Today we’d like to introduce you to Charlie Gains.
Hi Charlie, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
My name is Charlie Everette, and I’m from a small town called Murfreesboro, N.C. I grew up with a tobacco field in the front of the yard and corn fields in the back. In (Mur-frees-boro)it was customary to drive lawnmowers and tractors in the street. If you wanted, you could ride your horse to the grocery store and tie the horse right in front of the store. My fitness journey started very early. My father was master sensei (karate instructor) for our town, so I didn’t have a choice whether I would be physically active or not :). He was a black belt in Tae Kwon Do/Shotokan and sparked my curiosity to push limits and see what’s on the other side. He kicked our a**! We had to run a mile every practice, finish the mile and complete 100 push-ups/sit-ups, and THEN class began.
Another element that kept me active is being a musician (piano, vocal, percussion). I was in the marching band from middle school through collegiate. People don’t know how hard being a part of a band is until you’re in the band. In my opinion, band practices went harder than football practices. Because of this, I’ve always been super strong carrying those HEAVY a** drums. Those drums from high school through college all had a minimum weight of 60lbs on your chest for 2-5 hours a day.
I discovered I was different and capable of extraordinary things. I was arranging flipping combinations (backflips/frontflips), jumping off everything, getting good at many instruments, drumline captain for a couple of years, created a dance crew and found out that I was a leader and thought very different than others.
During college, I picked up a love for lifting weights. My dawgs would meet a minimum of 3-4 times a week to work out. Sometimes, twice a day, we still had band practice later that night. We were obliterating workouts back then. I weighed 125lbs with a bench max of 260lbs.
College is where I figured out how abnormally strong I was for my size. I wrestled in high school and throughout college, always wanted to compete/fight in MMA (mixed martial arts). During my freshman year, I had a 1.4 GPA and had to write the dean to stay in school and couldn’t focus on anything else other than school and band ☹
Looking back, I’m not sure why I found so much compassion and drive to get punched in the face as a career. In my mind, MMA was top-tier athletes competing against each other in a life/death sporty way. That was the crazy Charlie, Ha! Now, you can say I’m the healed and delivered version of crazy.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
In 2020, I was two months into a fresh lease with my current girlfriend, and things weren’t as smooth as we wanted. Because rent was ridiculously high, I couldn’t afford to break the lease and pay the current rent, so I had to couch-hop and lived in 6 different places before being able to afford a place to live. Some may say I was crazy, but I found happiness in my lowest times. I created peace in the shadows that no one could ever take away from me again.
I was best friends with depression. I had many sleepless nights, learned to live on $20 a week multiple times, moved into a new place, was excited, and unexpectedly had a sign on my door evicting me from the new location giving me 24 hours to find a new home. I had created an internal bliss that I was smiling through the eviction.
Because of these obstacles, I learned that we grow and evolve through rough times. Now, I advocate for mental health, self-love, and switching paradigms, so people know we have no limits. We can create our realities, and life can be simple if we allow it to be.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
God has blessed me with the ability to bring amazing people to one place. No matter your race, age, gender, or sexual orientation, we all become one at my events.
I host adult field days in Atlanta called “Gain Games.” Here, we bring back our favorite childhood games such as tug of war, kickball, dodgeball, relay races, board games and heal our minds. We have a mental health segment where motivational speakers, life coaches, massage therapists, tarot readers, and energy healers come together and talk about life. We heal together. We heal as a community and heal ourselves. I’m currently working on a way to bring this same event to our children. Everyone can remember that feeling as a child to know that we didn’t have to do any class work for a day but instead we played ALLLL day. I want to bring this back to our schools across the world.
What matters most to you? Why?
The Charlie Gains Show (currently through instagram and Youtube)
I’m working to produce a show that gives viewers excitement and hesitation to wonder what they will see next. My goal is to allow the show to become a visual representation that we can achieve anything with consistency. We no longer place ourselves in a box and use saying such as, “My name is _FILL IN THE BLANK_ and I’m a (poet). Yes, you’re a fantastic poet, but you can also learn how to cook, dance, sing, balance on one foot, learn another language, play a musical instrument,because our abilities are limitless. We create the person we want to be. We determine what makes us happy. We decide how fulfilled we want our lives to be.
On The Charlie Gains show, I currently collaborate with amazing people who are one of a kind in their craft and we find ways to be creative together. We inspire and motivate each other on this show. We unlearn conditionalities we were taught about how life is supposed to be, who we are, and what’s right/wrong, and ultimately end up at “what do I want for myself”?
I envision my show becoming global and creating relationships with people all around the world. I plan to travel all around to collaborate with people who are experts in their crafts. I want people to teach me how to ride a bull, how to be a ballerina, cook with a vegan chef, fly an airplane etc. As I learn, the viewers (you) will learn how infinite we are. Sometimes the things/activities we deem scary in our personal life can be normal to someone else, but visually seeing these experiences may spark curiosities to say “I would love to try that too” or “I can do that.”
The Charlie Gains Show is where infinite possibilities become possible and I’m so happy with the direction it’s going 🙂
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/charliegains_/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugMcGUkVOT_hU9ulwtdpWQ
