Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to another episode of Couple of Nukes. As always, I'm your host, Mr. Whiskey. And as always, if you are just listening to this as a podcast and not on YouTube, my background image plays a little bit into what we're going to be talking about today. It is a foresty hillside in California, known for forest fires more than any other place in the United States.
We are here with a retired fire captain, so I felt it was appropriate I was just going to have my background be fire, but felt like that might be a little triggering, a little disrespectful. So I kept it with just the California Hills. It also looks more pleasant for all y'all watching on YouTube or whatever social media you're at.
So, like I said, we are here with a retired fire captain, but not just any ordinary retired fire captain. This is a man whose retirement was as it often seems the case. Not as expected back in my grandfather's time and even when he retired, it was not the same as back when you would get a vacation or a fancy watch or some kind of nice work package.
Nowadays, what you end up getting is Thank you or a goodbye or a you're forced to retire right before you hit that sweet spot. Or in some cases you get a terrible medical injury as we're going to discuss today. And not only is our guest a retired fire captain, but he's also a transformational speaker and a life coach, Mr.
Rick Cheatham. I am so honored to have a firefighter on the show. It's not often that I get first responders in law enforcement, mostly military. So to have the civilian equivalent. In terms of y'all deal with it. The one episode I had the, the deaths, the PTSD, the hardships, it really is eyeopening. A lot of civilians don't realize what firefighters and EMTs go through just as much as police officers and military members.
So I'm excited for you to elaborate on that and really show us what it's like. So Mr. Cheatham, would you please introduce yourself for us? Thank you for having me. I appreciate being on your show. I think you nailed it. You said it all. I mean, I'm a retired fire captain with the city of Anaheim retired in 2020 as a result of the COVID pandemic that hit the country.
My department gave us an opportunity to retire early if we chose and I took an early retirement. So I got out in about a year before I anticipated. And And when I got out, I moved to Nashville, Tennessee and started off my retirement here, loving it ever since. Yeah, for sure. So let's start way back when you first, you know, had the thought, I'm going to be a firefighter.
If it was your thought, maybe it was someone else's, could you tell us about that? Sure. I don't know if you're familiar with, and I'm going to date myself here, but back in the seventies, there was a show that came out on, on a syndication called Emergency, and it was actually filmed in the county that I lived in.
In fact, the one of the one of the firehouses that they used was, you know, not far from my house at all. And anyway, they opened my eyes to what the fire service was. And it excited me as a young boy. So here I am about 10 years old or something. And, uh, seeing Ronnie and you know, Johnny and all the, all the all the different players on the cast and I started around Ryan's, it was Roy, Roy, Roy, and Johnny were the two names of the paramedics.
And it just lit a fire under me and got me excited. And as life would have it, I, I ended up taking some course terms that. Probably would have eliminated my career to becoming a firefighter and you know, made some, some, some decisions that had to regroup from. And so from my early twenties, Until my early thirties, I was in more of a reconstruction phase of my life and, and, and cycling out of some of the decisions that I had made early on.
They got me into some trouble. And by the time I turned 34 with six years under my belt of trying to become a fireman, I was finally hired with the city of Anaheim. It took me six years To finally get the acceptance letter ended up having to read 27 rejection letters saying, thank you for your participation in the process.
But unfortunately we're unable to hire you at this time. And I finally got that one letter that said, congratulations, you've been hired. We're going to give you a conditional offer. And that was around the summertime of 1996 is, is when that was. And I started my career in November of 96 with the Anaheim fire department and had a wonderful 24 years loving every minute of it.
Yeah, so for those of us who aren't familiar with the process, there's a difference between paid firefighting and volunteer. So when you talk about those six years of trying to get hired, were those six years, were you on a volunteer team firefighting, or what was that, you know, fireman training you were getting under your belt?
It was six year, it was six years primarily getting the education I needed, so I had to go back to school and get my education and fire technology had to go through a fire academy. I did do a lot of volunteer work, so I volunteered for a few companies. Riverside County was my 1st volunteer in 89. I started working with them.
Which is now cal fire. I volunteered with as an auxiliary with South Pasadena fire for a year. I volunteered with Anaheim fire for a year before they finally hired me. So yeah, there was a lot of that going on in that 6 year period. So you're not only getting your education, but you're also putting in volunteer work.
And then with the volunteer work comes Putting in applications and with the applications, there's a whole process that went on back then it started with the physical agility. Once you met the the academic side of it, there was a physical side of it. So you had to do a physical agility test and pass that.
Then after the physical agility, you had to do a oral interview. Once that interview was, or actually I'd take a written test. Then if you pass that, you went on to an oral interview and that oral interview was usually three separate interviews. So you started with just a regular interview, then it went to a chief's interview, and then it went to the actual hiring chief interview.
So that you go through all those as well. And I made it all the way to the chief's oral on probably. I'd say a dozen or so of the applications that I turned in of those 27, but always failed short fell short just just a bit on that hiring side. But Anaheim picked me up in 96 and the rest is history.
Wow. I think a lot of people have this misconception that you just show up saying, I want to be a firefighter. You throw on some gear and you know, get to, so to know that there's such a. And that's the process behind all that. Well, you know, it's a, it's a lot like the military. I mean, when you, when you sign up to be to, to join the military, you got to go through training and you don't go through just your basic training, but you got to go through your your AIT, your advanced individual training.
So, the, the, the fire service. As a paramilitary militaristic organization has a lot of the same structures, a lot of the same procedures as far as, you know, you're, you're looking at combat in one fit in one sense of being warfare. We have combat in our sense we're fighting fire, so it's still a combat mentality and we go through all the tactics and the strategies that you would go through in a military engagement.
Yeah, and y'all have casualties trying to minimize the loss of life and everything. Yeah, so it's a real battle. And one thing I want to kind of pivot to, I know it's a little off branch from that, the one EMT I had on the show, and I'll have the link to that episode in the description below, he talked about when he was serving on the, you know, the fire department team that, When 9 11 happened, that the whole firefighting industry and EMT industry felt it.
It kind of rippled because they were out there watching people who do what they do, you know, respond to 9 11. So I'm just curious what, how you kind of felt when that happened and if your department kind of felt it, if he said, if you kind of noticed a change in the culture and anything like that.
Absolutely. Yeah, he's right on. I was actually on duty the day, the time the towers were hit. In fact I got a, a morning, an early morning call. And responded to that call and while we were leaving, our rookie was already up, made a pot of coffee and we were bolting out the door on the call and he, he, he was yelling at us as we're going by, man, the twin towers were hit.
The twin towers were hit. There was a, there's a, there's a plane crash and we're like, what the heck? And we're like, okay, well, we'll figure this out when we get back. Let's let's run the call. So we came back from the call and the second tower had already been hit by the time we got back. And yeah, it, it changed the fire service because in our minds we were under fire.
We were, we were the front lines to an active combat zone. And that's how we looked at it. I mean, we didn't know all the preliminaries at the time. We didn't know exactly who, what, when, where, why, how, and all that. We just had our ideas. We had a sense of what was going on. And as the time develop as more, as more information came in it became very it became very noticeable that our profession was going to be forever changed.
And I was on at the time trying to get on our Our urban search and rescue team is which we, what we had at the time. And although we weren't quite in the program yet, we were, we were, we were, I mean, I shouldn't say we weren't at we're in the program, but we were on the farther end of the deployment schedule.
So we weren't having to get deployed right away. Right. Our, our deployment came when they. When they changed it from a recovery or a rescue to a recovery scenario, and we didn't have to go so because there was no more recovery and they'd already. Pretty much determined that most everything was going to be nothing more than a recovery effort.
Instead of a rescue. We didn't have to, we didn't have to go. In fact, they, they took one of our task force which was up north in Oakland. They took them over us because they were new into the system and they wanted to get them in our program. And that was all through FEMA. And so we didn't have to respond, but I can remember vividly just sitting there and thinking to myself 343 of my brothers died that day doing what I do every day, responding to emergencies catastrophic fee.
On a high steroid for sure with the twin towers, but nonetheless, I could see myself in that instant, knowing that I would have been in that staircase, knowing that I would have been climbing, you know, 90 to a hundred and plus. Stories of flights of stairs and I'm trying to pinpoint and get to the seat of where that fire was and see if we can make a difference.
We know now. Hindsight. Of course, there was no way they could have ever made a difference on that. It was what it was and sad as it is, it changed the fire service forever because now we, we have not only the The immediate response that we have just in our local communities and the things that we deal with.
But now we're looking at it from a totally different lens, which is we've got a lot of bad people out there that want to take us out, firefighters included. And we were usually the ones that were on the good side and people were always looking to us as we were the good guys. And now we were, we were, we were no difference.
And I, I think a lot of that mentality shift. Has caused a lot of the PTSI that we see within our own organizations today. So, it's really, it really changed the way we do, but we, we do business. Yeah. And I can only imagine that for some time after that incident, every station of firefighters was thinking.
What's the closest city to us? Is, is that going to be a target? And if it is, you know, we're going to be sent out there. And I was stationed just outside of Disneyland and Disneyland was a target hazard. So we were, we were very conscious, conscious of, of knowing that Disney could be hit as well. You want to make a big impact.
You want to, you want to really get people off their, off their game, especially in the tourist industry. You go after big target hazards. And so we were we, that, that kicked off. Several years of us pre planning and training at levels that I had never seen in the fire service before, specifically with how we do business at Disneyland.
Wow. Yeah, it's definitely interesting to see the ripple effect. And same thing with the military bases we talked on the show. I had some guys on who, you know, before 9 11 and all the Middle East conflicts there, they would just drive on base. So, And after that, there was threat con levels, there was gates, there was security and just how, like you said, now we need to be always ready to be prepared in the training for the worst case scenario.
And I know a lot of military members and servicemen on the law enforcement side, you know, it can be tiring, especially for the younger ones. When you're like, why are we doing all this training? This is never going to happen. Even the idea of preparing for a World War III. It can seem really far fetched to a lot of people, but the reality of it is we could be minutes away from conflict at any time, especially with we're seeing more and more conflict and violence arise in the world right now.
Right, exactly. That's exactly right. Everything can change on a dime. And since 2001, when when 9 11 hit we have seen those threat levels. At all areas of of, of our industry. We know they exist. We know that there's more than just international terrorism. There's domestic terrorists. There's, yeah, there's, there's just a whole host of threat zones and, and, and, and, and threats from terrorist organizations and just people who want to do the United States harm.
Let's face it, we're in a, we're in a global conflict right now and America does not have the the respect that it once did. And we're open, we're, we're open, our blind side is open. I think there's a lot of Americans that are, are not quite engaged at the threat level that's necessary, understanding what we are up against, that this is not just a couple of homegrown issues.
This is not just politics is as normal. This is something on a level that, you know, I'm 62 years old. I've never seen this in my life. Yeah, I know they recently stopped just like two three weeks ago. I suppose terror attack plan for New York City, you know to think Just recently, and like you said, I mean, there's people doing missile testing all the time, different countries, and most importantly, like you said, there's a lot of, even within the United States, there's conflict and enemies arising out of that, unfortunately.
And now, I know 9 11 is a very catastrophic event, like you mentioned, and the biggest one in firefighting history, but also 24 years, what were some of the other big events? Were there any particular missions you went on that really changed how you saw things or really were, were heart wrenching whether it was losing other firefighters or people who were victims of the fire or just the way things went.
I mean, what are some of those incidents if you could talk about those? Probably the biggest one that I responded to was Hurricane Katrina. Okay. In Louisiana and we had it, we were we were signed out there for 21 days and you know, seeing the devastation of, of, of what that hurricane did it, it completely opened my eyes to how, you know, Tragic life can turn on a dime.
I mean, these folks were, you know, minding their own business. They were doing their own thing. And before you knew it, you know, they knew this threat was coming in. But due to some unforeseen leadership issues a lot of people got trapped and it was up to us to go in there and rescue them in the flooded zones and, and deal with the aftermath of, of what, uh, happens when people are not prepared.
We found people that were up in their attics. We found people on the roofs. It was, it was the best way I could describe it. It was a large scale water rescue is what it was. Cause there was water everywhere. I mean, you couldn't walk without being in water. And we found some, you know, pretty tragic situations that were pretty sad to, you know, have to deal with.
But, you know, it's like. You, with anything you, you, you, you know, the mission and you accept it and with that comes the consequences of the aftermath of that mission. So you're going to cease things and you're going to, you're going to be involved with things that could come back to haunt you. And a lot of people, you know, the PTSD side of our mental health, a lot of people suffered tremendously from that.
But then there's local stuff. I mean, just the local stuff, it's every day you know, you're running on people's worst days. That's what we do. We, we run on people's worst day, their worst nightmare. And you know, and as this story is going to unfold you know, I became one of those stories later on in my career and I had to navigate through that.
So, you know, I guess the, the, the main thing that I, I'd like to say with that is it doesn't matter, you know, for fire, for police military. We, we put on the uniform, we pin the badge. And we do the job that's before us. And the aftermath, how we deal with the aftermath is, is something that each department has to determine what's best for them.
And one of the things that we as firefighters probably do to the credit of most is that we, we have a tight knit community and we talk and it's, you know, getting it out and, and voicing your Your emotions, your, your concerns, your, your, your, your What you could have done better. And we have these after action meetings and we find out, okay, how can we do it better next time?
So that's important. And I would always highly recommend that whatever the incident is if it's traumatic enough, get with the leaders of your organization and talk it out. And if it's not, you know, like on my crew, I had a small crew. I we would just talk among ourselves. And a lot of times we would just.
We would do our best to put a smile on each other's face and laugh through it to the best of our ability. Yeah, for sure. You know, a lot of people just hear the word PTSD and they assume and they associate. That it has to be combat related. But there's a lot of different forms of PTSD that are non combat related.
And that's really important for people to remember. Now you, it's funny you mentioned Hurricane Katrina because I remember that, but I remember more importantly, I was born and raised in New Jersey and a lot, I found out. You know, this was a historic event for me, because I lived there, but I found out when I was in the service, some people had never heard of it Hurricane Sandy had destroyed most of New Jersey.
I mean, it, it just, I remember watching News 12, is the, the news channel there, and they had like 300, they did a year, for a year straight, Day one day two day three of recovery day four all the way to 365 almost or plus a lot of news channels did that you know because people were Months after this hurricane had hit it was so devastating that months afterward people were Finding personal items or finding their boat or their car that had just been taken completely somewhere else.
I mean, I remember the boardwalk that I, I was raised on, you know, the whole roller coaster was sitting in the ocean. All the rides, half of them were buried underwater. You know, the whole boardwalk had been destroyed and there was a lot of tragedy with that, especially, you know, at the Jersey shore and, and, and down south.
And I remember for some reason, the, the shore home we had on this little island was one of the only ones that just was. And then there was other people, their whole house had just been taken somewhere else. I don't think people realize, especially people who are landlocked, which they have tornadoes. So, you know, but the devastation of natural disasters of those hurricanes and tornadoes, and I don't think people realize what a role firefighters play in all of that.
And so one thing I want to talk about is. You know, did you lose anyone when you were serving during that time? Well, I I did lose my best friend, from high school he he got hired by anaheim Before I did and then two years after I got hired he succumbed to leukemia And it was considered job related.
So yeah, I lost him and it lost a lot of people After retirement not, I never anybody on the job while I was up there, but we have had people that have, you know, I've got another friend that retired out early in his career because he got hit by a car while working a car fire on the road and a car ran him over and he ended up getting through the injury, but could never be a fireman again.
And he ended up. Trade getting a being retrained, got a different career, and then all the stuff started coming back and he was going to end up losing his new job because of the brain injuries that he suffered and things like that. And he ended up committing suicide. So I do have a lot of friends that suffered with PTSD maybe not as.
They didn't recognize it as such then. Yeah, for sure. But nonetheless, I don't think a lot of us understood what PTSD was in the nineties and the early two thousands. It wasn't until, you know, probably within the last 10, 15 years that. People really have started to hone in on the mental health side first responders, which was a huge key.
And one of the things that as the union president, when I was with Anaheim we pushed for, we pushed very hard for a PTSD or a mental health coverage for our firefighters that were, that were struggling. Yeah, and I know from your bio you also lost your oldest son and It's a very unfortunate thing for any parent to lose their child.
Was that during retirement or during your time serving? It was it was it was during during my time on the floor. Yeah, I lost my son was murdered Do you want to go into that story right now or do you want to I, I, I do. I know it's a, it's a tragic story, but I think it's important for you to share and, and to talk about that.
Yeah. My son Mike in 2013, just seven days before Christmas we got a phone call. I went, phone call. We actually got a, a knock on the door at like four o'clock in the morning, five o'clock. I mean, it was early in the morning. Yeah. And it was the the sheriff's department asking if we were the parents of Michael Cheatham.
And we knew exactly what was going on. We knew exactly what that phone call or that that, that door knock was. And it completely changed our lives forever. That was in 2013 you know, we spent the next year navigating through a, a a very quick, fortunately murder trial. The man was convicted.
He was caught in my son's home. So there was really no way for him to escape. He ended up going to prison for the rest of his life, hopefully without any possibility of parole. However, we do have this thing in California now that they've got these 2nd, 3rd chance kind of programs where if you try to remember the exact terminology, but I think you have to spend at least.
At least 75 percent of your time, you got to age out at 65 and once you've reached some, some of those markers, you're eligible for parole. Well, this guy that murdered our son is not eligible for parole. But now with these new compassionate laws, he could be eligible here probably within the next, you know, 20 plus years.
Maybe even sooner. We don't know, but he's in jail. I'm fine with it. But the problem is that once you lose a child, your world changes forever. Everything that you thought was, was, was right is now questionable. You just don't know anymore. Your trust goes down. You start to, you know, you start to look at people a little differently.
You know, I mean, when you come from a, a, a family. A scenario where your son is tragically and brutally murdered. Your, I don't know, your, your compassion, you know, your compassion for society changes a little bit because you're, you're always on the defense. You don't know who you can trust, who you can't trust.
You don't know if this guy's on the up and up. I mean, my, my son, this guy knew my son, my son knew him. They were friends. They they, they, they worked together even. And so it changes your perspective on a lot of things and it causes you to not deal with things that you probably should deal with, like grief.
For me, I didn't deal with my grief very well. I, I, I, I just dove into work. I, I, I was the union president at the it was just a nominated to the board at the time, and then after my first year became the president of, of the union that navigated through some of the most difficult times in our organizational history.
And so I just put all my focus on that. So I really didn't. I didn't pay much attention to my own mental condition of where I was, and what it caused was a lot of unresolved anger that I thought I had dealt with that was going to help navigate through it, but it, it basically just pushed everything down.
Because it pushed it down and I didn't deal with it. I started noticing a very uneasy tension that I always had. I was very I was on the edge half the time, you know, I was like, yeah, almost in a, you know, in, in a fight or flight kind of sent a scenario. I was like, okay, are we going to be fighting here?
Are we going to be flying here? I mean, where are we going with this? And you know, I, I, I thought I did a good job of, of, of just. Getting to a place where I, in the words, I could say, I forgive the guy for what he did. You know, I mean, what can you, what must be going through your dang head when you're willing to take out a kid, you know, 23 whose life's just getting started all because of your, your, your self centeredness and, and, and where you were in life at the time.
So I thought I was able to forgive, but unfortunately what I found out was I didn't really forgive the way that I needed to at the time. And so, because I pushed everything down and because I kept pushing for you know, staying busy, I didn't have to deal with it. And then when I finally was able to retire in 2020 and moved to Nashville, my daughter, who was 13 at the time when her brother was murdered.
She was now a young woman wanting to move out on her own. And so she chose Denver, Colorado. So I helped her move out to Denver, Colorado. And then I went back home and then we packed all our stuff. And then we ended up moving to Nashville, Tennessee. And then we were planning on making a trip back out to her apartment and help her get settled in in the springtime.
So we went back out and she had a a next door neighbor that had recently moved in and was. Making unwanted advancements and was kind of a stalker type guy. And, and I started hearing this and I'm thinking, man, this is not going to be good if I get out there and this guy starts making a play or he starts getting foggy with me.
I knew where my mental capacity was. I was still holding on to all that anger. And so sure enough, we get out there and this guy ends up. Having a conversation with my wife, just my wife. And that led into a discussion with my son. Cause he overheard the conversation, which then led to me being called in.
And before I knew it I was flying up those stairs and I was ready, I was ready for engagement. And I was going to, if this guy took one wrong move, yeah. Everything that I had had building up in me for those, those Seven plus years was gonna come out. And sure enough they did. And made some, some some remarks at me.
I made some remarks back at him and Right. I challenged him. I said, you know what, you're, you're, you're tough when it comes to threatening these young ladies, but let's see what you got when it comes to an old man. Let's see how well you can handle me. And I, I charged him and he pulled a nine millimeter on me.
And so it's the first time I've ever had a gun pulled on me, and it just. Cause me to step foot back for a second and I, I could see it in his eyes that he was, he was not, he was not prepared to pull that trigger. So I tried to force him to pull it. Cause at this point, you know, you, you get, you know, I just, I was, I was so angry.
I was so protective of my daughter. I was so, you know, trying to deal with all the, the, the non resolved issues that I had with my son's death. And to me, this guy became the perfect target to take all that aggression out. And then when he pulled the gun on me, it caused me to have to have to take a reflection here.
Long story short, he ended up getting arrested that day lost his gun because he had that concealed carry, which was he didn't have a permit for it. So he lost that. We got my daughter moved out. And got home felt a little safer now that she was said and done and everything was tucked away for her and she was prepared and then a month later I fell and broke my neck at C4 and C5 and was left paralyzed from the chest down.
And that's where the story kind of gets real interesting because that's where my mental health really took a turn for the worst. So not, no, not just burying my son at my early fifties, but then dealing with the confrontation at my daughter's apartment. Then a month later, I'm laid up two and a half months in the hospital, learning how to walk again.
The injury was so severe at the time. You know, they didn't know if I was going to ever walk again. They didn't know if I'd ever have the use of my hands again. They didn't know you know, what my outlook would be. But they said, if you, Keep positive and you work and you make the effort we think we can get you to a place where, you know, you could have an independent lifestyle at least.
And so that's what we shot to do. We, we, we made that our, our, our priority. When they came to me in the hospital, they asked me what my goal was. And I said, I had 1 goal and that goal is to walk out of this hospital. And 2 and a half months later I was able to walk out of the hospital and, and start this new.
Recovery that's now a little over three and a half years and the first year was probably the hardest, followed by the second, which started to give me some, some hope. And now in the third I've completely gone to the other side of it and I now use everything that happened to me as a, as a way of inspiring and transforming the lives of anybody that deals with traumatic injuries or traumatic loss.
Or just the mental mind games that come along with trauma in your life. Yeah, I know a lot of stats show that. Firefighters, police officers, military that after they retire, if they did the full 20 years or however long the longer, the more likely this is that they'll die within a year or two or three, or become addicts if they don't find a hobby or another career or a job to keep them occupied, allow them to fall victim to that.
In your case, I won't say it was a blessing, but you were forced to be occupied with your recovery. And I'm curious how that, that played a role in all of it because obviously you had retirement plans, sort of, I know it was a year earlier than expected, but how did you deal with that? You know, how did you deal with here comes retirement, you're finally going to relax and then boom.
And that's all taken away from you. And I mean, in a way now you're living a retired life that is completely different than what you had planned beforehand as well. Yeah, absolutely. I had, I was very fortunate while I was actually in the hospital in rehab learning to walk my wife, who is also a nurse was an ICU nurse for many years.
She understood the process of, of, of, of creating an environment that is conducive to healing. And in my case, not just physical healing, but mental healing as well, coming from a very active background that I had. So she helped me with just creating the environment within the room with essential oils, with music, with everything was just taken care of.
I didn't have to worry about anything. All this while she was working, she spent the night with me that her work gave her the time off. So she literally spent the night with me almost every night I was in the hospital on a bedside right next to me. I had friends from the fire service who were flying from Southern California from my department in Anaheim out to Nashville.
So I had people with me every single day I was there, which does a lot. To build your mindset to be able to overcome because now you've got a reason i've got my wife I've got all my friends in my they're they're coming out. I've got my family out here I've got my kids that were coming out to see me.
They were my like I said, my daughter was in in in uh, in Denver and my son was still living in california and I had them coming out that Was all great. And then I finally was released. I finally walked out of that hospital was a big deal. And then everybody went home, everything went back to normal.
And now I'm learning how to deal with all of my post injury deficits, not having the use of my hands, not being able to be a, you know, I was a contractor before I was a fireman. So I was a builder. I couldn't do anything. I couldn't this stuff around the house anymore. Trying to, you know, just, Do the little chores that I need to do as a homeowner was very, very difficult and I'd have to hire it out.
So I was getting frustrated. I was getting depressed and right now, before I knew it, and here's the crux of this entire conversation. Before I knew it, my mindset had shifted from one of I can overcome anything. I am now a victim of my circumstance. I will never be the same again. My body will never be normal again.
I will never have the function of my hands again. And it's all this negative mind shifting that was taking place. And it was taking me to a dark place. It was taking me to a place in my life that I was ready to quit. I didn't want to, I, why, why live anymore? Why, why bother with, process of trying to spin out of this thing.
I mean, sure. If I asked this question to your audience, I mean, have you ever got to a place in your life when things happen that we're so traumatic that you just said, why me? Why is this happening? This is not fair. And I, I cycled into what I call my victim mentality, my victim cycle. So when I was in my victim cycle I didn't want to work anymore.
I didn't want to try anymore. I didn't want to try to, you know, better myself. I just wanted to feel sorry for myself and everybody else was doing a good job of feeling sorry for me too. So, you know, I just jumped on that bandwagon and my wife got to a place. She said, look, we've been through way too much in our marriage for you to give up.
And if this is what it's going to be, she says, I can't do it. I can't do it. I know you're not what you used to be physically, but your mind's still there and you can still empower people the way you did as a captain on the floor, the way you did as a union president, the way you did as a contractor, the way you, you've empowered people your whole life.
You've given people hope. You've given people the will to overcome addiction. You've done all this in your life, Rick, the information is still there. So I need you to be the man that you were called to be. And that started me on a journey and she, she woke me up and it started me on this journey of learning how to overcome my mindset.
And I, I ended up enrolling in a group and through that group I listened to a man at a at a a keynote address he gave to our group. And One of the things he, he walked us through was he, he asked, what is it that you think about yourself the most? What are, what kind of feelings or what kind of thoughts do you have that are repetitive, that keep identifying with or keep solidifying who you think you are?
And as I got through the end of that, that, that process, I had one word that kept coming to my mind. And that word was useless. I felt useless. And he asked if there was any volunteers that would like to share what that feeling was and my hand went up without even realizing that this guy could call on me and now I got to go in front of everybody and explain it.
And sure enough, that guy called me, I was in the back row, called me up and I started talking to him and he asked me about it. And I said, well, I feel useless and here's why I gave him my reasons. And he asked me, do you think I'm useless? And I said, no, I don't. And he said, well, I was just wondering because you put a lot of emphasis on your body mechanics as being useful.
So now let me tell you the backstory about the man I was standing in front of. His name is Nick Santanastasso. Nick was born with no legs and one arm. And he is probably one of the most inspirational, transformational speakers you'll ever hear. On the circuit, the guy is phenomenal and he walked me through the process of transforming my thought process, transforming what I'd identified as useless.
Into the most identifying term that I could give it at the time, which for him was useful. So if you're not useless, you could be useful. And here I am with no legs and one arm and my body don't work the way that everybody else's does. And I'm useful. So he changed my paradigm and he changed my mind shift.
And I started working with Nick after that. And now having been with him for some time, I have now shifted gears yet again, and been able to take my story, my victim mentality, And shift gears into opening the doors for many, many others who are challenged by, you know, whether it's the, you know, your work, whether it's your relationships, whether it's your your, your your own health whether it's your, your family, your, your marriage, it doesn't matter.
We all struggle. With trials and tribulations, we all struggle with challenges. Life is a challenging arena, and the reason it's challenging is because it's helping us shift gears out of being victimized by circumstances into being victorious over circumstances. And that mind shift requires us to look and become aware.
Of the things we don't always notice within our own psyche, which is number one, what is it do I think about most often? What are my thoughts? Are my thoughts centered around fears? Are my thoughts centered around past experiences that keep me from moving forward in my future? Are my, are my thoughts predicated on how terrible, wrong, bad, and awful I am?
I don't deserve this. I don't deserve to be successful. I don't deserve to have a good relationship. I'm too short, I'm too tall, I'm too whatever. I mean just listen to the communication that goes on in your own thoughts. Every single day. So you become aware of those. And once you become aware of your own thought patterns and your belief systems, you can start to make some intentional changes.
And in those intentional changes. You can start to focus on some areas that will help you cycle out of that thought process. And once you become aware, you set some intentions. Okay, what is it that I do want? What do I want to accomplish? What do I feel like is my purpose? And once we start to get people to that place, the next big moment is then we shift our mind.
We shift our mind from a victim mentality to one of being a victorious person. Mentality. I can overcome anything and not only can I overcome them, but I can learn to thrive in them. And I call that my aim method. A. I. M. So awareness, intention, followed up with a mindset shift, and you can literally aim at any circumstance and, and have success pivoting out of it because now you've got the tools.
And what I had to come to in my, my mind shift gearing is I had to come to recognize that I had a lot of hostility, a lot of resentment, a lot of anger, and a lot of bitterness that was rooted deep within my heart over what this man did to my son and what he did to my family. And because I had all of that unresolved anger and that that conflict was going on in my battle, I had to My minds was, my mind was constantly thinking on, well, if this guy did it to this son, what if he does it to my other son?
What, I mean, what if somebody else does something to my other son? What if I lose another child? What if I, and I started just dwell on all the what ifs of, of life that were negative. And it just drained and depleted me. And so here's what I had to do. I had to come to a recognition that my mind thoughts, the thoughts that I had repeatedly been thinking over and over and over were so negative that the energy level was at a negative level.
And when my energy level was at a negative level, then all the output, the directions that I wanted to go were all in a negative sense. So everything that I thought was negative. So therefore, I kept creating negative patterns. I kept creating negative outcomes. And once I was able to finally acknowledge that and see that.
I was able to relieve that through finally forgiving the man that murdered my son. And once I was able to finally forgive him, I was able to get back into a position of power. And the position of power is nothing more than being a victorious or being, having victory over the circumstance and then being able to navigate.
Navigate to a different direction with intention. And having been able to do that gave me a new sense of purpose. Okay. Now that you're retired, you're not going to be using your hands, so you're not going to really be able to build things like you once thought you would be. I was going to get into like a house flipping and doing things like that, building things and, and, and, and then selling them after they've been fixed up.
Well, since that wasn't going to be an opera opera necessarily the, the, the, the, the way of going the next best thing was through Nick's help he. He certified me in transformational speaking. So I went through him, his courses, and developed a entirely different way of a, approaching life through the lens of helping other people who have to suffer through their own challenges and their own dilemmas and their own traumas through the art of mind shifting.
And so now that's what I do. I, I, I take on clients on a one on one coaching endeavor. And then I also do a public speaking for a transformational speaking for events, for people that are trying to gear up their, their constituency and their people to overcome and become all that they can be in life and become successful regardless of what.
throws at you. So that's been my life for the last two years now is shifting that gear. And now that I'm on the other side, man, I tell you what, it's absolutely amazing that a guy that suffer the loss of his son Broke his neck at C4 and C5. I mean, those are probably two of the most traumatic things that could ever happen to a person in their lives.
Every parent fears the loss of their child. And when I grew up, all my activities, all I can remember was my mom saying, don't do that. You'll break your neck. So here I am. Lost a kid, broken neck, and I've been able to climb out of that pit at such a level now that it gives hope and inspiration to all those I come in contact with because the energy that you can maintain for yourself and for others when you overcome those types of trials.
And these aren't things that people, well, I probably can't, you know, that's great for you, Rick. I know you could. No, I'm telling you. When you can come to the place where you don't even want to live anymore to a place of not only do I want to live, but I want to change the legacy of not only my life and my lineage, but I want to help change the legacy and the lineage of every person I come in contact with, because now I have the tools.
I know what it takes to get on course and make a difference, not only in your life and for your family, but also in the lives of everybody you come in contact with, because let's face it. We've got a lot of mind shifting that needs to take place in this world today. Just look at the world around us right now.
It's based on fear and fear is the enemy to success. If you let it, if you let it attack you and immobilize you. But the other thing that fear does, it is the great liberator, because not only if, if, if you will be liberated from your fear, if you take the intentional action to move toward the fear, in other words, let fear be your guide.
If you're fearful of a conversation, if you're fearful of the relationship, if you're fearful of your career choices, if you're fearful of. Promotion that's being offered if there's fear associated with something in your life, and I'm not talking about the fear of, you know, keeping your head on a swivel in a dark alley.
I'm not talking about that type of fear. I'm talking about the fear that we generate in our minds every day through the things that we think. Once you can overcome that fear, that fear becomes Your roadmap and you follow that fear so that you can prove to yourself that the fear was never tangible. It was all a figment of my imagination.
And once you've overcome and you've pushed through that fear, you realize that when you get to the other side, you look back and go, what was I afraid of? I don't, I don't get why I was so fearful that I just stagnated and I wouldn't move. I just stopped. I wanted to give up. That's what the power of being victorious over circumstances, as opposed to being a victim of your circumstances, will create in each one of us.
And it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter where you've come from, and it doesn't matter what the circumstances that life has thrown at you. You have the ability because you are in control of your life. And too many times we've been sold the bill of goods that our circumstances control us. And when we get there in life, that means we're like a ship out on the ocean with no rudder and no motor.
It's just, we're just tossed to and fro and anywhere I go is that's it. And it's usually not going to be a very good ending when you can navigate even the toughest waters of life with success. You're going to find that on the other side, your life is going to find purpose again. But then here comes the challenge.
Nobody does that by themselves. You can't do it by yourself. You have to be involved with people who have gone on and done it before you. If you try to navigate life, With the same people and the same circumstances that got you there to begin with, you're never going to find your way out of it. And so what I had to do is I had to, I had to find a coach like Nick.
I have another coach named Ryan. These guys are my coaches. They're my mentors and they help me when navigation is difficult. They. They help me see through it all. They see through the fog because they've already been there. And so that's my role now. That's my purpose. My purpose in life now is to find the people that that are seeking to become victorious over their circumstances and their challenges.
And then hire me as a coach, and I will help navigate you with guarantee that you will get on the other side of this because I did it with myself. And I've got people that have done it with me. So it's not a, it's not a sense of, well, I hope I can do it. I mean, I might be able to do it. No, it's a guarantee.
You can do it because when you are training at the level, whether you're, whether you're in the military, whether you're in the fire service, whether you're, you know, first respond, doesn't matter. Regardless of where you are, it takes training. And the best trainer or the best training to get is someone who's already been through it and they can train with you and they Can coach you through the steps.
And so that's what we do. Now. We help people through the steps of of challenging times in their life That's beautiful. And ladies and gentlemen in description below you will find the links to mr Cheatham so you can I would hire him as a speaker at an event or work with him one on one and see other shows he's been in and all that.
But Mr. Cheatham, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story and everything, all your advice. That was great. And I really appreciate you opening up about those tragic moments that can be very difficult to talk about even after healing. So I thank you for that. Right. I appreciate that.
Appreciate you for having me on your show. It's an honor really is.
