My Story: Searching for My Place in Life

Hi, I’m Brantley Pacheco, and this is my blog, the Full Force Mind.

This little project of mine began at the beginning of 2023. At the time, I was just another personal trainer.

However, like many others around New Year’s, I decided to set some resolutions for myself. I’ve had resolutions in the past, but they never seemed to come to fruition.

I was lucky enough to realize it this time, forcing me to look deeper at my life and what I wanted.

That was when I came to a cathartic deadlock.

What did I want? What has my life meant up to this point?

You see, like many people, I’ve seen and done many things that I would consider impressive. However, after comparing the events of my past with where I was currently, I noticed a frustrating disconnect.

This is the story of how I discovered why I was put on this Earth.

Childhood is Tough if You're an Introvert

One thing everyone can appreciate is being born at the same time as an awesome movie release. In my case, I happen to pop into existence in the same year as Die Hard, Beetlejuice, and Rain Man.

I also firmly believe that little detail formed a profound part of my personality.

My childhood was spent as a younger brother to a very extroverted (and bossy) older sister in a single-parent home with my mother.

Times were tough, but my mom made the best of everything and managed to raise two kids to become functioning and quirky adults.

Aside from home struggles of living without a lot of means, life outside the home had its own unique challenges for me.

I was a shy kid.

I had a tiny social circle of equally awkward friends. Some of the most fun moments I remember were cutthroat games of Uno played at a local McDonald’s.

Those were also the years I discovered my first real passion in life. Gymnastics!

It was a sport that you could do well in even if you were shy, and I trained my ass off despite being, according to my coach, “one of the least talented athletes he had ever coached.”

This was also where my experience as a coach first began.

Luckily for my coach, I was also the hardest-working athlete, so I ultimately excelled and became a walk-on for one of the top men’s gymnastics programs in the nation at Oklahoma University.

This was it! Everything was going to change for me. I would no longer be that shy kid that no one knew. I was finally going to be recognized and discover where I fit in.

It'll be Different in College They Said...

One of my many gifts in life is my intellect. I was known as that smart kid in class the teachers either liked or loathed entirely.

In college, I decided to go for a “smart-kid” degree. In this case, it was aerospace engineering.

I also made strides to meet new people and expand my social circle. I even joined a small fraternity.

All this while I trained full-time with a team of world-class athletes (I don’t exaggerate either, many of them became Olympians.)

Unfortunately, I wasn’t Olympic-Competition-Material, so my coaching fell by the wayside. I also didn’t really fit in with the team because I was the only “engineer” in a group of “health-exercise science” majors.

Ironically, I didn’t fit in with my fraternity brothers either because I was the only athlete in a group of guys who preferred… a less active lifestyle.

At the end of college, I graduated with honors and decided to try my hand professionally. So I crafted my first resume and started job hunting.

Maybe I didn’t try hard enough, or perhaps it was the economic recession, but no one would hire me.

I was done with college for the time being and was scrambling for a way to pay off my student loans. So I decided if I couldn’t make it in engineering, then perhaps it was time to pursue a lifelong self-obligation.

From Engineering To Military

Military service has been a generational undertaking in my family, and I always wanted to be a part of it.

Like everything I set my mind to, I wanted to excel, so I set my sights on one of the more challenging endeavors.

United States Special Forces.

I joined the 18x program and was sent to the Special Forces Selection Course after basic and airborne training.

Handling the physical aspect was no problem, but I wasn’t selected in the end due to poor peer reviews.

Thwarted by shyness yet again.

So I was sent packing to my first duty station, which happened to be in Hawaii. I learned a lot there and met many interesting people, but I still had my heart set on SF. After I had spent enough time in the Regular Army as an Infantry Wolfhound, I was back at the SFQC, and this time, I was prepared.

I was selected, and despite my engineering background, I was ordered to train as an 18D or Special Forces Medical Sergeant. I never imagined I would learn so much about the human body. Interestingly, while learning how the body worked, I found it paralleled many of the engineering principles I discovered in college.

This began a long and arduous journey in the Special Forces Qualification Course. I was challenged in ways I can’t describe physically, mentally, emotionally, and at times spiritually.

In the end, due to setback after setback in the course and still being regarded as unconfident (the adult word for shy) by my peers, my military contract ended, and I was left with a decision. Renew my contract, continue this seemingly endless journey in yet another place I didn’t fit in, or move on to the next chapter in my life.

It was the single most brutal life decision I’ve ever made.

Becoming The Best Coach Ever

It was a bitter end to my military career, but the universe seemed to tell me it was the right decision because I was offered a job as a Gymnastics Program Director during my discharge.

Despite my jaded (and somewhat damaged) outlook from leaving the military, a part of me I hadn’t felt in years had come back to life.

I loved coaching, and those kids were the reason I woke up every morning. It was the first time in my life that I had truly felt happy and at home.

I spent four years enjoying my coaching position and producing champion after champion. At that time, I received the single greatest compliment anyone has ever given me from the Women’s Program Director, who was hard to please.

“There are good and great coaches out there, but what Brantley did with that program is nothing short of a work of art.”

Unfortunately, the good times were not meant to last. Like countless others, my life was completely upended by Covid-19. Our gym was closed due to the lockdowns, and it was on the verge of going out of business. Here, I made another difficult decision.

I was one of the highest-paid employees, but despite my success with the program, the men’s program didn’t make money due to how the gymnastics world is structured. So to make sure it didn’t go under, I left the program so they could save money and stay open.

I ended up moving in with my mom and stepdad, who was also dealing with pandemic-related problems For the next year, I struggled to find anything that could make my life “work.”

I ended up moving in with my sister in South Carolina and decided that if I couldn’t find another coaching job, maybe there was another way to make the most of my skills.

So I became a personal trainer.

Trial and Error and Error and Error

Being a personal trainer wasn’t hard. In fact, it came naturally to me. I tended to treat all of my clients, no matter their demographic, like my gymnastics students of the past.

No, I didn’t have them do cartwheels, but I did coach them through lifting in a similar fashion. Everything we did was backed by logic and science.

But a nefarious problem had become noticeable after hiding under the radar for years.

My personal physical and mental health had deteriorated. I was so caught up in the struggles of life that I forgot to take care of myself.

I was overweight. I had chronic insomnia with consistent nightmares (maybe due to military training). My body ached from old injuries, and I lost most of the strength I had prided myself on. I felt slow mentally and harbored an intense lack in my life.

This is where New Year hit me like a truck.

Was I going to let myself continue down this path? Or was I going to do something about it?

Advancing One Step at a Time

It was January 1st on a Sunday, and I was wide awake at 5 am. I sat at the table in my apartment quietly, thinking to myself. I could set all the goals and resolutions I wanted, but in the end, if I didn’t know what purpose I was driving towards, what good was any of it?

So I grabbed a little notebook and a pen and began writing—nothing in particular. I was writing what was on my mind. What did I want? What was I good at? What made me feel satisfied? When was I at my best?

I kept writing questions to myself, and something strange happened. I began writing back answers.

I was at my best whenever I was teaching and realized I didn’t need to teach gymnastics to children. I just needed to teach someone in need of learning. And then I thought of something crazy. What if I held up the objective mirror and regarded myself as my own student?

I needed to keep track of my lessons and projects and wanted others to benefit from them.

That is how this blog was born.

So, I asked myself what my problems were. After that, I began to approach the situation like I was my own teacher. I didn’t have the solutions to a lot of my problems, so like a good teacher, what did I do? I looked for the answers, of course!

Problem 1: Why can’t I sleep?
Problem 2: Why can’t I control my eating habits?
Problem 3: How do I get my strength and physical youth back?
Problem 4: How can I impact those around me more?

After I wrote those problems down, I began researching. It was strange. I hadn’t made a single resolution, yet I was determined to change my life.

I researched with cold-military discipline day and night. Whenever I found something useful, I recorded it in a journal or spreadsheet. I looked deep into the workings of the human body and reverse-engineered my problems. From this research, I created a system for turning my health around and packaging it in a way anyone could use.

I created the Full Force Method.

Using this system, I began systematically resolving the problems in my life one at a time. This system may be my creation, but it only came through diligent effort and the talents loaned to me in this life. Now it’s time to pay it forward.

The Lesson and My Concluding Mission

All my life, I’ve been looking for a place I could fit in, battling shyness and confidence issues every step of the way. This year I learned something.

I will always be an awkward guy, but I am at my most confident, outgoing, and impactful when doing the one thing I love more than anything on the planet.

Teaching.

If you’ve read this far, know this, you are now my student, and I will do everything I can through this blog to show you ways you can expand and accelerate your health just as I did. You are not alone, and I will do everything possible to be a shining light in the dark. It’s time for you to engage yourself – Full Force.

Thank you for reading.

I hope this story kindles something great inside you.

Brantley Pacheco