a second this is very slow because there is yeah there's a lot of a lot of stuff involved this is also so the original thing I think the first approach was you have this process trying to fetch this this memory from from the kernel address space somewhere and that usually kills the process you get a segmentation fault your process dies so they have some some strategies against that one is um what did it die no going to it is a real-time well yeah I think my machine got meltdown what? on the other side or is it on the other side? yeah sure this is working but it doesn't really matter I was just scrolling up and down into the paper and it's fine that was okay that was actually something cool I read the whole the the exception suppression this is feature I think the Intel TSX is explained a bit further up this is yeah here this is cool so Intel has this sort of like transaction feature for for memory operations so you can basically say you can you can group multiple instructions and and then if one of them fails which it will if you like one will fail if you try to access memory are not supposed to access and your process still stays alive it's just all the other instructions that group are not officially executed so you can you can kind of you can avoid your process dying so you don't have to fork all the time and that speeds it up a little and then there's this they mention the the kernel address address space layout randomization stuff that's been going on in the kernel that is now default which I think mostly helps although it's still it's it's not it doesn't necessarily make it completely impossible just sort of not very feasible I guess you need to I mean before this you knew where it was so you could get it very quickly whereas now you kind of have to worry the whole memory and fish in the dark a little yeah isn't isn't the memory mapping table it's it's not technically in a memory isn't somewhere in the air maybe that's exactly why it takes a bit longer so yeah anything anybody wants to contribute and if like those who read the paper what was the most interesting thing anything anything I omitted but it was super cool to see the the chaining of attacks it almost felt like because it's like the fact that it the meltdown itself is basically that it doesn't undo it that it's it's supposed it says that this instruction it goes ahead it goes ahead and dust up out of order but then something breaks it doesn't fix and clean up all the crap it did right doesn't go to clear the caches it clears the registers but not the cash yeah I think the problem is that if you if you I mean this would also happen in the case of branch misprediction which is which is a case of spectral right but if you want to flush the cash every time that happens that will probably make it much slower as well that's that's a software fixture which is you flushed the whole cat well if it was probably designed in hardware it would just this because it knew where what was the stuff it just did yeah yeah yeah so like so that would be from a hundred percent much harder from itself but that should be the right way to solve it rather than the software fixes we are putting in right now which is well every time you do a exception just flush the whole cash but then if you flush a specific cash entry won't that also open a side channel where you can say if you where you can figure out whether a particular cash entry disappeared yeah so basically you can have like a temporary cash that you only commit into your real cash when an operation ah right so if it's already cached then you wouldn't you wouldn't flush it in the actual yeah so much that through on on the on the end of an atomic whatever instruction that you have at the end of this push everything through the real right for reading so again these are again things that they will probably end up doing in the long run but yeah it's super cool and then big big they found that with the whole cash sniffing in a side channel attack by just doing the timing even so this stuff is all but the way they figure out what's not in cash and what's in cash super cool I mean these side channel attacks are I felt the specter was a bit more of a mindfuck in the sense that they do like super crazy stuff in there like identifying bits in the code you're like specter is a bit a bit different because I think you have to sort of still find sort of vulnerabilities in the in the target and these weird I forgot what they are called we basically can jump around that is that is even more complex this one is almost straightforward compared to it no it's more like I think you need to find some specific constellations of I forgot what it was do you have the melt that the specter paper yeah but yeah we covers back to the next month okay so if we were to play that was evident so how would we absorb intel of this what I mean does the ISA say anything about the cash it probably doesn't because the cash is fully transparent but then the ISA doesn't say anything about about brand out of order exactly so if you just stick to the ISA you can't observe the impact and the timing is not specified in the ISA so you can't make any inferences based on memory read speed yes so if you're only programming against the spec yeah well yeah that is that is that this kind of the the abstraction of the ISA which is the architectural level and then everything that happens below it's it is internals Intel internals the micro architectural level that is not really the access time of memory yeah yeah it's technically not defined that kind of you probably have some uh definition saying that it's gonna be faster whatever but at that kind of granularity not at the kind of nanosecond granularity that people actually use to compare is like aha this one was faster okay I thought um the um one of the one of the mitigations but I'm not sure if that was meltdown or specter is that browser may cause uh decrease to the resolution of that time was so you can't you can't explain it by travel screw which is also very ugly fix in a way but this is actually much more than just mother and specter this basically generally just to be able to not do the whole cash uh sniffing right yeah so any kind of cash sniffing whatever he gets you get stopped by the the hammer especially yeah yeah right um yeah the other thing that was interesting about this was uh I think there was a discussion on the linux kernel mailing list where linus throw a fit and uh uh somebody else tried to explain it to him a little but I I don't know I haven't really followed that after the initial couple mails I read but it's interesting there was a very interesting article about the whole like the way you're talking about it more than half like what does intel do to it not so much of like the micro architecture side of things uh by uh about uh whether we should like whether we should take an intel like whether we should be angry against intel or how should we approach them so he's basically saying that the problem is because uh you don't we are we are not paying them enough money or like you know because we're because of the way the whole economy works they are more and more uh what like the intel's like hiding more and more things in the way they implement the micro architecture so like we are going away and away from transparency of how stuff works internally and then this kind of stuff will pop up uh because of the way uh the whole stuff is it just because it just gets more complicated right it's only that right it's also they don't open it up right if it was more more if we first explain better we will be able to find this way earlier and we you know not not with like this stuff in I don't know a million machines or whatever part of it is probably also the fact that the ISA is so far removed from really hard yeah that's that's the complexity yeah x86 and all of these things are patches and patches and patches but I mean that that's not really a change in the approach of this right it's really just the complexity underneath that layoff abstraction that you need the documentation that you need to implement things um it just gets more complicated it's not a not a political thing or like how did he explain that political but yeah maybe I maybe I'll just post the the link to the article there I think it's it's better I think he explains it better than I do but a lot of issues with a lot of stuff being hidden because if you know the thing is the second you have something like this people's gonna call people are gonna call for rms and then he tells to you know take on all the cost of dealing with all this stuff so they try to hide more and more things because there's a lot of times like you know in the silicon process you know you have buggy ic so they're you know I think AMD was covering this where they had a four core ic and then they'll just test the four cores and one of them was underperforming they just cut out the the core and then sell it at the three core ic yeah well I thought it was also with with um that's not really called I thought it was standard practice also for intel and also the the uh the the frequency the I think the clock frequency the frequency been this thing it depends yeah it depends on the quality of the chip if I sold you a four core chip saying well this is a three core chip but it's you know whatever I I'll give you a 25% discount many people will be like no I don't want this right but if I say yeah it's a three core chip right so there's a lot of economics and how people think of us psychology yeah yeah anyway I'll close the link to the to the article it's interesting but this was it was on the other end Intel has made an absolute fuck up on handling the servers either they had like six month head start yeah I'm pretty sure they were running around like less chickens for six months yeah sounds like it but but then yeah nobody would like in in December where you started reading the news of of strange OS patches with very little comment like in the linux kernel as well just um and and then people started looking I think at the updates for was it windows or OS X where they also like yeah yeah yeah it was interesting I am and I wonder what the long-term damage for Intel is as well um it's just this approach of doing out of order execution needs to be much more thought than much more probably you know it's like much more formalized and somehow tacked to the to the icing it now it's like in hindsight it's like of course this is this is a vulnerability and I mean you wonder why nobody thought about that when you say like wouldn't you think about the side effects of doing these things um first and and think of like the people who built this should know yeah it's all right no I think yeah I think I think we're done no need to I think what's interesting also is like if this is you know it's just if you think about it's like a super simple you know very easy straight forward just all the things that haven't been changed that haven't been cleaned up that should have been cleaned up imagine all the other crazy things that you can have with all the different modes of the cpu and the sleep mode and this and that and how that interactive you will find a lot more of these kind of bugs going forward now that people are saying look at this okay I'm following it now the register allocator is going to be the next search okay think about it right it's like super complicated this stuff is simple it's it's kind of cool uh I I guess this is getting more attention now because some a couple of young researchers these guys uh PhD students and everything sort of this sort of became overnight stars of the security scene more or less and and Google kind of took second place they're like oh yeah we also discovered this stuff and they actually had a nice I think the Google blog entry looks a bit easier to understand as well right there's a bit more um uh graphics and stuff in there but um I didn't I didn't actually read that I just looked at that yeah let's go for bios


OK, let me know if everybody can hear me now. Or we said a couple of things. OK, great. We're just going to go back one slide here, what I was saying. You've got to take responsibility for your thoughts, every one of them, everything that's going through your head.  You have to do this, because those thoughts are going to create your actions, which will translate into your results. Allow yourself to grow and change and evolve in this process. And more importantly, do not be afraid to change. Many, many people are afraid to change. You cannot be afraid to change.  We constantly have to be in a place where we're evolving. Always, forever, infinity and beyond. And this is part of being a human being. Now, this is a great slide. It's an amazing slide. Why? Because this caterpillar depicts what wonderful things can happen when you're willing to change. So what's happening in his life right now? Well, he's going around, and he's eating leaves, and he has a few friends. And his life's good.  And he's going along, and everything seems jolly and fine. And then all of a sudden, one day, he starts to feel uncomfortable and weird and strange, and he's getting stressed out. Because something is happening. He's going through a change. He's going through a transformation. Things are not the same anymore. He's going into a metamorphosis. OK? He does not understand what is happening to himself, his life, his body, and it's uncomfortable. It's painful, actually.  To change. Of course, he cannot change. If he doesn't change, guess what will happen? He can die. He only has one choice to move forward, to go into the cocoon, to go into the transformation. So he can go into the cocoon and take his chances and see what will happen. No one's giving him any guarantees or promises. He has no idea what's going to happen next. He doesn't even understand what's happening now. He knows that this is not what he was expecting. But he's only got two options, die or take your chances and move forward and change. And go into the cocoon and just go with the change. Not knowing. Not knowing what the future will hold. Having absolutely no idea. The future could be better. It could be worse. But his only other option is death. And he decides that he doesn't want to die. So he takes the chance and he goes into the cocoon and lo and behold, guess what? He's born out as a butterfly. And look at him. He looks amazing. And he is amazing. And guess what? Life is better than he could have ever imagined. He could have never dreamed his life to be this good. And often, this is the way it is. When we're willing to take risk and chances and change and evolve, often, the goal that we had, the thing that we wanted, ends up being even better than the outcome that we expected. And that's the incredible beauty and amazing thing about believing and trusting in ourselves and our intuition and in life. No one ever guaranteed me I'd make money in the market if I kept at it and kept trying to figure this thing out and kept losing. No one's guaranteed me a darned tootin' thing about the entertainment world of the television show. And yet, look at me now. I continue to move forward. There are all kinds of things that if you're willing to take risk and go for it, that can happen to you that are amazing. And no one said it was gonna be easy. It was a painful process in the cocoon. But then he hatched. And then he came out looking like this. And in this life, he lives and goes everywhere. He doesn't, he's not just stuck in this one tree before he only had one house to live in. Now he's got five different homes. He can travel all over the world. He's got fruits and leaps and trees and flowers he can eat. He's got tons of friends. And he looks beautiful. And he has everything and more. And it was all because he was willing to take the chance. So the lesson to be learned here is if you allow yourself to change and do not be afraid to do it, amazing things are possible. A lot of that has to do with your philosophy about trading in the market and money and anything you wanna do in life where you wanna be successful. And you're going and leaping into the unknown. There are no guarantees. And whenever someone asks me for a guarantee when they take the class, I say to myself, oh, that person just isn't ready to trade or they're just, they're really not in the right frame of mind. Now that doesn't mean they can't get in the right frame of mind, but they will need to in order to be successful. You gotta understand what this whole thing is and then you have to be okay with it and actually accept it and want it. Okay? And part of this just has to do with the way the universe works as well. So examine your surroundings. Who are the people in your life? What do they believe? Do they support you? Are they against you or with you? And also, how do they feel about money? What is their attitude about wealth? It'll be interesting to see. Someone will have to interview my husband if I ever get married about his attitude about wealth and money whenever that is 100 years from now. But the reality is it'll be impossible for me to ever connect with someone ever in a relationship who does not share my attitude about wealth and money, which is what? That it's unlimited of the money that I could make and that anything is possible. So you gotta believe, okay? Think about the people around you. Are they helping you to create a healthy framework for you to grow as a trader? Are the people in your life helping you to create a negative or a positive attitude concerning money? Are they helping to grow your wealth consciousness? Surround yourself with like-minded people. Surround yourself with people you want to emulate. Do not surround yourself with people that are putting you down. Get away from those people immediately. Immediately, okay? Just go, uh, and don't return their calls anymore. Enough, okay? Surround yourself with people who have a wealth consciousness.  So I can be friend number one because there's other people out there. And if you're in a place or a situation or a town or a city or wherever you live in the world and you don't know any people like this, trust me. Put it out in the universe that you're gonna meet some and you'll find some. First one's me. You just never know. Let's talk a little bit about fear. We were talking earlier about change. Many, many people are afraid of change. This idea of fear, it's taking over the world. Something needs to stop. It's an illusion. Why are some people afraid of spiders and some people are not? Why are some people afraid of airplanes and flying and some people are not? It's all an illusion. It's something we create in our mind. We manifest and create these fears in our mind and then they sometimes can rule our lives. If you're not willing to let go of this, you're gonna have a hard time changing. Many, many times what happens is people don't want to do something or don't wanna change their life for those circumstances or whatever happens because they're in fear of something. Fear of the unknown. Fear of what might happen. Fear of making a mistake. Fear of change. Fear of losing money. Fear of taking a class. Fear of trading the market. Fear of speaking up. Fear of saying their feelings, falling in love, whatever. There's a million fears out there. But I'm telling you that often they're self-created. You see this PowerPoint here, it looks like it's moving but it's not, it's actually, it's flat. This is one dimensional. Boom, that's it. But it appears to be moving, it's an illusion. And as you know, our minds are very, very powerful as we discussed earlier. If you have 120 million neurons in your brain, what do you think? You can overcome these fears that you have in your life to be successful or do anything using the power of your mind. One of the things that I credit myself for is an amazing mind a long, long, long, long, long time ago that was something that I realized about myself when I was very small and something that other people recognized in me. I had no idea I'd be at this point in my life even where I'm headed but I will tell you that I've cherished my mind and my brain and taking care of it. If you have lived your life and not taken care of your mind and your brain or cherished it, I want you to start doing that immediately because it is going to help you be successful. You are gonna need it, okay? And in the world that we live in, it's gonna be the difference between the people that are the winners and the losers and it's gonna be the difference between the people that actually make it and survive in the world and actually can't and don't for real, okay? So think about the things that I'm saying. Take them seriously.  And part of that is what we talked about earlier. Now, does anyone have any questions about anything? Anything at all? I've discussed here. Any questions, any comments before we get into the next section? Good stuff. I hope you're taking it all in. Any questions or are we all good? All right, here, hold on one second.


Hi everybody, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com here and that is 2020 mosaic football hobby packed break number 183 With five of those first off-the-line mixer spots that were that were given away. It's a pretty good one We have to do one more if you're watching live I have to do one more filler and then move a few more spots straight up and then we're in breaksville So we can get to that tonight. So let's make that happen first dice roll is the break itself And then the second dice roll will be for the giveaway part, but let's do the pack break Let's roll it randomize it names and teams two and a five seven times one two three four five six and Seven and final time after seven we've got mark Down to Igor two and a five seven times for the teams one two three four five Six and seventh and final time after seven got the Titans down to The Browns All right, it's no trade windows in these little filler breaks, but there's the first half of the list and There's the second half of the list right here. It's alphabetized by team and let's just print and rip at the camera back To where the product is supposed to be there it is and there's the final print out right here and It's we're getting the pack from a fresh hobby box So grab a die. We'll go one two three for the left side four five six for the right side Left side and then we'll go one two three four five on the dice for on the left side if I roll a six I'll just roll again and Spy fifth and final pack one two three four five One right up front easy. Just a kid reporter card Let's see what we've got Got a Randy Moss Alvin Camaro red and a Justin Herbert NFL debut and a Justin Jefferson and another Justin Herbert Base Justin Herbert. That's not too bad. So base Justin Herbert and NFL debut insert Justin Herbert Going to Yancy and the Chargers The Justin Jefferson, he's having another great season That's the answer to Vikings as well. Nice. All right, not too bad. Now. Let's see who's gonna win those mixer spots Let's grab everybody's names once again You dice new list Let's roll and randomize it two and a five seven times top five After seven good luck one two three four five Six and Seventh and final time so it's only the top five so from six on down sad times Michael very close no cigar. Thank you for trying though. We'll get him next time Thanks, everybody Appreciate it top five is their happy times top five Cory's happy. So is Matt Igor Igor and Terry Congrats to the top five. We'll see you for that break a little bit later today Bye-bye