By age 11, I was excelling at nearly every major sport including basketball, football, swimming and boxing. I was also very conscious of the benefits of making solid health choices and was diligently applying them to every area of my life (food choices, plenty of water and sleep, along with lots of prayer and meditation)

At the age of 17, I competed in an won my first "All Natural Body Building Show"

Even so there was a negative under current that had began to take place in me as a result of poor choices that I now look back and associate with an overwhelming sense of over-confidence/arrogance and a false sense of entitlement.

By age 30, the results of continued poor choices in practically every area of life had taken there toll and I found my life in complete and utter darkness and saw myself as someone I no longer recognized neither internally nor externally.

At age 39, I did in fact feel that there was no more life left in me. No more joy, passion, enthusiasm, or optimism. On my 40th birthday, my oldest brother Mount (R.I.P) came by to visit me and told me that I was going to make it. He told me he loved me and that he knew that I loved him too. He told me that he still believed in me . For whatever reason, at the particular moment and time hearing those words and feeling the sincerity of them was all I needed. I decided then to spend the rest of my life being grateful for it. In an instance I was ready and willing to do whatever it took to take back my health, hope, joy, happiness, confidence, enthusiasm, and optimism (to take back my life). I also had several clients that I had trained for shows and knew they would make an excellent support team. I resumed all the practices of a healthy wholesome lifestyle (All founded on prayer, and faith in God)

At age 41, I was back on stage and collecting win after win. A minute and very minimal accomplishment when compared to the fact that I am back to being who God has created me to be. Living life, loving life, and doing all I can to help others do the same.

Moral to my story/Life Lessons Learned

As children we all start our journey in life at a certain point and place, and that regardless of that place and point (be it extremely positive or thoroughly challenging) situations, circumstances and opportunities to progress and/or regress are guaranteed to present themselves.

The choices that we make within those pivotal moments are sure to be genuinely represented in the form of benefits or repercussions.

If we fail to make good choice, or, to complicate matters even further by actually making poor choices, an opportunity for redemption (in some form or another) is sure to present itself as well.  And sometimes just by knowing that someone genuinely cares can make all the difference in the world.  The key is to be able to first recognize the opportunity when it presents itself.  Second is to be totally committed to making the most of the opportunity, third is to have a support system of those who believe in you, and motivate you to completing the task.

In short, In God all things are possible to those who believe.