hi and welcome to healthy inspirations i'm your host lindsay smith as always the goal of this show is to encourage and inspire you to take action in your life and your health each episode we are going to showcase different health and wellness topics and invite various community experts to share their knowledge and expertise today we have three amazing guests and local inspirations that are also personal friends of mine and i am excited to share their stories especially as we kick off the new year our first guest is julian solomon who is an author and a speaker next we'll hear from the owners of a russian athletics chris angler and judge alinsky our first guest julianne is going to talk about all things gratitude and give us some tips to start off the new year gratitude is something i personally use every day in my own life and talk about it my own book junk foods and junk moods so today we're going to hear from the attitude in hansard herself jillian sullivan who's also the author of a little bit of gratitude goes a long way she has deliberately been studying human behavior every day for decades she has a diverse educational background which includes a b a in psychology and m b a in accounting and a certification as an expert level practitioner as a laughter leader so let's welcome julianne thank you for coming with  me coming on the show today coming with me while you have a really really diverse background so let's hear a little bit about how you got into all this i know you do laughter and gratitude and you're just such a positive in for inspiration to me  in my own life and i know that you just how did you get into all this very much for those very kind words i started out my bachelor's degree was in psychology and i really enjoyed that and then i ran away to the mountains for a while and decided i needed to make some money and i came back and got an m b a in accounting and so i did accounting i was a c p a and did all kinds of things related to accounting for about thirty years  but all the time i was doing speaking engagements i was a certified toastmaster and i really enjoyed that and meanwhile as you said i deliberately studied human behavior every day somehow so i kept that psycholog going at the offices you were yet everywhere you know because i deliberately learn by learning about myself and and learning about other people so yeah there's there's a lot of tension in the middle of taxis and i used to taxes  but i'm a cockeyed optimist and i'm always looking at the bright side and i started about four years ago i decided that i was going to do speaking full time to companies and organizations and i was looking at the newspaper i think it was a local newspaper and there is an article about certified laughter leaders and i thought wow that sounds fun it will enhance what i do and so i did go for the training with the world laughter torn columbus ohio and then it took on a life of its own and part of our training has to do is something called good hearted living and part of good hard living is gratitude so in two thousand and eleven i dedicated my life to gratitude in i did that by keeping a journal every day and i was pretty sure if i had more gratitude and as you know lindsay when you have more gratitude your life is better that's just the way it is but we're creatures of habit so if we want to new have it we have to work really hard at it so that's how i fallon to major amounts of gratitude and it works in your personal life it works and businesses and so i spread that word in all the presentations i do whether it's on communication or change management or team building or laughter workshops that's great now tell me a little bit about your book so it's a little bit of gratitude a long way and this is your first so it's my third daughter book and it's awesome i love it because so tell me a little bit about this how this got started this from in two thousand and eleven when you said you just dedicated yeah i guess you can my life but you know i really didn't think about writing a book then but then i talked about it so much and i realized how important it was you know you know it is you get some and then you want to spread it out right so i decided to write this book so the way this book is set up is on the left hand side i write about something that i'm grateful for so when this when you have opened it says i'm thankful for people who are kind in traffic that is something on the left hand side is what i'm thankful for and then on the right hand side i give the reader an opportunity to do an exercise in that particular area and so some people leave it open on a certain page for a month some people go through each one you can always go back and every time you go back it's a little bit i love that because i think one of the misconceptions about gratitude is that i remember when i was first getting into it i thought well what do i have to really be grateful for because we tend to overthink things exact crowded today i think it's something we overthink so we're like we think we have to have this whole elaborate thing like i have to be i'm only grateful  if i can accomplish this thing but when you realize that gratitude is so much more it's just the little things like you can be grateful for this couple of water you know for being here today for waking up for getting a shower i don't know sometimes being self employed i have to  because sometimes i don't like to get out of bed in the morning and get ready but those little things really go a long way and that's interesting you say that because one of the things in there is grateful for clean water because there are millions and millions of people that don't have them but i start my day and i wake up and i'm happy to be alive because there's thousands of people who thought they were going to wake up and they didn't so if like you said those are things we owe we over thinking because we over think we don't think about them or that you're in a bad and you have sheets and covers and heat in a refrigerator with food in it it's cetera et cetera so true i know this has been a huge tool since my dad passed away in september this has been a huge tool that i've used with myself and my family that it reminds us every day that you know just because we lost someone and you know we're sad and we're hurt there's so many other things to be grateful for and it's just such an amazing feeling tool have you seen as well as far as healing oh absolutely because included in that is you have the you can be grateful for all the great memories you have and nobody can ever take that away from you my thing is as  long as you're alive no matter what's going on in your body or your life you can serve somebody in some way and so that's the other side of being grateful is being able to serve others  love it so how can gratitude i know we talked a lot you talked a little bit earlier about how it can be used in business in your health how can gratitude really be used to maybe help with your goals in any area of your life well let's talk about goals because that could be in business or like you say we're solo preorders and so we have like nine thousand goals what right i'm all too familiar so at the end of the day what i say is a lot of times we all spend time going oh i didn't get this done oh i didn't get that done oh we didn't get that ten we need i added with the gratitude we need to celebrate a bit more so we have to get to the end of the day and say wow i didn't get this done and i did get this done and sometimes i always say or imperfect where humans so we need reminders so maybe we need to make a list turning the day off this done got this done got this done so at the end of the day you can go wow look at everything i got time and and the other side of gratitude is just i mean wow how grateful i am i to be here to talk to you to spread what i have to say to other people that should fill me up for days so things come in our life that are always left turns and right turns but we can say we can always come back i love the buddhist philosophy is if you don't spend time figuring out why you got off the path you just get back on the path so you don't get bogged down in why things aren't going well you look at the things that are going well and that is really our own personal power and choice to do every single second so i know just like you said well two things one dealing since i do a lot with emotional eaters and stress people tend to use one of the tools that i use because i think like you said this being here should be able to fill us up all day and so i tried to show people that you know life's about more than the food and we get our nourishment from other things and that's one areas of our nourishment so really celebrating those things is so important so you can realize what what amazing happenings you have in your life every day  i love it i love that you use the word nourishment because it right when you think of that you think of food feeds you but good feelings feeds you and gratitude feeds you and feeling joy feeds you and laughter feeds you all these things feed us it's your right it's not just food and they all there's so much research now into the fact that they actually change your chemicals in your body you know that  right and they just make you healthier they improve your immune system they take away pain they reduce stress on and on and on the list goes on yet so yeah i mean this is amazing  we are going to go to a quick break here but i want people to know where they can get your book and find out more information about you ok well they can go to learning never ends dot com the book is available there and if they'll sign up for my newsletter i will let them know when they  really appreciate you being on here today thank you i'm very grateful for that and we're going to take a quick break but we can come back a russian athletics is an hour long program a group training personal training program for men and women with special needs and disabilities and we'll have owners chris engler and judge alinsky here to talk with us about that so thank you or i'm someone who cares about smiles and i live and work in your community i'm the one who puts a smile on your child's face i'm an orthodontist a dental specialist who corrects crooked teeth misaligned jaws and dental irregularities i received an additional two to three years of specialized education beyond else cool oh my i'm the maker of healthy beautiful smiles for more information visit braces dot org with extra needs and disabilities so welcome to the program joe and chris a mix of sighted to have you guys today so tell me a little bit about every option athletics but we started in two thousand and nine kind of started as a pilot program where we took six  individuals three men three women and we wanted to see what the introduction of health and wellness into their lives could do for them was it helping them get around better when they're also going to just keep them healthier are they going to learn about special foods and what it really does for them and maybe learn a little bit more about some self confidence socialization that really came from that i think is our biggest thing that we learned from an awesome so tell me a little bit about how it got i mean i know you said how it got started but where does the passion lie because i know you two are very passionate guys because i know you personally as friends and you're so involved in this this community i was so excited to have you on here because your community that you really built is is really amazing to see so tell me a little bit about your community i guess as i'm going to call your community or my younger brothers a man with special needs and disabilities but we've also been more than coaches for special interests forever and just spending time with these individuals is just the highlight of my day and i'm sure james to as well of course so tell me a little bit about the program specifically so what do you what does a typical session much like our group sessions basically we we have a lot of different offering let's make a little dent into that so we have group training services we also one on one training services offered were individuals with intellectual developmental disabilities then were into more of the typical individuals as well as well as their parents trying to get them involved in really breathe that that healthy social environment for everybody to be involved in the health and fitness but are our usual routine basic calisthenics cardio  we run them through a strength circuit primarily primary muscle groups that we focus on since we have a short amount of time we do some plyometrics will work on the balance of appropriate steps in core strengthening and then we have these things called calorie contests which they take very seriously so do will simply blow up on treadmills bikes stairstep or is and then we have contests you can burn the most calories when we started fifty was a big number now we have individuals in like twenty thirty minutes burning like six hundred calories going to be the one who has the most calories burned so they're actually putting against each other to burn more calories so it's actually been some that we started the wheel on and now it's just kind of really why mash it has to be kind of like a trial and error because there's really nothing else out there like th it's been a long time we really kind of funds in that work and find things that don't work and it's always evolving in from where we were three or four years ago to where we are now is just light years and it's just really just bars and all cylinders we get in there really give them a full workout in than our brain so since i am very big into nutrition i know you're doing the calorie counters or anything else when it comes to you tricia and that you do with we do support healthy choices when it comes to eating i hate using this word but it's the first one always comes to my mind let's say we gently brainwash them to really sit there and make the right decisions because we kind of fill their heads with chris and joe know what you're going to do when you're not here with us so whenever they're at home and they have a cheeseburger and they kind of look over mom and then you're like oh i need this i got to go see chris and joe so in a way we have a way of will fill their head with information of healthy food options but as far as doing it in a structured environment  basically the parents are still making decisions for them preparing the food for them so they're going to get with dealt to them anyway but when it comes to do you want to go to arby's or mcdonalds you know the kids are getting enough information f five so we really range that's one on one in group wise but our core group is more young adults adolescents anywhere between thirteen and twenty eight thirty i would say is really the core of our group classes one on one c coach him seen him through special and picks wasn't there mentally nonverbal young men wasn't there physically and he was in a wheelchair ridden for most of his life his mom started to he swam with special because he was able to do that but his mom wanted something more for him so she got on him on the right path to started to bring him to us and now he's lost over two hundred fifty some pounds in a year and a half and the pictures we sent of him holding the enjoy and i holding the belt where it's just it's just huge the difference that he's made himself and just how happy he is his mom told the first time that she saw his feet leave the ground that she just tears came in her eyes but she never thought he would ever be able to jump so it's been one of our biggest one simply life changing yeah that's awesome two hundred  change and was he more outgoing and i'm sure that i know that's kind of what your company breeds this kind of like the social aspect as well you said you know there's the physical and physiological benefits in a body is really going to get from personal training or steady constant exercise routine the social aspect is something that they really benefit from as well as interacting with peers and then i'll get into how we have volunteers coming in as well that really help them grow socially working with more typical individuals but then the emotional side i guess that we really hit on as we create a positive environment that's always counseling its own they can they can do whatever really set their mind to it's more of fulfilling fulfilling themselves because i think a lot of times specifically this population are told that they can't do things that they're not evil that you know there's something holding them back and we always sit there and we just like to give that gentle kind of push in the turkish to just kind of so you kind of tell them that they could do whatever i love your vocabulary that's ok well yeah i think when you're constantly being told no man like you can't do something you start to believe it and i think it's great to have a positive environment where you can do it you know so that's great and you may not be non verbal but men of high fives and handshakes he gives us  enjoys yeah well thank you both so much for coming on the show today i want to let you kind of where can people find more information about your company how can people help i know that you're always doing different ways and people can support your cause so if you want to just share yeah just a few different things we have a couple things on the horizon we're trying to get more into trying to figure out ways to create a scholarship program for athletes individuals that can afford to come to us and work can afford the one on one service is the x or services we want to try and find some way to kind of have individual or some kind of corporate level support structure so that people can fund money people who believe in this cause and be able to kind of create a scholarship program that will get distributed to those individuals who need it and want to take advantage other than we were talking about maybe putting together kind of sports camps or soccer camps a way to kind of funnel money from the typical in the population into supporting these guys in the healthy lifestyles well so that's the most will be working on and what if you want to just keep your website so people can go on that and find more information that would be awesome ok great well thank you both so much for coming on today and people can go to auction athletics dot com to and out more information correct thank you both so much again i'm one system and the host of healthy inspirations and today we saw juli sensitivities once again it'll be a great show i have a special guest emily levinson coming on the talk about that so thanks for tuning in and we'll see next time