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 charge of your life and your health today we have two special guests and i'm excited to share with both of them today we'll kristen who is a wellness coach and president of the university of wellness and then from jeremy said who is a life coach and relationship expert our first guest is one of my dear personal friends and a true inspiration to me krista is a certified wellness practitioner inspirational speaker and president of the university of wellness in addition she is a certified personal trainer and fitness center director at lakeview golf resort and spa courses first book and cd titled fear faith and forgiveness of course letting go will be released in the spring wellness field tell me how you got started them when i was young i was extremely addictions to drugs alcohol bad men you name it i was doing it and i kind of had a fall and i looked at my life and was like i need to make a change and i started to ask god to lead me and i ended up getting a job front desk if that new center at a small women's fitness center and within six months i was managing the place of became a personal trainer and i just started to watch my life unfold and over the course of the last ten years i've worked in all areas all over the world basically now of the world all over the country different gym helping build gyms and wellness centers and that's what led me to start the university law this is so what exactly is the university of the university of law to specialize in all so i can work and have a business at the same time yeah that's awesome awesome so tell me a little bit about i know your faith is something that's really important to you and you kind of coined this term faith coach yes and you know when i first heard it i'm like well what exactly is this so what exactly is that what i do with my clients is a first uncover what their fears are and what i mean by fears is not like afraid of falling it's the voice that we hear in our head all day that we're not good enough or not smart enough or not pretty enough and we think that voice is true because it's earned voice but really it's just fear trying to keep us from pain but there's really no greater pain than the fear that we bring into our life every day so what i do is how my clients discover what their fears are and help them become aware of the fact that that is dealing with when it comes to fear because i know you said it's not just fear of falling or fear of planes but i think we have fear in our every day life i know someone i suffer from anxiety and i was afraid of literally everything i was afraid of going to school i had a strategically plan the way i got to school because i could be in front of crowds i mean i was literally afraid of life almost but i what are the kind of different spectrums when it comes to the i think one of the biggest things is just knowing that it is fear i mean there for a while i just thought i was crazy and paranoid because i was constantly doubting myself and this voice that your own voice and it's constantly telling you these things and i think just discovering that that is fear and being able to accept the fact that you are afraid of success or afraid of being rejected i know a lot of times with clients just getting them to to say they're afraid is a very very big step so how do you move from this place of fear to this place of what ingo meditation i use a lot of meditation and forgiveness and forgiveness is in every minute and a lot of the times we think we need to forgive others but it's we need to forgive ourselves for letting allowing others to do you what they do to us so it's always self reflection and you know we've got a lot of the times of forgiveness you know for years i battled with forgiving someone that did some domestic violence on me but when i realized in the end it wasn't that i was upset with him it was that i was mad at myself for being so weak and allowing that to happen so when i truly forgave myself he did not even matter anymore i think it's great that you said forgiveness and letting go is kind of a minute by minute thing it is because when i think of even meditation i used to think oh meditation is going you sit on a rock with your legs crossed trying to forget everything but really even meditation is a minute by minute thing it's the choice that you make every second you can you can meditate anywhere and i think it's kind of the same thing with forgiveness and letting go yes is a constant thing you need to constantly be doing is forgiving yourself for the mistakes that you've made in the past and not caring into the future and i used to not like meditation because i thought it was some people's way of not saying prayer then my mind is asking for help and meditation is listening and so to me both of them are connecting god on a higher level so what are some tools that you would give people when it comes to maybe letting go what are some of the things i know you have a cd a book coming out all about fear faith and forgiveness what are some of the tools that maybe and there aside from i know you do the meditation eg sizing is one of the biggest things it's able to get rid of the negative energy that you have a lot of times we're consumed with fear because we have so much energy just in our bodies and if we can get that out boxing has really helped me so i talk about that in the book the book is actually a course that takes you from being consumed with fear to straight out fearless is the last chapter so a lot i talk about a lot of the different exercises that you can use boxing is a great exercise for people who've been through domestic violence or you know are afraid of a lot of things you feel so powerful and that and getting up in the morning and meditating before you start your day and stopping when you feel like you're going to get upset and not reacting it really fast thinking about it before you do because i used to react really fast and i actually stop taking them in breathe before i react a little better now that is so important even when it comes to relationships i know i'm getting married in a couple months and that's amazing thank you you know you've been there since since the beginning when it comes to that but even just learning to choose kind of your battles and working your relationships with anyone it doesn't have to be if you're just getting married but with anyone really were quick to kind of i think people that were closest to or kind of quick to just kind of judge and just want to brand yeah you want to play the victim a lot so a lot of times we want to put the blame on someone else and a lot of times what people are doing is just a reflection of ourselves we're mad at someone else it's something that we need a to work on internally so looking at our own selves instead of constantly putting the blame on others and looking for the blame in others is the huge thing and  manifesting anything and so i want to hear from your perspective what that what that term even means to you and how you use it in your everyday life i actually lived in about ten miles from here and i had gotten laid off from a job and when i got laid off i was introduced to a man by the name of dr wayne dyer and he teaches manifest destiny so i spent about six months reading all of his stuff and learning how to manifest and i literally created a vision in my mind i wanted to move back home to west virginia i wanted to be close to my family i wanted to be able to travel all over the place and i set that vision in my mind and i never let anything stop me from it no matter what because there was a point where i was almost homeless like i ended up having to move in with my parents at twenty years old and i didn't want to do that but i just kept thinking this is the vision i have in my mind and this is what i want to do and when you do that you actually create the reality that you have in your life and everything that i wanted and everything that i believed when i had nothing is now happening m simply just believing that what you want can happen and it will if you believe it but the hardest part is to actually believe it when it's not in front of you so that's what manifestation is to me and i've seen you on that journey yeah i mean i've seen you  too is that so what if something doesn't happen though what if you you know every day i'm like chris i believe i believe i believe i'm so into this it's just not happening the thing that i learned with that is you're being prepared for like i would have things that would happen like contests for example and i would put all this work in do it now believe it was going to happen and i know what happened i won't win the contest and at first i'd be like oh this isn't working but then six months later another contest would come about and i would need the exact same thing and it was already done so i submitted it and it was an even better opportunity for me so you're always being prepared for what that vision is what you think it is might not necessarily be what it is yet because something bigger is coming so it's just accepting and being greg grateful for no matter what comes about i've put in so much work into things before and they've not happened and i used to get upset and now i'm like no need that one day so yes i think that's a great win even a full even just you know the attitude of gratitude and even just remembering  ok this network all this time but if this you know if i did this just imagine what's going to come in the future that's kind of what i tell myself with things don't go my way and you know i lose a contest or so you know i think it's like no this is like you said preparing me or this is going to and then do you recommend this is something i do and i don't know if he recommend this in your book or when you work with people is i actually write those moments down like ok this went wrong for me and that's ok and so then when then i can see how that played out in my life like oh my goodness this one thing that went so bad look how great it turned out to be yes and so that way i can recall it so that way it makes things a little bit better whenever yeah the whole first part of my book is my story and it talks about me being addicted to drugs and alcohol and bad then in you name and i was addicted to it and in the end though it ended up being that all of that stuff was to help me become the person i am i mean now i teach people how to overcome that and i've helped people and that makes me feel the most grateful is the able to do that so without those experiences i would never be able to do what i'm doing now exactly because you're real yes people can relate and i think ultimately we the underlying issue i think of human beings is just one to relate wanting to connect you know we're always looking for that common bond between someone because we we generally do want to feel part of the greater yet the greater good the greater humanity yet when people are really really bad like i knew i'd had a smoking sensation class one day and in the first thing they said was have you ever smoked and i said yes and they're like ok listen do you know because they knew i had been there had ever come that and so it's helpful to people when they see that you've been there and you've done that you've been able to overcome it and then they want to listen to you  definitely i'm grateful for all of the bad choices i've ever made in my life yeah it takes a lot to get to my parents might not be what i am but you turned out i mean just the path and i can't wait to read your book and i'm the only really excited about that so where can people find out more information about you i have two different websites one is university of wellness that org that will keep you posted on anything that i'm doing is far certification seminars retreats and they also have a website which is fear faith forgiveness dot com which will give you more information on the book as well as the class that i'm going to be teaching i'm teaching a class on march fifth at six weeks it's called fear faith and forgiveness it's a course in letting go and so over the course of six weeks i'm going to take them from that something's happening to the polar go to save the polar bear dot org today  hi and welcome back to healthy inspirations thanks for tuning in we have another amazing guest to welcome to the show his name is jeremy said jeremy is a retired but veteran from fourteen years of service in the u s navy after suffering from severe p t s jeremy went on a journey to himself and now wants to help others do the same jeremy is a certified life coach relationship coach and bereavement coach welcome jeremy thanks for coming on the show today thanks for having me i'm excited to finally hear from you i know we just kind of recently connect know when you say yes ma'am and so polite i love it so what brings you to pittsburgh actually my girlfriend you know really well moved up here oh great how are you liking pittsburgh so far love the city it's such a family oriented community and you know that's how i was raised to know her family her friends everybody you know what welcomed me with open arms and it's been one of those experiences in my life been up there also yeah we're kind of a big city with a small town feel right but everyone says  accurate so tell me a little bit you've been through a lot i mean crazy crazy tell me a little bit about your experience in the military and just what was going on with you there right well i join the military when i was seventeen and went into computers at first and after a couple of years kind of feel like i wasn't really don't want part it was you know nine eleven it happened and every day i'm reading all these stories about you know all the soldiers that are killed overseas aside or the other feel like i wasn't doing enough well i was eligible for realism and had an opportunity to convert over into the anti terrorism force protection arena so that's what i did and i spent fourteen years doing that and through that there's a lot of trauma  which actually kind of paved the way to me becoming certified coach long story short there are a lot of things that i went through both professionally and personally left active duty after ten years because my sister my younger sister she was twenty seven she passed away in march of two thousand and eight and started a long process of a downward spiral for me thinking about the other friends that i lost and you know keeping up on everything plus i converted over the reserves while was still active in that regard and then two summers ago i kind of hit rock bottom and i actually tried to commit suicide not once but twice and failed obviously i did i did fortunately i had some pretty amazing people around me one of those being my current girlfriend lot of love lot of support in my to what i had done for lack of better word i had become a jerk i've become the world's biggest  jerk concentrate on was me and i think that i had all this power and control over other people you know that all these things that it happened were somehow my fault so i carried all this guilt to around with me i started  counseling again i'd been doing it you know off and on for several years but i started doing it again for tom and realize that there was something missing as good as all the doctors and everybody were with the v a hospital there was something that was still missing so i started going to researching other other remedies some holistic approach is that kind of stuff and it's when i started really becoming familiar with the coaching industry the thing i liked about coaching a particular is that it focuses on the person and the future you know because i mean everybody realizes that you can't change the past you know and that was something that was hard for me to let go because i did feel responsible i did feel guilty for so many different things that happened no matter what i did there was no way to make amends to make up for it and so i started focusing on ok well what do i want to accomplish you know and what's really stopping me and that whole approach really sat well with me so i got into coaching the coach myself really and actually it was self there be well but i mean that's such a powerful story to go from literally literally rock bottom where you're like i just can't go on anymore to be the one now on the other side helping people now do you see can we talk a little bit about the p t s d post traumatic stress disorder so what exactly is that and how i mean how common is it in the military it's extremely common actually the first part of my therapy was working problem with the soldiers were ghosts of what level of combat they're seeing you know the time out at sea or over in the desert or whatever the case may be spend the time away from family friends everything this familiar to them having to adapt to another way of life and then been expected to come back and convert to or river back to being a father a son a husband that sort of thing it's difficult so it's like developing different personalities because when we're on  that there's a job to do that's all we can concentrate that's why i've always said that military spouses family that kind of thing they have the most difficult job in the world because when i was overseas i was concentrated on the job that's all i thought about day in and day out who was ok what's the mission what do i have to do you know and what's the next thing on the agenda you're going to forget about what's going on exactly exactly i'm not laying at home at night wondering you know this so and so ok you know when we're going to hear from them and i'm going to hear from them again but coming back and trying to adjust to a normal way of life by the general population standards is it's difficult because i think you know we just expect oh you just did your tour and you come back and that's that's what it is right you know but there's a lot right i kind of got a little bit carried away i went to a little bit extreme it took me almost three years before i could go into a restaurant and sit at a table the didn't have a full view of everything going on i mean i would wait for forty five minutes sometimes for a table in the back corner of the restaurant open up and so you knew exactly as you always you're probably always have to be on exactly and so you kind of took that into your own life i did i did and that's probably very common with not just that but other triggers as well absolutely and that's i mean and that offense is way in so many different ways for different people you know and everybody's different some people they can go back and forth between deployments and externally you know there's no hardship for them you know nobody really knows what's going on internally except for them what about even the reserves people that aren't necessarily on the forefront but they're still actively participating in the military or in some capacity a fillip there's some popular misconceptions about the reserves i know  one of the terms that i heard thrown around quite a bit were weekend warriors you know because when you're in a down cycle you go to the reserve center you train one weekend a month you know every month but what a lot of people don't realize is all of that training there's so much more behind the scenes it's not just that one week in a month you know you're always training you're always taking the classes and you know for me in particular you know going to the range in my off time and keeping up on you know the weapons aspect of it and that kind of stuff there's constant training so that we can be on the frontline so do you see a lot of how do you see the spectrum of p t s d among those maybe in the reserves to active duty is there still the personally i haven't noticed any kind of disparity as for severity of the case like i said it comes down to each individual obviously the people that see more combat for a longer period of time are going to have more things that they're dealing with you know memories things they've had to do things they've seen that sort of thing so with their logical alone i would say that chances are higher that they're going to have some external symptoms it so how do we help support better it's like how could the normal average myself who no one in my family is remotely in the military i have friends that are in the  military in different facets so how could i support those people maybe friends and i like this form of support that i found for me personally and i can't speak for everybody but having the ability to talk with somebody about it you know that was part of mine my personal issue was kept everything bottled up for years you know part of it is requirements there are certain things that you can and can't talk about as far as a specific mission goes but you still have the ability to kind of talk in broad terms help find local support groups you know that cater specifically to veterans that have come back you know but but having a new year and not judging i think that's so important listening and not my i was actually this weekend with one of my friends and she she's in the army and she she was deployed and she you know just went she had a really rough time when she came back and was kind of into drinking and things like that and she said to me the other day she's like you know the best thing that i did was go and talk to someone she's like but i've always been too proud i've always been too proud i thought i can handle things on my own and she's like but it really it helped everything it helps she's getting married she said it helped my relationship it helps just how i feel i don't feel the need to go turn to alcohol like i was and just so many things but she told me she's like i felt too proud like you know going to seeing someone is you know that's still if i did this i should be able to handle it no problem yes yeah very very common pattern of thought and almost verbatim what i went through so as as a coach tell me a little bit about how you transition your own life to being a coach well it started with learning basic principles of coaching and everything before i even went to school and you know got the sort of occasions and everything taken the basic principle about what i can do what i can look for in the future you know which really  to accomplish for me it was about really getting to learn myself you know everything that i went through that led to the suicide attempt a couple years ago it wasn't just the military is what i learned about myself there are so many things so many lessons that i've learned through life not through anybody's fault or anything like that but just the experiences that i had the lessons that i learned from that especially now i have a child there were still things that i was carrying with me i actually had a really good conversation with tina my girlfriend  control the way i feel about something that i can sort of control the way i would you have to move and i think a lot of people actually need to need help dealing with you know their emotions because i think a lot of we don't know how just even as a society i wrote an article that it is getting worse because of technology and things like that we're getting so emotionally disconnected right that's a whole nother topic for a whole nother whole other day we'll have to have you back on and talk about that but where can people find more information about you and your services well i've and i love working with people you know for a reason and my purpose is qana taken on different forms where i've worked with a couple of parents and children worked with corporate executives you know because when it comes down to it my practice is based on the relationship the person has with themselves well thank you for being on the show today so what is it always opening always opening doors dot com always opening doors are calm and thank you for tuning into healthy inspirations if you know any local inspirations that you think would be