Hey there, it's steve again and thank you so much for joining me for this month's podcast. It's good to be with you as always. I hope everybody is enjoying the fall season now that it's all upon us, whether you're enjoying your kids back in school. I see a lot of postings on social media, very happy for you there, whatever it is you enjoy to do this time of year as we prepare for the holidays that are rapidly approaching, amazing how it goes by quickly sometimes. So I hope you're taking a moment to enjoy things. I really do today. I'm gonna talk to you about for what I believe are simple, not so time consuming ways to increase our awareness, self awareness about the homelessness issue. In fact, as some of you know, and I mean if you turn on the news, turn on your, your phone, there's something being posted about the homeless. It's beyond an issue, a problem. It's a crisis, it's an epidemic. I live here in Los Angeles, We see it every day in the state of California. So I wanna talk about four simple ways. It'll take less than 20 minutes a day if that where we can start to increase our own awareness about this matter much like many have chosen to do with the matter. Um, the problems, the issues surrounding addiction and mental health. It wasn't too very long ago that those two areas that affects so many people in this country and around the world were stereotyped and labeled in a certain way and it wasn't a positive light. There is a big time stigma associated with addiction, which I've talked about in a previous podcast on at least one occasion as well as mental health and there are some that are being treated for co occurring disorders so they have the mental health challenge as well as the substance abuse issues as well. We've come a long ways. I'm personally in recovery, I have my own journey of recovery from the disease of alcoholism, I'm so grateful for the opportunity to get well through long term treatment. There is not a cure for the disease I have, it's a daily thing for me. I work on it daily but it can be treated unlike many diseases long term and for the rest of my life if I choose to do that, I had to start somewhere. I chose to go to treatment more than once and I also am a member of a support group for my ongoing recovery. So I'm so grateful to have options So what I want to talk about quickly before I get into these four specific ways and yes, it's an inside job when we're increasing our self awareness, I say that and chuckle a little bit. Um not because this is a laughing matter because that's where it starts, it starts for me in my recovery and my journey to increase my awareness around this major worldwide challenge crisis that we have affecting almost every country and many cities out there throughout the world, California in particular. Los Angeles san Francisco san Diego are a few of the major cities in this country that are being heavily impacted not for those not just for those on the streets but for those of us in society that are trying to figure out what we can do with this so quickly rather quickly. I'm gonna walk you through in a few minutes here kind of set the stage for this. What I believe is blocking the learning process. I know these things have impacted me for decades and then I'll share with you what I'm doing today that has increased my own personal awareness. We've got the T. V. The news tv shows Hollywood, the movies that they make as I was saying earlier for a long time Hollywood, the media, the news, the networks spun people with addiction and mental health and a very negative light for a long period of time were stereotyped as bombs inadequate. Unmotivated, incompetent, inept incapable thank goodness. Again I had some choices, some options and I chose to to get well as a part of my journey as I choose it today. So there's a lot of influence there that impacts our belief system. I know it did for me and that goes beyond just what we're talking about here. We can get into ethnic background color of skin uh sexual orientation preference, their gender. There's a lot of big topics being discussed at least it's being discussed. I'm not so sure how constructive it's it is right now, but at least it's on the table. You know, it's getting people's attention now. We gotta sift through kind of the B. S. Especially when it comes to those that want to apply a political agenda. You can point to the networks, you can obviously point to the politicians. For me, I work, make an effort to sift through the B. S. And I'm gonna tell you how I do that so that I can for my own somewhat educated opinion, especially when I go to vote. So we've got the news, the movies sometimes. Um, you know, it's part of our upbringing. We were raised a certain way. Now when I share these things with you. Please remember this. Please take note of this. I'm not judging you. I'm not here to judge myself or anybody else. I'm here to try and do my part, small part to start increasing the awareness and start to kind of hone in our focus a little bit. That's it. You know, we're all raised and brought up our parents and they did the best they could and their parents did the best they could so on and so forth. But there's a lot of influencers out there, that's what I want to point out, some things just weren't discussed in schools. Again, not judging the education system personally, I believe the teachers are educators and many other professional, um, positions out there are underpaid because they do a lot for our country. So we've got the mainstream media, social media, a lot of postings, a lot of opinions, Okay, they've come from somewhere, they've been shaped by something I'm gonna share with you. Some of the things that shaped my opinions for a while now, for me, I wasn't so vocal about it until just recently for a long time. I stood by and I didn't do anything. I didn't like, it didn't make me feel uncomfortable. I took on some guilt. I also was afraid to do something and at times I got defensive, which was my cover for not doing anything about it. I wanted to continue to live in steve's world, even though that world got sidetracked into my own addiction with alcohol, but nonetheless, it was my world. I'm working to change that today. I didn't want anything that violated. I mean I want to see things get done, but back then I didn't want anything to violate. Any social privileges that I thought I had or any rights that I thought I was given and in some cases I still don't. Today, I'll delve into that a little bit later in the future when we get into citizens and non citizens, but today we're gonna stay on point here, I believe. And at times I felt hopeless and helpless. I opted to take the route of what can I do about it, what can steve do about this. So there were a number of factors that shaped my opinion and perception of people who are harmless and people that suffer from addiction and mental health. I find that a little interesting now that I'm in recovery myself, you know, you know, that'll, that'll change, you know, when it happens to you and that can change your tune a little bit too, but I care and I do want to make a difference. So now I'm gonna keep moving along here and again, just to try and create some awareness in this short podcast. One of the things that I didn't recognize for a long time was the impact of poverty. I've had a great life. I've all my needs when I was growing up were provided for taking care of, I got an opportunity to go to schools, very good schools, continue my education and ultimately move out of the house and pursue at the time, my dream job, I'm very blessed even in my own, even in recovery, I'm very blessed. So I'm gonna talk just briefly about the phenomena of, of poverty, the impact it has. You know, the only difference between people on the streets, addiction in mind is absolutely nothing. The disease of addiction, mental health, poverty, it's a social disease, I believe homelessness does not discriminate. I fortunately did not find myself being homeless and on the streets again, I consider myself blessed. So we're talking about individuals here, number one that have been impacted with the history of life of low rages, whether it's the child trying to support for the whole family, not even an adult, an adult, yet a history of unemployment, lack of discretionary money leaving these people feeling helpless, dependent and ashamed. Where's the room for growth? For these people? Where's the opportunity? I had the opportunity to go to treatment again? I'm blessed feeling helpless, dependent and ashamed. I can relate to when I was caught up in my addiction And in the very early stages of my recovery, 1000 these people go day by day to meet their basic needs of food, clothing and shelter if they're mentally and physically disabled in some way. The government, which I talked about in the last podcast provides like $850 a month. How are you gonna survive on that in L. A. Let alone any other city in this country. The support is not there. We have the institutional level that's impacted in terms of their perceptions, how they've created roles and regulations, their perception of who's qualified and who's not, who's lazy, who's incompetent, who's not, I'm not sure how much more driven you can be beyond trying to find food and shelter on a daily basis. Now, some again are caught up in the grips of mental health challenges and addiction. I understand that a lot better today and today, Number three in society right now, we have a federal government state, local governments generally are not doing much. They're throwing money at the problem by saying, just build more affordable housing if you can't get a job because you're caught up in addiction and mental health challenges, how you gonna pay for affordable housing, no matter what the cost is long term care, they've pushed it down to society to us to ignore, to tolerate. And in some cases just accept it for the greater good, this isn't for the greater good. We've got to figure out long term solutions and they are available. The government right now across the board does not choose to focus its efforts there and spend money. I have a long term solution available to me and I choose to take it without it. Where would I be and others be caught up in the grips of mental health and addiction. For me, it was addiction to alcohol. So where are these people going to be able to grow and sustain this? So that's me setting the stage there in a few minutes now, as promised, I'm going to get into four things that you can do on your own time. You don't have to do this with another person. Keep in mind what I just said, there's a lot of people forming opinions that aren't based on the facts. I'm simply just trying to start to unveil this to you in a very specific way. And some opportunities to start to increase your awareness as I'm doing today on a daily basis with that said my first suggestion and this is something that I'm doing daily as I journal and continue to podcast and write about this stuff. Number one to write down all of your fears, perceptions and stereotypes. You can choose it to share that with somebody or not. It's an interesting exercise just to get it down on paper just to take a look at it. Number two to listen and be open to stories that you see maybe on social media, on the news, other outlets that impact and disempower others. So again, articles, postings the news. If you can sift through their agenda, takes a little time for me. Be open to doing that for a couple of minutes a day notice the resistance. See if there's any resistance, see what comes up for you. You can start your own journal if you want. Number three simply acknowledge that there's cultural diversity that exists in our country and across the world, meaning there's other opinions and perspectives on this. People are going to come at it from different angles, see if you can be open to that for a couple of minutes here and there and number four again acknowledge anything that's coming up for you, any emotions positive. Hey, I want to do something about this. I mean most of us like the feel good piece that we see on a major network or some other affiliated network that's a tear jerker. I mean I tear up when we hear our national anthem. There's a lot of pride there. There's a lot of hope. There's a lot of caring wanting to do something for another person wanting to make an amends. Because there's one thing in this country, there's a lot of great things. There's one thing we do in this country, we know how that we when we get behind it, we know how to take care of our own and we rally other epidemics. There was HIV AIDS a lot of progress. Is there is it completely taken care of? No, a lot of progress. Is there people were dying on a daily basis from the terrible disease. The number of deaths here in L. A. Is going to reach 1000 From people living on the streets, 1000 deaths. We rally, we can get behind this. Thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to listen to this podcast. I look forward to hearing from you about this as well as the other podcasts that I've recorded and some of you have and I appreciate it. Um you have an opinion. I'm not gonna take it personally. I am going to take it as an opportunity to educate if I feel I'm educated myself and um yeah, that's it. Just looking to break down some of the defensiveness, taking things personally and some additional cultural conditioning some more awareness. That's it today. And that's something that I've been doing on a daily basis for quite a while. Thanks again for tuning in be well and I'll talk to you soon as we go in to the holidays. Take care. God bless.