Ripples: Gratitude is always available

This week I have been recording some social media content about gratitude. I started w 7 days, just like the movie "The Ring" except not menacingly. Lol. Once I started I dont think I really want to stop. Gratitude can be a very healthy exercise at changing your perspective in a positive direction. One day at a time.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hey guys, it's YK presenting Ripples. So today I was kind of thinking so my whole podcast is kind of about how the little things make big differences. And um I kind of wanted to talk a little bit. I've been recording a kind of like a gratitude segment on my um on my social media. Um I haven't posted any yet. I I find that if I like film in bulk and then put up videos every day, it's a little easier than trying to film and post every day. Anyway, it doesn't matter. But basically, I was kind of wanting to work on some gratitude for the week, like do like seven days of gratitude, and it's been so rewarding to really just like sometimes you forget to like do the stop and smell the flowers thing, especially now. I mean, ironically, it's like becoming spring, and so now's the time more than ever to stop and smell the roses, right? As they're blooming into anew and whatnot and so forth. Um, but so I've been doing a little bit of that every day. I'll do like a video of gratitude, and I don't want to say it's hard because it's actually very easy to do. But like the days that it's difficult is like um, so my mom had some technical difficulties, I'd like to call it. Um she is a vulnerable senior, and there's a lot of scam artists out there, and she got scammed the other day, and so you know it's it's it's one of those things where I don't mean to share her business, but this is such a like I don't want to say a common occurrence, but I think my sister said something like the there was like over six billion dollars reported last like in 2024 for like theft, like scam theft, and I'm like, and it's just terrible. There's also a friend of a friend where his landlord that he's known forever, um, she got scammed so hard she might lose her house, and it's just tragic. Like it's it uh I mean it's one of those, oh my gosh, how do you even find how do you even find the positive in these kinds of situations? You know what I mean? And but you really can, and I know that sounds really like cliche, and I know it sounds like oh come on, can we just not can we just not be puppies and rainbows and unicorns today? Like, like some people get annoyed that you have joy. Let's face it. You walk around, you're like, oh, like you're like dancing around in a circle, throwing flower petals into the air, and someone next to you is like stupid. You know? Um so but there's positives in everything, right? So I will give this to you from my mom's perspective. I think this is the greatest way to put it. So she got scammed, which makes her embarrassed, which makes her sad, which could make her depressed. But instead, you know what she did? My sister and I, we took time to, you know, do the whole redoing bank accounts and credit cards and make sure her auto pays are on the new credit, you know, the new checking accounts, and so there's a lot of effort on our part because she can't do it herself, and it's not, it's just she has a problem with her memory, so we have to help her with things that maybe like someone else might not need help with, and so she just needs more assistance than like you know, maybe the average Joe or whatever. Um, but instead of being like, I don't know, instead of taking it to a dark place, she's been constantly thanking us for not yelling at her, for not making her feel bad, for being there and doing the things we need to do again without like rolling our eyes at her and doing things as in a as uh let's see how I want to say this, and then in a timely fashion that we are physically able, you know, because we both have jobs and we both have different schedules, and my sister and I are tag teaming um this project, and so just seeing my mom stand in gratitude through this horrible experience for her, you know, because like it's when people steal from you, like I had a I had my car stolen from me um like two years ago because I I used to drive a Hyundai, and that's one of the more vulnerable vehicles still to this day on uh car theft. And um being robbed is I don't know if anyone if you haven't been robbed before, it's it's not the greatest feeling in the world. It's very I think it can be very fearful, like you can become very fearful from having that experience. It just makes you I don't know, it gives you a funny feeling for a while, you know what I mean? Like you don't always feel safe when you go to your car, or now you start to wonder if it's gonna be there when you get back, you know, and just the financial hit you take, because even though I've caught have car insurance, you definitely are not gonna get the same amount in your like you know, like the amount they give you for your car. They'll give you the blue book value, but not like the value value, or like um the emotional value that your vehicle has for you. Because I know for me, my cars tend to be an extension of my being. Kind of like, you know, kind of like a fun t-shirt you wear, right? You've had adventures in it, you've taken people places in it, you've told stories in it, you've had wonderful travels and experiences, and and so it's like a memory time machine. And so for someone to take that from you, it's just kind of like, oh, you know what I mean? But even for me when that happened, my gratitude was so like um they steal things out of the car too, right? And I I do I did have some items in the car at the time, but the greatest part was like there was a um, I was weightlifting at the time. Um, I'd been weightlifting for a couple years, and my trainer got me a customized cowhide, real cowhide lifting belt. Because being a plus size girl, I can't just buy one from the store. The ones, even the big two X's from the store don't fit me. So he ordered from a guy that he knew from Texas, I think. And he ordered me a customized belt so I could weightlift safely with a belt, and I'm that was in the back of the car. And it was recovered. They didn't take it, they left it in the car. Luckily, the car was recovered, so I was able to get some stuff back, including my weightlifting belt. And I can't tell you how much that meant to me because that was such a special gift from someone special. And then on top of that, like, you know, they took like some CDs or whatever, and they had like um I had some gift cards in there. And uh, but one of them, uh one of the gift cards that was almost empty had my name on it, and so it was ditched in a yard somewhere, and so someone turned it into the police, which again, nice of them, and they were able to call me and track me down and be like, hey, there were some things left in the yard. Um, here are the things we recovered. And one of those things, it was nothing like valuable otherwise, but the one thing that they did bring back that I was excited for was my steering wheel cover. I had bought like, you know, kind of like a bejeweled um steering wheel cover from just Amazon, and it's not so much the value of the item, it was the fact that it was a memory piece of my car. So I could take a piece of my old car and put it in my new car. So that's why that part was so important to me was just having that option to kind of just keep the memory alive of my old car, like in memorandum. And so, like all the positives that you can find out of something negative. So, mom did that, I did that. I know again, it sounds hard, it sounds silly, but the perspective that you have can change your experience because my sister and I are closer with our mom because of this experience. People show that they care to my mom, so my mom feels valued. Um there are just really some amazing things that can come out of something what we would call negative, right? And so I just wanted to share how great, like, I don't know, I don't want to say how great this experience was. Because that's not the that's not right the way, not right the way to put it. Um, but just so you can understand. So anyway, so on my you um social media, yayk Y A Y K A Y 555. Um, I am on TikTok, YouTube, and um Instagram, and I also have a Facebook. Um on all those platforms, I do put up all my videos, and I plan on doing a gratitude segment, like seven days of gratitude. So I'm gonna start putting those up pretty soon. Um like I said, I'm just kind of slow, I'm a little slow on posting, but I'm I'm filming them, so progress, progress, progress. We're our our own worst critic, if you haven't heard. Um, that's you know, in case you no one's ever told you that that that's the thing, but um, so that's the thing I wanted to talk about today was just finding taking those like experiences, finding the gratitude where you can can really make a difference, and it can really switch your life around. Sorry, I'm driving at the same time. Um, it can really drive uh change your life around by the way you look at things. I'll give you one more example too before we go. So I used to work at a fast food restaurant, and if you worked, if you've ever worked in the food industry, especially with restaurants or some of the fast food y guys, you really consider your work co-workers family. Like you kind of create, you know, you have like the mom of the house, and you have your little siblings that you fight with, and then you you know, you do consider yourselves family members, it's not so much co-workers, and um and there was uh there was a day that we were working and it was really busy, and it went kind it it actually went pretty horribly. It was kind of like you know, you're running out of this, you're running out of that, you had to go and make some on the fly of some of the ingredients to put on the line, you know. It was just this frantic cluster fart, right? All the cluster fart. And this could have been one of those days where you sit down at the end with your co-workers and go, Wow, that day's just stunk, didn't it? But instead, my my dearly departed manager walked up to all of us and said, Wasn't that amazing? Look at how we handled that. We crushed it, we became together and we communicated so strongly, and it wasn't that fun. Oh my gosh, what success we had today. And I can't I was just blown away by it. Shouldn't be a new subject, it shouldn't be a new concept, but for some reason that day it just became so obvious to me that we have choices every single day to decide what our day is. I have moments that aren't my favorite, but I have yet to have I have yet to have something that ruined my day, my whole day. Have I had experiences that weren't my favorite that day? Are there things that I wish it had gone differently that day? Absolutely. But I have been it has been a long time that I can remember where I could have said today was a terrible, terrible, no good, bad day, as the book as the kid's book would refer. It's been a long, long time, and I can't tell you how much of a value that can be in my life, in your life. Just taking the little time, little things. You can find anything to be grateful for every day. There's plenty of things to find. You just have to look for them. So anyway, I will talk to you soon. Kia bah oh, um, I did put up a video today. Let's see, what days what day is today? April 14th, I think it is today, 2026. So today on my Facebook, if you go to my Facebook, I did put up a video, and it's um it's actually kind of reflects about what we're talking about today, about how one person can make a difference, kind of with that perspective of like live in your joy. So I put up a video of a gentleman, um, it looks like an old grainy video, but it's a gu about a guy who just starts dancing on like some hillside by in a festival somewhere, and then just the crowd that ensues. I mean, you gotta watch it. Go check it out on my Facebook Y-A-Y-K-A-Y-555. Should be posted on that, and then just check it out. It's super fun. I think it's just I think the title of it's like uh one makes a huge difference, or something like that, you know, and all it can only start with one, or it has to you know what I mean. Anyway, so go check it out, and I will talk at you guys soon. And I hope you have a magical moment day.