Akeem Haynes

Akeem Haynes faced many challenges throughout his personal and sporting life before he represented Canada at the 2016 Summer Games. He was constantly set back by different institutions, coaches, and himself. Akeem offers the audience his story of how to deal with setbacks, how to let go of the past and to keep focused on your vision. He offers insight into mental resiliency, how to manage opportunity, and to calculate the right decision. Akeem shows audience members how to deal with loss/failure and turn it into motivation. Akeem believes that the importance of positive thinking and positive self-talk is the key to having confidence which then brings success.

Akeem has dealt with a lot of pain and setbacks in his life, there are two types of pain in this world. Pain that makes you bitter, and pain that makes you better. The number one thing is that we trust ourselves and have faith in who we are and what we want to accomplish and that we surround ourselves with those who support our dreams. His story on his early career and life to become an Olympian offers audiences a personable story of overcoming all odds to become who he is today.

Being one of Calgary’s and Alberta’s most decorated dual sport athletes, Akeem Haynes earned a full athletic scholarship to The University of Alabama. While the student-athlete lifestyle might seem glamourous, it taught him how to be productive and manage his time while getting optimal results. Akeem teaches us that time management, positive habit-forming, the power of positive self-talk, and holding ourselves accountable all play a strong role in being productive. The results of being productive are impacted by one’s discipline to keep focused on small/daily goals, that build you closer to the vision of where you want to be. Akeem helps others focus on how to put the right amount of effort into our work, our lives, our loved ones and ourselves.

If you truly want to make a change in your life, you first have to accept complete ownership. We are the one constant in our problems and solutions. Akeem’s speech will give you perspective how to grow and development from within yourself and how to deal with internal and external challenges. Akeem shows us the importance of values and maintaining loyalty to our beliefs so that we can more easily deal with change and challenging situations. He shows the importance of building relationships with those who are like minded so that we can master ourselves and control our destiny. This allows us to better handle change and to adapt ourselves to become whoever we need to be in order to accomplish our goals. Akeem’s presentation explores how it is adapting to challenges where we can grow the most, therefore making challenging situations an opportunity rather than a struggle. Being different is never a bad thing as long as you deal with it in a positive way. Akeem teaches us the power of positivity, strategies for dealing with change and how to put it all together for success.

In 1998, Akeem Haynes and his mother departed from Sav-la-mar Jamaica and migrated to a small town in the far North of Canada to Yellowknife, NWT. This was a huge adjustment for their family coming from Jamaica. Not only were the winters tough and the days sometimes light for 3 months out of the year, Akeem and his family had to adjust to an extreme version of Canadian culture in being one of the only black families in the area. They struggled early in those days in the forced shift to lose part of their cultural roots, with no access to Jamaican ingredients for home cooked meals as well as learning the Canadian way in an unpopulated and limited access location. Akeem felt the pressure of being culturally different early on in those years. He heard his classmates whispering jokes behind his back, and felt eyes on him wherever he went. A huge culture shock for Akeem and his family, they pulled together to discuss and strategize on how they needed to act, work and respond when faced with challenging situations due to the culture barriers.

It was in these moments that Akeem understood that he was going to be judged in Canada for his looks and his culture. Something hard for a young person to understand, Akeem continued to take the high road and to transform the challenges into proven success. Akeem later went on to go to University on scholarship to Kansas and Alabama. Two of the most culturally divided states in the USA. Akeem used his previous experiences in what his family had taught him early on in Yellowknife as well as what he had taught himself in different situations. Akeem identifies the challenges of what is like to be a new immigrant in Canada in small towns as well as some of our larger cities. Akeem shares a deep and personal story of the troubles his family faced as new immigrants in a remote Canadian community and the struggles he and his family faced early on in his life to be accepted in Canada while also navigating poverty, discrimiation and a loss of identity. He shows the importance of one staying connected to their roots, and what he learned on how to interact with non-black Canadians, as well as how to overcome negative thinking that is usually a result of one being labelled “different”.