The Evolution of Garth Voisin

The

Evolution

of Garth Voison

Authoring a self-help book requires an extent of transparency that can be overwhelmingly uncomfortable. There’s an established trust that comes with relatability and truth. Fitness enthusiast and model Garth Voisin decided to be transparent. Growing up on the island of Trinidad, Garth was feeling like he wasn’t living up to his full potential and knew that he there was more in the world for him. Leaving his family behind, he did what he always would, jumped out of life’s airplane with no parachute and landed in New York City. After the trial and tribulations of figuring out life in the Big Apple, he decided that he would be an author to share his story. Ironically, this was because he was challenged by a television commercial.

Garth was consistent on what he was trying to do with pursuing the passion for writing. While wanting a full Mind, Body, and Soul understanding, Garth began training and consulting in the fitness industry. “A lot of people focus on the body, which is not a bad thing,” Garth explains. “But, I think sometimes we don’t understand that the center of it all would be a mind. Your actions come from your mind. Feelings come from your mind. Everything comes from your mind. The mind is the mainframe of life. So I wanted to connect the two of them and to share it with as many people as possible.”

Garth was a transplant in the beautiful city of New York right after the turn of the millennium. He was excited, enthusiastic, and optimistic. He was in a new space with a world of possibilities. Never did he think that the struggle of The Empire State would be the first challenge that he would be faced with. The eager newbie was faced with sleeping in his car for a stint and even slept in a house with no heat. By 6 o’clock, he was asleep because staying up beyond the 6 o’clock hour would mean that he was conscious of how cold he was. Those memories continue to remind him that if he could overcome those things, he would be fine. However, he doesn’t feel that he will ever be “OK”.

“You’re never Okay, man,” Garth laughs. “I think, I think the point where I realized that things will work themselves out. You will never be okay because you know, not every day is going to be okay. you know? It was definitely a hard transition. Being as transparent as transparency can get, there was a lot of depression. Missing being at home, and then there’s this idea of ‘what I should do? Just give up and go back? So you’re trying to push on, and it was tough.

Garth continues, “There was this commercial that said “if you were to write a book about your life, would anyone read it? I kept hearing the commercial regardless of where I was. I like cars, right? When you want a new car and you think about the car you want, you see that car over and over and over and over. All of a sudden [it feels like] there are 100 million of these cars in your neighborhood. So the first time I heard the commercial about it, I was just joking around like, yeah, okay, you know, I should write a book about my life. And the next two days it came up again and then came up again. I’m like, you know what, alright, okay, I’m going to do this.”

Garth’s first book was not much about his own life but more about experiences and trying to encourage his readers to reflect on their own lives. In doing this, Garth admitted that his ego and pride were bigger than his purpose. All of that would change when emails, facebook messages, and posts responses informed him that his messages were resonating with the readers. They were experiencing the things that he was writing about, thus, making them one of the same with him. The only avenue left to travel was that of full transparency. To achieve this, Garth would have to allow his purpose to overtake his ego and pride.

“A lot of these things are happening to other people and they don’t have a voice,” Garth explains. “Sometimes, if you are free to share what you think that went bad in your life, that’s a good thing. Most people just share the highlights. I’m actually trying to reach into the mind of men. I feel as though I posted a lot of stuff recently from the mind of a man, and got some feedback. Some of it was good, well, most of it was good. But again, I’m writing it regardless. I feel as though we are in a society, now, where the man’s mind is more closed off from when it was from before. I’m trying to write from a perspective of the mind of a man because I feel as though a lot of men are staying silent in order to not have a confrontation or all the context. People don’t understand that that leads to so many different things.”

Men are raised to be a locked chest of emotions. While kids, boys are told not to cry and to “man up”. Taught not to complain when upset about issues. And encouraged to fight our way out of any situation that arises. While little girls are taught to do the exact opposite of all of those actions. Into adulthood, the once boys playing with trucks are now men, closed to expressing emotion. Therefore, it’s always rewarding

when Garth has a man send him a message of social media.

“The biggest shock is the reaction from people who you would assume would not react,” Garth says. “The feedback from people who at one point, would say writing a book is not going to work. But, when you see the writing and being consistent and be in something that is put out there they say, ‘Hey, you know what? I didn’t support that in the beginning, this writing makes an impact.’ So from the time I started to get a little bit more feedback from writing, and that’s when I realized that as much as I would have loved to go into more acting or modeling or more, I think it makes sense.”

While pondering writing a post on instagram about influencers and influencers being people that have to be more than someone selling a product, we’ve come to an understanding that their posts should be something, and they should be someone that changes somebody’s life in a type of way. That way when you read a post or see a photo, there was an impact. Everybody has a role model in some way. Maybe it’s a small circle, but now that you’re an influencer in a bigger circle, what are you doing to impact people that are around you? How are you using your popularity to effectively help create change? Many people who really want to impact the lives of others have the “if I can only reach one person” mantra. This stands true of Garth.

“I’m at that point where it has to be something that’s not just a passion or mission that you’re on,” Garth pleads. “You have to at least help somebody. I think that’s where all that came about. Just the idea of sharing experiences with whoever’s listening, whoever was reading, whoever had once paid attention. I just hope that my words can help somebody. The trials I’ve been through, and we haven’t gotten to those things [via social media] yet. I set out on a mission, a personal mission to get new books out to as many people as possible. I didn’t plan to make anything off of the book. So the mission now is that as many places as I go, if I know somebody had said to me, Hey, I love the book idea and I could meet up with them. I just go to different places and just tried to give them

the book to maybe sit down and chat with them a little bit.”

Never leaving the world of fitness, Garth saw the opportunity to address the full rounded Mind, Body, and Soul method for his training sessions. He was excited to talk to men about the mental training of fitness. Many trainers will say that mentally overcoming your obstacles is the first step to achieving your goal. We encourage people to just “make it” to the gym. Worry about the workout after you get there. With the mental workout, it’s just being open to an authentic and transparent conversation. You wouldn’t believe how difficult this is. Transparency leaves you open to judgement, ridicule, and even unwarranted guilt. Men tend to not like the truth of themselves as it’s told from another person.

Rules have changed. The ideals and ideas of manhood have changed. Society has changed. But the one thing that has not changed as the fact that there are very few outlets for men to really come out and say how I feel about something. Outlets that reassure a man that he isn’t the only person dealing with a particular situation. Or allowing yourself to believe that if you get emotional and begin to pour out your feelings that you’re less of a man.

This is a primary reason that the magazine you’re currently reading was created. And for Garth, it’s one of the biggest motivations for him to connect with others. He understands that if you keep it in your mind, your actions will begin rebelling or lashing out, which could lead to anything from woman to alcohol or worse.

“It’s okay to want to talk to somebody about something because it’s on your mind,” Garth explains. “Instead, we, as men, to compartmentalize our problems or put our issues into a little corner, which is what you’ll do whenever it comes back up again, which is not actually dealing with it. So you’re constantly dying in silence. Screaming with no audible source. Because again, you’ve had this mask on for so long that it’s like they removed in mass and say, hey, And they put it back on because they can’t be themselves when they go anywhere else.”