In this informal livestream, Brooke Cheney – owner and instructor of Great Start Shooting School – frames suicide prevention as the most effective way to reduce gun‑related deaths, noting that roughly six of every ten gun fatalities are suicides. She opens with a personal anecdote about watching a yoga‑breathing video, then shares a simple 3‑3‑3 breathing exercise for anxiety relief. Throughout the talk she stresses the importance of “feeding your brain” with positive, educational content rather than sensationalist media, citing personal development teachers like Tony Robbins and Dean Graziosi as sources of continual improvement. Cheney recounts attending a Freedom Rally, wearing an “Educate Not Legislate” shirt, and reflects on the value of learning from difficult experiences. She also mentions her own political engagement – running for local office and encouraging viewers to get involved in their communities. Interwoven are references to her firearms‑safety instruction work, where she describes transforming fearful beginners into confident shooters. The livestream concludes with a call to action: practice breathing, consume uplifting information, share knowledge, and take local civic action to help prevent suicide.
Chapters
All right, ta-da! It's 9:04, so I'm like 4 minutes late. I was watching a video on yogis and breathing techniques and how to be healthy, so that is my today's Suicide Prevention Saturday. Is feed your brain good stuff, because the more good stuff we have, the better we feel. The better we feel, the more power we have. The more power we have, the more we can do. It just gets better and better. So feed your brain good stuff. Goodness knows there's plenty of crap out there that we could be feeding ourselves. So, okay. Hi everyone, my name is Brooke Cheney. If this is your first time, I am the owner instructor here at Great Start Shooting School. All this stuff behind me— oh, I always forget. Hold on, I forget to silence my phone and it's just frustrating. All right, come on, go back. Uh, there it is. Okay. Um, yeah, the phone thing. You would think before I go live I would remember to set my phone up to be proper. So, um, Great Start Shooting School. I am an instructor. And why would a gun owner come on and talk about suicide prevention? Make sure we talk about suicide prevention. I am not a counselor. I am not— well, I am trained actually in a couple things. I've been to trainings. You too can be trained easily and usually for free in some suicide prevention programs. You gotta find one that fits you, and I will have to look up some of those links because I don't have my little certificates. So back to Brooke Cheney, suicide prevention. Why am I doing this? Oh yeah, that's right, because when the media says that there were 10 gun deaths and we have to stop violence, which of course I'm so for stopping violence, But the truth of the matter is 6 of those deaths, a good portion of that, more than half, are suicides. So if we want to be honest and we actually want to have an impact on saving lives of people who lose them from guns, suicide prevention is the way to go. So here I am every Saturday night, 10 or 15 minutes here or there, different schedules, different, um, different topics every time. Next week, next week may be later than normal because it is my husband's 50th birthday. Hey Brendan, thanks for joining us. Um, us, yes, me and everybody else. So, um, so it might be later. And this is the challenge, I try to be here at 9 o'clock and most of the time All right, so feed yourself good stuff. I was late because I was watching a video on meditation and breathing, and they were talking about a breathing technique. There's tons of breathing techniques. You can Google it, of course. You can go to YouTube and look for breathing techniques for relaxation, reduction of anxiety, um, all sorts of things like that. So breathing techniques are really, really useful. One of the simplest ones is if you can count in and go like 1, 2, 3 as you get in, and then you hold it for 3, and then you let it out for 3, right? It's that simple. That's an example of one of so many. Um, that is like the easiest one that I can think of. Hi, Bill. Nice to see you tonight. Um, any questions, obviously let me know. So feeding yourself good information, not the crap that is on the news and not the bad news, but stuff that will actually build up your immune system, stuff that will actually make you feel better. Today I, I, um, at a Freedom Rally, and so I wore my Educate Not Legislate t-shirt, and education is how our minds grow. And ideally, we are educating ourselves on both sides of whatever fence we're standing on, uh, and the more education you have, the more your brain grows, the more options you have. One of the challenges that I've been talking about with people a lot lately is that people get in their little alleys and they just do one thing and they don't do anything else, and they don't know what's on the outside of their blinders. We were, we were at a fair last weekend. We're talking about the things that they put on horses so they can't see around them. Unfortunately, that's what a lot of our media really is, is that everyone's got blinders on. They're only allowed to see that little bit that the media is going to show you. So I went to a freedom rally today, and I was inspired by, uh, some of the speakers, and it helps if you can understand that there is— that life is happening for you and not to you. Even things that are really horrible and things that suck are things that at some point you're going to learn from. Ideally, you will learn from them, because if you do not learn from them, very often we repeat the same mistakes we have not learned from, and it makes it for a hard life. And once you've learned your lesson and learned how to do something better or more gracefully or something along those lines, it's another stepping stone to get to the next better piece of you. We are always improving. There's a Tony Robbins saying, KNAI, which is constant and never-ending improvement. I absolutely suggest Tony Robbins. I love going to his live events. I used to volunteer on his staff, and it is fun. And that's why I think I like going to the, the thing today. I'm looking at my calendar. What else do we have? So Tony Robbins events, there's plenty of videos on YouTube. I will warn you though, go to Tony Robbins' actual channel because when I type in Tony Robbins, I end up getting a bunch of little compilations versus an actual event sort of stuff. Uh, who else? Uh, Dean Graziosi, also really fun to listen to. Uh, Get Up get outside, run around, do and be the best person that you can be. And if you're focusing on making you better, guess what happens when you can make yourself better? Other people are inspired by you. And when other people are inspired by you, sometimes they'll tell you. And it's kind of like, oh really? I'm so glad I made a difference in your life. Because some people tell me that from time to time, and it really does. So that's what I got for you guys tonight. Feed your brain more better information. Learn something new. Maybe it's a breathing technique, maybe it's Tony Robbins thing, maybe it's a Dean thing, maybe it's something I didn't think about. Hey Charlie. And have it be something that uplifts you and make you feel better. I teach all day. I teach people new skills all day, how to handle a firearm safely,. And I love watching people go from clueless and scared and possibly afraid to confident and happy and having a permagrin. And so learning of any kind, I think, makes us happy. And sometimes we do get to learn what we're not good at, because not everybody's good at everything. But if we don't try, we don't know. And what else is there? Learning fun stuff, figure it all out, uh, do what you can wherever you are. I think one of the challenges that a lot of us are having right now, having just been at the Freedom Rally today, is that we don't feel like we have any impact on anything that we do. And I'm here to tell you, you absolutely can make impact wherever you are. And it doesn't have to be the way everybody else is. For me, I've become politically active and I pay attention to who's running where, that sort of stuff. I'm actually on the ballot this year in my town running for an office. And stepping up and serving others while taking care of yourself, also totally awesome. All right, that's all I got for you guys tonight. Thanks for checking in, and if there's any topics you guys ever want to discuss, please, please, please let me know, because I know there's got to be stuff that's more interesting than not. And if I have something specific from y'all, it makes it a lot easier. So that's what I've got for you. Suicide Prevention Saturday, because most gun deaths are actually suicide. Feed your brain something useful. Something that helps you and something you can learn and maybe share it with someone because sharing is caring. And, uh, do something locally. Um, oh, thank you so much, Brendan. Um, yes, I, I don't— I have no idea. It's one of those things. It's campaign season. We put our signs out, we get people out to vote, and we do our best to take care of the people that we are serving. So All right, hon. And I think that's it. And, and, and— all right, I love y'all. Uh, thanks for checking in, and I will see you next week, maybe a little bit later, remember.
