Gratipreneurs is a show about our family’s journey to build a business based on gratitude and fight cystic fibrosis. Each week we’ll share our experiences on entrepreneurship and teaching kids how to start a t-shirt apparel business, living a more mindful and simple life, and, most important, how to be more genuinely grateful and joyful. Of course, we’ll also touch on homeschooling and homesteading since that’s central to our lifestyle.
In this first episode of Gratipreneurs, we discuss:
- The pros and cons of gratitude journaling
- The science of gratitude
- How a homeschool lesson led to the creation of Naturally Grateful
- Why it’s important to teach our daughter to be a kidpreneur
- and more
We appreciate your support at timy12.sg-host.com and helping us to fight cystic fibrosis. Thanks for tuning in and enjoy the episode!
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Podcast Transcript
A Slightly "Less than Perfect" Transcript
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.
Maisy 0:08
I thought maybe for lunch today, I’d have a sandwich that says, gratitude garb on top and some writing somehow.
Liz 0:16
How would you write? About with jelly?
Maisy 0:19
How about with frosting?
Tim Young 0:23
So are you grateful for frosting? Is that what I’m hearing?
Liz 0:26
Yeah. All right. Can
you define gratitude?
Unknown Speaker 0:32
Yeah. Grateful you are happy and joyful and have fun.
Liz 0:38
So gratitude is it does make you happy. Yeah. But what does it mean to be grateful?
Maisy 0:45
It means to be
grateful means to be thankful for what you have to be thankful. Yeah, to be appreciative. Sure.
Unknown Speaker 0:56
Do you think you can be in a hurry and be grateful at the same time?
Unknown Speaker 1:02
Yeah, maybe while you’re running, you could say, I’m grateful for life.
Unknown Speaker 1:08
Okay, fair enough. But it seems to me that maybe your body’s moving. But it seems to me that your mind has to slow down, and to think about the moment to be grateful. I mean, it seems like when I find that when I’m grateful, I’m stopping. And I’m thinking about what specifically, I feel gratitude towards. And it’s hard to do that, if I’m wondering, when I’m in rushing mode, and I’m getting a lot done, and I’m working, it’s really hard to think about gratitude. But you know, one of the things that’s always confused me lives is like, if you do a search on gratitude, there’s, there’s these things mazey called gratitude journals, people buy gratitude journals all the time. If you go to Amazon and type in gratitude, first thing you see is a gratitude journal. And there’s like hundreds of them, and people buy them to write down what they’re grateful for, or they have prompts in their like, name someone you’re grateful for, or a name of food that you’re grateful for, or something like that. And I’ve never done a gratitude journal, because it just didn’t make sense to me. But I mean, what do you think about that?
Liz 2:05
I’ve never done one either. How about you may
Maisy 2:09
have never really done a gratitude journal. But sometimes I do one. Every once in a while.
Liz 2:16
Daddy and I have kind of taught you to do gratitude journals. And like you got to treat Yeah, gratitude tree. Usually Scott, start your school day off with daddy by putting something on your gratitude tree. And we start our week off in school by putting something in gratitude journal, and you’ve done gratitude journals. We’ve done those in school for a few years. So why do you think we tell you to do it? And then Daddy, and I don’t do it ourselves? Because you do it? Mom? You do it every once in a while you do it every day. whenever you can. I have started. But I didn’t used to.
Maisy 2:49
Well, I think because you two are already grownups and you’re trying to teach me because you guys haven’t taught your who self?
Liz 3:00
Yeah, so I always thought that I did practice gratitude. Because I’m a grateful person. And throughout my day, I tend to think about things that I’m thankful for, and things that I’m appreciative appreciative of. And if I ever you find something that makes me upset, I tried to change my thinking and turn it into a positive outlook, you know, what could I find good in this situation? What can I be grateful for here, even though I’m feeling bad. And so I always thought that’s practicing gratitude, because I’m a grateful person. And I guess it kind of is. But, you know, as I started studying, like the research that scientists are doing about gratitude, I’ve been convinced that I can do a lot more to help myself. And one of the ways that I can do more is to do something like a gratitude journal. But there’s tons of ways to practice gratitude. But the idea is that you actually practice it, you actually make it a habit, and you do something every day. And I hadn’t been doing that I hadn’t been sitting down and actually doing something with my gratitude. I just been thinking about it as the day went on. Well, what’s the benefit of that? I
Tim 4:03
mean, if you’re, if you’re already a grateful person, like you said, you are, and I believe you to be there. And what’s the benefit of actually practicing gratitude by
Maisy 4:12
because she makes sure he keeps being grateful. Because one day he might forget, and she wants to write down being grateful.
Liz 4:21
That’s true. So there’s been actual research done. I mean, when people talk about gratitude, it’s like, oh, doesn’t that feel good? Doesn’t that make you happy to be grateful for things, but there’s actual scientific research and experiments that have been done, about how being grateful and practicing gratitude can make actual real changes in your body, like the wiring and the structure of your brain can change the hormones that your body releases can change. If you’re if you force yourself or stop yourself, I shouldn’t say force yourself, but if you take the time to stop yourself, and actually do something with your gratitude, such as write it down. So there was a study that scientists Did where they it was the scientists of the University of Southern California, about a group of psychologists, I think it was, they got together a bunch of people. And they told them to imagine that they were in a bad situation like a bad life threatening situation. And someone came and pretend someone comes and gives you a gift that saves your life, like a gift of food, or clothing or shelter. And that helps you out. So you’d be really grateful for that gift, right. And when they did that, they had the participants wear electrodes and hook wires up and things like that to their brain so that they could take a brain imaging scan, which actually shows the electricity and, and the activity in your brain while you’re thinking of things. And it showed that when they thought about something that made them feel grateful, certain areas of their brain lit up, all of the energy went there. And it activated is called their prefrontal cortex, which is in the frontal lobe of their brain. Yeah. And
Maisy 6:04
if you hit it hard enough, bonk,
Tim 6:07
let the record show she smacked her head.
Liz 6:11
But where’s your frontal lobe? All right, where’s your frontal lobe? What are you doing,
Maisy 6:17
they can’t, they can’t see you on the podcast, oh, I’m smacking my forehead.
Liz 6:22
If you smack yourself in the forehead, which you should do it gently. That’s your frontal lobe of your brain. And when you think of grateful thoughts, and when you feel gratitude, that is the part of your brain that gets activated. But you know what, that’s also the part of your brain that’s responsible for making you feel less stress. And for making you feel loved feeling strong emotions like that. So by activating that part of your brain, you can feel happy and you can feel loved. And you can feel relaxed, just by thinking about gratitude.
Tim 6:51
Imagine a world where people feel loved, happy and relaxed. And imagine all this conflict and division that we have everywhere. And everybody seems to be, I don’t know, digging in their heels and on different sides. So imagine if everyone felt more grateful how they might at least approach the table, and at least be willing to listen to somebody.
Liz 7:11
A few days ago, you and I were outside working on our rabbit area we keep rabbit Yeah.
Maisy 7:18
Was a bit
ungrateful.
Liz 7:23
You were a grumpy Gus.
Oh, boy. Why were you so grumpy about that? I didn’t know. Like it.
It was pretty hot that day. And I was asking you to do some chores and some work. We were trying to fix some fencing in our rabbit area, and you just wanted to play you did not want to be working. The tools weren’t cooperating. And you were not feeling good at all. But what did we do? We
Maisy 7:48
tried to be grateful. But
Liz 7:52
no, I think it worked anyway.
Maisy 7:56
A little bit. But for me,
Tim 7:59
what did mom gave you some tips on when you were not feeling grateful out there? That mom gave you some strategies and tips on how you could become grateful?
Maisy 8:06
Yeah.
Liz 8:07
What did you do?
Maisy 8:10
I tried to say I was grateful at least I have rabbits to do this for but it didn’t really make me happier. No. And
Liz 8:21
then I said, and I’m grateful, even though it’s hard. I’m grateful that we have a nice sunny day to do work. And it’s not raining on us or anything.
Maisy 8:28
I’d actually I actually said that I’d be happier if it were raining. Because then it cooled me down.
Liz 8:36
Well, I saw your attitude change, you maybe didn’t notice it, but I definitely did. Because you stopped being grumpy. And instead you came over and you gave me a hug and we had a little cuddle. And then you said, Okay, let’s finish up. And so maybe you weren’t thrilled about having to do the work you would have rather played. But when you stop to think about why you were doing the work and how you were grateful for rabbits, and how we talked about well, at least it’s a nice day, and we’re together, it did sort of change your attitude a little bit. And that is because you activated the part of your brain that helps you feel those better emotions. And also scientists have found that it releases hormones when you practice gratitude. And we call them the feel good hormones. hormones are chemicals.
Maisy 9:19
I know that I know all that stuff. So she’s eight. So what I know it all I’m almost mine and just know kids consider summers free from grades
Tim 9:36
for summer coming up
Liz 9:38
last summer. So you can actually do some learning right now. So what are hormones then if you know it all,
Maisy 9:45
hormones are this chemical that releases into your brain and there they are, what causes headaches, and there are also what causes gratitude And things like
Tim 10:00
that that’s bourbon. In both cases, headaches and gratitude are
Liz 10:05
quite, but they are chemicals that are released in your body, and they do have an effect on you. And our bodies have all kinds of chemicals. So you can release chemicals or hormones like melatonin to help you fall asleep. Your body has growth hormones to help you grow. But when you think about something you’re grateful for your body releases hormones like dopamine and serotonin, and oxytocin. And those are all hormones that we call the feel good hormones. They’re ones that help you feel relaxed and help you feel pleasure. And so when I saw you out at the habitat, and we started to feel, think about things that we were grateful for, I saw your expression change from grumpy, furrowed brow frowny face to smile, and you looked a little bit lighter. And you didn’t even realize that that was happening. But stopping and forcing yourself to think about what you are grateful for actually changed a little bit of what was going on in your body physically, which helped you to enjoy the day a little bit more, even though you still had to work
Maisy 11:05
on the podcast show that I’m sticking out like her and telling her she’s Cuckoo.
Tim 11:12
not buying oil. Think about it this way. Would you rather I mean, this is a little bit of a trick question. But seriously, would you rather feel upset? Or would you rather feel happy? Right. I mean, there’s times Listen, there’s times when all of us are upset, or sad, or melancholy or something happens, and we get a little bit down. Now, if we want to feel that way, sometimes it’s okay to want to feel that way. Well, my Steelers lose, I want to feel sad. I don’t want to be happy in that moment. When that happens. I want to feel sad. I don’t want anyone making me feel happy. But a few minutes later, I can use a strategy of gratitude to say, Well, at least they gave me a lot of entertainment this year, at least you know, I have football to watch. At least I can look forward to next year. So just like you had that experience with the rabbits out there had to work hard gratitude. When you practice it can be a tool that you can use to change how you feel from being down to feeling up. What do you think about that?
Unknown Speaker 12:13
I think that’s kind of good. Yeah. I
Unknown Speaker 12:16
mean, it makes sense, right? It’s it’s a strategy you can use,
Liz 12:18
but it’s something that takes practice, too. So that’s why we always ask you to do things like keep gratitude journals and stuff like that. And that’s why we often talk to you when things aren’t going your way we try to say well, what can you be grateful for in this moment, is something that you have to practice. But what scientists have found is that the more you practice it, the easier it becomes. And so that’s one reason that keeping a gratitude journal can be really helpful. And I’ve actually changed my mind on it that even though I’m a grateful person, I wasn’t actually practicing my gratitude. I was thinking about it, but I wasn’t doing anything with it. And so I’ve started keeping a gratitude journal. And we’re going to talk about lots of ways and upcoming podcasts about how you can practice your gratitude. And over time, how that’s going to become easier for you. And for me, and for all of us. Any anyone who practices it, it becomes a habit, and then you don’t really even have to think about it anymore.
Tim 13:08
All right, well, I’ll watch you with that, because I’m not doing a gratitude journal. Oh, boo. Well, I mean, Mr. bonzo, Dad, do a gratitude journal, or he is a booth who I think that I’m able to think very often and most moments about ways to be grateful there’s so much around me to be grateful for I always feel that way. I don’t feel like I need a tool like that. Plus, I don’t like writing my hands. You know, I have a hard time writing like that. So I don’t want to do it. But
Maisy 13:36
I’m gonna say it for that you even have fingers, dad.
Tim 13:42
So what about this business? We have Maisie so I know you love saying the name. What’s the name of the business? gratitude guard, you got to enunciate on a podcast. So I don’t know I keep wanting to have a theme song for every time I hear gratitude garb. I think about the song to Dinosaur Train. Do you remember that show? Dinosaur Train? Yeah. Gratitude, garb? gratitude. Gratitude guard.
Maisy 14:14
So, obviously, you’re just trying to be healing on the contrast. And we might even need to redo this.
Tim 14:21
Yeah, we have to edit that out. But listen, so you know, we did something. I don’t know if you realize this, but we have done something in two months. That’s pretty amazing that a lot of people want to do but sometimes don’t get around to doing and that is we came up with an idea for a business. And then we actually acted on that idea and turn it into a reality. So you tell me you tell us how did we come up with this idea was right here in this room? Right. You and I. So how do we how do we do it?
Maisy 14:47
We decided to have a business. And at first, I thought it should be we thought it should be graduate garb and Reese. DeCosta Yeah, like a sticker. Thinking to think, Well, you
Tim 15:01
know what it was that you may not remember everything in the lesson. This was a homeschool lesson that I was doing with you about coming up with a business. But I said, we got to start with some criteria, like, you know, not I don’t mean what kind of business? What do you want out of the business? For example, what are the things that we wanted was a lifestyle business so we could do it together? For example, we could start a business mom could start a business that she would have to go somewhere to a building, right? So then she might have to leave all day long and go somewhere to accompany. We wouldn’t want that,
Maisy 15:30
would we? No, we wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t want that. Hey, definitely not mom. She wants to sleep in on the weekend. Friday. Eight o’clock is pretty late, isn’t it? And the side, the sides. We were late. I was supposed to get to school at eat. But instead, I nearly got there at night. So who
was the one that slept in today? Mom?
Tim 15:58
Well, it’s a good thing that we homeschool then. So if you sleep late, we start an hour late and we go longer. It’s no big deal. That’s the nice thing about that. But one of the things we talked about when we were starting with our business talk a couple months ago was we wanted a lifestyle business one that you and I mom could do together. But we also wanted a business. If you remember this, we wanted to come up with a business idea that we could do from anywhere. Like soon as we’d like to travel, right? Remember, a couple years ago, we traveled for like three weeks and went to all the national parks out on the southwest, you know, the Grand Canyon, Xi’an and all those things? Well, if we wanted to do something like that, again, we want to be able to have our business and be able to earn money while we’re doing that, right. So we couldn’t do that if we had a physical business business where we had to be at the place all the time. So one of our criteria was, was that we also wanted a business so we could do from anywhere. And that led us to this idea that you know, of having an online business, but the reason we chose gratitude guard was you and I just finished writing on the gratitude tree on the wall. So
Maisy 17:00
we haven’t finished we still got like a bald spots. And besides that have been a little loud. So man, please.
Tim 17:09
Okay, don’t mention bald spot around me I get very anxious about. But yes, we have some bald spots on the gratitude tree, we still have more leaves to put but that day, we had finished our gratitude lesson of what we are grateful for that day. So we said, Wait a minute. We’re great, more grateful people are always talking about the benefits of spreading gratitude. And we want to have a business together and we wanted to be an online business. What about a business where we can inspire people to be more grateful? And so the idea was spreading gratitude by wearing gratitude. Right?
Liz 17:38
That’s a great slogan. Yeah. And
Maisy 17:42
even better, I also think that we should get more designed to more products on graduate garb. Like, try to make more designs on grad who guard.
Liz 17:55
I’m sure we will you got to start somewhere, though, right?
Maisy 17:58
Like maybe a shirt that says gratitude. And it has like, a video game bang on it or something. Oh, cool. Yeah. Comic Book,
Tim 18:14
like a kid. Sure. Yeah. You know, we’ve got a lot of serious designs on our on a roll, I
Unknown Speaker 18:19
met Mr.
Tim 18:20
Raditude. We’ve got serious designs, you know, like grateful and happy. And my attitude is gratitude. And those are what’s called poignant design, which means they’re, they’re meaningful designs for people. But actually, the first idea you had was you wanted to create a little onesie for a baby with a
Maisy 18:36
message that said, let me let me it’s supposed to say, grateful for your bottle.
Tim 18:46
Your first idea for sure, it was grateful for my bottle and a little maybe, but you know, hey, I’m sure I’m sure the kid is grateful for the bottle. So that’s actually what happened. I mean, so just so you know, I mean, part of what we want to do in our homeschool class with you is teach you give you the confidence to conceive a business and start a business. But you know, there was a lot of people you’re going to find in life that say, Oh, I wish I had a business, I want to start a business. And then they never do. Because it’s one thing to have an idea. But you if you don’t act on your idea, your idea will always stay a wish. But if you want your dreams to come true, you got to take action. And that’s what we’ve done.
Liz 19:23
We had a little bit of criteria, then when you were thinking of what type of business so what was some of the criteria?
Maisy 19:30
Like? I don’t really think about grad who garb is really a good name. We’ve really thought about that because garb.
Tim 19:40
Okay. Mom’s question was, remember, I just talked about we had some criteria that were important to us. Do you remember what those criteria were? What is criteria? And so what are the requirements? What were the list of needs that we had?
Maisy 19:53
We saw how we’ll sell?
Tim 19:56
Yeah, we wanted to have a lifestyle business, right.
Maisy 19:58
And we needed to know Well, we’ll sell or something,
Tim 20:02
right? We couldn’t we didn’t have a physical place. We wanted to be able to sell from anywhere, right?
Maisy 20:07
Like, even if we were in Europe, we really are. Yeah.
Tim 20:11
No, we’re not. Alright, so congratulations on knowing that.
Liz 20:15
So we could be anywhere and the business could still run. Yeah. Okay. So that’s an online business. Yeah. And when did you have any other criteria?
Maisy 20:26
Yeah, we also had our name, Brad who garb. And we also had other things like, how we’ll sell what will sell how we’ll buy, how we’ll get customers, and daddy sometimes calls it, fishing boat, customer,
Tim 20:45
customers, but I had written a one page business plan template for you fill in the blank. And I asked you to fill that out that day. Because remember, in our lesson, you’re the one who wrote the business plan, in your words. I mean, I guided you, but you wrote the plan. And then when we got to the area about money, profits, we said here’s only make money, what do we want to do with it? And so what did we decide there? that was important to our business?
Maisy 21:08
We could use it to help cystic fibrosis. And we are going to we’re going to do it. Jude’s hospital. cystic fibrosis in other places. Yeah.
Liz 21:17
Yeah. So why was that important to us?
Maisy 21:19
Because it cystic fibrosis is dangerous for little kids. And it is affecting one of our little friends. Oh,
Tim 21:27
you got a buddy that’s dealing with it? Yeah. whole family deals with it. Right?
Maisy 21:31
Yeah, they have to do this routine. And they put the face mask and it goes, God, God, God, God.
Tim 21:39
What is it? And what does he think? Or say? Or what happens then?
Maisy 21:43
Well, he asked to breathe in this medicine that helps us cystic fibrosis. And he’s
Tim 21:47
what five years old? Yeah, yep. And what is it? What is his sister do while he’s getting that treatment?
Maisy 21:55
He usually keeps him company gives them toys and to play with and sits around and helps achieve and redo him or something? Yeah, he reads to him every once in a while.
They have to do as a family, they do it every morning and every night for his whole life.
For his whole life, um, how about when they come up with the medicine? I think they should have an idea to make sure he doesn’t have to go for teen.
Tim 22:25
Yeah. But I mean, what, you know, this couple will kind of wrap up the podcast episode in a couple of minutes. But what a great idea that we have, right? We have an idea for a business for our family that you and I and mom can continue to work together, we already spent all of our time together. So let’s continue working together a business that we can do from anywhere. But if we’re successful with this, to great things are gonna happen. One is we can help spread gratitude, which is going to make the world what a happier place,
Maisy 22:52
a much happier place. And if we get to China and even worked things are, we might be able to get them to turn into president
Tim 23:03
right. So there you go. I know mom, she’s a so when she says things that sound like that. let this go right and keep moving. So number one, we can help make the world a happier place by spreading gratitude and encouraging people to spread gratitude. My idea is that people will see you wearing the shirt or where are you securing a bag or whatever, you have no one to talk to you about gratitude. So you have an opportunity to talk to them about the benefits of being grateful.
Maisy 23:30
Well, I thought, and we already got a few buyers. Like somebody even bought a mug. That was the first thing they got. We celebrated our first sale. Yeah. Cool and happy mug.
Liz 23:43
Exactly. And now whenever they drink coffee or tea out of their mug, somebody can walk by and say, Hey, what are you grateful for? Yeah, exactly. And you can start a conversation about it. Or we can spread gratitude. But the second nice
Tim 23:55
thing about the business that inspires me, like I said, the first thing is that we can help spread gratitude, which means what we’re really trying to spread is joy. Gratitude relief. Exactly. But the second thing is if we’re successful, is we can raise money to fight cystic fibrosis and just the thing,
Maisy 24:13
our main goal is to get cystic fibrosis like, like the black plague went extinct. Yeah, let’s go extinct. Make
Tim 24:21
it go extinct. So just like the dinosaurs,
Maisy 24:26
just like the other black plague and things like that.
Tim 24:32
Alright, so you think we should wrap this episode up now? Yeah, yeah. Well, how was this for you?
Maisy 24:37
I think it was great.
Tim 24:38
Cuz you got to talk more, right? Alright. So until next time,
Maisy 24:42
we’re gratefully you’re Yeah. Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
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