Bold Gratitude with Lainie Rowell

What's going on everybody? I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. My name is Brian Martin. I'm a second grade teacher and host of the teaching champions podcast. And today I have a pretty special conversation for you. And that's the first for the podcast. Today we have our first repeat guest, and it's Lanie Rao, and Lanie. She's a best selling author, and award winning educator and international speaker, a TEDx speaker, and the message that she shares today is an important one. Today, she talks all about gratitude, she dives in to the power of journaling and shares about her new journal bow gratitude. She discusses the importance of praise, why we need to be conscious about noticing the good in our days, different ways to practice gratitude, the importance of being a good listener, and so much more. Now, don't forget to hit that subscribe button, so that new episodes come directly to you. And if you think someone will benefit from this conversation, please share. This community is all about amplifying the voices of some people who are doing amazing things for others. Now, let's jump into this conversation. And I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I am super excited for this episode because we have an absolute Rockstar with us today. It is a big moment for the teaching champions podcast too, because we have our first returning guest because she just brings so many gems. I want to welcome Lenny Rahl back to the teaching champions podcast. Lenny Welcome, my friend. Well, thank you so much for having me. I love any chance I get to talk with you, Brian. And I'm really hoping that I can live up to being the return guest and yeah, just excited to be here. Oh, you're gonna blow it away, my friend. And I always love the time that we get to spend and chat and you being out in California. I'm sure it was a beautiful day. It was snowing and the winter was awful today. So I'm looking for a little gratitude with this conversation that I have today. Well, yeah, so I never know if I'm supposed to admit to the beautiful weather in California when others are. I think there's Beauty and Snow. Don't get me wrong. But I know sometimes that you know, we get used to things right. So it's nice to hear and work and working with the young kids, they always find a lot more beauty in it than the adults do. The art and the wonder of kids, right? Like, you have to tap back into like Neil Pash Rika talks about that, like, revisit your three year old self. How would your three year old self see this? And that's a good way to really the world? Yes, it is. I mean, there's pure joy in their face when they see the snow coming down. So it's pretty awesome. Now for people who don't know who you are not familiar with your work, would you mind giving them a little background? Sure, I will try and be as concise as possible. I've been in education for a really, really long time. I am currently a full time author, speaker, consultant, and really honing in on human flourishing, and building communities social emotional learning, you know, what makes each of us unique and dynamic and inquiry based learning. And those all really do go together. Even though it sounds like a smattering of topics. I feel like they all go together. In fact, I think they all tie in to human flourishing. Yes, I think so too. And one of the reasons why I wanted to dive back in so last time we were together about a year ago, we were talking all about your first book evolving with gratitude, which is amazing. And it just came around to me. So Thanksgiving comes and you know, there's a big push in the month of November to be grateful to celebrate gratitude, but then it kind of falls by the wayside. But it's something that we need all year long. And I was given a presentation about a month ago, and I was preparing for it. And it's based on like sports psychology, and because that's something that I'm extremely passionate about. And I was researching a sports psychologist and he was talking about developing the young athlete and he listed out all these attributes that we should have. And one of the key components he said was gratitude. So I wanted to bring you back on just not so much like the background, the gratitude, which we should dive into, but developing that practice of gratitude, not just in the month of November, but throughout the course of the year. So could you tell us real quick, why is gratitude so important? Well, gratitude is important for a myriad of reasons, the ones that I can quickly just say, it's going to improve well being, it's going to nurture relationships, it actually activates learning, if you want to get into the neuroscience, and the happiness, chemicals, and what all that does to promote learning. And then it's this beautiful prosocial thing that makes the world a better place. And those are kind of the ones that I really focus on, how is it going to improve our well being both mental and physical? How does it nurture those relationships? How does it help us learn? And how does it make the world a better place? Yes, it's so true. And you know what, in that research, when you talk about like the well being the physical, just the overall aspect of it, like, what are some things that we can do? Before we dive into the gratitude journal? What are some other things that we can do to really form that gratitude practice? I mean, one of the things that I'm just so excited as I've taken this deep dive on gratitude, and I know I mentioned, I think I mentioned when I was on your podcast last year, that my background is psychology, I was actually a psychology major. And there were just certain things that always stood out to me like the praise to correction ratio, which I know we talked about last time, Praise is a form of correction, I'm sorry, Praise is a form of gratitude. But it's just been so fascinating to see the variety of practices that are out there. But I think what it really needs to start with is the noticing, the noticing the good in our life, the good and the people around us the good and the things that we have. And when we focus on what we have, we don't notice as much what we don't have. And so, when we focus on what we have, we have enough, I think that's an Oprah quote that I'm butchering, but something like that. No, you know, I think that is so true. And a while back, I read a book called The Art of noticing. And I think we may have talked about that a little bit. But they you know, in that book, one of the things that I've really tried to hold true to myself, is the author talked about going through your day, really paying attention to what's around you, and know that and offering like five authentic compliments, and then asking five authentic questions as well. I love the asking the questions. And I think that is a huge part of gratitude is really noticing and wondering where, you know, Where's this coming from? Oh, how was this so beautiful, and just there's so much richness to it. There's so much that we just get used to in our world. But when we start noticing and asking questions, we really get to see the fullness of it. And I think that's really lovely. And I just want to say also you mentioned early on, yes, November is considered the gratitude month, and in particular on Thanksgiving Day, right. And so if you look at your social media feeds, whatever you happen to be experiencing in the way of media, it gets very concentrated around Thanksgiving, which I love. But what I don't want to see is it fall off because a holiday has passed and like you said beautifully said this is something that should be a part of our life, always not just a part of a holiday. Yes, very much Greedo. And one another reason you know, why I wanted to bring you on to is we think about the holidays, we think about Thanksgiving, and then we have the Christmas holidays that are coming in it can be hard. Like sometimes we think about all the happiness, but there's a lot of people and we don't always see it externally, they might not give it off. But internally, this time of year can be really hard for some people as well. It can be hard, especially as we're gathering around tables with people that we don't often get to see. And we start to notice people who are maybe no longer with us. There's a definite bitter sweetness to the holiday season that I think we don't always acknowledge. I think we feel like we should be happy all the time. But there's definitely things that we're not going to be happy about. And we don't want to shy away from those negative emotions. Those negative emotions are signals and signposts and they tell us like a warning. Something's not right here something you need to pay attention to this. And then you can lean into like hmm, okay, so basically my body's giving me a signal. What is this about and use the tools that you have to stay in it for as long as As you need to, but not longer than you need to. That's something I'm always trying to I think that's a fine line of, you know, how can I make sure that I'm not dismissing these negative feelings? Because they're uncomfortable? And really there are no quote unquote negative emotions, is it unpleasant, unpleasant to feel anger are rare times, you know, but they all have a place, right? If I'm playing sports, I actually probably want to be a little angry, because I want to have that like aggressiveness like I want to be ready to fight. If I'm in a debate, I want to be able to have that a little bit too. So I think this is a really tricky thing. That is maybe a lifelong quest is to figure out how can I embrace negative emotions and deal with them in an appropriate amount of time, but not to ruminate for several rates, like spend so much time on it, that it's really negatively impacting my life? Yes, 100%. And I think gratitude is a good way to kind of help climb out of that, that slippery slope or off that slippery slope of those negative emotions. And you came out with this bold gratitude journal. Because journaling, I think, you know, this is something that I haven't embraced that I need to, because I really dive into the gratitude. And I'm good when you talk about picking out those tiny moments, I've made it like part of my daily routine to pick out those daily moments. But what I noticed is, so at the end of the night, I can think about that. But then a week to three weeks go by and those moments are gone. And it's hard to recall. And I think with that journal piece, plus you're putting pen to paper, but you can flip back and relive those moments. And there's got to be power in that as well. Yeah, I have a visceral reaction when I'm near or holding my journal, even when I'm not even writing it, it just like this reaction of like, okay, I know what's in here. And it's, it's my world, and it's special. It's my heart. And when we had the idea, so it's, so I wrote it, and kind of put the the framework together. And then my amazing, lifelong bestie Allison Liu is this incredible creative. You know, from the beginning, she's like, okay, Lanie, we need to make sure this works for teens, tweens, not just adults. And like, that's brilliant. And she also really pushed me, you know, universal design is a very big deal. To me, that's something I do a lot of workshops on. So I always wanted it to be, you know, the firm goal of think about notice, think feel do as a protocol. That's like the firm goal, you could write it, you could draw it, you could record it into your Voice Memo app on your phone. And we say that I wrote that in the very beginning of the journal, you don't actually have to write in the journal for every single thing if you want to, you should. But if you're just not in the mood, just do it a different way. And so we also just tried to bring a lot of choice into the different activities. And so the journal is designed to it has an intro and we I even wrote in the intro, I'm going to like pull it up, so I Don't misquote it. But it's like something to the effect of you can start here if you want to, but you don't have to think you like it that you don't have to if you don't want it because the whole thing is meant to like flip around however you want to. So after the intro, it goes gratitude for happiness, gratitude with my pizzas, a second one, and then gratitude with the world is the third one. So it was very intentional of okay, and it really goes to kind of the things I was talking about before. So gratitude for well being gratitude for happiness. That's the first section where it's really focusing on you being thoughtful and developing some protocols. You know, I mentioned the doctor who saw one, I think when we talked last year, the notice, think feel do and then just some other ways that we can really build this grateful disposition for ourselves. And then the second section really jumps to Okay, well, how can we share that gratitude with those who are closest to us, it could be our students, it could be our family members, friends, whoever it is, but those people who are really in our, you know, in our close bubble here. And then the last one is about gratitude with the world. And it's really about how can we make that gratitude not only out loud to our family and friends and students and peers, but how can we make it out loud to those we come across to see even strangers and so there's a lot of different practices in that section. I'm really proud of the whole journal. And I think that maybe that last section is where this journal is particularly different from other journals because it's actually encouraging you to not just stay in the journal, it's actually encouraging you in the two sections gratitude With my peeps in gratitude with the world, like spread it, but even spread it with people, you don't know that well, and that's something interesting. Yeah, I think it's so interesting. And I love how you really made it to embrace all these different modalities where people can make it their own, which is super cool. Yeah, we really wanted and this is again where Allison pushed me I knew the practices, I knew the quotes I wanted to put in there, I knew a lot of the things but Allison really pushed me on like, well, how can we do things for people who are really artistic like I am. And we actually have directions on how to do an origami bookmark. Because since you're gonna jump around, maybe you want to bookmark to where the last activity you did was, and it's really a variety. So there's fill in the blanks, we've got these, you know, activities where you can go really wild like found poetry we've got section we've got motivating quotes through all out in that's really fun to Allison deliberately when she designed it, the quotes are mostly on a blank page. So if you wanted to, you could write around it, you could draw around it, you could put stickers around it, you could do whatever you want in that blank space. There's a lot of intentional blank space in here, but it still feels to me designed. And then one of the things that is really pretty unique. And I'll tell you, Brian, if you look at my bookshelf, I've got like 50 Gratitude journals, because I tried to do as much research as I could, I'm like, I'm going to spend $40, on this journal, I'm going to get the $5 one from, you know, the dollar store, I'm going to try all these different ones and see like, what do they all have that I love, and what are they lacking, and one of the things not to throw shade, but one of the things that I struggled with is a lot of gratitude journals, there's first of all, not a lot of prompts, they're usually really using about five to 10 prompts. And they also give you a specific amount of space. So to me, I'm someone who I either have a total anxiety that I won't fill the space, or I have totally anxiety that I'm going to need more space, and it's not going to look nice. And so so what we did at the end of each section is the prompts that I created are actually all listed on a page. And I know we're an audio podcast, but they're all listed here. And then you cut them out. And then on the pages that follow that are mostly blank, you just glue the prompt in or you could rewrite it if you don't want to cut your journal and then you just write as much space as you want. And then put another prompt down. So we're really trying to be like, as universally designed as possible. How can we give as much face as much choice and voice as possible? Yes, I love that. I love listening, I was listening to you and your co author talks about that where I believe you were in a Starbucks and you had all the different journals and you laid them out. So you did your homework we did. And it was really fun too, because it's nice when you have a partner because there were certain ones that I liked. And she goes off, that makes me feel like it's homework, that's too much text on a page. And I was okay, that's something to think about. I have to be more economical with my words. And yeah, it was really, really fun to have someone. I wouldn't say we're total opposites. But you know, just to bring in that how we're all unique and diverse and unique and dynamic, I should say, to hear how someone else felt about opening up one of the journals versus how I felt was really interesting. So we're always assuming variability. We're always assuming there's gonna be someone who doesn't want to draw. There's someone who doesn't want to make it pretty. They just want to write in pencil. That's fine. That's Yes, yes. In the end, it was I was looking at it from the pictures online and everything. What I loved is, you made it fun. And we talked a little bit about this earlier. But we talked about gratitude. And I mentioned sports psychologist and the sports psychologist said for these young athletes, teaching them all about gratitude. And before we hopped on and started recording we talked about you made this was tweens in mind. You talked about doing this with families, like developing a gratitude practice for a young person, especially the teenager as they go up is so huge. So that's one of the reasons why I love this gratitude journal. Oh, you're so kind Well, I'll tell you what another funny thing about having one of your lifelong besties do the project with you is she encouraged me to channel what she calls fun Laney and she didn't want me to write really formally. She says remember we're writing for tween teen and adult. There's to me an upbeat and fun tone to the journal and it's not to make Light of gratitude, we still have reverence for gratitude. But it also is a good time. And there is nothing wrong with having fun while you're doing your credit, it doesn't need to be so. So you know, subdued it can be a good time. Yeah, no, I love us. And I think this is something that I would love to see brought in the schools. In fact, I campaign for you to do a children's one. So hopefully years down the road we get we get it into the the elementary school students but you talked about so there's three parts, we have happiness with your peers and with the world, can we dive into those little parts, maybe give us a prompt that you use in the book or something from the book from from each one of those sections that you really love? Yeah, and so it's fun, because as I mean, the journal is only been out for a few months. And as I've been working with teachers, one thing that's been happening is teachers have been getting the journal for themselves. And then they use the activities with their class. So they'll pull the prompts, or they'll do all sorts of really, really fun stuff. And so in the end, I end the first one and I know I've said this a lot. But the notice think feel do is the first one that I do with any group that I'm working with, because that's just to me a good protocol. And so I do a lesson where I take the kids through notice, think, feel and do giving them a word bank for the feel, trying to help them develop that emotional granularity. And then I give them options at the end. How do you want to express your gratitude? Because the Do you know? So do you want to make a gratitude chain because we have in the book, we encourage people to cut the book apart, cut the journal apart. And I know we know that stresses some people out. So we always give them another option. Like if you don't want to cut this, go to the website and download a copy. We totally get that. But thinking about, you know, do you want to write a letter of gratitude? Do you want to make a gratitude chain that you could hang in your room or on the mirror in your bathroom? As a reminder, every morning when you get up? Do you want to contribute to our gratitude wall in the classroom. And so there's all sorts of different ways. So all of these things are really meant to be used with individuals with groups with classes, you know, in staff meetings, all of that, all that fun stuff. So those are just some of the activities like I said, a chain of grateful memories is one the gratitude letter is another that's actually from the with my peeps section. And so yeah, there's there's so many different ones, you want to get one from the another one from the my peeps section. Yeah. And then and I love because you know, sometimes how you're given those examples out. Because sometimes, you know, we just expect our students to know this stuff that we've seen in plain sight, but it's not maybe is visible to them, or it's not brought to the conscious for them. And I've learned that to get kids attention, including my own two children. I love to use Instagram reels. So I will go and I will find Instagram reels that represent gratitude in some way that they would not have connected to gratitude, but I see it as gratitude. And so whether it's like if I'm doing a lesson on savoring, which would be in the gratitude for happiness section, so savoring there's a lot of things we can savor besides food, but there is a really good Instagram reel of a baby eating ice cream for the first time. And oh my goodness, like, the eyes gets so big. And that baby just grabbed the ice cream with all of her might. And you can just see that she is just savoring this ice cream. It's the greatest thing she's ever come across in her like 10 months on the planet. And and so I really like to find Instagram reels where I can see people experiencing and or expressing gratitude. There's one that's so fun. It's this little three year old, and he's blowing bubbles, and he has the hardiest laugh after he does his bubble. This kid is in pure joy. He's savoring blowing bubbles and so, so the savoring one is another one from the happiness one. And then I'm actually flipping through my own journal here. And some of the things that are really fun again, are cutouts and so there is one that's like write the best thank you note and it actually is on kind of stationery that you can color. One of the ones that I go back to regularly it's called my peeps is the name of the page on 64. And then you just list out like in this one section people who make you laugh, people who cheer me on people who stretch my thinking people who embody gratefulness, love me unconditionally. So celebrate my wins. And they think when we start to get more granular with that, that's really, really helpful. And then another one, this will go back to the happiness section. But you know, the three things list is really, really popular. And you'll hear a lot of people talk about that their gratitude practice, they do three things that they're grateful for every night. Well, my experience and this is just me, but I've heard this from other people too, is it gets really monotonous to do the same three things. So we have a three things where you mix it up, and you put a word in front of things. So like three lol things, three kinds of things, three epic things. And then I kind of nerd it out. And if anyone wants any of this stuff, just reach out because I give you all the stuff. I need a cube, where you just roll the dice, and then you love me like okay, well, this is the kind of three things list I'm gonna do tonight. So a lot of the journal while you do things in the journal is actually also meant to teach you how to do these things outside of the journal and just like what are some practices that you could bring in regularly? And then you asked for a specific example of from the gratitude with the world. Is that cool? If I give you one of those, I would love that. Okay, so I'll give you ones there's a spreading good vibes checklist where it talks about little things like hold the door open for someone like a champ, be a stellar listener and lend an ear to someone who needs to chat, shower, everyone you meet with genuine compliments all day long. Declutter your bookshelf and donate, you know, volunteer in a soup kitchen. So some of them are tiny, and some of them are bigger investments in time. One of my favorites is called the reviews are in it's on page 110. And it's kind of like a mad libs for writing a five star online review. So it basically is like, I recently had the most fill in an adjective service at fill in the name of the company, restaurant store, or whatever it is. The staff was incredibly mature adjectives, you know. So it's trying to help people because I find that a lot of people have gratitude in their heart and they want to express it. But it feels really hard to just start from a blank thank you note or a blank screen or anything like that. So just trying to help people come up with ways and even though into like, Okay, well, who should we be thinking, think about health care workers, salespeople, food service people, hairdresser house cleaners. I mean, there's so many people we come into contact with on a regular basis. It's pretty unusual. If I go to a restaurant, I get on Yelp almost immediately if I had a good experience, and I will write the review, right while I'm there. I love that. It makes me feel so good. It almost feels selfish, but I know it's not. But it's a it's something that is doing good and makes you feel good. Oh, that's so good. So good. I just want to jump on a couple of these that you said so many of them. The first. And that's why I want to, you know, I think there's so passionate about getting you on and talking about it for us. But for the young tweens and the teenagers is you know, you talked about find your people, because sometimes, you know, we think about finding our people. And we think one person should be all of these different attributes that you listed. But that might not be the case. I love how you talked about getting granular teaching people, well, this person might help me with this. But then there's this other person that I have in my life that I can go to to help me with something else. So I love that I love the good vibes checklist. What are ways that we can spread the good vibes, because teaching those students all about that. And then when you talked about, you know, the Mad Libs and how we all have gratitude in our heart, but sometimes it's hard to recall and you know, having those prompts and I say that so much with the students but what I also find and I'm surrounded by amazing people, but I see it and I see it in myself. Sometimes we need those reminders still because you know when you're a teacher when your administrator here in the people business, there are so many there stressful moments. There's so many fires that you're putting out every single day plus your fight and your human nature negativity bias that sometimes we we get clouded. So I love how you're pointing all these out for our students but for us as well. Yeah and I it's there's like two sides to that that I'm hearing one is first of all getting super granular like he said about, you know, this is someone who challenges my thinking and I'm sure you have kids in your class that challenge your thinking right? And so I can think of one kid I mean, I must have taught this to she's probably maybe married and a parent herself by now but You know, years ago, when I had her in my second grade class, she would challenge me. And there would be times where I would just kind of out of pride, just be like, Nope, I, I'm right, she's wrong. And then I'd like step back and realize, oh, my gosh, she was right, I need to go apologize to her. And so even though it didn't feel good, and a time when she was challenging me, I'm grateful to her, she caught my mistake, I can make this, you know, eight year old for outsmarting me. And then that's actually a good thing. But then also being thankful for ourselves. So we do also have in the book, we offer up some affirmation, some self affirmations, and then we leave space for you to add your own that would be specific to you. Because that's not something we want people to that's not the lesson to be learned with gratitude that you should be self effacing. If we can be grateful for ourselves, we work hard, we do things. And so we see the good, and we noticed that often, it's the result of someone else. But there's still a good amount of time, it's because of us so we can be grateful for ourselves. Yes. Oh, so good. So many great things. I love this journal. And I can't wait for more people to get their hands on it. But you don't just write my friend, you are a podcaster, too. And you have an amazing podcast called evolving gratitude. And could you explain a little bit about that? Yes. So evolving with gratitude, the podcast comes from I wrote the book evolving with gratitude and kept sacred space for 20 educators to share their stories of what gratitude with kids peers in the world meant to them. Now, books are finite. And I was determined to use my own word economy. And I knew that I couldn't fit more than 20 educator stories in there. So that's where the podcast came from. It was me initially bringing on people who did contribute into the book saying like, can you share it with those who maybe don't have access to the book or just prefer to hear it? And then it was me, okay, how do I get to talk to the people who I didn't get a chance to get in the book, like you, Brian, and I'm so happy that you are on the show. And so you are episode 32. So we're like, it was so fun. And we're headed towards episode 100. And so you were you were pretty early on. And I appreciate you giving that time and people love that episode. And so yeah, it's just all about what are the stories that people have to share, to do with gratitude. And sometimes we're very specific to gratitude. Sometimes we're more specific to well being and thriving and things like that. And as I was sharing with you, before we hit record, I actually in the last few months started writing for Arianna Huffington, thrive global. And now that I'm a contributor to that, I've been starting to get some some of my heroes not that the previous guests weren't my heroes, but some of the heroes that I have no connection to. And so some of these far away heroes now that I've had a ton of my, my edgy heroes on like you, Brian, so it's been really fun to get people like Laurie Santos will be one of the guests in the new year, David Meltzer, Dr. Ayman, with you talks about brain health. So season three is really looking good. I'm excited about it. So well, I'm fired up for season three, just a you know, when you talk about Laurie Santos, the happiness lab. And that is a huge podcasts out there. So to spend some time with her had to be amazing. It was a fan girl moment to say the least. And I actually had to record the intro separately, because I could not I was too worried I wouldn't keep my composure. No, I just started. I was just like, don't worry about the intro. I'll do that later. And but she was such a delight. And what a I mean, the happiness lab 85 million downloads. Amazing this huge, huge podcaster Not to mention, she teaches Yale's most popular class in the history of Yale, the science of well being. And just for her to give me that space was I mean, talk about gratitude. I'm still in awe. I mean, it happened a couple of weeks ago, and I'm still on cloud nine for all of it. For anyone who comes on the podcast. I'm super grateful. And so the opportunity to connect with some people that I wouldn't normally cross paths list is pretty special to me, and I can't wait to hear those future episodes. Now. One thing that's beautiful about podcasting, like you said, you super grateful to make these connections, but it's also about learning because everybody walks such a different path has their own life experiences has lessons to share. What is it like? One or two lessons that you've learned from hosting the podcast and you probably have 1000s of lessons that you could give, but just off the cuff, what is one or two that pop out to you that really are meaningful? So if we're talking about like, as a podcaster, like, how has that learning experience been, if that's okay to respond like that, but let me know your service. To me, the best thing about being a podcaster is those connections. But to me, it's also about learning to be a really good listener. And so David Meltzer has a famous saying, be more interested than interesting. And they think that's a really profound thing. And I think that's what being a podcaster allows me to do. So everyone has lessons to teach me. And when I'm in this space of being the host, and I get to ask the questions, you know, it is a little bit of a dual thing, because you do have to also be thinking about where the conversation is going. Right, right. And that's like the Yes, paradox of podcasting. But it's present as I can possibly be, as the host. Knowing that I also get to go back and re listen to the episodes as I'm checking for audio quality, and, you know, editing the transcript and things like that. I have just learned that there, it really does validate the fact that we are all unique and dynamic, and that we all want to be seen, heard, known and valued. And so between those things, I think there's a lot. You know, one of the things about gratitude is it's really powerful when you do it internally. But I think when you do it externally, there's this beautiful sense of belonging that happens, which is such an important thing for people. And so that's it's kind of I don't know if I answered that succinctly. I don't think I did. But at any rate, I hope, no, you know, you took that down a different road than I was expecting. But I love that, because I think that lesson is so important, to be more interested than interesting to be that great active listener. And that's not always easy, because, and that's not just being a podcast host that's in real life, in the conversations that we have to be interested in that other person. And I also love what you what you said there about sharing that gratitude. We have that mutual friend Meghan loss, and she's a rock star, just came out with her new book legacy of learning. And one of the things that she said on our podcast episode was she talked about, you know, when you're lacking something, and you give it away, often that comes back to, and I don't have to be lacking gratitude. But when I give that away, when I'm in a restaurant, and I pull out my phone, and I fill out that Yelp, it comes back to me. So I think that was beautiful, you just share? Well, thank you. I do think that is how the world works. And it's not that we do things to get things, but I think when we even just the doing is going to bring us joy. And then it does also tend to have a way of coming back to us. So it's just, I mean, I think I said this before, maybe even on this podcast, it's like sometimes topics pick you, you don't pick them. And they do feel that way about gratitude. If you had told me four years ago that I would spend years taking a deep dive on gratitude, I would have probably looked at you a little funny. Like, wait, I'm always talking about inquiry based learning. And yes, I'm talking about SEL, and yes, and but to go very deep on such a specific thing. You know, once you kind of see how it's a universal and it's foundational, and you start to see how much more there is to it. I think that that's why I get anxious, like you were saying about people focusing on the one day a year for Thanksgiving, when it's like no, this is how you live your life. If you want to have the best life possible if you want to have the most fulfilling life and it's not, again, just about all positive emotions, it's about that full human experience. But when you live a grateful life and you're noticing and thinking and feeling and doing that's really where it's just life changing. Yes, it is. It is and you don't know when he talked about that, like, it made me think of John or John Gordon quote and he always says he's talking about positivity in this call, but he says you know, you got to feed the positivity egos you feed and weed and weed and feed, I'm going to feed into positivity weed out the negativity. And the most important part is that feeding. And I think we can talk about gratitude, but we got to feed that gratitude. Whether it's with that gratitude journal, or it's hearing your voice and evolving with gratitude, where you're planting those seeds and it's just you know, feeding that gratitude. You know, that muscle that we have and that we need, and it is a muscle it does have to be worked out and you mentioned it earlier the negativity bias that we all come pre loaded with which served us evolutionarily because it kept us from danger. We were always on red alert, what's gonna go wrong now what's bad now. And but most of us are not living in dire situations anymore. And most of us are not under constant threat. And so we have to retrain our brains to notice the good instead of the bad all the time, all the time. 100%. So one of my favorite questions, Lenny, that I love to ask is, do you have any book recommendations or podcast recommendations? The list is long, but I will give you just, I'm gonna give you one book. And can I sneak in a few podcasts? Because that's so hungry person. Okay. So the book that I read most recently that I think is just so practical, actionable, and really can make your life so much better, is happier hour by Cassie Holmes. And she's so practical in giving you the tools for how do you time audit? How do you Time Wish? How do you? Basically we all have 24 hours in a day? How do you make the most of that 24 hours? Obviously, there's a an overlap with gratitude, because a lot of times we're doing things without noticing. But that is a really, really good one. I'm currently reading two different books. I'm reading all by Decker Keltner. And Jim quicks limitless. So I snuck two more in there haven't read them, but they're both really good so far. For podcasts, well, you should definitely be listening to Brian Martin every day or every chance to get in your What are you posting, like twice a week now? I use, I had to scale it down a little bit, just because I was starting to get burned out a little bit. So I scaled it down to one one a week. Hopefully I can get back into maybe throwing a bonus episode in here or there. I feel like it's okay, I hear that you're the podcasters I believe you but I feel like it's more than once a week because I'm like, wow, how does he get that much content content out? So So in addition to teaching champions, I would say quick brain. And I mentioned his name earlier, Jim quick. He has the limitless expanded version of his book that just came out. But quick brain. I am so fascinated by him. I have only recently come across his work, but his way of you know, he's all about how can you maximize your potential? How can you maximize your brain? And I feel like I'm working a lot, but I'm not always retaining enough when I'm listening to podcasts when I'm reading books. I'm consuming it but I'm not retaining enough. So I need him to teach me some strategies about how to actually hold on to those things a little better. I mean, I'm still listening to the happiness lab, Laurie Santos. Huberman lab on purpose with Jay Shetty armchair expert with DAX. Dax Shepard. Those are just some of the tried and true ones can't help but give them a shout out. No, so good that that book sounds amazing and you know, I've listened or I've watched a bunch of Jimmy quick YouTube videos and he is so good. It's amazing what he can do so definitely want to dive into that book a little bit limitless. Yes, I'm excited. We we do a book study. Yeah. Now if someone wanted to connect with you if they wanted to purchase you know or dive into bow gratitude with you what will be the best way to connect? Sure, so you can get to everything at Laney ral.com. And I know that's not the easiest name to spell so it's L A I N IE and then Raul like Powell, r o w e LL, the bold gratitude journal and evolving with gratitude are both on Amazon but you can get to everything from my website because there's a Books tab, there's a podcast tab. And then I do write extensively these days, maybe too much. I don't know if people want to read everything I write but I do write a lot and I have that on an on a news tab in on my website. So you can check all of that out and I would love to connect with anyone and my email is just lanie@gmail.com and I will always and I said news before for the for the articles it's actually in the resources. But please just reach out and I will gladly connect with you and share some ideas and I want to hear what you're up to to awesome well ah writing for Thrive global amazing, my friend amazing and the podcast evolving the gratitude, the journal and we talked about Oh, you know how important that is that that gratitude practice is, you talked about, you know, the topics, you don't choose the topics that those topics choose you. And that's your mission, and you're so needed in this world. Lanie thank you so much. I am grateful for this conversation. But more importantly, I'm grateful for you, my friend. You're blessed word. You're so kind. And I feel like I needed to ask you more questions. I'm, I'm a, I'm a guest that's very compliant. And so I want to ask you questions, and I always forget. But I mean, if you still have a few minutes, I'll sneak some questions in for you. Yeah, I mean, we sure can. So I'm just curious, like, Where were you in your podcast? During how many episodes are you at now? So this is Episode 200, maybe five 206 that we're gonna we're gonna do. I think that's pretty amazing. And so what's what is it? What do you get from podcasting? I'm going to turn the tables because you asked me that question. And I didn't answer it correctly. But now Now I've got it. This is the way I wanted to take the questions. Yeah, no. Well, first off, I loved how you answered that question. Because, you know, it's funny, because you put it on the importance of being a great listener. And I think that is so important. Um, as far as what would I get from podcasting? You know, selfishly, originally, I think I got into it, because I wanted to be like a keynote speaker. And it was a gave me a little credibility, it allowed me to work on this craft and share some, you know, reflection, and working on it. And I, I was nervous about doing interviews. It's that sounds pretty crazy. But, you know, it's just, it's revitalizing. I don't know if that's a good word, or not to talk to people meet people, like you. And I get to learn from people like you. And yeah, I think that's just the beautiful part of it is in my little tiny corner in Western New York, I get to connect with people from all over to my friend in Huntington Beach. And just like we said, we can learn from so many people. Well, I concur with that. And I would say that podcasting is probably the hardest thing I do. I actually think writing is easier. I think keynoting is easier. But podcasting is like I said, it's this duel of I have to be present and thinking a little bit ahead at the same time. And that's it. That's a tough thing. And plus, you also want to, and you're you're so generous with this, I always want to give people as much space as possible to share what's important to them, and what's going to help the listeners. So just, I could ask you a million other questions, but I know it's late for you. So I just wanted to know kind of what's what's next for Brian Martin. I appreciate that. And it's just a maybe a newsletter, maybe maybe a newsletter to work on the writing skills a little bit. They're a little weak. So hopefully, but it's just another way like you talked about putting gratitude out into the world putting the just expressing yourself and releasing that out. Well, I will tell you, James clear is very clear. That's so redundant. But James clear is very, I never really thought about how his name is so helpful in some cases. But James clear is very clear about there is no amount of social media followers that he would take in trade of his newsletter. Like that direct connection to people where a platform doesn't get to decide things. There's no algorithm behind it. It's just me sending a message to the people I get to share my message with. And so I think a newsletter is a great way to also remind people that your episodes are ready for them to come and listen to so yeah, absolutely. And James clear. He has one of the best ones out there. So he's got a good one. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. You're such a rock star Lani, thank you so much. You're very kind my friend and I just am so grateful and I hope I was an okay return guest and hopefully I haven't ruined Grand Slam. Slam. Thank you my friend. This podcast is a proud member of the teach better Podcast Network better today. Better tomorrow and the podcast to get you there. You can find out more at Teach better.com/podcast Now let's get back to the episode. This conversation was so good. Lainey is absolutely amazing. And she just dropped so many gems. Now this is a teaching champion state where I share three of my favorite takeaways from this conversation. And the first gem that I loved is I learned talks about feeling the gratitude muscle. And the research is clear on gratitude, and how much of a positive effect that has on our lives. Well, it's important that we set up practices in our lives, so that we can welcome more gratitude into it. In a gratitude journal light, ladies bowl gratitude is a perfect place to start. The second gem that I loved is how Lainey challenges us to think about how we express our gratitude. And take a second right now, and really think about how you express your gratitude towards others. Because there's a level of intentionality that needs to be there. And it's important that we remember that the more that we give, oftentimes, the more that we're going to find coming back our way as well. And the third gem that I loved was our Lenny talked about one of the most important lessons that she's learned from being a podcast host is that if we want to be interesting, it's important that we be interested. Because all of us, we want to be seen, we want to be heard, we want to be valued. And being an active listener, being curious, slowing down, paying attention to what others have to say. It strengthens those relationships. And it's so important. Now these are just a few of my favorite gems. Hit me up on Twitter at be Martin real on Instagram at teaching champions podcast, and let me know what are a few your favorite gems. A big thank you to Laney for dropping so many beautiful takeaways. And be sure to check out Bo gratitude journal. And a big thank you to all of you for being here for being part of the teaching champions community. We support we encourage we lift each other up. And always remember, it doesn't matter whether you're from rural America, to urban America, to Canada to Spain to Bahrain. We're all on that same team. We're all on that same mission. And we're always better together. Keep being amazing, my friends, and as you go out into the week may step into your strength, may you step into your shine, and let's build our champions up. Have a great week, everybody