Suicide prevention Sat, get a pen and paper out....

All right, so it says it's live. Good to know. Am I doing anything yet? No, no, I am not. Why? Because I'm still going on Facebook to do that. So now I gotta type in stuff because for whatever reason, um, whatever this is called, YouTube takes way longer to set up than this one, but that's where I'm starting there. So give me a sec, I'm almost done, really I am. One of these days I will figure out how to do this, um, seamlessly. Hahaha. It's always questionable at best though. Me, seamless. And oops, that's not gonna work. So much fun. All right, for real, it's not that way. Maybe it's this way. It is. Oh wait, that doesn't work. Oh no. All right, hold on. Oh, what a pain. And I thought I would make this easier. But no. All right. Oh, now I'm just crooked. Hold on. Oh, all right. So I thought I was being all cool and having a tripod hold the phone instead of me, but what's happening instead is that I'm all crooked and stuff. All right, so let's see. I have my head in both of these. So anyway, Hey, I'm just gonna have to deal with the fact that my whole thing is crooked, but you'll all live because you can tilt your head just a little bit. Uh, one of the things we were talking about is how I actually tend to tilt my head pretty much all the time, often. My chiropractor says it's because, you know, it's always tight on one side. So, all right, hold on. This is just— oh, I fixed it at least a little bit. All right, it is what it is. All right, 9:01. At least I'm here sort of kind of on time. First time for everything. Well, do I really call it on time when I don't actually necessarily always do it at 9 o'clock? I'm gonna call it on time for now. All right, so those of you just checking in, hi, my name is Brooke Cheney. I am the owner and instructor at A Great Start Shooting School. I'm a gun owner and a competitive shooter and an instructor and a training instructor and all sorts of stuff. So why do I do Suicide Prevention Saturday, people ask. I'm like, oh well, let's see, because as a gun owner I have to talk about it because the headlines say, "Stop gun violence!" And yet somehow— hi Tom— they don't seem to tell you that 66% of gun violence are suicides. So if we're really looking to stop gun violence, we're gonna actually pay attention to suicide prevention. But somehow that gets missed in the media because the media is the media. Yes, yes. So suicide prevention is just to raise awareness for the fact that gun violence is 66% suicides. Now that being said, Why not actually address the problem of suicide prevention? There's an idea. Because there are anti-gun people and there are pro-gun people, and one side yells about Second Amendment, other side yells about gun violence and getting rid of guns, and neither one of those things will actually stop the violence that we have. So you take both the sets of these people and you put them together, actually with a common goal of stopping violence, Imagine what we could do. So every Saturday for now going on the last 3 years, 99% of the time I am here raising awareness for suicide prevention and the fact that you really should pay attention to the actual facts versus just headlines. So what do we do for suicide prevention? 1, raise awareness. Even saying the word suicide often will get people freaked out. I've been to enough funerals of people who have committed suicide that nobody wants to talk about it. They just say there was an accident. They don't say, oh, he killed himself. Now, there's semantics everywhere. I don't remember what the current rules and regulations are, but I totally just went to a comedy show last weekend that really explains the whole thing of it's okay if I screw up, simply for the fact it's impossible for all of us know the right things to say, right? So let's give ourselves some grace for not knowing everything, because I have to do that because I know there's another thing that people want to say besides commit suicide. Um, they want to say died by suicide or something. Oh, and I forgot to turn off the, uh, whatever you call it, my, my phone, so it's making noise. Who knew? So get your pen out and write. Did you do that yet? I mean, I said get a pen and paper, right? That's what the title says. Why would I say get a pen and paper out? Let me tell you, because it makes a difference. If you are stressing, if you're having a hard time, if you are frustrated, if you are excited, if life is wonderful you should write it down. Why is that? Because when we physically write stuff down, it makes it so that it's more in our brains. It also gets it out of our brains. Those of us who have dealt with anxiety, depression, and other challenges, we have to remember that no one else can hear what's going on in here. When we physically write it down— hey, Paul, um, when we physically write stuff down, it helps sort of organize things and get it so it's not just spinning around in our brains. The one person we talk to the very most out of everybody else in the world is ourselves, because I don't know about you, but I have a hard time quieting my inner voice. And by writing stuff down, sometimes you can get the inner voice to talk to you on a piece of paper When you read it back to yourself, you're then paying attention to what you just wrote, and that can help and be therapeutic at best. One of the things, if you've been to a meditation retreat or self-empowerment or any sort of self-development stuff, a lot of times one of the things that you will do is write down a problem or a concern that you have and then throw it into a fire. And let it burn up, right? It is symbolic. However, as long as you believe it's going to work, it will help. Hey, Lino, how are you? Yes, before the fall is over, we definitely need to get together. Uh, we gotta get Zaldi to pick a num— pick a, pick a name, pick a day. There we go, that's what I'm looking for. All right, so grabbing a pen and paper. Writing stuff down gets it out of your head, helps your brain kind of figure stuff out better around it. So that's one thing you can do to help you. I'm trying to give you guys resources every time I come on of something that can help you. As we've talked about probably every time, is just simply that deep breath. You've seen me do it a couple times because even though I do this every Saturday, I still feel awkward doing it. Sometimes Saturdays are better than others. The tech difficulty, the fact that I'm just ahead on Facebook is like, uh, but nothing is perfect. It's imperfect progress. Writing stuff down. What else is there? Breathing, definitely. Serving others. That's the other reason I get on here is because people have told me that this little bit of conversation, me to you, has helped them. So because of that, I continue to try to serve. Is it selfless? No, because when I started this, it was really more about me having a way to get out there. Hey, Mike. Um, and so I don't know, serving others is definitely a way to feel better as long as you're taking care of yourself. And I don't know if you've noticed, but I keep drinking my tea, and making a cup of tea for me is a way of taking care of myself. And Mike and I actually were just having this conversation today that when you serve others and take care of others, you have to remember that you need to take care of yourself too, because sometimes we will distract ourselves by taking care of others versus taking care of ourselves. So T for two, not really for two, but T for me is taking care of me. So do whatever it is that you need to do— massage, pedicure, manicure, I have no idea, reading a book— giving yourself that 5 or 10 minutes to calm down and center yourself. My mom's had a really hard week this week. She lost her pocketbook. We thought it was stolen. Uh, it actually got turned back in to the condo complex office where she works. Where she lives, so it didn't get stolen. But that day of not knowing before we found out that it got turned back in, that was a stressful day. So life ebbs and flows. There's good stuff, there's bad stuff. We get to choose the stuff we pay attention to and the stuff we hold on to. Anxiety is generally fear of what could happen. Depression often is fear of what already has happened. And one of the things I talk about with my students is the Zen of now, and realizing that this moment right here, this is really it. This is the only moment that actually exists that we can experience, right? We can imagine our future, we can imagine, you know, we color our past by the things that we choose to pay attention to. And we have to remember that we have the power to decide And it's not that it's super easy, like, oh look, I'm just going to be happy now. That is not how life happens. Oh, Chrissy, did you get my note? Are you coming to the party? I need to know. I'm trying to get that final head count for Sean's 50th. So I don't know, it's one of those Saturdays where I definitely feel like I'm rambling. I tried to get ready and had a fight with my daughter instead because, you know, that's what happens when you're the parent of a teen. Things do not always go according to plan. So write stuff down, get it out of your head, read it. If you don't like it, toss it, throw it in a fire, watch it burn. It may feel symbolic, but it also can make a huge difference, quite honestly. Um, write good stuff of that you do want. Uh, my husband and I, when we bought our first house, we had a list on the refrigerator and it was all the things like our 10-year plan of the things we wanted for the house, a hot tub, um, Corvette or stuff like that, uh, new furnace, so on and so forth. And by writing stuff down and having it where we could see it, a lot of that stuff happened within 2 or 3 years. Never got the Corvette, but we did get a new furnace and things like that. So writing stuff down really does give you power. Simple thing of breathing, shoulders back, opening up your chest— we've talked about it 5 million times before, but it's such a simple thing. And if you can remind yourself to do it while while you're doing— hey Mike, I hope you are healing well and I hope you're watching this from home and not in the hospital. That would be awesome. My friend Mike Johnson, he was in a car accident. Oh gosh, I don't even know how long ago now. 2 weeks ago, maybe 3 weeks ago. I am horrible, uh, horrible at keeping track of time. So shoulders back, take that deep breath in, and take care of yourself. Whatever that means for you. For me tonight, it's my apple cinnamon tea because it's yummy and it makes me happy. So anything else? If you're here in Connecticut, 211. If you're having crisis, you need to talk to someone, dial 211 and they will have something for you. And what else is there? I don't know. I think that's kind of it. Like I said, not feeling like I'm on my game today, but And I feel like I'm rambling a lot, so I will try to be more organized. But that's another lie. Hey Peter! Oh, I need to know from you too. Are you coming to the party? So for those of you who are watching who have no idea I'm talking about, my husband's got a 50th birthday. Anywho, um, lies that we tell ourselves, like me being more organized next week. I had plenty of time to be organized today. I could have had an outline. I could have pre-done this, all sorts of stuff. Doesn't happen because I choose to do something else instead. We're kind of joking about the ADHD thing these days where it's like, oh, what? Oh, squirrel. Wait, no, sparkly squirrel. Or wait, no, I just don't want to do anything. So that being said, did I do stuff today? Yes. Did I work? Yes. Did I teach? Yes. Did I play with my kid and my, my dogs? Yes. All of those things. So write things down, breathe, take care of yourself, give yourself credit for the stuff that you get done. Do not beat yourself up for the stuff that you didn't. Just realize you made a choice because we all have the same 24 hours in a day and we're going to do the things that are important to us. So with that, I'm really going to leave now because it just feels like it's been a long, rambly sort of thing. So let me know your favorite parts, uh, down in the comments and maybe I'll just make a highlight reel of the parts that were actually good. And I will talk to you all next Saturday. There you go. As far as I know, I'm not going anywhere. Have a good night. And of course, I've got to hit like 3 buttons to actually end. There's that.