Understanding culture and customs is a really important part of your travel experience. So let's explore a little bit. First of all, what are we talking about what is culture? There's so many different definitions. But here's one that I like to use. The shared knowledge and systems have meaning in a society, basically, how a society organizes itself around certain symbols and knowledge about how people should behave, how they should interact, what their values are, and what their beliefs are.

They are the social and behavioral norms in a society. Basically, the glue that keeps a society together in terms of expectations about how people should interact, how they should behave, and what they should do. And these things are passed down into general generationally through different generations. And that's basically how culture continues and perpetuates itself. The older generation teaches and passes these expectations and these norms and these behaviors down to the next generation. What is a custom, a custom is a little more narrowly defined.

It's basically a traditional, widely accepted way of behaving that is specific to a particular society, place or time. That's pretty similar to culture, but culture, it campuses a much wider range of things, things like values and beliefs, and customs and excuse me traditions. However, customs are more specifically defined as behaviors, things that people do. So customs are actually part of a larger culture. There's this idea called the cultural iceberg. And this basically says that there are certain aspects of culture that are easily seen observed and identified.

These are things on the surface, things like food and language and music. In ways of dress and the flags that are associated with the culture, holidays, performing arts, visual arts, these are all things that are on the surface and that we can easily point to and say that's a part of culture. But just like an iceberg, there's a whole lot of culture that's underneath the surface. Sometimes it's referred to as deep culture. And these are the things that are often the unspoken or even unconscious beliefs that actually influenced those things that are more observable things like values and body language, gender roles, ways of leadership, leadership styles, even something as basic as notions of the self who who is a person who is an individual attitudes towards age, attitudes towards so social status, etiquette rules, expectations around politeness, religious beliefs, there's so many things even things such as the importance of time time how people approach time, notions of cleanliness approaches to problem solving.

These are all of the unspoken deep level cultural things that we often can't really point our finger to or easily observe, but they are actually probably much more important than those surface level cultural things. So once again, culture is so such a wide range of values, beliefs, and practices, things such as language, religion, food, folk art, but other things that aren't so easily identifiable or easy to point out child rearing methods, sometimes there can be very subtle or small differences and how different cultures approach child rearing things like how you actually express your manners, and one culture you might think it's important to always say please and thank you, and in another culture that might actually be considered rude because it might indicate that you think The person won't do is not supposed to actually extend their courtesy to you. So there's so many parts of culture many seen in many unseen.

And part of travel is that you get to experience some of the joys of experiencing different cultures, things that activate your senses. I call it a very visceral experience, things like new foods, experiencing or listening to different music and the dances that go along with it. Participating in different festivals. So many people travel around the world to go to different Carnival festivals, music festivals, there's a festival in the desert in Mauritania. So there's so many parts of culture that is that are so exciting, you know, interesting customs and traditions. You can learn a lot by going for example, to weddings, or observing things like baby naming ceremonies.

What What do societies do with a baby when a mother first gives birth and how do they treat the mother when she first gives birth. There's so many opportunities to observe some of these interesting customs and practices and traditions. There are also opportunities to actually learn about things, you know big topics like history and art and ancient civilizations by going and experiencing a new culture. So these are very exciting and joyful parts of new cultures. Again, once you see things like how people dress, you also might get a glimpse into things like how men and women are expected to relate to each other, or how older people and younger people are expected to relate to each other. What people do at weddings or other festivities and celebrations, very joyful things to experience.

Other traditions around food and things like hospitality in many cultures, serving tea or coffee, or even having ceremony Tony's around how you specifically serve people, tea and coffee. Those are part of some of the traditions and customs that are very important things such as what you do with a bride when she's about to get married, or what you do with a young person when they're about to go off to school. So again, very fascinating and interesting experiences around experiencing different cultures. The other thing is experiencing other different cultures or other cultures can cause you to actually reflect on your own culture and be more mindful and aware of what are some of the values, the surface level level cultures, cultural values, and also some of the deeper cultural values that are important to you. So you actually become more curious about your own culture and customs.

Maybe there are things that you didn't know about your own culture and customs that you're now curious about and once you research, but you also get to see how connected we are so part of Experiencing different cultures, different being the operative word is that you see how divergent and how different we are all across the world. But you also get to see some commonalities with especially when you think things like weddings and baby naming ceremonies, and even customs around death, you see that these are often experiences that we all have, despite our differences in cultural backgrounds, so you get to actually see how connected we all are. And that can be a pretty profound experience. And as a result, you actually can learn more about yourself. I always say that one of the aspects of travel that really facilitates self learning and self knowledge is interacting with vastly different cultures.

Very, you know, important to contemplate who you are in the wider scheme of the world and being a world citizen. But we also know that one of the ways that cultures differ is through values, again, those deeper level level things that influence the surface level cultures. And so there have been many researchers that have pointed out some of the key ways that societies across the globe different in terms of their cultural values. One is what's called this, this continuum of what we call individualism versus collectivism. individualism is where you give priority to individuals. And that's sort of what we see in many Western cultures.

That is really about what you as an individual want, what are your preferences? What are your goals, what are what is it that you want to do, but collect societies that focus more on collectivism, they give more of a priority to the group group cohesion, that it's important to go along, for example, with what your family wants, or what your ethnic group wants or what your society wants that group cohesion and priority to the group's goals. More important than priority to individual goals. There's something else called high power distance versus low power distance. And then a society that values high power distance. There's more of a hierarchical social structure that is really important that you respect people's titles and their status, whether it's something like a government official or a chief of a village or the the patriarch or matriarch of the family, that that hierarchy and within the family and even in workplaces is very important to respect and sometimes very rigid.

Societies that have more of a low power distance, again, may focus more on equal treatment, that it really doesn't matter what your status or your title is that people can, you know, be expected to interact equally. There is another dimension that's called quantity of life versus quality of life, quantity of life. Be where there is a focus again in many Western societies on valuing competition and achievement in reaching your individual goals, versus being more focused on valuing relationships, for example, focusing on taking care of the elderly, even if it's at the expense of your individual achievement or goals. So it's that quality of focusing on relationships that can be much more important than any individual goals. Also, there's this idea of high uncertainty versus low uncertainty societies and high uncertainty societies, people in general, the society in general tends to avoid uncertainty. So not necessarily going out and doing activities that are, you know, considered adventurous if it's not known what the outcome would be, that people in in these sort of societies would tend to be much more focused on continuing customers.

Traditions doing things the way they've always been done. And in low uncertainty societies, people seem to be more comfortable with uncertainty trying the unknown, doing. Even things like travel, right traveling to unknown places. This might be a value that's associated with the low uncertainty society because people might feel more uncomfortable with exploring the unknown. And then finally, there's this idea of a long term focus versus a short term focus, and societies that have a long term focus. They're constantly thinking about the future, people might be raised to really focused on what they're going to do next, what the future generations are going to do planning 10 1520 and future generations ahead.

We're short, short term societies might focus more on a present focus where you really focus on a day to day what your relationships what's going on in your immediate surroundings. And keeping that stable as opposed to really thinking too far ahead in the future. So these are some general ways that societies might differ in their values and the way that values may differ across cultures. And they could influence things such as the decisions that people make, how they interact with authority figures, how they plan for their future or not, or even the activities that they're willing to participate in. So I've always found this very fascinating, because these differences can often account for some of the more tangible differences that we see in people's behaviors and traditions and practices across cultures. So given those differences, there actually can be many difficulties in interacting with different cultures.

And you know, as you see with those different values, worldviews can clash. And this can lead to misunderstandings in the meaning of behavior. So one person might do something and have one intention behind it. But it could be misunderstood or misinterpreted in terms of the intention or meaning, and expressions of values and even politeness can often be mis misinterpreted. So, just in terms of how you should greet each other in a first meeting, and this is something that is often talked about in terms of cross cultural business interactions. So this is an Asian man who's saying, Why is she trying to shake my hand?

And she is saying, Why is he bowing? This is a clash of worldviews of expressions of politeness, where the way that each of these parties thinks that you show politeness and hospitality and greet someone is completely different. So, these are some of the downsides, some of the clashes that come with cultures, even in terms of how women are viewed in terms of their dress in society, so On the left, you have a woman who is, you know, espousing a Western view of what's acceptable for women to wear. And she's looking at the woman on the right, who's from a Middle Eastern culture. And she's saying everything is covered, but her eyes What a cruel male dominated culture. And the woman on the right from the Middle Eastern background is saying, nothing covered, but her eyes What a cruel male dominated culture.

So they both see each other as somewhat being oppressed. And this is because they're different worldviews, different values about how women should be presenting themselves in public devalues around modesty, and so forth. And there's a special note about language, how language can actually be one way that the cultural clashes are expressed. And so very important values are Often reflected in speech and language. And I don't mean necessarily, if you're speaking a different language, even if both people are speaking Spanish or English or French, but they're coming from different cultural backgrounds, there can be misunderstandings that come from things like asking inappropriate questions. So in some Western countries, it's, you know, it's okay to go up and make small talk with people and ask certain questions about their political views or even their religion.

But in other societies, those kinds of questions might be considered rude or too intrusive. So even if people are speaking the same language, so to speak, their actual way of communicating is different because of their culture. There could be misunderstandings that come from failing to apologize. So I know in some cultures where there's you know, large crowds there, it's very crowded and personal space often, you know, There's very little personal space people might be bumping up against you or being really close to you, and people from societies where if you even just violate someone's personal space a little bit, you would apologize. And so in those two instances, there might be a cultural clash where in the society that's used to big crowds, an individual wouldn't even, you know, think to apologize if they stepped on your foot or brushed past you or shoved you and the other person is expecting an apology.

Also, there have been a lot of language clashes around giving compliments that seem rude. And so this even happened to me once where I was interacting with a woman who had this was in Sudan, actually, and she had a newborn newborn baby who was a few months old, and he was such a cute little baby. And I noticed and he was a very chunky baby and I noticed how he was very cute and such a big, chunky baby and everybody looked behind They thought that that was a compliment that was inappropriate and it seemed rude. Okay, so and it wasn't a matter of language, I was actually speaking to her in Arabic, the little bit of Arabic that I knew, but just that type of compliment was considered rude. And so, so many important values are reflected in speech and language. And therefore this can be a source of misunderstandings, whether you speak the language or you're trying to learn the language.

So the takeaway around understanding different cultures and customs is that awareness is key. First of all, just basic awareness that differences are often unseen and unspoken, that there can be differences that you can see such as the way people dress, the foods that they eat, the holidays that they celebrate the religions that they practice, but so many differences are actually unseen and unspoken things like how you give a compliment or what Do if you bump into someone or what? How you are expected to greet someone. These things are often unseen and unspoken. And even there's their unconscious to the members of the society because it's just a part of the culture that they're used to practicing. So another important thing is that awareness of your own surface and deep level culture can be really important.

Just thinking to yourself, how much personal space do I value? Or am I expecting and that can help you to be aware of when you go somewhere and you notice that personal space is treated differently. So it will make it you know, much easier for you to see that as a cultural difference than to see someone else's being rude or trying to hurt you, or trying to do something negative. So awareness of your own surface and deep culture can really help you to identify when there's a possible clash of cultures. There's a possible misinterpretation or misunderstanding. So that said, you have a cultural awareness challenge.

Number one you are to identify one cultural value or custom from your own culture. And when I ask people to do this, it's usually pretty simple. But sometimes people feel like, wait a minute, what is my culture? Do I even have a culture? What are customs, what are values. So sometimes it might take a little bit for you to really think about and identify your own cultural values and customs.

But this is very important for that key takeaway, which is awareness of your own background. And then number two is you should identify one cultural value or custom from the next country you plan to visit. So up to this point, we've been doing a lot of research and a lot of challenges around helping you to figure out where you are definitely going next, or where you think you might want to go next. So maybe you've already pimped incidence, or maybe you just have a few options in mind. Either way, just pick a country that you think you might plan to visit next, and do a little research, you have your websites that we've talked about in the previous section. And you can identify one cultural value or custom from that country.

And then take a minute to see if there's any difference between what you identify as your own cultural value, or custom and what you've identified from the country that you plan to visit. And so one of my favorite authors who wrote the alchemists and who really understands the power of understanding culture and travel, says culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers, but first, they have to understand that their neighbor is in the end just like them With the same problems, the same questions. And so I think that harkens back to one of the benefits of interacting with different cultures is that you get to see that despite so much difference and the divergence and values and customs and practices and beliefs at the core, we're all just groups of humans who are striving to, you know, have to answer some basic questions and to live a quality life.

So I'll leave you with that. And I hope that you can really get something beneficial out of this challenge of identifying your own cultural values and beliefs and customs and that of the next country that you plan to visit. Good luck.