Rico Sharp Motivations: Don’t let life kill you! Part 1

Look at somebody next to you on your left or your right and tell them, you are special. You are special. You have greatness in your life. You have greatness in your life. You are talented. You are talented. You are powerful. You are powerful. You are creative. You are creative. There is nothing that you cannot accomplish. There is nothing that you cannot accomplish. All things are possible. All things are possible. In your life. In your life. And I can see you in your future doing big and great things. Doing big and great things. Now give yourself a round of applause. All right, now before you take your seat, I'm going to ask you to say the same thing to yourself, but I want you to put a little more emphasis on it, right? I want you to be a little bit more forceful with it because you're speaking over your life, you're speaking over your future. And I want you to just say to yourself, put your hand right here and say, I am special. I am special. I am gifted. I am gifted. I am talented. I am talented. I have greatness in my life. I have greatness in my life. Nothing is impossible. I can accomplish whatever I want to accomplish, and I will realize my dream and make myself a great life. Do you believe that? Give yourself a round of applause. Thank you very much. You may be seated. My name is Rico Sharp. I'm a motivational speaker. I'm a life coach. I'm a leadership trainer. I'm an interpersonal skill developer. I'm a mentor and a counselor. I've been basically for the last 32 years of my life empowering people to be able to overcome adversity, realize their dream, and come into their greatness. And there are some things that you want to accomplish in this life, right? Yes. There are some things that you want. There are some things that you want to be able to make sure that before your time expires that you are able to realize in your life. And I'm here today to push you, to help you to understand how to get there, how to make that happen. Now, just to share a little bit with you about myself, and then we'll get into what I've come to talk about today, which is on the subject of suicide prevention. My life story began at the age of 13, basically, for me. I was born to a very loving, caring, dear 14-year-old teenage mother who loved me with all her heart. But times were tough for her because she was raising 3 sons alone. And my father, who was a drug dealer living on the other side of town raising another family, really wasn't involved in my life. He wasn't there for my family. He was somewhere else raising a family that was not his. And so my mom, she struggled. She had challenges in her life being a teenager with 3 boys. And so what she ended up doing was sending me off to go live with a family member, not because she didn't love me, but because she couldn't afford me. And so I stayed with this person for 5 years, and then that person got really sick and had to hand me back off to my mom. And So my mom did the best she could to take care of me and my 2 brothers without any help from anyone else. And sometimes I got shuffled around throughout different family members' homes. Sometimes I got shuffled around to church members' homes. And then at one point, my mom came to me when I was around 13 years of age and she said, you know, I love you, but I can't deal with the situation anymore. I can't— you know, you, you guys are growing up, you're getting a hard head, you're you think you know it all, that kind of thing. I need you to go live with your dad. And at that point, I was petrified, terrified of my father. And I, I didn't really know the guy, didn't want to live with him. Every time he came around, all he did was just beat me and criticize me and, and just made me feel like I was unloved and unwanted, which is what I grew up feeling anyway because of being shuffled around everywhere. And so at the age of 13, in the 9th grade, There were some boys that were in my school, in my class, that were very flashy, very classy. They had money. The girls wanted to be with them. The guys wanted to be like them. And I'm in the classroom with these guys, and they thought I was kind of cool. So I started like hanging around with them at school. And when my mom said to me, go live with your dad, and I didn't want to go live with this dude, I thought, you know what, this is my new family. These are my new friends. I'm going to go and live where they live. And so that day I made an immature decision to run away from home, and I ran away to go live on their side of town. I didn't have the capacity mentally to understand that these guys were not going to embrace me as their family member. I didn't have the capacity to understand that I just forced myself into their lives. That's right. Into a helpless situation. From that very day, I became homeless. From that very day, I had to learn how to survive by eating out of trash cans, sleeping under oak trees, and sometimes in the middle of the night jumping up and having to run for my life to keep from being taken advantage of and abused by people out there on the street on drugs. And one thing led to another after being out here on the street homeless like that for months and months at a time. A drug dealer came by one night and I was leaning up against an oak tree about 2 o'clock in the morning during the winter, cold, shaking, and shivering. And he saw me as a young 13-year-old lost boy. He said to me, why are you out here in these streets every night like this? He said, like every time I come by, I see you out here. And I said to him, because I don't have anywhere to go, I don't have any place to live. He said to me, come and get in the car with me. I got in the car with him and he took me to this rooming house that he and other drug dealers lived. And he bought me some clothes, gave me some food, allowed me to take a shower and to sleep there in that rooming house. But after about a week, he came to me and he said, Hey Rico, if you're going to survive in these streets, then you're going to have to learn how to hustle. You're going to have to learn how to be a man, and you got to basically grow up overnight. And he handed me a bag of crack cocaine, and he said to me, go out there on the street corner and sell this crack cocaine. Make yourself some money, and this is how you're going to survive the street life. At that time, I didn't realize that I had alternatives and options. I didn't realize that there were things that I could do to not get involved in that lifestyle. And long story short, I started selling drugs. Couple of weeks later, I started drinking alcohol. Couple of weeks after that, I started smoking marijuana. And a few months later, I started using cocaine. And at the age of 13 now, I'm an alcoholic, I'm a weed head, and I'm addicted to cocaine. And I'm also a drug dealer on the street, risking my life every day and destroying the lives of others who I sold crack to. And eventually, the police came and started watching me and saw me. And said, hey, here's a young boy out here that doesn't belong out here, and he's involved in criminal activity. So immediately they started arresting me. I was so naive, I was drinking a beer while the police was walking up to me to arrest me at the age of 13. I had no idea that having alcohol in my possession as a young teenager was a crime. To me, it was like drinking Kool-Aid. But I went to jail that night, to the juvenile detention center. And eventually I got out. My mom came and got me. I went back to the streets. I got out, started living that same life again, got arrested again, got out, got arrested again, got out, got arrested again, got out, and eventually was taken to the adult county jail. Bonded out, went back, bonded out, went back, eventually sent to prison, got out, went back to prison, got out, and went back to prison. I was arrested from the age of 13 to the age of 19, 19 different times. 19 different times. On that last time of being incarcerated, the judge said to me, you are a threat to society. You deserve to be locked up for the rest of your life. And I was facing 22 years in prison with a mandatory sentencing for trafficking cocaine. And the judge sent me to prison that last time. And while in prison, I made a decision that I can't spend the rest of my life like this. I saw so many people die, so many of my friends and family members lose their life in the streets. There were so many times where I almost lost my life, where there were times when I almost OD'd off of cocaine in a hotel room by myself. There were times when the police beat me down with their sticks and their clubs and even hit me with the car. There were times when I got beat up by like 12 guys at one time and left for dead. There were times when I jumped out of cars That was still going down the road trying to run from the police. There were times when I just really did crazy stuff because I thought that that was my life, that was my identity, and that was my purpose. But while sitting in prison on that third time, I met an older gentleman by the name of Billy. Billy had been in prison for like 30 years and was never going home. Billy had accumulated while in prison his own personal library. I became friends with Billy. Billy started mentoring me in prison, and Billy tucked me under his wing like his own son. And Billy and I developed a good friendship. One day I said to Billy, hey Billy, I'd like to buy your books. Billy said to me, well, I'd like to have some coffee. I'd like to have some cigarettes, so if you would take your commissary money and give it to me, I'll give you my books. And I made a deal to buy Billy books, and I bought an encyclopedia from Billy. I bought a dictionary. I bought an almanac. I bought commentaries. I bought Bibles. I bought everything that I could buy that Billy had, and I turned my dorm, my bunk, Into a college. And I began for 8 hours a day, 10 hours a day, 12 hours a day, every day for years, every single day for years, just sit there on my bunk and read and read and read and read. And I started memorizing words out of the dictionary, started memorizing verses out of the Bible. I involved myself in an educational and vocational program in prison called Interpersonal Life Skills. What is that? And there I began to realize that I am not a drug dealer. I am not a criminal. I am not a drug addict. I have a purpose to my life. I have greatness in my life. I have something to offer the world. And I began from that moment on to make up in my mind that I am not going out of prison the way I came in. One of the things that I discovered in prison, ladies and gentlemen, is that being in a physical prison is the manifestation of being in a mental prison. I go into jails and prisons now and I talk to inmates. I speak for the federal government. I go around to schools and colleges. I speak for businesses. When I came home out of prison on November 3rd, 1995, I got down on the pavement as soon as they opened the gate to release me, and I kissed the pavement, and I made a promise to myself that I am never coming back to prison again as an inmate. Ladies and gentlemen, November 30th of this year will make 20— no, 30 years, 30 years that I've been out of prison. Amen. Thank you. That's like a birthday to me. Mm-hmm. And I'm grateful for the opportunity that I've had to be able to come out here and turn my life around. And I made a promise not only to myself, but I made a promise to life that I'm going to give life all that I have to give. I made a promise that I'm going to use the remainder of my life helping people to overcome adversity, to discover their purpose, To discover their greatness, to live their dream. And ever since that moment, I've been traveling the world, speaking, helping people to realize the greatness that lives on the inside. I even started a transitional house for homeless people, for people who are coming out of jail and prison, so that they wouldn't go back for the rest of their life or murder and rape and kidnap somebody out in society. And I've allowed for my focus to be on helping people like you every single day. Yesterday in the Daytona Beach area, I spoke twice for a company called RAO, which, which are the acronyms for Rising Against All Odds. And I shared with them on how to bring out the best in you and how to give life all you have to give. That's right. When I leave you today, I'm going to the Pembroke Pines location to speak to them tonight. This is Suicide Prevention Month, and although some of you may not feel like that suicide is a contemplation that you would ever consider, the truth of the matter is mental health illness dwells in the best of us. And one of the things that I found as a counselor, as a mentor to professional athletes like people in the NBA, NFL, and WBO boxing, One of the things that I found with counseling my clients, which are in different states around the country, is that mental health is an illness that is not actually identified until there are problems and issues that dramatically disrupt one's life, even to the point of death or suicide. I have a brother that I love very much.