Resilience How to Emerge from your Tragedies Stronger

imagine

you’ve just finished up a long day of

work at the studio that you’re recording

your brand new free workouts every

single day for the entire world

and it’s finally time to lock up and go

home you lock the key in the door and

you turn to go down to your car

when you see four men walking up the

street

as you walk down to your car you hear

one of them whisper don’t move

you turn back over your shoulder to look

and see what that was

and you see that one of the four men is

now pointing a gun at you

turn back to your fiance who actually

didn’t hear the speaking

and say get in the car they have guns

you get in the car

and right before you sit down you look

back and you see now that two of the

four men

have guns pointed at you as we were

sitting down

we heard the shots fired pop pop pop pop

pop

pop pop pop eight shots

we drove out of the parking lot and as

dustin called the 911 operator

i realized that my hands are wet as i

crawl out of the passenger side

floorboard

i look at my hands and as the street

light passes over the car and lights up

the inside

i see that they’re now covered in my own

blood

i realize i’ve been shot

i believe that my life and your life

have both been defined

by overcoming obstacles i want to talk

to you today about how as a fitness

professional

and someone who’s experienced a lot in

the short life that i’ve lived

about how we can turn this adversity

into our superpower

resilience i’ve been known to be an

eternal optimist and always positive but

this is not as a result of me being

naive

or oblivious or unsure about what’s

around me

in fact it’s the exact opposite i’ve

experienced my fair share

of life-altering tragedies and today i

want to talk to you about two of them

specifically

not to make you feel sad for me or to

feel sorry for me but more importantly

to make you

see yourself in me i want to show you

what’s possible when life throws things

at you that you never

expect and how we can come out stronger

together

and i want you to think for a minute

before we get started if i asked you

have you experienced something terrible

you would likely be able to say yes

right

now if i asked you looking back at this

thing were you able to move forward from

it

knowing you handled it in the best way

that you could he felt confident about

you growing stronger from that tragedy

and most importantly if life were to

throw another tragedy at you today

would you be prepared to say i’m going

to grow stronger

from this tragedy i want to talk to you

today about how we can work on answering

yes

to that last question in june of 2017 i

got a call from my mom early on a sunday

morning which i knew was not normal

she informed me that my brother had been

in an atv accident

and would likely need brain surgery my

brother had just gotten married he had

just had a kid and he was always

accident prone so i just knew he was

going to be okay and maybe my mom was

being a bit dramatic

only i was wrong

the next couple weeks our family slept

in the hospital waiting room and

listened to doctors tell us we’re doing

everything we can

it was a roller coaster ride of

infection and

he’s sustaining his stable status

there was never any positive projection

for any quality of life

we learned that my brother’s severe

brain damage had left him with three

percent brain function

he would never get better and he would

never wake up

we would have to make the decision to

let him go

in a coincidental twist of timing i had

been reached

out by a gym in charleston west virginia

which was my brother and i’s hometown

prior to zack’s accident they had asked

me to write a story about a time

when i had decided not to give up now

initially i wrote my story about moving

to charlotte

and not knowing anyone and chasing a

dream where i was in the fitness

industry but i had no support

everyone made fun of me and called it a

pipe dream and never supported me in

that mission

then my brother had his accident and i

decided to trash that story

and write about how i knew that my

brother would never give up in his rehab

journey

i visited the gym to take a picture

there while i submitted my article and

told them about my brother’s accident

and they gave me a t-shirt it was a blue

t-shirt with red writing across the

chest that said never give

up they told me to give it to my brother

because they thought he might need some

motivation

in his rehab journey back to his

strength

my brother died the next day

i will forever believe that that was his

message

to me never give up

that message surrounded the most painful

thing i have still

ever experienced and simultaneously what

i decided would be my start of leaving a

legacy

of being a living example of resilience

i decided right then

to turn all of my pain into my purpose

never give up the choice i made after

losing my brother would in fact change

the trajectory of my life i decided to

start thinking about the legacy that i

was leaving and

would it be one that i was proud of i

was a personal trainer and i technically

had a full schedule of clients

which i had worked three years in a city

where i knew nobody to try and achieve

i would offer free boot camps in the

park i was training at five different

gyms when i worked here when i first

moved here

and now i had my own personal training

in an apartment complex gym

where i was fully booked out of clients

which was something to be proud of

but i had no room to grow i couldn’t

scale i couldn’t offer more than what i

already had because i had no more time

i decided then that i was tired of being

complacent and i was tired of being

stagnant

i knew something had to change when i

decided to funnel this pain

and take my pain into my purpose i took

my in-person personal training company

to a digital platform with my fiance

dustin who was

a cpa by trade but also a photographer

and videographer by talent which we

didn’t know

until he decided to rent a camera and

google some camera settings

when he proposed to me he calls it cheap

i call it

destiny he decided to take that picture

and as we took that picture and posted

it on my instagram

and continued to help me market my

fitness career with his photography

we learned that he was really sought out

and really incredible what he was doing

he was really getting some big names for

freelancing jobs

all while still being a full-time cpa we

decided then and there to start

combining our passions and our talents

and start creating our legacy

how would we do this how would we make

sure that we stood out in a very

saturated fitness industry the digital

world was so crowded and we needed to do

something that was not already being

done

we took inspiration from a daily youtube

vlogger casey neistat and decided to be

the daily fitness vlogger

and post a brand new workout video every

single day on youtube

we decided this and we ran with it a lot

of people told us

we were crazy that this didn’t make any

sense this mission was too big for just

two people

that we would never fulfill our mission

of giving free fitness

every single day to people all over the

world

but that voice kept coming back in and

our pain kept pushing us to fulfill our

purpose

never give up so we didn’t

to say this was initially a struggle

would be an understatement

it was a lot of fights with each other a

lot of fights for long hours

breakdowns tears frustration and we just

couldn’t figure out how to get it

rolling at first

all while working 80 to 100 hours a week

individually

to be able to afford the media studio

that we were renting out to record these

workouts

to put out for free to the world after

about a year of posting youtube videos

every single day for free we finally

started to catch some traction

we felt like we were growing our

worldwide audience they were giving

great feedback and we were finally

accepted into the youtube partner

program

most importantly lives were changing we

recorded late one night on a sunday

evening

in the middle of september and we

decided to lock up and go home and start

our edit for the evening

as we locked up we turned to go down to

our cars in the parking lot and we see

four men walking up the street we walked

down

and as we walked down the stairs i hear

that same whisper

don’t move dustin didn’t hear the

whisper but i remember clinching

my backpack and turning around over my

left shoulder

and seeing one of the four men pointing

a gun right at me

i turn back to dustin and say we have to

get in the car they have a gun

so we both ran to the car to get in and

right before i sat down for some reason

i decided to look back again

now i notice two men have guns pointed

at us

we start to sit down and i hear eight

shots fired

dustin managed to get us out of the

parking lot and we were screaming and i

was in the floorboard of the passenger

side car

he called 9-1-1 and as i crawled out of

the floor i noticed that my right foot

is really cold and my hands are really

wet

and because it’s nighttime the street

lights are going over our car and about

a block away from the studio

i open up my hands to see them covered

in my own blood

and i realize i’d been shot the operator

tells dustin to pull over into a parking

lot because we were closer to an

ambulance than a hospital

we pull over and she instructs dustin on

how to get out of the car

go find some towels in the back of the

car to which he grabbed a yellow

towel that he used to clean his car with

and hold my foot up in the air to apply

pressure to stop the bleeding

i saw my pink nike pegasus slowly

turning red

as he put pressure on the outside of my

foot i remember being completely silent

in the ambulance and not saying a word

to the paramedics

i was so confused about why i wasn’t

feeling any pain yet

the adrenaline was still going and i

couldn’t feel anything and they actually

awarded me

the most calm gunshot victim they had

ever worked with

when we got to the hospital we learned

that the bullet had hit the branch of an

artery in my foot and i had to go into

emergency surgery to cauterize that

artery

and also heal my heel bone that had been

shattered in the accident

i remember waking up from that surgery

and realizing that i was alive

and that dustin was alive we both still

had our lives we were still here

i had that same decision to make again

in that moment

yes it was painful but i promised myself

i was going to turn my pain into my

purpose and i promised

to never give up

for months after my surgery i was in a

boot i was wearing a wound vac i was

using a scooter to get around everywhere

and i was also cleaning and packing my

own gunshot wound

doctor’s orders twice a day three months

after my shooting i was cleared to put

weight on my right foot

and two weeks later i decided to come

back to the youtube stage and film

workouts

to start my comeback story the beauty in

all of this tragedy

is that because i was shot i’m now

actually a better personal trainer

when i decided to come back to youtube i

started my journey with a community of

tens of thousands of people supporting

me in my comeback

and virtually joining me in these

workouts and up until that point because

i was a division one athlete and a full

scholarship track and field high jumper

i had never been able to relate to

people who were very new in their

fitness journey and very beginning

coming back from an injury or starting

their journey completely all over from

something

now i was able to show that every single

day since december 10

2018 i have shown up on my channel and

fought for my strength

now over 1 million subscribers and over

115 million workouts completed later

i can’t imagine not showing up and not

having a fulfilled life where i know

it’s all because i didn’t give up what

tragedy pain or

exposure to failure are you still

holding on to without allowing it to

push you

into the next chapter of your story we

all have a decision to make and we all

have a path to choose when we navigate

how to move forward from a tragedy

what if now moving forward you were able

to say i got through this thing and i

can tell that i’m stronger

because of it what if instead of saying

i’m a victim of this thing you can now

say

i look back and say all the ways i can

display my resilience

and most importantly if something were

to happen to you again

what path are you going to choose are

you going to choose the victim mentality

or are you going to choose to not give

up and allow it to push you

into your best life in losing my brother

i honor him by living every single day

to make sure

i give access to fitness to people all

over the world

i went from my apartment complex gym to

now a new

media studio that is over 20 times the

size of what i used to be training in

with four full-time employees and i

can’t imagine if i would have skipped

out on something like this

over 115 million workouts completed

or opportunities that could have been

missed

being a survivor of a gunshot i am now

able to say i am a stronger

and mentally and physically healthier

person i feel my physical strength come

through

i’m more confident i feel alive and

thankful for my life

i’m also a better personal trainer now

because i can relate to people of all

fitness levels

knowing we’ve all been at the beginning

at some point together

life will continue to take shots at us

but now you know it’s possible

to go through your tragedies and come

out stronger

don’t think of things that you’ve gone

through in the past as your baggage

unless to take it from a fitness

perspective

you view that baggage as equipment that

is challenging you

and making you stronger and you can look

back and say because i’ve carried this

i’m stronger today in life the choice

will always be yours

give in or never give up