170. Finding Social Success and Joy through Laughter: A Conversation with Allison Marean

In this episode, Colette interviews Alison Marean, a social coach with over 20 years of experience in helping others. Alison shares her journey from being a school teacher to co-founding Successfully Social, a business offering neuro-affirming coaching for individuals with unique social and learning needs, with a focus on autism, social thinking, and laughter yoga. 

Alison highlights the transformative power of creative strategies, including the use of imagination and laughter, to boost self-confidence and reduce social anxiety. She discusses the significance of childhood memories, the educational system, and her pivot to creating a program that helps children and families navigate social interactions positively. 

Additionally, she discusses the benefits of laughter yoga and practical methods for integrating play and laughter into daily life.

00:40 Introduction to Alison Marianne
01:56 Alison's Childhood Memories
04:20 Journey to Becoming a Teacher
06:24 Founding Successfully Social
06:50 The Importance of Social Emotional Learning
12:05 Laughter Yoga and Parenting Tips
16:55 Laughter Exercises Demonstration
23:57 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Get to know Allison:

With over 20 years of experience, Allison Marean is a sought-after Social Coach known for her patience, creativity, and ability to connect with diverse learners. Holding degrees in Communication Sciences and Special Education, she has taught in Boston and Denver, where her passion for social cognitive learning grew.
As the co-founder of Successfully Social, Allison offers neuro-affirming social coaching for individuals with unique social and learning needs. A lifelong learner, she has specialized training in Autism, Social Thinking®, and Laughter Yoga. She shares laughter as a powerful tool for self-regulation and building meaningful connections especially in schools to support the teacher student relationship. Her creative teaching style combines mindset strategies, science and laughter to help kids improve their self-confidence, reduce social anxiety, and bolster problem-solving skills for social success.. 

Allison has recently served as a keynote speaker in Springfield, Missouri, and Stamford, Connecticut, where she shared the importance of using laughter as a tool for self-regulation and social connection. She is also preparing for her upcoming TEDx talk in December.

When she’s not coaching, inspiring audiences, or leading laughter sessions, she enjoys adventures with her family, cheering on her kids from the sidelines, tending her garden, and caring for her animals.

Website: https://www.besuccessfullysocial.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/allisonmarean/

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Connect with Colette:

Instagram: @wellnessbycolette

Website: love-colette.com

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In Health,
Colette

Transcript

Colette Brown: Our next guest has over 20 years of experience with helping others. Eight years as a school teacher.

She's a social coach and co founder of Successfully Social, offering neuro affirming coaching for individuals with a unique social and learning need specializing in autism, social thinking, and laughter yoga. She uses creative strategies to boost self confidence, reducing social anxiety, and fostering social success through science mindset work and laughter, a keynote speaker.

And soon to be TEDx presenter. It is my great honor to welcome Alison Marianne. Welcome Alison. Thank you for having me. We've had a little bit of a bumpy start to this interview that You all won't see behind the scenes of what's happened, but the beautiful thing is that Allison and I have been laughing the whole time.

So that's a good thing. Allison meeting you was such a gift to me. First of all, you're absolutely gorgeous. You're stunning. You've got this great curly hair. You've got a beautiful big smile and it's contagious. And when you got up on stage to present, You had all of us laughing and you were so engaging.

And I just said, I have to bring you on my podcast to share all of your beautiful light with the audience. So I'm so thankful for you coming on today. And I would love to dive into you. So I would love for you to take us back to a childhood memory. We'd like to know who you were as a girl.maybe five or seven and tell us a memory that's very impactful to you that's resonated throughout your life until today.

That's a great question. So I think what actually comes to mind is in second grade, I had a teacher named Mrs. Duffy, and she read us the book Fudgemania or Super Fudge. Do you remember those? Yeah. Okay, so this teacher, Mrs. Duffy, when she read us this book, she used to use different voices for the characters.

And I just remember sitting on the floor and just Listening to her, take in the story, hearing the voices, and I could just picture it in my head. And that I think fostered my love of one books to using my imagination and three, just being able to teach people in a way. I just remember, I loved her. I just thought she was best thing, like to read to us like that.

And. That's actually something that I had forgotten about until a couple of years ago when my kids were of the age for me to read them the super fudge books. And I started reading it to them and all these voices came out and my kids were like, yeah. And I was like, Oh my gosh, Mrs. Duffy. So I think that is like the memory that is such a core memory for me.

And I think as I got older, School wasn't as fun and I just don't remember loving school as much as I did when I was younger. And I think I've always taken that with me. And so now when I work with kids. I'm always using my imagination. I love to use voices with my own kids, my clients. When I read stories to my own children, I love using voices.

And I just think that came from this second grade teacher that I had, Mrs. Duffy. She was just so great and whatever she did just hit me. So that's in the right spot. And I took that with me. That's beautiful. 

Colette Brown: So you have this beautiful childhood, you have imaginary Voices and friends, right? And, so you get into college, you become a teacher.

And so tell us about that. Like you become a teacher, you're going through, and you're seeing how the education system is, and you're also seeing a deficit in other ways that We can communicate with children and others. So tell us about that journey. 

Yeah. So I always knew I would work with kids when I was younger.

I babysat, I taught at summer camps. I even taught swim lessons and both of my parents were also, they had Their full time jobs, but they were also helpers. My dad volunteered at the local homeless shelter. He like runs the local homeless shelter in my town. My mom always worked very closely with people with special needs.

So I always grew up around that. So I always knew I wanted to work with people, with kids. I wanted to also be a helper. I never knew I wanted to be a teacher I fell into that after college and that encouraged me to go to graduate school, to become a severe special needs teacher.

And then I got my job, I was working in Boston and then I moved out to Denver, Colorado. I taught out there, but as the years went on, I just, I wasn't loving teaching as much as I thought I would. I found myself feeling burnt out. There was a pretty strong focus on academics and in test taking, which I just didn't agree with because I noticed that what kids really wanted, whether it was my special ed students or the regular ed students, kids were having difficulty communicating with each other and making friends and keeping friends.

And it was what is going on here? I also didn't even feel like I had a good relationship with my students. It just felt like it wasn't working. So I left teaching to start my business with actually my friend who was the school psychologist, her and I both felt the same way. Like we were just bumping our heads against the wall.

Like we need to be helping kids in this way. So we started our business successfully social, and we were able to help kids. Individually or in a small group or with parents and their kids as a family unit. So we help kids increase their understanding of the social world so that they can navigate it and make friends in a way that feels good to them.

And while we're doing this, that's when I started to take a deep dive on myself and get into the personal development field. And that's when I noticed, not only do kids need to understand the social emotional world and I don't know about you, Colette, but I didn't learn that when I was a kid.

Yeah. I didn't learn about mindset until my thirties. So now I not only help kids with understanding the social world, but also with increasing their. mindset strategies and helping them increase their confidence and decreasing that anxiety so that they feel calm and comfortable sharing themselves with the world and they can interact in authentic ways.

And I, I absolutely love it. 

Colette Brown: Yeah, that's beautiful. I will reflect back being a baby of the seventies We did not have effective communication and, you were more seen, not heard, and you just flow along and teachers teach to the test. And sometimes you have that. Fantastic teacher like yours where they just really made an impact on you.

And so I think those teachers give a little glimmer of hope that, okay, like this can be fun. I can do it. And, so it's really beautiful that you stepped away from kind of security. And you went into something that you really believed in. And I think it's so necessary. I think everybody needs to go through your program and we can talk about that later.

But so you stepped away from teaching and you started this successfully social can you tell us a little bit more about what that looks like? 

Yeah, sure. I, Offer different, small social groups. So oftentimes it's less than four kids in a group and I don't just group them by ages or grades, but I actually, like a school would, but I actually get into, where are their struggles?

Where are their challenges? What are they, excelling at? So I thoughtfully put kids together. And then in those groups, it's. Educational it's, I teach them about their brain, teach them about different social situations. Kids love to talk about what they're noticing in school or somebody said this to me and I don't get it.

And so in the small group, kids feel more connected. They get an opportunity to learn about themselves, learn about others in a, in a safe, comfortable environment. And In that environment, we don't just talk. It's not therapy. We do different projects and my older groups, we go out, we go to pizza restaurants, we go Christmas shopping.

And in my younger groups, we do a lot of playing. I just had a group of, let's see, there was a three, two, three year olds and a four year old in my group this weekend. So we were working on things like sharing and sharing an imagination, sharing toys, playing together. So just different ways to go about it.

And I love being able to help parents. And their unique child, because I also think as a teacher, I wasn't able to really work with parents and I'm so grateful that I get to work with their children. And I get to talk to the parents and have these real conversations about, Hey, this is what you could do at home to help your kid or this is how your child's brain works.

So this is not going to work for them. So I really love being able to work kind of hand in hand with parents and help them support their uniquely wired child because every kid is different, right? I think when we become parents, we think this is how it's going to be. And people tell you, talk with your partner about how you want to raise your kid, but then you get your, you have your baby and it's Oh this is different, so I just, I absolutely love what I do now. And I love that I get to work with the whole family and it's more of a. More of a village, more of like really Hey, this is part of my village. I'm part of your village and I can't wait to help you help your child and support you and your family.

Colette Brown: That's so beautiful. And looking back, I'm a mother of two. My oldest is 20 and my younger is 16. And, I was at my sister's baby shower this weekend and talking to younger, parents of younger children. And Just trying to reflect, they're like, what's the advice? What do you do? And I just, I was reflecting, thinking, just don't take it so seriously.

Like really just let things flow and don't force your kids to be friends with. Sometimes your friends children that they just don't get along and sometimes they pull in people that are very complimentary to you that you never would have talked to before because their kids like are so in alignment with you.

And, and really just allowing the child to be themselves. To be and not say like my child needs to be like this student who is getting a 4. 6 GPA and is the star athlete and maybe your child likes to draw or play music or is not so ambitious. It's in books and that's totally fine.

And just really taking that pressure off of a parent to say your child's okay. And by the way, here's some tools navigating whatever that looks like. 

Allison Marean: Yeah. And I love how you said that. Just allow your child to be who they are. And I think that's one thing , when I actually left my teaching job to start my business, I had just given birth to my son.

I had my daughter who was one. Wow. And then I was pregnant and so I had all these like starting a business. Yeah. . Yeah. So my friend and I started our own place.

Yep. . It took me, after you have kids that changes you and yeah. It took me, I loved my business, but that's how I incorporated laughter yoga into my business. Because as a parent, all these things are thrown at you and it's yeah, what's in my toolbox what do I have? And I think that laughter is a great tool for everybody because.

It's free. You don't need a prescription, right? You can do it by yourself. You can do it with your children. It's not a language barrier thing. It's not a, there's no cognitive like jokes to get. You can just initiate laughter and, You can feel better. And I think parents need to, like you said, let their kids be and need to be able to regulate yourself, calm yourself down.

So you can let your kids be themselves, right? So you can embrace the differences that you weren't expecting or the challenges that you weren't expecting. Yeah, 

Colette Brown: no, it's true. And I would love for you to walk us through an exercise. And I also want to just have a I have a quick little story and it might inspire parents.

 I call my daughters, my sugar and spice and my younger one is my spice. And she would, when she was younger, it was really hard for her. Like she, it wasn't that she was mean, but she just. wanted her way. And she just was very confident. And so I walked her through, I'm like, what do I do to help her?

And so finally my older daughter and I sat down with her and I told my older daughter, we're going to do a little role play here. And we set up a little, it was like a hamburger restaurant and all the animals were lined up in cars. And she was the person taking the order and it was a hamburger restaurant, but a customer came through and ordered pizza and was demanding, I want pizza.

Why can't you give me the pizza? And she's we just have hamburgers. And so it was a demanding customer that she had to handle. And her face was. Like in awe, she was thinking like but I can't give that because I don't have it. And she was trying to think of workarounds, but she didn't understand like the deep meaning that she was actually understanding.

There's a conflict here and I really can't change it. And She was trying to offer suggestions. Like maybe you can go across the street to the pizza place. And after we were done, she was so happy and she was like almost free because it gave her the opportunity to be in charge and understand that there's conflict here and I'm trying to resolve it and be patient with me and it really helped her.

Like I have to say, and. It was out of desperation on my end to try to figure out a way to communicate. But I tell parents now, role play with your kids. And it could even be teens role playing about situations that come up at school or whatever. But do you use role play Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't do therapy, not a therapist, role playing or even, like I said, when kids come to my group, I'll be like, so what'd you guys notice in school? What happened? Did anybody like, did anybody flip their lid? Did any teachers like lose their. Junk, like what happened?

Anybody crying? Because not that we are, judging anybody, but it helps to rather than be like, Oh, I cried. I flipped out. It helps to be like, Oh yeah, my teacher did yell at this kid. And then it's Oh why did your teacher yell at this kid? What was going on? And we're able to actually like.

Dissect. Yeah. Social situations. So that kids can better understand, Oh, this is where my teacher's coming from. This is where that student's coming from. And this is why there was a conflict. This is what happened. So it's like looking at it from the outside. And we, so role playing, we also watch sometimes we watch different clips from different shows, like friends or whatever, however old the kids are, depends role playing watching, like I said, reading books, like talking about movies, like what's this character thinking?

What's this character thinking? It's all so helpful. And so I think you can get it dead on with your hamburger shop with your daughter. I think that's so great. And I think if more parents can be like, Oh, because basically you're playing with her, you were playing with her and And we learn through play and that's what happens as we get older.

We stop playing and then it's wait, this is real life. Like, how do we do this? So I think if we keep playing with kids, even as they get older, like it can be so effective and so helpful for them. 

Colette Brown: Yeah, absolutely. So would you be willing to walk us through a little laughter? Yeah. Absolutely. 

So let's see.

So here's the thing with laughter, yoga, laughter, yoga doesn't require any stretchy pants or mats, And this is why it's so great because you can do it at home. It's a way to reframe your thinking. For the sake of this, since we were talking about, parenting and how. Before when we got started, we were laughing because we kept having all these like technical difficulties, right?

Oh, signing in new technology, this and that, we were to sit here and one of us were to be like, Oh this is frustrating. I got other things to do but you and I were both able to laugh about it and you were like, Oh, sorry. And I was like, Oh, it's okay.

And we checked in on each other. Do you have time? Do you have time? Yep. And it just. Ease the tension. When you get stressed out, cortisol ramps up everything in our body. It's like fight or flight. So that laughter that we did together, it wasn't like nobody told a joke. The joke was that you and I are like terrible at technology or the fact, but nobody told a joke, but us laughing helped us Feel better with each other.

It calmed me down. It calmed you down and we were able to proceed. So I think, my favorite laughter exercise is milkshake laughter, which is something that you can do when you are feeling good. Like in the morning people drink protein shakes and take their vitamins and drink their water and gratitude and all the things.

 So I'll share two different laughter exercises. So the first one would be laughter milkshake. If you just want to give yourself a dose of laughter in the morning, this is something that I like to do. You pretend again, we're going to use our imagination, our play, pretend like we're younger, right?

Have some fun with it. We got to get into our less serious adult mode brain. And we're going to pretend we have some milkshakes. And we're going to fill up our milkshakes. I love peanut butter and chocolate. So I use extra chocolate and peanut butter. And so we're going to mix it up and you can add whatever you want.

These are healthy because it's strawberries, blueberries, all the things. So then we're going to mix it up and we're going to drink it back. So we are going to fill our bodies with all the laughter. Okay. So I can start it and then I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out and jump in and we'll do it twice.

Okay. Okay. So we're going to go like this. Hey, drink it back.

Let's do it again. Drink a little bit more. 

Colette Brown: Alright. Here we go. Hey. Hey.

It gets you like laughing, right? You're like ridiculous. Shake it up. Yeah. No shakes. Yeah. But I feel good. Yeah. Imagination. Yeah. Another way to use laughter is, and I love this for parents, you ever go to work, I don't commute anymore. Thank God, grateful for that. When you're trying to go somewhere and all of a sudden it's like red light, traffic, red light, slow driver, and you're like, Oh my God, my head is going to explode.

And you just want to like, Spew so when we get in that mode, it's helpful to totally flip it on yourself 

Allison Marean: and 

be like, you know what? So this is called traffic laughter. Traffic laughter is when you're sitting in your car and you're like, instead

of swearing at the red light. Laugh at the red light and then turn to the person next to you and wave the people behind you. Oh, Hey, red light. Even if you're with your kid and you're like late to school, you're going to be late again. Oh I'll walk you in this time. 

So even if we're like laughing at a red light where we're like, this is not funny, our brains are like, okay, but we feel good. So again, it lowers our cortisol, we feel better and we're able to take it in because what are you going to do? You can't change traffic lights.

You can't change the traffic. All you can do is be like, okay next time we'll leave earlier. 

Colette Brown: We're going to laugh it through. Yeah. 

Allison Marean: Because you 

Colette Brown: have the choice of do I'm going to get angry and release that cortisol And then we're teaching our kids too. So I think that'ssuch good advice.

Yes. Yeah. Especially those living in big cities. 

It's every day I live in the country and I've gotten stuck behind a tractor before. Oh, nice. Are you kidding me? And then some turkeys and it's you can't make this up. So what are you going to do? Like we said, we all have a choice and I choose laughter.

I love that. I love that. I choose laughter. Yes. Me too. I try to, maybe not every time because we all have those moments. 

Allison Marean: Yeah. 

But laughter has actually helped me, like when I do get upset. . I had a situation at home yesterday. My daughter got a goat. Speaking of children and what do we do for our children?

My daughter got a goat. Okay. Yeah. And I've never owned a goat before. They eat everything. They eat things. They jump. They're strong. I'm learning about goats. And yesterday the goat busted out through the fence and I did find myself getting annoyed and upset and I at one point I was like I need to share this about this go and old me would have been mad today but yesterday It was like a shorter amount of time.

Like I don't, it's not that I don't get annoyed or upset because I do. I'm human. Yeah. It's a shorter amount of time because shortly after I'm able to be like, okay, that was actually funny that I wrestled the goat to the ground in the front yard.

Colette Brown: Exactly. I'm waiting for somebody to be like, I drove past your house and saw you, with the goat. Oh, I grew up country and yeah, we used to, in the winter when it would snow, it would either number one, cover the cows. Hey, and their feed, and they would get hungry and they would sometimes lean on the fence posts, push them over and we would get a call at two in the morning. Your cow is in our front yard and My dad would wake us up and my brother and I would go out and we'd have to herd the cow home in the middle of the night, like the bucket with the corn in it to get him back or just hurting, because they sometimes won't go for it and you have to sneak up behind them and push them the way that you want them to go and, or scare them into the way that you want them to go.

But, oh yeah, I've got many of those. Stories. And, one lesson that my grandfather who I just love dearly, who's no longer with us. If I ever came home from school and told him a sad story or something that happened, he would just start laughing. And I would say, why are you laughing? And he's because honey, if you don't laugh, then you're going to get upset.

so that was my first, probably why I'm a very. Like laughter is my medicine and I laugh at everything naturally. And I think it's probably because of him,And so you're reminding me you're giving me more, memories of why that's important and how it felt when I was younger to hear somebody laughing at my problems.

Allison Marean: you need somebody who's going to be like, we laugh now because that's your choice, right? You can either smile lines or you can have frown lines and smile lines are always better.

Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. So how do people work with you? Do you work virtually with people or is it all in person? 

I do. I work in person with people. But I also, something that came out of the pandemic is I work virtually with people and at first talk about love, hate but now I love it. I've had clients in Germany and yeah, I just love how, laughter can connect people and oh my gosh, so can zoom

They can check out be successfully social. com or you can check me out on Instagram or Facebook at Alison, Marianne,

Colette Brown: Okay, perfect. you're just such an inspiration and a beautiful light. And I appreciate you sharing all these tips with us One question that I ask all my guests at the end is, if this Was your last message that you had to broadcast out to the world? What would it be? 

Oh man, I think my last message would be to choose laughter. Every day choose laughter. We all have a choice. And that's what I would say is choose laughter over everything because man, it just makes you feel good.

It connects you with others. And I don't know if this is, if this is it for us, this is the only life I know. I don't know what happens after, but I want to enjoy myself. I want to have fun every single day. And actually it's my birthday today. So thank you for sharing this day with me and thank you for laughing with me.

if this was my last day, this would be amazing. 

Colette Brown: I feel the same. I feel the same. Yeah, it's been a joy. I so appreciate you. And is there anything else that you feel like sharing today? 

Allison Marean: I don't know. I think that I appreciate what you are doing for people. I just, I appreciate meeting other people who are so beautiful from the inside and the out.

And I just thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to come on and share laughter and myself with the 

Colette Brown: world. Thank you so much, Alison. I appreciate you. So we will put all the links. To Allison's socials and website in the notes and please reach out to her. And if you know somebody who has a child and might be a little bit socially awkward or needing a little bit of help, reach out to Allison and have a conversation.

 Alison, thank you for all you do. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Thank you. And everyone else until next time, be well.