To make this podcast accessible to those hearing impaired or who prefer to read rather than listen to podcasts, we offer the following AI-generated transcript. Yeah, it’s far from perfect. But it should be close enough to give those who aren’t able or inclined to learn from audio interviews a way to enjoy our episodes. Enjoy 🙂

Tim 0:00
You’re listening to Gratipreneurs from timy12.sg-host.com

you’re not afraid of catching lizards. 

Maisy 0:18
One time. He did me while I was playing with him. I didn’t even flinch. So that lizard that was going home and going. I’m really grateful she didn’t slip me when I’ve been

flying. millennium. Okay not slinging flinging keys away. I’m glad he was safe. Yeah, I didn’t even let go of him. He hit me. And I didn’t even notice it. And then when I looked down,

Tim 0:38
so you told them off me. So you were out there weeding and having to pull up weeds by your little fingers in the lavender? And you weren’t too happy about that, huh? But something changed to make you grateful. What was that? I went over to the stump to weed some. And I found some centers are two of them.

Maisy 1:03
chases to fund scissors. And you know what? caught one. Yeah, I caught him a few times, actually. Because every time I let him go, he didn’t even move, you know, while you were doing that mom was working in the garden planting and doing some transplants and removing some weed block and stuff. And what I was doing was I was hand tilling an area where I’m planting grapes. I mean, that was hard work. Because you know, I’m pushing that. Basically, it’s a Wheel Hoe with a tiller attachment, through that clay a soil and it was really hard. And I was working so hard, and it was like, physical work. But then when I looked over saw you, you know doing that and chasing the lizard, then I saw mom planting in the garden, it made me really, really grateful to have land to be able to grow things on and to work, you know, we have our animals and, you know, you know, I love to plant trees and plants, so many trees. And you know, we have all kinds of gardens and stuff like that. But it’s such hard work, right, mom? I mean, it’s so hard out there. But I wouldn’t but but I have surprised that all what I was feeling in the moment was just gratitude for that. And that’s what I wrote on the tree this morning, isn’t it?

Tim Young 2:11
And you wrote on the tree that you are grateful. You wrote on the wall today, the gratitude wall that you are grateful to have a woods. Yeah. Why is that?

Maisy 2:18
Because now we got what’s to walk in? Yeah. And corn sleeves and look for morels. Oh, it’s Morel season, starting this week. Wait, wait, wait, this time, instead of looking over there by the pond? Why not looking in the real forest? Go in the forest look for morels.

Liz 2:36
Yeah. So I bet when you guys were thinking about being grateful for lizards and land, you actually made some structural changes in your brain. Because the science is showing us that you can really make physical impact in your body just by being grateful and thinking about your gratitude.

Tim Young 2:53
Well, I don’t remember making any structural changes in my brain, maybe did you make any structural changes in your brain? So I don’t know what you’re talking about.

Liz 3:03
Well, you know, last week, we talked about how your body releases certain hormones, when you think about gratitude, and you actually have some physical changes. But you know, last week, Daddy and I also let out that we don’t actually practice gratitude on a regular basis, do we? So we make you do it, or we don’t make you do it, we encourage you to do it by keeping things on your gratitude tree and gratitude journals. But daddy and I just thought being grateful people was enough. And we don’t actually practice it or make a habit of doing anything with it. But the more than I’ve learned about the science behind gratitude, I’ve learned that there are a lot of things that we can do to actually enhance our our feelings of gratitude, and make them become even stronger and make it even more of a habit for us. So I wanted to talk to you about whether or not you think the things that daddy and I asked you to do like writing on your gratitude tree or writing in gratitude journals. Do you think that helps you at all? What are your thoughts on it?

Maisy 4:10
Because it does make me happier to think of gratitude.

Liz 4:15
But is it something that you would do on your own? Do you think you would stop to write in your journal just on your own? If it wasn’t if it wasn’t something that I said okay, let’s you know, take out our journal and write something in it.

Maisy 4:27
I don’t know. I actually pretty sure right now.

Liz 4:32
Yeah, it’s not really a habit yet. Right? Well, they rarely write in our journal at all. I mean, dad, just do a gratitude leaf every week. Yeah, one leaf a week.

Maisy 4:47
Right. Every Friday morning, you and I could do 100 leaves for a week. But I think about it that’s actually like to do more. Yeah, because it is fun to stick leaves on.

Tim Young 4:59
So It isn’t the gratitude expression as you’re like you like putting tape on the back of the leaves and slapping them on the wall

Maisy 5:04
Yeah. Because I’m glad I’m able to stick them on and just look at them. And they look like it is making a beautiful tree. Yeah. And today, I was grateful for trees on the gratitude tree. So I was grateful for James, he brought trees on the tree. See what I did there? I didn’t even notice.

Liz 5:32
Wow, you’re amazing? Well, I’ve been convinced over the research that I’ve been doing that keeping a gratitude journal or making some more of a practice of my gratitude is going to be beneficial for me. So I’m putting in some energy for that. But Daddy, you’re still not convinced. Right? You think that what you do with gratitude is enough?

Tim Young 5:55
Yeah, I mean, I believe that, to your point of the science, I believe that there are a lot of people that for whatever reason, have trouble recognizing opportunities to be grateful. And there’s a lot of, you know, pain and discomfort that comes with life, you know, whether it’s health issues, or whether it’s financial issues, or relationship issues, whatever it may be, it is possible to look at all the things that are wrong in situations, like, for example, maybe this morning, you know, you could have instead of being grateful for the tree, you could have been ungrateful that you’ve got to do school, maybe I’d rather watch TV, maybe I’d rather play or something like that, right. So a person can adopt that outlook on life, of seeing things through that colored lens of everything is grateful.

Maisy 6:40
Like, I think ungratefulness is a green lens or no, a gray,

Tim Young 6:47
gray or blue lens, I’m gonna say Lachlan blacklands. But but but there are many, many people. And that’s their natural lens. That’s who they are. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being that way. That’s just who they are naturally. But, but for people who are naturally like that, I believe that they need tools and strategies and tactics to help them appreciate the beauty of life and things that they can be more grateful for. And the benefit of them making that transition is that they become more joyful and more happy. So for people like that, yeah, I think a gratitude journal, or something else like that is necessary. But you know, me, Mom, you can answer this question yourself. I mean, I express gratitude all the time and every situation because I’m, I’m aware how lucky I was how lucky I was, for example, that my mom didn’t drop me on my head when I was a baby. You know, there’s a billion things like that, that that could have happened to me in my life, how lucky I was to be born in American how lucky I was to be born White is that we shouldn’t live in a world where that’s, that’s a benefit. But it’s a fact. You know, so there are a lot of things that happened in my life that I get no credit for, that I’ve benefited from. So I am always grateful for those kinds of things. And that’s my outlook on life. So I don’t see how a journal was going to help me see the world differently. What do you think? Well,

Liz 8:05
you know, when you want to play the guitar, wanting to learn how to play the guitar, what did you do? How did you go about doing that?

Tim Young 8:17
I just put on music. And I get my guitar out. And I kept playing and messing up until I learned how to play it.

Liz 8:23
So lots of practice, lots of practice. So if we, if you want to be healthy, you make it a habit to eat food that’s good for you, right? So if you wanted stronger muscles, you would exercise them a lot, right?

Tim Young 8:37
I look at pictures of guys with big muscles. And I try to will that to be me more than anything, and it’s not working. It’s not working at all.

Maisy 8:45
Maybe that’s because they’re just movie stars that have pillows in their suit?

Tim Young 8:52
Because I think it’s exactly what it is is photoshopped guys

Liz 8:55
anyway. Well, my point is that if you want something, to if you think of gratitude as a muscle, if you practice with it, and you exercise it, and you get in the habit of using it, it’s going to get stronger, and it’s going to be easier for you to use. And so maybe you have been able to do that over the years just by thinking about things that are grateful. But maybe for someone who’s like Macy’s age who hasn’t had that experience yet, doing something like keeping a gratitude journal gets them in the habit of doing that practice, or gives them that time to exercise their gratitude muscle a little bit to make it stronger. So things like gratitude journals can be helpful for certain people for certain situations, I guess. I was reading about a psychologist named Rick Hanson. And he’s written lots of books about changing your brain and the benefits of gratitude. And he did a study that found that if you focus on experience for at least 20 seconds, then it actually creates a structural change in your brain. It changes it opens neural pathways and synapses and actually makes a physical change in your brain. So what he found is that when you’re practicing gratitude, it’s important to take your time to think about what you’re grateful for, don’t just like pick something randomly and let the pat the thought pass through your mind and then move on. But instead, actually stop and experience it and think about it for at least 20 seconds. And it will make a bigger impact on on your feelings in even structural changes in your brain. So that’s why I think keeping a gratitude journal does that because if you’re going to stop and write about something, you have to give it some thought. And if you give it some thought, then you might be able to think more deeply about it or have stronger feelings about it. And also, the research that’s been done about learning things in education, they found that the more senses, you can stimulate while you’re learning about something, the better you’ll learn it and understand it. So instead of just letting the thought pass through your mind, but stopping and actually writing, and using your tactile and your motor senses of holding a pencil and actually writing words on pages, then that will make your learning about it and your understanding of it even better, even stronger.

Tim Young 11:12
Okay, so now I got a problem, because what you just said convinced me the gratitude journal, because for a couple reasons, one, not just the process of writing it, that makes sense to me that for a period of time, 20 seconds, whatever it may be, that makes sense to me that you’re concentrating on that specific thing that you’re grateful for. But then you’re able to look at it, I’m able to I’ve written and now I can sit there and stare at and think about it. So I’m still experiencing that moment of gratitude. But then I can go back later and look at it, and go back and look at the things I’ve been grateful for my life. And that kind of weaves this tapestry of gratitude that becomes your personality, which to me makes a lot of sense. Versus You know, it is I mean, I know it’s true at the hopefully, you know, it’s true that I do express gratitude all the time, through a throughout the day. So I’m innately grateful. But that’s a fleeting thing. Okay, I’m grateful that I have landed work now. While I was rocking my way. And then I do get back into that. So now I’m thinking about I don’t like rocks or something like that. Never have I become grateful for chiggers or, you know, no seams or things like that.

Maisy 12:14
I’m grateful for mosquitoes because they give blood transplants I think, because they go to one person suck the blood.

Tim 12:23
Yeah. And carry the disease to the next person.

Maisy 12:26
Yeah. So you know why? Because then they go to a person that’s really healthy. And then to a person that sick, he might accidentally drop some blood from the other

Liz 12:37
person. And they can pass on some good antibodies. No, no, that’s been proven. Yeah. But that’d be an interesting that makes COVID.

Tim Young 12:45
So back to your point. I mean, that makes sense to me to do a journal now. Whereas, you know, with Maisie when I homeschool her on Friday, I do a gratitude tree, but what do you do for her in terms of journaling?

Liz 12:54
Well, we’ve done journals over the years. So maybe we’re gonna look back at a journal that you did. I think this might have been kindergarten or first grade. And I asked you to write what you were grateful for. What’s your journal look like? Can you explain it?

Maisy 13:08
Well, it looks messy. It says i luv not l o v. And because I had to be fixed. I it says, I love my mommy so much.

Liz 13:26
So I said, Can you write something you’re grateful for? And you wrote that? And yeah, look, you you wrote one sentence and you drew a picture to write. So you started off with that. And then let’s look at your journal from this year that you’ve been working on. Can you explain what that one’s like?

Maisy 13:42
This one is much neater, but there are no pictures. I just write little notes like, Pokemon. I’m grateful for mom, Daddy, vacations, family front, then the next page of cardboard. And I wrote trampoline playing was lucky. My toys mom’s birthday.

Liz 14:02
So if you notice the things that you’re writing about, you have a lot of tangible things. What does that mean? Do you know? You write about tangible things. Things I have things you have things you can see maybe things you can hold. So when you’re first starting out writing a journal or any kind of practice like that, it’s normal to have just sort of simple ideas. So you see your dog run by and you say, Oh, I’m grateful for my dog. Or you see a new toy that you got that you like, and you say, Oh, I’m grateful for my toy. So there are things that you can see and that you can hold and that’s okay, because you’re just learning how to use your gratitude muscle and you’re also just learning how to write in journal so it’s okay that you’re just writing simple things and things that you can see you got to start somewhere. But I have been convinced to start a journal too. And this is one that I’ve been working on how does mine compared to yours?

Maisy 14:57
Yours is a lot more Look at that

Liz 15:02
page. And I don’t have pictures or anything. All just thought,

Tim Young 15:09
I’m grateful for dust.

Liz 15:12
Oh, no, I am not grateful for destiny

Maisy 15:14
to be grateful for does because that’s his dead skin coming off made it worse. Oh, gee, sorry, Mom, I guess I made you grateful for dead skin.

Tim Young 15:32
So you just started writing the journal I mean, so what’s the is this forced? I mean is hard to do I mean, what’s your process like for you?

Liz 15:38
It’s not actually I really look forward to taking those few minutes of quiet each day and just reflect and write on something. And you know, I find myself thinking about gratitude throughout the day more often. Because in the moment, I’m thinking, Gee, I wonder if I’m grateful for this moment or not, because I know later in the evening, I’m going to need to come up with something to write about. And so it’s not only gotten me to think about things throughout the day, but I also really look forward to those few minutes of quiet that I can write. But the thing that’s different about your journal, and my journal, is the way that I think about gratitude. So whereas yours are often tangible things, mine are often thoughts or ideas. So for example, the last page that I wrote in my journal, I got a new book about botany that I’ve really been enjoying reading. And I could have said, I’m grateful for my book, because that’s what I see. And that’s what I can hold. But what I really meant was that I was grateful for knowledge. I was enjoying learning from that book. And that’s what was really making me happy. But the fact that I was writing it in a journal, rather than just letting that idea, pass through my head, and then go away, it caused me to stop and say, wait a minute, let me think about this for a few minutes, like the researchers say. And I thought more deeply about it. And I became even more grateful, because I wasn’t just grateful for the knowledge, I was grateful that I had access to information. And I started thinking, Wow, it was so easy for me to get this book. And there are people in the world that don’t have access to books, can you imagine not being able to just go to the library and get a book if you want, or go to a store or order a book online, there’s something you want to learn about, but you can’t because you have no access to the information, we are so lucky. And so I not only was grateful for that book, for the knowledge for the access of information, but I actually sat and thought for, you know, two or three minutes about how amazing life is. And look, just thinking about it. Now I’m happy, I’m smiling, and is bringing back all those feelings of gratitude again, but you know, just that that little experience of writing in a journal one day for just a couple of minutes of my time, has given me this much joy and changed my thinking that much that I really do think I’ve made some structural changes in my brain, there’s something to this.

Tim Young 17:59
Well, I don’t know if you noticed, but over there, by the my library chair, I have a journal that I bought, like six months ago, with the intention of writing in it. And I wrote in it one day. And that was and I remember, like, you know, he was just but for me, it wasn’t a gratitude journal, I was just writing like, some notes for the day or whatever what happened or whatever. And I’ve never been able to get into the habit. Because Because I’ve always tried to do it like, well, I want to write a journal to recap my day and stuff. And I don’t think I’ll ever get in that habit. But the way you’re approaching it makes sense to me to have a specific thing to do, I want to reflect on what I’m grateful for or what I’m feeling. So I’m gonna try it again and see how it goes.

Liz 18:36
Well, and there’s all different kinds of ways of practicing gratitude. So in future podcasts, we’ll talk more about journaling. But we’ll talk about other ways too, if that way doesn’t work for you.

Tim Young 18:44
What you got to say me.

Maisy 18:47
Alright, he wrote in it once. But after that, he forgot about it and wrote in the dumpster.

Tim Young 18:55
Well, no, it’s over there. And it’s a it’s a great

Liz 18:57
day over there collecting dead skin cells, yes.

Tim Young 19:01
Which, by the way, won’t bother me at all. I’ll just do you know what any guy would do. I’ll just flick them on and off. And then they’ll go on the floor. And I assume somehow they’ll go away,

Liz 19:08
the maid will come

Tim Young 19:09
anyway. So you know, but I’ll go back and give it another shot. Because you know, something you said in the whole thing resonates with me now we’ll see whether or not I can make it a practice. I think you make it a practice. You know, if you make it a practice enough, you can get value out of it. And I think given up on a too quickly in the past. I’ll try it and see. So I don’t know, maybe, maybe maybe you’ll you’ll take up journaling to writing in your own journal. So I want to talk about business a little bit now transition from you know, gratitude, talk to our business. You said something in the last episode that I found interesting that I want to talk about with you. Because again, the whole idea is to help you learn and to teach you over time to give you the confidence so that she can start your own business and that’s why we’re doing this. You said you didn’t like the name gratitude garb in the last episode. Why is that?

Maisy 19:54
Because I don’t really like the garb.

Tim Young 19:58
You don’t like garb. But you know what Was garb even mean?

Maisy 20:01
It means fabric, but I don’t really like it

Liz 20:04
because it sounds like garbage.

Maisy 20:06
Yeah. And it also kind of makes me want to throw up.

Tim 20:12
Alexa, what does garb mean?

ALEXA 20:14
as a noun, garb is usually defined as a fashion or mode of dress, especially have a distinctive, uniform kind, as a verb garb is usually defined as to dress clothes.

Tim 20:26
I mean, so it just means clothing.

Maisy 20:28
Yeah, but still, ewe garb. Garb-age.

Tim Young 20:35
So, you know, not every company has, you know, like this really great name. I mean, like, what would you What would you name the business?

Maisy 20:43
I would have named it grateful place.

Tim Young 20:47
Grateful place. Okay. So that’s a good name. But, you know, in the old days, let’s say, like, 30 years ago, or longer, you can name a business pretty much anything as long as no one else has taken the name. But today, particularly with a business like gratitude garb, we’re selling online, right? People go to a website to order from us. So they have to go to gratitude. garb.com. So if you name your business grateful place, you would want the domain to be grateful. place.com. Right. But bad news, someone’s already taken that there’s already there’s only you can only get one address per person. so grateful place .com is taken

Maisy 21:27
grateful farm dog.com.

Tim Young 21:28
Well, you know what grateful farm dog.com probably isn’t taken, we didn’t have that idea. We look for a lot of different. We thought about a lot of different names. But one of the criteria that we use, then Sue choosing our name was can we get the URL, the URL is the name of the website. So amazon.com is a URL youtube.com is a URL google.com is a URL and gratitude. corp.com is a URL

Maisy 21:54
and I’m asleep. Right. But

Tim Young 21:57
you said last time that you did work crazy about the name gratitude guard when we came up with it. And I’m explaining to you that when you come up with a business name, particularly today, if it’s going to be an e commerce business that you sell online, I know, you have to get the website. So that was one thing about it. Now another thing about it is you want to come up with a business name that’s memorable. So is gratitude garb memorable?

Liz 22:22
Yeah, I think so. Because I like how the worst kind of go together they both start with

Tim Young 22:26
their alliterative, right?

Liz 22:27
And I like that, you know, it’s easy to say gratitude garb?

Tim Young 22:31
Yeah, don’t like Dinosaur Train.

Liz 22:32
It’s kind of gotten a little Yeah, it’s got a little thing.

Maisy 22:36
to it. No more Dinosaur Train Dad, I confiscate it from you. So how did I now mean confiscate?

Tim Young 22:44
So in choosing a business name, there’s a number of things to consider. One thing to consider is can you get the use of the website URL for that which we were able to? That’s one reason that we chose that name. and other one is, is it can it be memorable? Can you branded but you know, not every name once a company comes out with it is considered a great name. For example, you and I were watching a TV show last night on an app called Hulu. Right? What kind of name is Hulu? Yeah, right? Who Who? But I think I don’t remember this exactly. I think Hulu is the origin of Hulu is Chinese from the Chinese word for gourd or something like that. And I think that their idea was, Hey, can we, you know, have like, you know, a gourd or something that was something that holds a lot of stuff. Can we be a reservoir for a lot of content, a lot of TV and stuff like that. But the reason I’m sure they probably chose it was because Hulu, you know Is he is memorable.

Liz 23:39
It’s fun to say it’s

Tim Young 23:40
fun to say. And it’s only four characters, and they were able to get the domain hulu.com. So there, I’ve seen a number of restaurants and other businesses that have wonderful names, and they go out of business. So business success doesn’t have anything to do with did you choose the perfect name. There are a lot of companies that have what I consider to be mediocre names, but they have very successful business models they have executed really well. So choosing a great name doesn’t mean that you’re going to be successful. But you can’t use a terrible name. I have seen some terrible business names that distract when it couldn’t when a consumer wants to buy from you. They’re like, well, I’m really put off by that name. I don’t think gratitude guard will put off anybody, but no one’s gonna listen to it go wow, that’s like the greatest name ever. But it works doesn’t look good enough name.

Liz 24:30
It has to do with what we are businesses carb is clothing. Gratitude is what we want to spread. So it has to do with our business. It’s easy to say gratitude garb. And it’s pretty memorable. So and we could get the domain.

Tim Young 24:43
Yeah. And what would be cool is if anybody listen to this podcast would actually go to the show notes for this podcast on our website on gratitude. grog.com and they can comment they can say do a name is les. Or do that name is great or whatever, so we can hear what people say,

Maisy 24:57
dude like that pig.

Tim Young 25:00
Do you like the pig? So does that make sense to you? That’s why we chose the name.

Maisy 25:04
Yeah, well, it’s just that. I don’t really like the name.

Liz 25:09
Maybe it’ll grow on you over now?

Maisy 25:11
I don’t think so. Still garb,

Tim 25:15
okay.

Tim Young 25:18
We’ll see if we can turn garb into a positive thing,

Liz 25:20
but work on it.

Tim Young 25:21
I think that’s enough for this week, we’ve talked about why we’re grateful. We’ve come up with strategies that here is going to start writing a gratitude journal.

Maisy 25:28
So we’ll stop writing in it and he’ll be at the bottom.

Tim Young 25:34
And we will and you can report back whether or not you know, we’re doing that, but we’ll see. And you’ll keep writing in your journal.

Liz 25:40
I am I like it. Me too. I

Maisy 25:42
like writing notes on my journal.

Tim Young 25:45
So they let you do yours in the next week, and then we’ll report back on our findings. Well,

Maisy 25:50
it’s time to wrap up the podcast wrap up this episode.

Tim 25:55
Okay, so until next time,

Maisy 25:57
bye.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai