http://www.teenbodybuilding.com/achang.htm
“I came across your amazing transformation story on bodybuilding.com and wanted to speak with you about a show on NBC we are currently putting together.” - January 2005
“We at Muscle and Fitness heard your story and want to get an interview from you.” -January 2005
I’m going to tell you a story. A story about dreams and promises, about victories and defeats, and about you and me. This story begins with once upon a time, and it ends with…
Dreams and Promises:
Once upon a time, I was an overweight kid, a troubled youth, and a bulimic teen. I was insecure, inadequate, and insignificant. I searched for meaning and feeling in the chemical rush of food, in the social approval of grades, and in the admiration of friends. I yearned for success. Yet, no matter what I achieved, I was never fulfilled.
By the time I was 12, I had every single eating disorder ever diagnosed. I had changed from a fat, weak, cowardly child to a skinny, arrogant, anorexic prepubescent teen. Yet, I was still angry, still afraid, and still…not enough.
I searched for salvation in churches, in crisis centers, and in books. I kept looking outside to the world for the questions inside. Answers that we all must inevitably find: why are we here, what should we do, how would we live, and who could we become. After my third near-death experience at the age of 14, I made a promise to myself that I would know all these answers in 7 years. I would do whatever it took to experience the Truth.
The journey of a thousand miles always begins with that first step.
It was there, in the dark morning runs of the mountains, in the rusty mats of the dojo, and in the sturdy grip of the iron, that I found my path to salvation. I never believed or trusted myself in the past, but through surprising myself with every moment I trained, I started to see things in myself that were never there before.
If I could forge my body through my will, then what else is possible?
I was obsessed with being a Champion. Every day I dreamed of competing in the Olympics, of winning the Gold Medal, of being the Best in the World. In Something. Anything. I just wanted to know that I had what it took to be somebody. I would have died to known that.
In July 2004, in the last summer of high school, I sacrificed everything in my life to make that dream real. I had already transformed my body, my relationships, and my life, but I still never made it. I gone from being a failure to being good, and sometimes even great.
But I was sick of being just good enough. Good enough never is. I wanted, needed, to be the Best. I have been on the edge for far too long. I knew I had to take that leap and risk the fall. The Chance to Fly and Have it All. Even for Just One Moment.
So I trained in lifting, wrestling, grappling, boxing, kickboxing, swimming, running, rock climbing, and everything I could do for 6-8 hours a day. 7 days a week.
Within three months, I packed on 30 pounds of solid muscle. I was 170 pounds with 6% body fat. I benched 415 pounds. I shrugged 500 pounds. I leg pressed 800 pounds. I was a monster.
I did what was supposedly impossible by all scientific standards.
Strangers on the street would ask me which Olympic event I was competing in. Athletes at YMCA would thank me for inspiring them to go the extra distance. Kids would come up and tell me they pushed themselves further today than they ever had in their entire life because of me.
Hundreds of people thanked me everyday for living my dream, my impossible dream. They said that watching me has given them the hope and promise to go after their visions and achieve their missions.
What is your dream? What is your greatest victory? How did you get there?
Victories and Defeats:
Those memories still warms my heart, even in the darkest of days. I risked my body and my life for my dreams. In that summer of 2004, I experienced those moments and these memories I died to have. Just as I was about to make it, to that perfect peak, I fell.
I tore every single joint and ligament in my body. Doctors said I would never train again. They told me to take Prozac and painkillers for the rest of my life.
I came so close. Yet, I never got on that show in 2005, never got the $500,000 sponsorships and model contracts, and never got the gold medal.
People always ask me if it was worth it: to sacrifice so much, to come so close, and still…to be so far.
Sometimes, I wasn’t sure if I could take the fall from glory or the fading story. It’s hard to make sense of life when everything you ever worked to have and risked to be is taken away. It’s tough when you’re 18 and the world tells you that you will never train again, that you will never live your dream again, and that you will never have your life again. And it’s sad when you began to believe is what they say, and you began to forget what you once stood for, fought for, and lived for.
Most people in life play in the shallow pools, where if they shall fall, they wade safely, back to the shore whence they came. And then, there are the few, those crazy fools who dreams with their eyes wide open, who soar the roaring waves, who live in the unfathomable heights and unbearable depths, and who become the legends and myths that makes us whole.
When you fall from such great heights, you break every single bone, every joint, and every fiber in your body. And when you are down there in the abyss, heart drowning to stay afloat and soul sinking to see the light, that’s, that’s when you know who you really are and what you are made of.
The hardest battles of my life was not getting to the top. It’s falling off the peak that you worked all your life to get to, and finding the heart within you to get back up, over and over again.
At 20, I came back from that injury to compete in the finals of a national grappling tournament in April 2005. I believed that this was my moment of glory. I would win the gold medal, get on the news, get my own show, and change the world!
In the finals, one minute before victory, I tore my shoulder and my nerve. I could not even feel or move my entire body.
For 19 months, I could not move, feel, or even see my shoulder anymore. Yet I did not want to give up. For 16 months, I still went to the gym and worked out, even though I did not have a shoulder. The structural imbalance caused my entire skeletal system to collapse into itself. I was becoming a cripple. And I did not even know it.
I saw over 25 doctors, and no one could help me. I lost over 40 pounds of muscle.
The top neurologist said my only option was a nerve transplant, from my triceps to my shoulder. I would lose part of my arm, 100%. I might get my back shoulder if the muscle took in the new nerve. He had no idea what the success rate would be.
A top surgeon told me 18 months have passed since my injury, and I would never get my shoulder back. Sorry.
That day, I broke down. I was 22. I had kept the promises I made to myself at 14. I lived my dreams and made real all my goals by 21. In the process, I overcame two impossible injuries. But what could I do in the face of this injury that crippled my body?
All the heart, courage, and strength seemed meaningless against a nerve that cannot fire, a muscle that cannot move, and a body that cannot function. I began to lose hope.
All my life I wanted to be a champion. I was the manifestation of health, fitness, and strength. I was the underdog who took his one in a million shot and made something out of himself.
But who was I now?
The Gift had become the Curse…
Until now.
You and Me:
A week ago, I went to Strategic Profits, an online marketing and business conference in Orlando. There, I met Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Bob the Teacher, Tom McCarthy, Gary Vaynerchuk, and hundreds of successful entrepreneurs. I realized that they all found their passion, lived their core values, and did what they love.
I felt torn. I was once a great athlete and trainer who helped people change their bodies and lives. But now, my own body was destroyed and crippled. How could I help anyone with their health when I was not the Olympic-caliber athlete anymore?
I always dreamed of a world where everyone has perfect health, wealth, and truth. I thought I would achieve this dream when I won the gold-medal and became the guru for all health: physical, mental, emotional, financial, and spiritual.
I wanted to be the Rocky, the underdog, the one-in-a-billion chance who overcame impossible odds to win it all. That was the way I saw myself for 22 years. That was the vision I manifested after I woke up and before I went to bed. That was my dream.
Sometimes, when we lose our dreams, we find our destiny.
That injury lead me to see a world of pain, lost, and emptiness that I never would have experienced and understood before. I once thought I been through so much as a child, with all the crisis centers, diseases, sickness, injuries, and psychological and social problems I faced and overcame.
Yet, even those days of teen-age angst and suicide meant nothing compared to losing my body and facing the reality of death when all I wanted to do what love and spread life.
That sense of injustice and pain from experiencing the broken systems of health care, of wellness and fitness industries, and of our entire medical, social, and capital system made me promise to come up with a way so that nobody will ever have to go through what I went through again.
Now, as a warrior turned entrepreneur, I have a new mission in life. I want to create systems of intellectual and physical distributions for all health. I want to create a world where every human being live their core values and have their loving relationship with earth, plants, animals, friends, families, bodies, and spirits.
I didn’t realize that this injury that I saw as my greatest weakness is actually my greatest strength. In a market where every “expert” is a bodybuilder who leads a hardcore lifestyle that most normal customers cannot maintain, I have created a unique system in which everyone can achieve health.
They told me I would be doing the world a great injustice if I did not have the heart and courage to give this gift to everyone who ever wanted health.
For the longest time, I kept thinking that my story only meant something when I healed completely, when I got to the gold medal, when I had that ultimate victory.
But the truth is, we all have a story worth sharing. And it doesn’t matter if it isn’t perfect like the fairy tales. It doesn’t matter if it’s not finished. Because the best stories never end. And they never die.
In this world, we get so focused on the results, when what we really need is the experience.
Yes, I am not a 170 pound, 6% bodyfat, Olympic level athlete anymore. But I am still, and always will be, a champion of health, wealth, and truth.
I am still that man who remembered that his life changed because he transformed his body. I am still that dreamer who imagined what would be possible if he could perfect one thing, just one thing, in his life.
The truth is we don’t have to wait until someday to be that person we always wanted to be. We can be that person right now.
And we don’t have to be afraid of successes or failures. Because the highest highs’ and lowest lows’ can never take away how you have experienced, what you have understood, and who you have become.
That, my friend, is yours to keep. Forever.
And you will go on to pass that gift, those lessons, and these blessings to others in this great big journey we all share, together.
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. - Mark Twain
What were your greatest challenges? How did you overcome them?
We all have a story worth sharing. Tell it. Scream it. Cry It. Sing It. It doesn’t matter. Just Live It.
Legends Never Die.
