Fit & Fab

"No man is an is­land en­tire un­to him­self: every man is a piece of the con­ti­nent a part of the main…" This quo­ta­tion from the Eng­lish meta­phys­i­cal po­et John Donne speaks to our in­ex­tri­ca­ble link to each oth­er. It sug­gests that hu­man be­ings do bad­ly when they are iso­lat­ed from oth­ers and thrive best when they are part of a com­mu­ni­ty. Donne was a Chris­t­ian but this con­cept is shared by oth­er re­li­gions, prin­ci­pal­ly Bud­dhism. To­day brings to a close the month when we cel­e­brate 42 years as a twin-is­land Re­pub­lic. In keep­ing with this sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone, we ho­n­oured ex­em­plars in every field who have ac­com­plished and con­tin­ue to give back to the wider com­mu­ni­ty. Across the spec­trum in ed­u­ca­tion, me­dia, the arts, sport, health, re­li­gion, na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and the pub­lic ser­vice and the many fields that are a part of our land­scape, these achiev­ers have carved a niche in their fields and con­tin­ue to im­pact the lives of our cit­i­zens in pos­i­tive ways. Each one teach­es one. We stand on the shoul­ders of our fore­fa­thers, our par­ents, our teach­ers, those who shared their love, their knowl­edge, those who lis­tened when no one else heard. We as in­di­vid­u­als need oth­ers to take us to our own lev­els of per­son­al great­ness. The par­ents who see the po­ten­tial in their dif­fer­ent­ly abled child, that teacher who tells a child, "I see great­ness in you."

"It is one of the most beau­ti­ful com­pen­sa­tions of life that no man can sin­cere­ly try to help an­oth­er with­out help­ing him­self," says Ralph Wal­do Emer­son. We all have a gift to give. "If I have seen fur­ther than oth­ers it is by stand­ing up­on the shoul­ders of gi­ant."—Isaac New­ton.

To­day as we roll out of Sep­tem­ber and in­to a new month, I share with joy the in­spir­ing sto­ry of a man who, on the brink of de­spair, was of­fered an out­stretched hand. May we too recog­nise that the pow­er is ours to change lives and by ex­ten­sion re­store the 'sweet­ness' to our beau­ti­ful T&T.

"Some­one is sit­ting in the shade to­day be­cause some­one plant­ed a tree a long time ago."—War­ren Buf­fet

Judy Al­can­tara

BA Eng­lish Ho­n­ours/Span­ish

CIAR Cert [Coop­er’s In­sti­tute of Aer­o­bic Re­search]

Fran­cis Weekes:

The great Joseph Camp­bell says that every one of us has to trav­el that Hero's Jour­ney, a jour­ney that is de­fined in 12 dif­fer­ent mile­stones. Our ex­pe­ri­ences and dis­cov­er­ies in this per­son­al jour­ney are ex­treme­ly im­por­tant. My de­sire is that some­where with­in these words some­one will em­brace their own jour­ney and dis­cov­er the hero with­in.

Let's trav­el back to 2015. I was 43 and at the top of my game pro­fes­sion­al­ly, per­son­al­ly, fi­nan­cial­ly, and emo­tion­al­ly. My uni­ver­sal align­ment was on par with every one of my de­sires, dreams, and plans. I was fi­nal­ly about to fol­low my dream and pas­sion of be­com­ing a mo­ti­va­tion­al speak­er and pro­fes­sion­al life coach. Af­ter all, I had put in the work, stud­ied, and re­searched every piece of lit­er­a­ture by all the greats. The time felt right and as far as I was con­cerned, I Fran­cis L Weekes was at the thresh­old of suc­cess. Lit­tle did I know that the year I had planned to launch out in­to my dream ca­reer, would be the year of my great­est life test. I would lose two of my friends that were like broth­ers to me. It was just af­ter the 2015 Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions, Cur­tis, 42, a guy who nev­er showed any signs of ill­ness, died sud­den­ly from heart fail­ure. That same week Brent, 46, then lost his bat­tle with di­a­betes. The month of March 2015 sig­nalled the be­gin­ning of a down­ward spi­ral from my vic­to­ri­ous vor­tex to a place of ex­treme sad­ness and pain brought on by the trag­ic deaths of my broth­ers. My healthy, pos­i­tive, and hap­py ap­proach to life was grad­u­al­ly re­placed by un­healthy eat­ing, poor sleep­ing habits, and neg­a­tive feel­ings, thoughts, and emo­tions.

'Slow­ly be­com­ing my worst en­e­my'

I was slow­ly be­com­ing my worst en­e­my. By Sep­tem­ber 2016, I was now al­so fac­ing the fate of many mid­dle-class Trinida­di­ans with sud­den un­em­ploy­ment af­ter over a decade of serv­ing in the pub­lic sec­tor. Eco­nom­ic de­pres­sion in a coun­try is dif­fi­cult, but even more so for a 44-year-old man that has been fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent since the age of 19. I felt worth­less and like a fail­ure. As much as I tried to keep my feet on the ground and head held high, the anx­i­ety grew and in­som­nia lurked night­ly. De­pres­sion took up per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy in my life. I can on­ly de­scribe it as liv­ing but not alive, walk­ing but go­ing nowhere, hop­ing but noth­ing to hold on to. My life be­came a shell with the sound of hell's an­gels say­ing "you are bet­ter off dead". On­ly my love for my beau­ti­ful daugh­ter kept me from obey­ing those voic­es from hell.

As fate would have it, this year 2018 Car­ni­val ush­ered in my sea­son of re­align­ment to my mir­a­cle. On Car­ni­val Tues­day whilst walk­ing on Tra­garete Road, ob­serv­ing the mas­quer­aders cel­e­brate in the great­est show on earth, I saw the im­age of hope. It was the "Meet­ing of the Men­tor". He was a man that I had heard about, one who was very in­stru­men­tal in help­ing many achieve their fit­ness and life goals. A cham­pi­on; a world cham­pi­on in his own right. I felt a pull and I need­ed to seize this mo­ment, It was the feel­ing I had known all too well, back when the Uni­verse and I had walked hand in hand. That pull gave me the courage to walk up to Mr Dex­ter Si­mon and say hel­lo. He shook my hand and em­braced me—a per­fect stranger—with the warmest and most hum­ble smile.

It was at that mo­ment I knew that I was on the road to res­ur­rec­tion and my Hero's Jour­ney was back on track. On­ly this time, I had a men­tor in Dex­ter Si­mon. I called him up some weeks lat­er, fol­low­ing which, we met. I shared with him all I have shared with you to­day and this was his re­sponse.

" 'You have what it takes to be great again and even greater. Weekesy, in you, I will cre­ate a mas­ter­piece be­cause I see the true you.' " Dex­ter Si­mon had the be­lief in me that I had lost. I on­ly saw a 46-year-old, de­pressed, worth­less over­weight 219-pound fail­ure. He saw a hero that sim­ply need­ed to re­turn to the bat­tle with a sharp­er sword and a healed heart.

I can say that join­ing the Dex­ter Si­mon and the Asy­lum Gym fam­i­ly along with his twin broth­er, Der­rick, has been one of the great­est per­son­al in­vest­ments I have ever made. How­ev­er, I had to put in the work men­tal­ly, phys­i­cal­ly, emo­tion­al­ly, and spir­i­tu­al­ly. I was now called to take full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty for the achieve­ment of Dex­ter's mas­ter­piece plan. It re­quired a to­tal change in di­et, dai­ly work­outs, dai­ly car­dio, and his broth­er Der­rick de­mand­ed no less than nine hours sleep per night. Al­though I live two hours away from Diego Mar­tin, I have nev­er missed a train­ing ses­sion. I bought a food scale and stuck to my di­et to the last ounce mea­sure­ment with the help of my su­per faith­ful part­ner Whiney Richards who has sup­port­ed me 110 per cent. Every day I start with car­dio and end with car­dio. Suc­cess in any­thing re­quires an ex­treme lev­el of no com­pro­mise, no ex­cus­es, com­plete dis­ci­pline, and a fixed fo­cus, of at­tain­ing that goal by all means nec­es­sary.

'The res­ur­rec­tion, that born-again ex­pe­ri­ence'

"We are what we think about"—the great writ­ers Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightin­gale have al­ways said so. I def­i­nite­ly at­test to the fact that what you think about is what you be­come. So I need­ed to match all this hard work and ded­i­ca­tion with the right think­ing and with the cor­rect phi­los­o­phy. Once again, I re­turned to the teach­ings of all the greats. With that knowl­edge and the awe­some guid­ance of my men­tor Sir Dex­ter, I have ex­pe­ri­enced that res­ur­rec­tion, that born-again ex­pe­ri­ence, of lov­ing me, be­liev­ing in me, know­ing that any­thing and every­thing is pos­si­ble. In my first week, I could on­ly do three push-ups at a time, it lit­er­al­ly took me over a minute to com­plete 20. I now do 120 push-ups straight.

It has been four months and I am now 41 pounds less than when I be­gan. No more in­som­nia, no more anx­i­ety at­tacks. I am be­gin­ning to love me again and align­ing with a uni­ver­sal pur­pose. No longer de­pressed and I am ex­treme­ly filled with grat­i­tude and thanks­giv­ing. For who­ev­er is read­ing this sto­ry, I want them to know that life is un­pre­dictable and the hu­man mind is frag­ile. It can, how­ev­er, be pro­tect­ed and strength­ened with healthy habits, a healthy lifestyle, healthy as­so­ci­a­tions and nev­er al­low­ing the ex­ter­nal ex­pe­ri­ences to shake your in­ner core. We were all giv­en the uni­ver­sal op­por­tu­ni­ty to en­ter in­to this liv­ing space with the abil­i­ty to be great, to live in abun­dance, to jour­ney, and yes to ex­pe­ri­ence many bat­tles and win.

We are all he­roes and just like in com­ic books and movies, there are times when the hero falls and may get cap­tured by the en­e­my. How­ev­er, he or she al­ways finds a way to rise and be­come even greater in the vic­to­ry. Tony Rob­bins says, "There is a pow­er­ful dri­ving force in­side every hu­man be­ing that once un­leashed, can make any vi­sion, dream or de­sire a re­al­i­ty."

It's my de­sire to help oth­ers to dis­cov­er their in­ner great­ness by help­ing them to un­leash that dri­ving force with­in.

We are all he­roes on this Hero's Jour­ney. So let's pick up our swords of great­ness, sharp­en them with the right think­ing, face our chal­lenges and con­quer all the drag­ons of doubt, fear, and dis­be­lief be­cause our great­est life awaits us yet.