Mental Health Matters Quadrants for the Chaos
In this live‑stream, host Brooke Cheney welcomes her community to "Mental Health Matters" (formerly "Suicide Friends Saturday") and frames the session around suicide prevention, mental‑health awareness, and practical decision‑making. She opens with gratitude to regular viewers and co‑host DJ, shares a personal philosophy that every life contains both fairy‑tale moments and nightmares, and urges self‑compassion and grace toward others. The core of the talk is the Eisenhower/Quadrant matrix (urgent‑important, urgent‑not‑important, not‑urgent‑important, not‑urgent‑not‑important). Brooke illustrates each quadrant with vivid anecdotes – her son’s thumb injury (urgent & important), her mother’s missing keys (urgent but not important), planning a family vacation or an essential‑oil class (not‑urgent & important), and binge‑scrolling or “busy work” (not‑urgent & not important). She explains the decision rules for each quadrant (do now, schedule, delegate, eliminate) and ties them to mental‑health outcomes, emphasizing that reducing frantic urgency can lower suicide risk and improve overall wellbeing. Brooke also shares a brief “math of aging” analogy to explain why life feels faster as we age, and she highlights personal self‑care practices such as meditation, exercise, and learning new skills. Throughout, DJ and community members contribute roll‑call, comments, and occasional biblical references, reinforcing the collaborative, supportive atmosphere. The session concludes with a recap of the quadrant framework and an invitation for viewers to apply it to gain peace and better mental health.
Chapters
All right, it gets me all crazy when it goes to zero watchers because I know y'all are out there. Uh, DJ, you want to check the YouTube side and make sure that we're really still there or not? But anyway, hey everybody, welcome! It is Saturday night. It's a moo! Um, sorry, see, this is just not fair because I say things like, it's a moo, and those of you watching on Facebook or Instagram, uh, don't know what I'm talking to talk about. So To Live Blue is out there. So, all right. Hi, it is Saturday night. Welcome to Mental Health Matters, formerly known as Suicide Friends Saturday, but because, uh, YouTube has too many actual live suicides, which is horrible, um, that is why it is now Mental Health Matters. So here we are, and the little counter thing went up to 5, so I know we're all actually here. All right, people. Well, first I just want to say thank you so much for last weekend. I was losing my stuff because for those of you who were here, I was like 10 minutes late and I'm like, ah, um, because you know, I like being on time. I thought I was gonna be here and then it didn't work out. And so last week was a little bit scatterbrained and, um, a little bit. Yeah. All right, hold on, hold on. Oh, sorry. Guns and Barbecue, the, the the, the stallion is here. I thought he was going to give me some squirrels, which I thought would've been very appropriate for stuff. But anyway, oh, Taryn is here. Taryn, welcome. So glad you could make it. Taryn is one of my new students. So anywho, here we are, Suicide Prevention Saturday. Why? Because 2 out of every 3 gun deaths we hear about are suicides. And if we're going to save lives, we need to talk about mental health and suicide prevention. And as y'all have heard me say this more than once, for those of you who is not first time— hi, Taryn— um, is that when we address our mental health issues— and I'm gonna move it, I'm not that tall— um, when we address our mental health issues, not only are we helping those people that could possibly do suicide by gun, we're helping all of those people who are considering suicide by any other means whatsoever. And bonus, when we have good mental health, we have less violence in the world because good mental health allows us to process the things that we need to process so we can handle the things we need to handle. And tonight I am very excited because I actually had time to work on this stuff for you guys tonight, and we are going to talk about the quadrants of decision-making. So I got GT3 here. And just for those of you who are new, GT3 thinks that this show should be at least an hour, maybe two. I think he's asked for up to 4 hours before. And GT3, you'll be happy to know I have figured out a way to do that. Yes. What I'm going to do is take some of the replays and just put them all together, and then you can have 4 hours of me. That's going to be my easiest way to do 4 hours. Oh, And I had to tell you that before I brought this comment up because yeah, 2-hour stream. So we shared it out. So I promise you, 2, 3, you'll be the first to know when I do a 2 or 4-hour stream. So, but for tonight we are going to stick to our 20-minute, 30-minute timetable generally because at the top of the hour we have Hillbilly Show and, oh, speaking of Hillbilly, there is a hillbilly. Yeah. Check out Hillbilly Up. He's got a show at the top of the hour. Hello, Mr. Chris. Um, so DJ is in the backyard making backyard. Yeah, he's here in back office, uh, taking care of stuff. And, um, by all means share away because like I said, super excited. All right, here are my squirrels, or maybe they're rats. I don't know. I guess they're squirrels. They're tiny, but yes, there's my squirrels. Good job, barbecue. Great way to, way to make up for that. All right, so here we go. I am going to do a little presentation for y'all. So Mental Health Matters by Brooke Cheney, that would be me if any of you didn't already know that, but I'm pretty sure all of y'all know I am Brooke Cheney. Now, if I can find my handy dandy little thingy that will go to the next, there we go. Okay. This is one of those things I was just thinking about and I wanted to share. And actually, while I'm doing this, I am so gonna, um, not look at your comments. So DJ's in charge of pulling stuff up when it is time to do so. Oops, that's not what I wanted. All right, so let's talk about me. One of the things I think about all the time is that I have an amazing life.. And if I tell you my life story, I can make it sound like the best fairy tale ever. I got everything I wanted as a little girl. I got to ride horses. I got to be on a farm. Oh, it was so great. However, if I chose to, I can tell you my story as if it was the most horrible nightmare and just that bad things happened. And if I only told you about that, then you would think I had the worst nightmarish life in my world. And the reality is truly that both are true. I've had amazing things in my life, and I've had painful things in my life. And what happens is, for those of you who've already heard this before, is that we focus on the things we choose. And so tonight is about making choices. What are you going to focus on? Are we going to talk about the best things that ever happened to us? Or are we going to focus on the worst things that ever happened to us? Or are we going to at least realize that most everybody has their struggles? Most everybody has their glory moments of this was the best moment of my life. Like, you know, my favorite is walking down the aisle to marry my husband. Yes. Thank you, dear Lord. I do love that so much. Are there others? Of course there are. Laughing with crazy belly laughs with my brother. Yes, those are the things. Are there other things that are not so awesome? Also yes. However, the reality of it is, is remembering everybody's got some fairy tale in their life and everybody's got some nightmare in their life. So try to give yourself first and foremost some grace. And then when other people are around you that are maybe not so awesome, give them some grace too, because you don't know what they're going through. So tonight, uh, oh yeah, sorry, one more thing. Our vision, and I say our vision is because I would not be here without DJ and Barbecue and G-Webs and all of you guys who come and support me and suggest that I continue on. So What's our goal? Give you something to think on, maybe something that might help you look at something differently. Focus on the good in the world and feed your brain good things. That is the goal. Tonight's topic, we're going to talk about life moves fast, work on one way to slow it down. Let's work on one way to slow it down. I can almost read what I put up here. All right, simplifying the decision process. I do not know about the rest of you. However, most everyone I've been talking to as of late, like, this past week was pretty quick. Like, it feels like I was just here running from the fair to get to you guys. But last week was like, the last week was on, like, I don't know, super fast hyperdrive or something. And it just seems like most of us are just running, running, running, running. Go, go, go, go, go, go. Go, go. And it's just like so fast. So, um, that is kind of where I found myself earlier this week. I was just like on— wait, let's see. Barbecue, what do you think is the best way? A squirrel hopped up on cocaine? Maybe, maybe that was it. I don't know. Um, I don't think it would be good to put squirrels on cocaine. We actually have an issue here in Connecticut where people are spray painting squirrels that made the news. So you never know. Squirrels, the poor things. Anywho, life is super fast. We're going, going, going. Things are pulling at us all of the time. And this is why we're going to talk about the quadrants, because that this week is what brought me some calm and a moment to reflect. So, but Brooke, what are the quadrants, you ask? I'm so glad that you asked. The quadrants are urgent, not urgent, important, and not important. So when we are talking about each one of these, we're going to put two of those in there. So, and I'll show you the quadrant at the end of these. So our urgent and important quadrant means that something's very important and it is urgent, must be taken care of right now. The first thing that came to mind was Christmas. My son cut his thumb in the kitchen when it was Christmas dinner, and he was 8 or 9, maybe 10, somewhere in there, youngish, but old enough to help dad peel the potatoes. It was great until he peeled the top of his thumb right off. And it was, it was just the whole top of the thumb was just gone. And we're applying pressure, applying pressure can't make them— the, the bleeding stop. This is— becomes urgent and important because, you know, the bleeding probably would have stopped at some point, but it was bloody towel after bloody towel on the floor. And it was like, okay, it's Christmas morning. Uh, so hop in the car, go to the ER and get that taken care of. And so, cause they've got the stuff that makes the bleeding stop. So that was urgent and important. So what do you do when it's urgent and important? Well, yeah, you have to take care of it right now. There are no other options. Now here is the thing I find in our life, we forget to realize that some things are urgent but not important. So Again, back to this week. I reflect on so many things this week for you guys. My mom called and she couldn't get into work because she couldn't find her keys. And I had a full day of work and I'm trying to get ready for the, um, I'm trying to get ready for all my students. And it's like 7:35 in the morning. My first start student's going to be at 9:30 that morning. And my mom calls and I'm like, okay, okay. I'll go and I'll, we'll, I'll go look for our keys and then maybe I'll find them. And then I'm like, well, but if I don't, I'm not, don't have time to bring her to work. And okay, this is where making that choice of, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Because I was literally walking out the door and I'm like, no, she's not dying. Her importance of getting to work actually isn't that important. In that her boss will understand, right? Obviously we wanna go to work, but it's, I got to stop for that moment and realize, wait, wait, wait, her emergency is not my emergency. And I still had to take care of my customers that were coming in a few hours. So I needed to make sure I took my shower, I got dressed, I got everything I needed so I could then help her. And still be able to take care of my customers. So her urgency was not my urgency. And I find myself, at least I don't know how you guys are on this, but I will get sucked into somebody else's urgency. And lo and behold, I went and took my shower, I got dressed, I called her back. Guess what? Yeah, she found her keys. However, we still met at the car dealership that morning to order her a new key so that I would have a backup. So next time I would have a better solution for her. So when somebody else's urgency gets in your way, and like I said, I believe everyone here has an amazing heart and you all wanna help always, cuz I know I do and that's why y'all here, but We have to remember when it's somebody else's urgent, it may not be important for us to do. So if you can ask yourself, must I stop doing what I was doing and fix this now? And if it is urgent and not important to you, then the answer is no, you do not have to continue on and do that. Now, life, it's not all binary, left and right, up and down. Well, it kind of is because that's the whole point of this, is to make it a little bit simpler. If we look at important and not urgent, so important, not urgent, so planning for family vacation, renewing your registration or permits. I figured because I've got such a large group of, uh, permit-wielding folks here, um, there are many things that are important in our lives, but they are not urgent. However, planning, planning is the thing that helps them stay important and not urgent. Uh, yeah. So, um, yours truly, I may from time to time know that there's important things that I should be doing and they're not urgent now, but if I don't plan for them and actually get them done, then, uh, they become urgent and important. Like, um, I don't know, one of my students, she showed up, she showed me her permit and it expired in like 2019. And I'm like, um, hun, do you know? And what it was is she just had the— she hadn't gotten rid of it and she had her new one. But it's just like knowing what is coming up with my students. For example, here's what I tell them. Here in Connecticut, you got 5 years with your permit. When you get your permit in, if all I do is put a reminder in my email that says 90 days before my expiration date is, send in my new application. That is something that's important that I can plan for, and then it doesn't become urgent. Because goodness knows, I am sure that I'm not the only one, but I'm going to pretend I am the only one because, you know, of course you all have all of your stuff together always. All right, Mr. DJ, it is 15 minutes in. And I got a couple more slides, but I think it'd be appropriate if you could actually welcome everybody in and/or tell me anything, um, that we should be chatting on. What do you think? Oh, do I have to add you to the screen? I'm like, I think you can.
Oh, there he is. Here I am. Um, yeah, Gun Websites was in here, uh, first and early. Uh, G23 out there as well. Sorry if N93 joined us tonight. So 2 Live Moo. Guns and Barbecue is out there with the squirrels and whatever else, right? Abigail Sorge Finnegan is in the room, so is Taryn Gomez. Welcome in. Hillbilly Up is out there. On the Facebook side, we've got Chris Broncato, the Atomic Punk. And that's your roll call for now.
All right, very cool. All right, so I didn't look to see if there were any highlighted things, but I'm gonna go with Abigail's 'cause it's down at the bottom. Permit was issued January 1996 when she was born. Expires when I die. Yeah, there is that. Moo. Yes. So this matrix, for those of you who want to know, is right now is currently as the Eisenhower matrix. However, Seven Habits. So Stephen Covey made it more available to more people because he got it published more. And with the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. So yes, it's not mine. I didn't make this up, but I don't believe anything is unique. I believe Shakespeare said that there is nothing new under the sun. I don't know, DJ, you would know that better than me. You're the thespian in the room currently, as far as I know. So what else? Yes, NGT3. This is totally my favorite thing. Your, your lack of preparation doesn't equate to my emergency. And yeah, having been in IT for a long time, that happens all the time. So, um, all right, let's see. All right. Oh my gosh. Sorry. Uh, I got another train of attack scroll. I'm fed at math. That, that would be— yeah, that's like coke. Yeah, different. All right. So, all right, I'm gonna get back. Life moves pretty fast. And yes, and this is true for those of you old enough to know Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Um, life moves pretty fast is like an iconic quote from that movie. And but it's true. And for those of you who have not noticed, it's like the older you get, the faster my life moves. And here's the simple math behind that. When you are 1 year old, 1 year is 100% of your life. When you are 10 years old— I have 2 hands— ready? When you are 10 years old, that 1 year now is only 1/10 of your life. And so exponentially, as we go to 20, 30, 40, 50— so now I'm at 55, so it's like, it's 1/55th of my life versus 1/100th of my life. So to me, that is the mathematical reason why it seems as though life goes faster as we get older, because it's math. All right, then there is the not important and not urgent, you know, doom scrolling, binge watching any show, that sort of thing, busy work in general. What do we do with that? Well, personal choice. Make sure you are making the choice versus being on autopilot. All right. Uh-oh, spaghetti-zos. Sorry, my monitor goes off from time to time. You couldn't see that it went away, but here's what it looks like as the quadrants, right? Urgent, not urgent, important, and not important. So across the top we have urgent and not urgent. And along the side, important, not important. So urgent, important, crying baby, maybe, maybe not, depends on your parenting style. Uh, not urgent but important, exercise or shooting or that sort of thing, practice. Excuse me. Urgent and not important, we've got our distraction box, that phone call of someone who did not plan appropriately. And then not urgent and not important, busy work, right? So there is that. Then, sorry, I, I'm back to looking at the, the comments. So that's how that goes. So binge watching tank videos while it's Lucy Arms pre-port, right? And this is where when we're looking at what they say you should do, right? What to do with the— once you have this matrix, if it's urgent and important, do it now. If it's important but not urgent, plan for it. If it's urgent and not important, assign to someone else, or like I said when we did the slide, schedule it when it works for you. And then not urgent and not important, delete it, or at least make a conscious decision to do them, because I am actually all about, uh, doing some of the not urgent, not important stuff, because to me that's our time off. Now, to be fair, do I want to say that like meditation is something that's important and non-urgent? Yes. So when it's not urgent, right, if we go back to that matrix Dun dun dun. All right, y'all can, y'all can, uh, go in on here, right? So it's just like not urgent but important. So exercise, practice, um, learning. Like this, this weekend I'm at a, um, a class all weekend and I am learning about essential oils and it's not urgent but it was very important to me because I had to say no to training. And when I say no to training, it's like I'm going to training, but none of my students are getting trained this weekend because it's important to me to have a better apothecary, to understand how to make myself and my family more healthy. Um, so I'm super excited about spending all this time with oils this weekend. So that was something that's super important. And it's urgent, no, but it was something I had to plan for. So like taking a class, going to training, that sort of thing is definitely not urgent, but it is totally important. And I'm working more with my students on that. So when it says not urgent, not important, see, I have to look at the thing because I can't, I don't know, not urgent, not important. I'm like, like, uh, oh my goodness. Abigail said like sometimes just sitting on the couch with somebody. And, uh, you know, not doing anything, that is not urgent, not important, but I guess it's still under the not urgent and important thing because spending time with your significant other or friends or family, it is kind of going to be important. So I guess there's all of those things. Um, all right, sorry, I'm looking finally. I'm like, oh yeah, DJ did put stuff out there. So, uh, snow leopard videos are urgent when it comes to keeping my mood in check. Yeah. So, um, and that's just it, is we all have our different definitions of what is important and what is urgent, right? Um, like I said, I feel as though the idea is when everything is coming at you super fast just kind of go back and just ask yourself, just ask these 4 questions, right? If I can click on the thing that will do the thing. Apparently I cannot click on the thing that will do the thing. No, that's weird. What am I doing wrong? I'm gonna throw DJ up near— I'm not trying to do that to you, DJ. I just don't know why it's not working.
Ta-da!
Oh, there it is. All right, so what to do when anything is happening in your life. Ask real quick, is it urgent and important? Then I must do it now. If it's important but not urgent, I must plan for it. If it's urgent and not important, assign it to somebody else. And not urgent and not important, delete it, or at least make a conscious decision to do it. So, um, yeah. And here's the thing, I found a ton of peace in this this week. And, uh, What do you think, DJ? Something that might be helpful for life in general? Now that I've thrown you up on the screen without warning, hahaha.
I think that I want to double back to the origin of that nothing new under the sun thing, and Darren Gomez out there nailed it, uh, saying that it's actually from Ecclesiastes. So Ecclesiastes 1:9. Yeah, okay. So what it says is, uh, what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again. There is nothing new under the sun. I had no idea that that was its origin, so pleased to know that tonight.
Yeah. Um, yeah, so spending time with loved ones, urgent and important. Well, hopefully it's not urgent, right? Like spending time with my son in the ER while his thumb is bleeding, that's urgent. Um, and, and in my crazy life, I actually have to plan spending time with my family between all of the things that I'm doing because— and I say the same thing to my students, I just like, if you want to learn a skill, whatever it is, we could be knitting, we could making fan art, um, we can be learning how to write or act or play guitar or any of those things. If we don't plan time to do those things, most of us will not do it. I have so many people who I've been doing this for over a decade and a half now. They're like, oh yeah, I wanna come see you. I wanna come see you. I'm like, all right, you gotta plan it. You have to plan it. Pick a time. And like, oh yeah, yeah, I'll get to it. I'll get to it. And 5 years goes by and 6 years goes by. And I'm sure we all have those friends. Oh, we gotta get together. Yeah, let's do that. And then I'm like, okay, here's the calendar. Let's go. Oh, well, uh, no, I can't do that right now, and then it doesn't happen. So, um, yeah, it is important, and it's— I like for it not to be urgent because, like, car crashes to me are urgent, um, all of that sort of stuff. So, all right, Mr. DJ, anything else? Anything else?
No, I think I'm straight.
Okay. All righty, well then, Um, and thank you, Taryn. Um, I did not know either. And see, uh, yeah, no, Taryn, Taryn is awesome. She's a busy mom. All right, what, what's Demek? What is that? She gets to have Demek surgery on Monday. The mech. Any ideas, DJ? Zero. Okay. I'm sure Gigi will then tell me. Oh, surgery on her stomach. Sorry, I missed that, didn't I? It's a little bit— yeah, right. So finite resource, absolutely. We, we, uh, another one of the Bible things, no day is promised, um, and, and, and all of those things. All right, so with that, Mr. DJ, would you like to do your thing where you say goodbye to everybody?
Yeah, I want to thank you for hosting another Saturday evening conversation. Um, everybody, thanks for being here tonight. Next week, bring a friend. Um, at the end of this video, if you do us a favor and refresh your screen and leave a comment, that really helps the algorithm understand that people feel this is important and it's worth sharing. Uh, it was worth sharing stuff tonight with Gun Websites, G23, Sorry Fan 93, 2 Live Moo, Guns and Barbecue, Abigail Sorcha Finnegan, Taren Gomez, Hillbilly Up. And on the Facebook side, Chris the Atomic Punk Broncato was here. Until we see everybody else again, be safe, have fun, take care of yourself and your crew, and rock! We're out.
