Today we're chatting with Carew Papritz, renowned author of "The Legacy Letters," to unwrap the timeless art of gratitude and the profound impact of simple acts of kindness. Carew unveils how his book of heartfelt letters from a father to his children became a cornerstone for National Thank You Letter Day and sparked a global movement that culminated in a Guinness World Record.
If you feel inspired please consider sharing this episode with a friend, writing a 5⭐️ review or becoming a Raising Wild Hearts Member here!
Today we're chatting with Carew Papritz, renowned author of "The Legacy Letters," to unwrap the timeless art of gratitude and the profound impact of simple acts of kindness. Carew unveils how his book of heartfelt letters from a father to his children became a cornerstone for National Thank You Letter Day and sparked a global movement that culminated in a Guinness World Record.
If you feel inspired please consider sharing this episode with a friend, writing a 5⭐️ review or becoming a Raising Wild Hearts Member here!
walking, our talk and our daily lives with our children. I mean, we really show them that the glass half full is much, much better than the glass half empty. And that being kind and the being polite and those very you know kindness and manners and civility and gratitude, which to me are the four elements of a thank you letter, are the same things that we want to teach our kids.
Speaker 2:Welcome, revolutionary Mama, to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast. I'm Ryan Watkin, educator, mom of three, revel at heart and passionate soul, on a mission to empower and inspire you.
Speaker 2:Here we'll explore psychology, spirituality, parenthood and the intersection where they all come together. We'll discover how challenges can be fertile soil for growth and that even in the messy middle of motherhood we can find magic in the mundane. Join me on my own personal journey as I talk to experts and share resources on education, creativity, self-care, family, culture and more. I believe we can change the world by starting at home in our own minds and hearts, and that when we do, we'll be passing down the most important legacy there is healing, and so it is. Hello friends, welcome back to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast Coming at you today with another great interview. Today I'm talking to Karu Papritz. He is the award-winning author of the bestselling inspirational book, the Legacy Letters. Through his innovative literacy efforts to inspire kids to read, papritz has created the I Love To Read and first ever book signings through his KaruTube video series. He is also the creator of National Thank you Letter Day and the world's largest thank you letter, receiving a Guinness World Record for the project. We talk a little bit about that in the podcast too. He explains how he came up with the idea when he was in a local classroom of his working with a group of elementary students, and it was really fun to hear him engaging with these kids and coming up with this idea right on the spot.
Speaker 2:As an educational thought leader, karu continues in his personal passion to teach people of all ages about personal and global legacy issues. We touch on a lot of wonderful topics in this episode. We talked about anger, we talked about the link between gratitude and mental health, we talked about writing Thank you notes the important of handwritten thank you letters and, of course, we talked about legacy because, as you guys know, legacy is one of the words that I love. I think language is very important and legacy is one of those buzzwords. For me, it's one of those really important ideas that we can embody in our everyday life, and Karu talks about just that. So I hope you guys enjoy this amazing conversation as much as I did. Let's jump in. ["i Did It"]. ["i Did It"] Karu. Welcome to the Raising Wild Hearts podcast.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Ryan. It's a pleasure to be on your show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm so happy to have you here. One of my favorite things in the world is to do these interviews with amazing people who have many times written books and just had different life experiences and your life experience. In your book, it jumped out at me. The word legacy is something that really really speaks to me. I believe, as parents specifically, we have a choice on what legacy we leave behind to our children and what legacy we create while we're here with them, and so that's a really, really powerful word for me. So I wanna start with that word. Why legacy letters? Why was that the title of your book and why are you someone who wants to dive deep into legacy?
Speaker 1:Well it was. There's a bit of a fun story behind that. I should say fun story. It was a early midlife crisis story, which is the best kind to have early. So I was working in the film industry, the feature film industry. I graduated from UCLA film school, got into the bright lights and followed all that great stuff. It was wonderful.
Speaker 1:But I began to see the writing on the wall which was people making a lot of money and were miserable. So I sort of I took a drive about around the West, which is where I'm from, and I just didn't know what I was looking for. But I knew it wasn't to be in Hollywood and I ended up on a small ranch in Southern Arizona near the border, very, very desolate area, and I parked it there for five years. And what's really fascinating is I ended up sort of coming back full circle to my roots. My granddad had a small ranch growing up. So here I was, cowboying in a very desolate area, pretty much alone by myself.
Speaker 1:And this idea, this germination for this book, came about because I was sort of looking at my life like where did I want to take it next and what did that mean? And so the legacy letters, which is the book I ended up writing, came about because I was thinking about, during this walled and pond time of my life, like where, what does life mean, and where do we go with it, and so on and so forth. And so the basic premise to tell your listeners it's a series of letters, a fictional letters, written by this father to his children that he'd never lived to see, and these letters become their practical, moral and spiritual guidebook for the rest of their life. And so in the process of writing these letters now, letter writing is a very interesting thing because it's a very intimate act, right, it's a very emotionally sharing act, even if you're writing to people you're never going to see. And the whole thinking behind it was it starts off. The book starts off very, very simple how to say please and thank you, how to take care of used cars, how to fall in love, how to, I mean. And then it becomes more complex and more complex. So the whole idea of this man trying to wrap up life in these letters and figure out what that legacy is supposed to be. And here's an interesting ending to that Years later, when the book had come out and I did one of the member national awards, it was on the best settler's list, it was doing great.
Speaker 1:But beyond that, I woke up one day and I realized after all this had come about that I was a philosopher. I had never, ever in my life wanted to be a philosopher. You don't grow up, oh, as a kid. Y'all want to be a fireman or I want to be a philosopher. Gosh, that sounds really good. No, never, ever, ever in a million years. And here I was, and to me, a philosopher was someone that not only thinks about life but thinks how to connect the acts of life and how to make them.
Speaker 1:I guess the idea of legacy is not so much what you leave behind but how you live in that moment. So a legacy moment. And so I know this is a long, roundabout way to come to this, but this is a very powerful question. When we talk about legacy, usually when the conversation comes up, it's about what we're leaving behind. But if we're talking about, especially with our kids and especially to your podcast and especially the moms out there, we're thinking how do we create legacy in our lives? Well, gosh, that's the intention of every single moment you're with your kids and with your husband, and with your friends and with your life, and that is, you are literally living your legacy at that moment in time. So I guess I hope that answers your question in the biggest roundabout way I could.
Speaker 2:It absolutely does. I come back to presence quite a bit as a through line in this podcast and having I forget how many minutes are in a day. At one point I used to quote it a lot. However, many minutes are in the day sometimes, that's how many opportunities we have to come back to presence, right, Because we fail and then we try again and we do better again.
Speaker 2:So, as a philosopher which you discovered that you were, which I like that because I'm a philosopher too and I yeah, when I was thinking I used to say I wanted to be a pediatrician, which I couldn't be farther from the truth, but I wanted to help kids, and that was the way that I thought I would be able to help kids and affect their lives. Turns out, you know, that is still happening in this different way. So, as a philosopher, you hinted to the question of like what does life mean? Or what's this like meaning of life. Have you found that answer yet, karu?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, yeah, I mean this really. You found the answer. No, I really found the answer. No, I think it came about with this, the writing of this book. There's this really fun thing that happened.
Speaker 1:I love getting kids excited about reading, I'm a big literacy advocate and finding different ways to do this. So I started, very, very fortunate, to be able to do lots of book signings all over the place and Barnes, noble and Costco and small bookstores and all that, and I really love it because I love meeting people, I love talking to about the book, but at a certain point, more so than just doing that. I love to be outside. I love riding horses, I love being in the mountains, I love skiing and hiking and so on and so forth. And I thought, gosh, how can I combine the two of those things? And so I came up with this idea of doing first ever book signings. And the reason is is, I thought, well, being a filmmaker, I'll put this on YouTube and kids will get excited about it and they'll go what's this all about and who's this guy that's doing it? So the first ever book signing I did was a book signing on horseback in front of, and I rode up into Barnes Noble and we did a digital book signing, a book signing and it was the horse I used to cowboy on. And so I've done things like on top of Mount St Helens, a book signing on top of volcano, did a whistle stop book tour from Orlando to Niagara Falls and 13 cities, and on river rafts and glaciers and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:And people say, and here it is, why do you do this? And I say because if you read the legacy letters, you'll find out why in the go. Well, why do I have to read legacy letters? And I go, no, it's actually I'm walking the talk of my book, which is living life to the fullest. Yeah, and I know that's another roundabout way of saying wow, this is what's on the book, but it really is. I mean, someone can say are you serious, are you doing it? And I go, yeah, because guess what? That's what this father was trying to in almost every single page. Get out there, live, live, live, live, live get out there, right?
Speaker 1:What about living legacy?
Speaker 2:Right. So I wanna tell you a funny thing. Yeah, please, and that's a little vulnerable. So I went on to Amazon to find your book and I did what most people do and I looked at the reviews and I did what a lot of us do and I wanted to read the one-star reviews and I just and I do this with everything, almost everything I wanna say. I wanna hear what people that are saying.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you read your own reviews or not, but I was struck by this woman who was very upset by the premise that this man in this book left and never had a chance to raise his kids which is what I'm understanding, I think, from her thing and she was very upset by this and she went on and on and on about how she was so upset. And as someone who did not grow up with my father, I thought, wow, I would have loved some legacy letters from my dad. Like it's interesting the way that people's life experience and trauma and maybe unawareness of their biases or something like that, affect like what really resonates with them and what doesn't. Because I get that the purpose of the book is like legacy and if you frame it through that, then how could you like deny that? Like how could you dislike that?
Speaker 2:And so I was really trying to understand this woman's like trauma and I'm going well, maybe she, whatever, like I'm like really practicing my empathetic muscle in that, but I thought that was like such an interesting thing, but I do love the premise of the letter and I do love the premise of somebody who maybe couldn't live out the legacy but realizing, maybe at the end of his days I'm assuming I haven't read it yet, but at the end of his days that like I could have made a different choice. Like you're saying, live life to the fullest. Yeah, so I don't know that there's a question in there, but what's your thought on that? Like looking back the regrets of the dying, kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:You know, yeah, no, this is a great question. I love this because I read that interview years ago. I did that review. I also read the other one Star review which is I mean, they're so fun, they're God, that one Star review. There was that one, the one you talked about. The other one was it wasn't my cup of tea. I was seriously. You gave me a one Star because it wasn't your cup of tea. And here I am remembering that one Star, right, because it was so little, chris. But the other one was seen to the eyes of trauma, which I found interesting. Now there's in response to your comment and I'll make it into a question. So I found that fascinating her response.
Speaker 1:Two things came out of my thinking with that. One was in creating this book, I had the option of a different introduction. I had actually written an introduction where this father is in a small bush plane in Alaska and he crashes and he has to make a cabin and all this and leaves behind these dies and leaves behind these letters and so on and so forth. And the romantic in me oh, it's up in Alaska and I've worked up there and lived up there and this would be perfect and I thought that's a real cop out. It's just such an easy romantic sort of boop, boop, boop and you're onto the thing and everyone loves it.
Speaker 1:So in this setup for this book, the opening letter is from the wife. This is how the book starts and she is writing a letter to the editor of who's taken on these letters and in four paragraphs she proceeds to set the entire tone for how women deal with tragedy. And this is fascinating because she talks, and I ran this by a number of women because I was like, oh my gosh, if I do this, I could just be hung out to dry. And when I told this to one woman she goes well, no, this is exactly right, this is how it works. We own tragedy and I thought, wow, and almost accepting for that one star review, almost to a woman. And now hundreds of women I've talked to later, none of them balk at this. They just think this is absolutely. You have a separation, you have this tragedy and it creates this. And what this book also becomes is a love story, because he's trying to find his way back into her life and that's a little bit of a fish hook out there for all the moms like, oh really.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's really true.
Speaker 1:He wants to make amends for whatever separated them, whatever is in our deep emotional background that separates two people and they don't want to talk about it and that is a very powerful reason for this. And then the guy goes to this cabin, dies in the mountain cabin and leaves behind these letters. Eventually the wife comes and picks up his body. You can read all this and the children grow up with these letters. It's given to them on their 10th birthday. They grow up with them and they want to give it to the rest of the world some 50 years later. So these letters were written a long time ago, in an older time, and you can tell by the language and whatnot. So that's a long answer to that question.
Speaker 1:And the second part is and here's what's fascinating I told a number of buddies of mine. I just ran by them and I was shocked by the guy's response. The guys were like, oh, I would have never done that. I would have come down, I would have never. I go, come on seriously. The women were like, yep, that's what happens to us. We take it on the nose and we run with it. And some of the guys were like I can't believe that guy would actually do that they were. I was stunned. I was stunned yeah.
Speaker 2:That's really funny. I'm laughing. That's hilarious. I think that's true and I think now hearing you talk about it like that, that may have been the more courageous choice. To have that man unable to raise his kids for whatever reason it was, that might have been the more courageous choice because that may be more relatable well, maybe just to women, maybe not to men, but I like it. I think it's interesting. I look back and there are some letters that I would have loved to receive from multiple men in my life let's put it that way and so I think the whole letter writing process is courageous in itself, and you said it's an intimate act to write a letter, and I would argue especially today with social media and texting and emailing, like to sit down with a piece of paper and a pen is like it's almost like a sacred act, it's almost like reverent and traditional and there's like this old school feel to it. So let's dive into that, because I know you're big about thank you letters.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk a little bit about writing an old school, which sounds crazy to even say that letter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, all right, let's talk about that. Well, this is fun for all you that are like, well, why should we bring thank you letters back? I mean, there's like, oh, there's an obvious reason. But so here we go.
Speaker 1:I created National Thank you Letter Day about eight years ago and this is really fun, the genesis of this and I was teaching a handwriting class to our small local school up here where my son went to elementary school. So there were fourth and fifth graders in there and I would take the book and there's a letter in the legacy letters called how to Say Please and Thank you, and it's one of the first letters, and so I was sort of using examples of that and it's interesting, and writing up there. So the kids were looking at that and I could just feel the yawns in the background. I'm going, oh, this is great. And I just all of a sudden and this is what usually happens with these this thing pops into my head and I said, hey, what if we did a Thank you Letter the size of a football field? And they're all like Mr Bamford, that's a cool idea. Oh, my gosh, let's do it. And I said, yeah, let's do it. What are you? What are you gonna? Yeah, let's all do it. And then, all of a sudden, I was like what are you thinking, man? The size of a football field. So what happened was is we did it and it ended up being the size of a high school basketball gym. Wow, we did it on November 14th, which is now National Thank you Letter Day, and we got all. I mean, the whole community was involved, the Postmaster was in. I'm not the Postmaster, that was the next year, but we had people, we had 600 kids sign it and it was just super, super cool, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 1:But what do you do with the world's largest Thank you Letter? Well, you have to send it. So next year we create the world's largest envelope, world's largest stamp. We send it to our sister school across town. We, the Postmaster, stamped it, we stuffed it. I'm telling you, when you take an envelope and a stamp, a letter that size, it is like a 25 foot long, four foot high burrito of paper, took 20 kids to carry it. We had to unscrew the doors of the gym, stuff it into the back of the mail truck and we had to unfold it and do it. So it was delivered, it was official. As a result and here are two cool things that came out of that was that the Postmaster actually gave us 600 postcards prepaid postcards for kids to write Thank you Letters to anybody they wanted their parents to include. I got one from my son, which was unbelievable it was. I was so surprised we and we got national recognition for that and got on the Kelly Clarkson show, so we got to spread the word in a nice big way.
Speaker 1:But ultimately what it really comes down to and what you were bringing up is we call it old school, I call it timeless. Timeless right, because writing a Thank you note or a Thank you letter has never gone out of style. Why, november 14th, in the middle of the month of thank you, of gratitude? And here's something from the legacy letters I want to read why letters are important.
Speaker 1:Letters are real.
Speaker 1:They're made of paper and the paper holds the time you place into the words. The paper can be held. It's human size and made for hands to hold and touch and feel. It is not electronic or made of electrons. Because letters are real, they can be saved and cherished for a long time. You can always feel the person and the way they write, even long after they're gone. That is a profound legacy to leave someone. One of the coolest things about a letter and part of that is and what I discovered was letters hold time. If time is the most valuable thing that you have in your life on this planet and you give that time to somebody else, people recognize the time it takes to write a letter is the time you put into it. When they get that, they understand that it's not a text, it's not an email. Who's going to save that If there's a burning fire? You're going to grab those letters. You're going to grab those photos, probably before your kids and after your kids and your pets. But it is that powerful, it is that intimate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is. I agree, thank you. Letters never went out of style for me Growing up. It was like we were allowed to open one present on Christmas Eve Same here yeah. I'll be darned if it wasn't Thank you notes every single year. Thanks, mom. No, really Every year you can open one present, and it was the box of thank you notes that we would be then writing for the next.
Speaker 1:That is brilliant. I love it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it was always like a little silly and cheeky that, because we always knew what it was going to be. But yeah, that was kind of a trip. And so now my kids are two, seven and nine and I homeschool our older two kiddos and we do write thank you notes and we actually just in the month of February sent out our thank you notes from the holiday season and it felt really good to do and I thought in a couple of them I wrote like better late than never, ha ha, but it was still there. It was just because it was two months later. It didn't really make a difference.
Speaker 2:I don't think it had any less of an impact. I think it had more of an impact because it wasn't forced. We did it on our own time. We really enjoyed doing it. I sat down with my kids and we did it together. My kids got to each draw a little picture on it and it was like everybody was into it, and so I think sometimes we think as parents we need to force it. But I think if we include everybody in this very intimate act of letter writing, whether it's a thank you letter or something else, that we can really make it this kind of together act. You know what I mean, absolutely right, yeah, no, I love it.
Speaker 1:You've taken the word right out of my mouth, I mean and on the practical end of writing letters for all of us. And I did the same thing with our son. First of all, you got to walk your talk. They've got to see you write Like mom, who are you writing a thank you letter to? Because not the do as I say, right. And so I would do the same thing. I'd sit down and I'd write a letter in and tell who are you writing to? Oh, I'm going to write to so. And then it becomes a courser. If you're setting an example and you make it very easy, not only you saying thank you, but I have to still. I mean, my son's a senior in high school and he'll write like oh, thank you for that.
Speaker 1:And I go OK, but just, you got two more lines. You can eke it out something personal in there. So you're teaching your kids to relate conversationally in a letter that says thank you, I can't wait to see you. I used the, I threw the football for the first time today, grandma and grandpa, and it was so much fun. Thank you. And gosh, one small detail If you teach your kids to do that, it doesn't have to be this long drawn out thing, right?
Speaker 1:I really, when I teach this is funny. I teach how to write Valentine's Day letters and it's a hoot. I just did and luckily I just had a whole bunch of lovely interviews and whatnot on how to do this, and people are always amazed. But the thing about it is I make it so simple. It's go everyone's got a printer, grab a white sheet of paper, say dear, so and so, and then you write guess what?
Speaker 1:You write down three things that you cherish, that your partner, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend does for you every single day. Because that's there's the intimacy, there's the love, because of what we do in our daily lives. And then you sign it and then you wrap it up and you give it a, put it in an envelope or you can, if you can send it, so on and so forth, and people love it and it's easy. It's five minutes. You know, in our day and age if you can't do anything in five minutes it's over, right, I mean but that if we teach our kids this is not a painful event. To do a thank you letter, it's fun. Have some cookies with it, right? Do some bribery.
Speaker 2:Right, that's right, make it fun.
Speaker 1:Make it fun.
Speaker 2:So I've heard you say, or I read on, I read somewhere that you said America has like we have an anger addiction, and I'm curious. I want to talk about anger a little bit. I want to talk about where is it coming from, and then also, is there a healthy way for us to express anger?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that anger addiction. That was interesting. It was an op-ed that I wrote regarding the politics of where we're at in this day and age and you know it's almost as if we're. One of the biggest things I think that's come about is the internet, the anonymity of the internet and not being responsible for the words that we're putting out there. You know, I'm an old time advocate of don't put anything out there that you wouldn't want your grandmother to read, right? That's a great one. That's a great. I mean, if we all abide by that, then I think the level of civility would rise greatly. But I also think that the the amount of I don't know if I want to say hate, but we're becoming addicted to it because we've got, we have institutions now that are helping us gin that, that hate, whether it be the internet, whether it be media, whether it be and I'm not going to blame any one particular thing, but we're buying into that. And guess what Hate sells? It makes a lot of money for people and you know, you've heard like hate travels faster than love. Absolutely, gosh.
Speaker 1:You look at the way things, the way the internet algorithms are all set up, so I find it very. I don't find it discouraging. I just find that in how do we combat that? Well, we combat that by again walking our talk in our daily lives with our children. I mean, we really show them that the glass half full is much, much better than the glass half empty. And that being kind and the being polite and those very you know kindness and manners and civility and gratitude, which to me, are the four elements of a thank you letter, are the same things that we want to teach our kids. And on every single day and this is funny when we talk about let's say please and thank you the pillars, the bedrock of civilization. As far as I'm concerned, you need to say it one million times to your kids before they start using it right Even now, even when my son is like all right, what do you say? You know, thank you, you know? Or?
Speaker 1:please or you know, but he's very, very good about it, but still, after this day, you know, but for all of you out there, it needs to be said over and, over and over as a way to push back against the, the incivility that seems to be becoming a daily part of our lives and our kids' lives, and it's like no, this isn't the norm, this doesn't have to be this way. And it's up to us as parents, it's up to us as people to say no, we're not gonna do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's interesting because I think kids, especially teenagers I don't have teenagers yet, but I sure as heck are. Just I'm like an anthropologist when I go out in public and I'm constantly watching and observing and I'm curious about kids and I'm curious about teenagers and I think that teenagers have this like rich life in their devices. I think a lot of it is through this like virtual world that they have and little of like less than when I was a kid is it face to face or like a true, like social setting, and so I think that they're exposed now more to these like polarization and they see it in this like virtual way. But, like I always say, like you don't see people in like a grocery store or down in the corner walking your dog, like yelling at each other because one person is a Democrat and one person is a Republican, or did you know somebody took the last banana and you were reaching for it? Like people in general are like pretty kind, like I'm pretty civil.
Speaker 2:So I think like we're getting the wrong idea. The more we outsource to this like social media, internet life, we're getting the wrong idea of what real life actually is and that's like mostly polite and kind, polite at the very minimum. But really I think most people are good and kind. I like to still believe that, but I see why people get caught up in it, because there's a lot of it out there on the internet especially. Like you said, fear travels faster, anger travels faster, for sure, in social media terms. Yes, like yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:I thought that was really interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah, people are making money off of that right, yeah, and it's a huge way, in a huge way, and I'm not one of these people, that's. You know that I'm not conspiratorial at all, but gosh, I mean what's the? I mean, look, this is as old as newspapers. If it bleeds, it leads, right, yeah, I mean it is that central idea, yeah, and so what do we have to do in our you know, hit and it's the old, well old saying. But what I say to my son, I say you can't change the world, but you can change your world. You know, inside of what you do. So if you're looking at that, like, oh, I just can't stand, even kids like, oh, my gosh, it's too much to go, yeah. So what do we do inside this world? Every single person that we touch, we need to touch with that thing that comes from your heart, that comes from your moral stance, your responsibility, the things that you believe. Yeah, it's 1,000% yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and owning that yeah, yeah, really owning that experience, it's okay. So for me, you know, after many years, it's okay to be angry, right, and it's okay like and for to be able to express that. Most people don't know how to actually express it and so it comes out. Let's go full circle in this one star review of this woman who's like so appalled by this idea that a man could leave the kids, because she may be making this up, but maybe she didn't have a healthy way to express her anger and she didn't know to like punch a pillow, scream into a pillow, you know, get righteous about it and, like, change something in her own life, in her own world, and then perhaps go on into the world a little softer and having more compassion for people.
Speaker 1:I like that, oh, into the world a little softer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a little bit softer, soft around the edges a little bit there you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well done, I like that yeah.
Speaker 2:For sure. So let's, as we start to wrap up, let's touch on the link between gratitude and mental health, and then I'm gonna ask you the three questions that I ask everybody at the end of the interview.
Speaker 1:Oh, not the three questions, the three.
Speaker 2:I have a lot to do with it.
Speaker 1:Now I'm nervous, right, so I've got some really interesting things here. So when you constantly practice gratitude, it reduces stress and anxiety. Studies have singled I've actually pointed out that producing gratitude will increase happiness by 10% and 35% reduction in depressive thoughts. Now think about that, and the more that you have I mean talk about a fountain of youth, a fountain of happiness the more that we do this and the more that we give, the more that we give to our communities, the more that we give to our families, the more that we give to people that are without and give of ourselves. That giving is that part of gratitude. And it's interesting.
Speaker 1:We always talk about practicing gratitude. Well, I wanted to take it a step forward. I say do gratitude. Let's not just practice it, let's actually do it. Let's make it every day and have our again, once again. Let's have our kids see it. I'm a big fan of getting kids involved in community whatever's. We do all sorts of stuff. We raise, we do things to help out what current cane victims will. Gather up clothes. We write letters and put them in the clothes and we send it out. We did this with books and we've done it with food drives and all, but always there's letters in it. I want to create that intimacy there. So that's teaching them to do gratitude. It really is Gratitude. It's like an armor. It's this. It's crazy how powerful it is and how it pushes back against again. We talk about the hate and the anger out there and all this. It feels so good to do good, mm-hmm, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:Right, it's an energy.
Speaker 1:Oh, welcome, yeah, yeah, if you go on. Yeah, no, go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:If you go out into the world feeling grateful, regardless of it's like the internet world or like real world, you're projecting the best version of yourself. If you go out and you're worried about something and you're stressed, you're gonna create and attract opportunities that just make you more stressed out and worried and fearful. And so if you believe in energy which I'm not sure who does it now, but it's all the energy behind it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, 100%. And on a practical note, on the sort of the practicing gratitude or doing the gratitude, one thing I love to do and I still try to do it at the end of the day say to yourself, almost like in a prayer or just even just a quick mantra did I do good today? Did I do something that just pushed the world forward and I helped? Someone did it. And like, no, I didn't. Well, okay, we're gonna try again tomorrow and again with your kids. The same sort of thing hey, did we do a good thing today? What'd you do? Oh, I helped so and so, or I said this great, that's great.
Speaker 1:Another practical aspect is take I love this one because I practice is when I get so wrapped up, and probably right after this lovely podcast, I'll just go out and take a breath outdoors. I'll look up at the clouds, I'll listen to the birds, I'll take five minutes out in nature. Think about doing that three times a day walk outside, take a breath, breathe and go wow, there's like this is a gorgeous world we live in. Whatever that may be, however hard or difficult it is, five minutes outdoors is tremendous. And lastly, celebrate the small victories. Celebrate them, I mean, when I'm talking small, like your son or your daughter does something, it's like, hey, god, that's great. We like praise.
Speaker 1:But celebrate the small victories in your life, like you know what, this was a good day, yeah, or this moment was good, or whatever the case is, or I was able to get around. Whatever corners, whatever they may be, celebrate them. You add up a whole bunch of small victories. That's a giant victory at the end of the day. So those are. I think that really helps in terms of creating a way of living that is full circle, living life to the fullest, and we don't have to do it with huge chunks, so we don't have to make the world's largest. You know, henry, thank you letter although that was super, super fun, but yes, that was yeah. So do it in these small chunks and after the end of the day, it will all add up.
Speaker 2:I'm going to follow your lead on that. Go outside in five minutes for five minutes in nature and listen to the birds. I'm going to follow your lead on that one. It's something that I find to be tremendously helpful, and it's always good to have that little reminder. So, thank you, I'm going to do the same. Yeah, karu, what's bringing you joy today?
Speaker 1:Oh, talking to you, ryan, 100%, this is, this, is this I'll tell you and I try to I this. And also talking about going out in nature. This morning I woke up and my head spinning because I got all this stuff to do. I'm going whoa, whoa, whoa, go for a run, go get outside. And I try to get out before the sun comes up and not not as any pad on the back. I've been running all my life, so, but what I find is it's the I have to. I constantly am meditating on nature, you know, because of my thoughts are spinning all over. I go no, no, you're here. You're here, enjoy it. You know, breathe in, take your body. You're alive, you're vertical, you're above ground. This is great. I come back and then I meet. I meet someone new, a kindred soul who's trying to do the same things I'm doing get this, get these good messages out. So, yeah, I'm, this is. This is a good, good moment, this is a great victory.
Speaker 2:Me too, thank you. Are you reading anything right now, and if so, what?
Speaker 1:Oh, you're going to like this. I have it right here. It's called the legacy letters. No, I'm just. I'm just kidding, that was a setup. You game list.
Speaker 2:That's on the list. That'll be in the show notes.
Speaker 1:I actually heard about this book a few years back and I was. I'm a mountaineer Also, I've been climbing, not only rock climbing but being in mountains and whatnot. And this was written by this guy, a Norwegian, called Erling Kage. It's called Silence in the Age of Noise and he talks about because I had lived in Norway and I was like it was intrigued because he was, he had a mountain, he's a famous Norwegian explorer. The first person to reach the North South Pole alone explores the silence around us, the silence within us and the silence we must create. And I was intrigued by that because he was an explorer, he's a mountaineer, and so this is what I've been enjoying silence in the age of noise. Very small book, it's a nice, transcendental sort of book to read and it points you down just by the just by the title of it. Again, silence in the Age of Noise. No shameless plug, get nothing out of it except for the fact that it's a lovely, lovely, simple read.
Speaker 2:Thank you, I'm going to put that on my list. I just thought that the title of the book, like, calms my nervous system a little bit, because you know we have the silence in us. It's just taking the step to listen to the silence, and even the silence in between the noise.
Speaker 2:I feel like that's a really meditative practice. With three little kids, the house is really loud a lot. But if you, if I listen for the moments of silence, even the brief seconds in between seconds, yeah, the seconds it's there, yeah. And then the last question I have for you today, karu, is who or what have you learned the most from?
Speaker 1:Oh, those lovely, difficult, fantastical questions where you try to say this like I'm saying this now so I can buy some time to think about it, because I don't want to give you an obvious choice there. I've been very fortunate in my life. My parents you know my, of course my parents. They gave me my love of reading and writing and being outdoors. My creative background came from my high school English teacher, who ended up being not only one of my oldest friends but my oldest friend of 40 plus years. He recently passed away and he was the editor on this book, the Legacy Letters, and we had written several books together and he was a man of letters and he taught me so much about film and life and art and creativity and it was.
Speaker 1:I had an extraordinary upbringing through his friendship and my wife and son. My wife because she's a great life partner and I love her to bits and we've been through so much together. So we constantly learn from each other. And my son because he is he's a child and he's a great guy. He's an eagle scout and he's a ski patroller and he's a super guy and I'm constantly learning from him. I'm constantly. Actually, I'll confess I'm now cooler in music than I was three years ago. I hate to confess it, and if you ever found this, if you ever listened to this podcast, he'll say, yep, I know that. So now I'm actually cooler as a result of his eclectic taste in music, but also because he keeps me on my toes and he keeps me youthful, and I have to walk my talk with him. I have to walk my talk of fairness, I have to walk my talk of honesty and I it keeps me in check because I cannot go astray from the thing that I he has been brought up with. So there, we go.
Speaker 2:That's right. They hold us accountable, don't they? Thank you so much for your time and bringing all these beautiful influences together from the people you've learned from and the life experiences, and thank you for showing up today and just bringing this wonderful energy to the podcast. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks, Ryan, I really appreciate it. And to all you listeners out there and all you moms, this this is a wonderful moment. Enjoy your small victories and listen to this lovely lady. She looks like she's got a lot on the ball and she's got a lot to give to the world. So thank you again, Ryan, for having me on the show.