Suicide Prevention Saturday (on a Sunday because life doesn't always go according to plan)
In this livestream, the host frames the session as a "Suicide Prevention Saturday" that fell on a Sunday, emphasizing that discussing mental health is essential for suicide prevention, especially given the link between gun deaths and suicide. The host repeatedly promotes the national crisis lines 988 and 211, urging viewers to use them both for personal help and to assist others in crisis. Personal anecdotes illustrate how unexpected schedule changes—such as a missed fundraiser, a volleyball game, and a Christmas‑day kitchen injury—create stress and highlight the need for external support and pattern‑interrupt strategies. The speaker introduces the concept of "rigid flexibility," drawing on Tony Robbins, Bruce Lee, and a skeleton‑muscle analogy to explain how a structured plan combined with adaptability helps navigate life's disruptions. Throughout, the host thanks the community, references fellow creators, and encourages viewer interaction as a source of motivation, while also sharing holiday reflections and coping tips (e.g., using flour for a bleeding thumb). The talk concludes with a call to share resources, a reminder that everyone is struggling, and an invitation to return for future sessions.
Chapters
Hey everyone, it is Suicide Prevention Saturday on a Sunday. Because life does not always go according to plan. So, um, here we are. And why are we here? Hey, Saria Fan! Um, this is— oh my goodness. Yeah, see, this is why I usually have DJ, so I just don't look. And then, uh, I will say hi to all you later. So hold on. All right, so I, I don't have a DJ tonight, so I am going to have to push buttons and stuff. And all of that sort of thing. All right, so why are we here? Because 2 out of every 3 gun deaths we hear about, the media tells us about, the CDC talks about, are suicides. And if we really and truly want to save lives, we need to talk about mental health, because when we talk about mental health, we also manage to help prevent violence as well. So that is why we're here. Uh, we raise awareness for mental health and getting people to realize they are not alone. That's what that says down there. And there's resources, and 211 and 988 are the easiest ways to get some help immediately if you need them. And here's the other thing I think I forget to tell you guys often enough, is that if you know someone who's in crisis and you don't know how to help them, you can call the 988 number and they can help you help someone else. So, um, don't look at it as it's only a resource if you need help. It is a resource if anyone needs help. Since that is a phone call I get, it's like, oh, I know my friend is struggling, I don't know what to do. And I can give you ideas, but A, I'm not a counselor and I don't give out that sort of advice really. However, these guys are actually qualified. So that is that. All right. So I said hi to Saria and Miss Chasing Ghost. You know, it's going to take me a little while to remember this is Tara Smith's Kitchen, but Chasing Ghost is your new channel with lots of fun motorcycle rides. For those of you who want to live vicariously through Tara, go to Chasing Ghost and check out her YouTube channel. So, all right, so it's Sunday, not Saturday. So what does that mean? Hmm. Well, it means that I forgot to pay attention to the week, honestly, and I forgot that I had a fundraiser last night for my daughter's volleyball game. And it was Saturday afternoon, like 3 or 4 o'clock, where I'm like, hmm, I'm leaving. I've been teaching all day. I'm leaving in about 2 hours to go to a volleyball game bingo night, and I don't know what time I'm going to be home. So I'm like, DJ, what do we do? What do we do? And between DJ and my husband, we're kind of like, okay, well, you can cancel or you can reschedule. And the idea is, um, this is not my first Suicide Prevention Saturday on a Sunday because life does not go according to plan. It's just the first one in a while. So I hadn't really thought about the reschedule thing. And so at 4 o'clock, before I rescheduled this, I was stressing. And sometimes, often, when we are stressed, we are not that resourceful. And that is why we need to reach out to others. And when I called DJ, it was because he knows the YouTube etiquette that I do not necessarily know. And I'm like, do I just cancel? What do I do if I cancel? Is He's like, well, you just put a tab up on your communications, all of that. And he told me what to do. And then I talked to my husband and his wise words were, do what makes you happy, what makes you content. So canceling in my brain was just not an option. Rescheduling, however, that seemed like something I could do. And why am I telling you this long story about what happened to me? Is because we all have the same challenges. We get in a place of stress and we're not quite sure what to do. And so often in our lives, we have to think that we are the ones who have to figure it out and take care of it. But this is where making that phone call and calling someone and be like, what do you think? Even if you're not going to agree, listening to somebody else's idea about where you're at and maybe something you can do even if you don't do what they suggest, it might help you find that other way. And we do that pattern interrupt thing, right, where we're no longer thinking just about ourselves because we're calling someone else, we're talking to someone else. And that is what we are trying to do, is breaking a pattern when we're in a place of stress. So, ah, Sue's our friend Saturday because on a Sunday, because life doesn't coordinate a plan How often do y'all have something not go according to plan? One of my favorite things is talking about, uh, if you want to make God laugh, just make plans. Because most of us have plans, and very rarely does any of it actually go the way you expect. So life does not go according to plan always, but generally there is a Plan B. And if the Plan B doesn't work, there's usually a Plan C. And this is where having resources or understanding what is happening around you— sorry, something else just came. I really wanted to show you guys my little friend ornament that I'm going to throw up in my tree because Michael Ballinger, who is probably watching either on Facebook or he's going to watch the rerun, gave me my friend ornament for my friend tree, which means I now— this is our big tree. This is our actual Merry Christmas tree in the household. We just finished decorating today. Yay! Um, sorry, it's just today. Yay! Um, I like rhyming. So I have a little ornament and it's adorable. It's a little wooden whistle that he made and it says 'A Great Start' on the top of it, and on either side of the whistle it has someone shooting. It is very cool. So I meant to have it with me tonight, but life does not go according to plan. Rolling with the punches. I don't know how many of you guys know Bruce Lee, but if you read any of his work, one of the things he talks about is take what serves you, leave the rest behind. Be fluid in what you are doing. One of the strongest things in the world is water, in that it can move mountains, literally. It can dig giant big holes because it just keeps going and going, and what it goes around after a while it just destroys. It's not that forceful most of the time, it's just a little trickle. And if you read some of Bruce Lee's writings, what he talks about is to be flexible. Like, actually I said water, but it's also like a wand in the wind. A wind in the wind? What are those things? Um, the things that blow around in the wind? Well, one of you guys have to All right, sorry. See, I have to go back here because I don't have a DJ tonight. All right, so, um, yes, our Christmas tree is hysterical. And actually, I don't know if there's a way to show you even more of it, but it literally goes to the ceiling. And when you're standing across over there on the other side of the room, it really kind of looks like it goes into the ceiling. So it's actually a lot of fun. Ours is real, so So it would be bad to have ours up year round simply for the fact that it would turn brown and make a mess on the floor. Plus, it is crazy hard to keep the dog out from underneath there, so that's also a little bit of a change— challenges. Um, yeah. Oh, back to having plans, then God laughs. So Chasing Ghosts had plans for holidays and boss called. I will be on the road now, have two loads to run to Washington, hopefully back by New Year's. Yeah. So I mean, I suppose when you are doing contract work, because in my brain that's what I think of as trucking is contract work, because when there's a job you go do it, you have to have a lot of flexibility built into your life and your loved ones need to have that flexibility along with you. So, so Tara, I hope you do get back for New Year's. That would be lovely. I'm sure your wife would appreciate if you're back for New Year's. But one of the things Tony Robbins talks about is that you want to have rigid flexibility, right? You do want to have a plan. You don't want to just not have a plan because you're not doing anything or because you know it's going to change. It's like rigid flexibility is you want to have that plan, you want to have a way to go and what you're going to do next. However, when stuff doesn't go according to plan, you want to be nimble enough to make that change as you need it. Because basically what it says is the people who have too many rules, i.e., you must get up, you must have your coffee, you must walk out the door, you must go to work, you come home at 5 o'clock is your dinner, at 7 o'clock is your, I don't know, bedtime tea, and 9 o'clock it lights up, and it must happen like that every single day. And if that doesn't happen, you get upset and you get mad. Well, that leads to a very unhappy life because even though you get most of what you want most of the time, if you can't handle a change or things not ever going according to plan, or if something gets thrown in the, um, a stick in the wheel as it were, you need to be able to be okay with it not working. Now there's the other extreme of that, which is, yeah, I get up at some point, maybe I'll get dressed today, maybe I won't get dressed, maybe I'm going to eat today, maybe I won't eat, and you don't have a plan at all. Well, that might be a little too flexible because maybe you get something done, maybe you don't. So the rigid flexibility is— she's like, think about your skeleton, right? You have a bone structure, that's the rigidness in your body. And then you have your flexibility, which is everything that makes us be able to move, right? So our muscles and our ligaments allow things to move. So we're rigid if all we had was skeleton, but because of our muscles, we have the flexibility. So together it works really well. One thing by itself would not work. If we did not have our skeletons, we would be slugs. I'm not sure that would work well. And it'd be really big slugs, so that'd be kind of gross. But, um, we will, uh, definitely— sorry, and Viejo is here now. Sorry. Uh, so hi, Viejo. Um, oh my goodness, sorry. And then I'm reading, so, so, Saria's fans, uh, her artificial tree stays up all year long and it's the last real tree the family had when she was a kid. And it is awesome. I mean, sorry, I just think that is awesome. I don't know how old you are or anything, but the whole idea that you have your family's tree and it stays up all the time— I hope it's little. I'm just— because ours is huge, so I can't imagine having it up all year round. But it is fun. Um, oh, and Viejo, I do want to say, just like everyone said last night on Hillbilly's channel, I'm glad your face is all better too. Uh, for those of you who don't know Viejo, he also has his own channel and you can go check him out over there. I'm sorry, it would be helpful if I— because if you don't know, and I can almost point in the right direction. So he has his own channel, uh, he's recovering from a fall. And sounds like a lot of us are getting hurt. It's not— apparently this is a bad time of year for us YouTubers. So, um, he had fallen, scraped up his face, and he wasn't showing his face on YouTube for a little bit, but Yesterday he was. So life doesn't go according to plan. There's always a workaround. That's the whole thing. The more flexible you are, the more you can deal with unexpectedness. Like for Sarah, Sarah, hmm, for Chasing Ghosts, Tara, what it is is that she has a flexible schedule, but it's not hers, right? It's when they have a job for her, that's when she's going. And she can make plans as if she knows what's going to happen,. But then you also get to have like this where she's going to be going away instead of being home for the holidays. So rigid flexibility, have a plan, because she had a plan. It was for the holidays. She knew what she was going to do. Then she got a job. So now my guess is whatever her plans were for the holidays are just postponed. It's not that they're not going to happen, or they're just not going to happen in the way that was expected. And so we really have to always remember the person we talk to the very most is ourselves. And so when stuff doesn't go according to plan, we have to make sure that what's going on in here is asking a good question. Like if I was Tara and I had planned with a fam and I got called out— I don't do a job that I need to get called out, but let's say I was. So actually, oh, I kind of— I do actually have a story about that, is that it was Christmas Day and my son was helping my husband do the dinner, and they were peeling potatoes. And when they were peeling potatoes, my son took about half a good chunk of his thumb off. So my son and I went to the ER for Christmas, and it was just like, okay, this is what we're doing now. Was it what we planned? No, that was not what we planned, but what could we do? We had to get the bleeding to stop. They were able to do that. We were not in the home, but since then I learned from my EMT friend, flour would have probably done the trick. So have a plan, be flexible with your plan, and understand that sometimes that detour is exactly what you needed. Because if you have a faith in something larger than you— I appreciate having that belief in God because it makes it so much easier for me. It's like, huh, well, that was my plan, but that was not God's plan. So by having that faith— this is why I think a lot of people who have faith are stronger or happier because it's like, okay, when stuff doesn't go according to plan, someone else has a plan for me. So— oh, whoops. All right, Saria fan, yes. Um, let me go, let me go. All right, let me go in order. Uh, busted knee, so you have a tiny tree to set up. Well, wait, did they send you one that was already set up? So it's like pop out of the box and you have a tree. So— oh, you still have a busted knee, just your face is better. Well, I'm glad your face is better. That's 1 out of 2, so you're 50% better. And, uh, sorry, I'm sorry, dude, but if it makes you feel any better, I say yes ma'am to men and I say yes sir to women. So I'm not necessarily good about the whole man-girl thing, and it is way harder on, um, internet because we don't get to see or hear each other. So 30 on the 21st. Oh, you're a Christmas baby. I'm sorry. Um, but we still get to celebrate and give you birthday presents that are actually wrapped in birthday wrapping versus getting stuff on Christmas. Uh, my— one of my daughter's friends actually just told me his birthday is the 23rd, so in his household they actually don't celebrate Christmas. They only celebrate his birthday. So happy almost birthday. Um, let's see, what is it? Have plan A but realize you end up on C or D. Well, it depends. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Um, yes, it might be A, it might be— so sometimes we do get A, we do get that first plan that we had. Sometimes we go to B, which is most common when we're already failing. But yes, C or D, it's always good to be able to zigzag, zig and zag again if you need to. And the more What is it that Tony Robbins— the more uncertainty that you can deal with comfortably, the happier you're going to be. Now, as humans, we need that certainty and that uncertainty. The certainty, oh, that would be the plan we have. The uncertainty, well, maybe it doesn't go according to plan. So these are the things that make us happy. All right, um, hello Lakeview Outdoors, I appreciate what you do. Okay, thank you, you're right. That feels— sounds weird, me explaining, reading that out loud. I can talk, I swear I can talk. I like— hey Brooke, I really appreciate what you do. There, I finally read it, what it actually said. My poor little brain was trying to answer what you were saying before, so, um It is something that I do because it's important to do. And I am getting better at saying thank you and actually hearing you guys say that you like what I'm doing. And it is definitely a challenge on a regular basis. Like even just this last minute of Saturday to Sunday, but hey, I got all you guys over here. So I appreciate you for showing up. Cause that's actually the other part that I always want to make you guys know is like, Without you all here, I would stop doing this. I would not sit here and just chat to myself for 15, 20 minutes as we go. Oh look, it's been a whole 18 minutes. All right, so, um, that is it. That's what I got now that I looked at how much time I have been going blah blah blah. All right, and I appreciate each one of you, uh, coming in, commenting, saying something so that I know that you are there, because it's supposed to tell me how many people are are here watching, but unless you're commenting, I don't really know what's really happening out there. And I need your encouragement because it's important. And so I wouldn't do what I do if it weren't for each and every one of you. So I want to get better like Hillbilly and all the other channels I've been watching lately to thank you for coming out tonight. I don't know what the weather's like out where you are, but it is rainy and cold and yucky here. But I'm looking forward to getting a nice warm bed shortly. So with that, next week we are on schedule to be back on Saturday night. As far as I know, I don't have any more parties. Oh, I do have a party, but I'm coming home early on next Saturday's party just so I can see you guys. So it's my excuse to not have to stay at parties late, is come home on a Saturday night so I can pop on and do this. And then on the 23rd, Mr. Hillbilly and I have an interview that is coming out with you guys on the 23rd because that— I am being at, um, family for Christmas, our Christmas, uh, dinner with the in-laws. So, all right, ladies and gentlemen, if I do not see you between now and then, I will see you next Saturday. So Have an awesome— uh, sorry, no, yeah, see, I'm like so close to saying goodbye. 55, clear and calm on the Central Coast of California. Yeah, we actually had tornado warnings and we're in New England and we don't normally get tornado warnings. Thunderstorms, yes, but the utility trucks are all out because high winds and all that fun stuff. Way different than the center part of California. All right, ladies and gentlemen, I'll do it one more time. I promise I'll go this time. If you need anything, if you need to help someone else, tell them about 988 or 211. And I will, uh, I'm sorry, I see you all just put another thing in. Struggling with life lately, but I appreciate every one of my 2A supporters. And it can just be supporters in general because Being around firearms is what got me to start realizing how important so much is as far as why America is the way America is in our freedoms. Uh, as far as struggling, everybody's struggling with everything right now. It's kind of crazy. So we're in the same boat. So it's great to reach out to each other so we can actually talk about what's going on. So Tony, I'm assuming that you have a way to get a hold of Viejo, and I'm sure he would talk to or if you need to, just text me or email me if you— if there's anything you think I can do for you. And with that, honest to goodness, I'm really gonna go now. All right, good night everybody.
