Finding Strength in Adversity with Rick Cheatham

In this powerful episode of 'We Are The Men,' Angelo welcomes guest Rick Cheatham, a retired fire captain, transformational speaker, and life coach. Rick shares his profound and inspiring life story, detailing how he overcame significant adversities, including a nearly failed marriage, the tragic loss of his son, and a debilitating injury that left him paralyzed from the chest down. Through his experiences, Rick has developed the AIM approach to help men shift from a victim mentality to one of victory. The conversation delves into themes of forgiveness, resilience, and the importance of community and mentorship in navigating life's challenges. Listen in as Rick provides actionable insights and a message of hope for those feeling trapped in their struggles.
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Connect with Angelo
Website: https://www.angelosantiago.com/
Email: angelo@angelosantiago.com
YT: https://www.youtube.com/@weare.themen

Connect with Rick
Website: https://rickcheatham.com/
Email: rkconsulting292@gmail.com
FB: https://www.facebook.com/rickycafd/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/rickycafd/

00:00 Intro and Guest Introduction
02:12 Rick's Life Story: Overcoming Adversity
03:36 Current Life and Helping Men
06:03 The Importance of Support and Mentorship
09:41 Struggles in Marriage and Personal Growth
14:36 Tragic Loss and Personal Injury
20:14 The Power of Forgiveness and Mind Shift
36:01 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro and Guest Introduction
• 2:12 Rick's Life Story: Overcoming Adversity
• 3:36 Current Life and Helping Men
• 6:03 The Importance of Support and Mentorship
• 9:41 Struggles in Marriage and Personal Growth
• 14:36 Tragic Loss and Personal Injury
• 20:14 The Power of Forgiveness and Mind Shift
• 36:01 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Finding Strength in Adversity with Rick Cheatham
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Intro and Guest Introduction
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Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of we are the men. Today's episode is a little bit of a throwback to the early days of this podcast, where it was all about men sharing their stories openly, vulnerably, and allowing you the listener to see yourself in their story and get something out of it that you can apply in your own life.

And this episode is a powerful one. And so I invite you to sit back and listen to my guest, Rick, his story of overcoming extreme adversity in his personal life, to come out on the other side with extreme strength and clarity in what he's here to do.

So enjoy this one. If you get the opportunity, please leave a rating. And if you haven't yet, make sure to follow for updates on new episodes every week. 



Angelo Santiago: Welcome back to we are the men. I'm Angelo Santiago. And my guest today is Rick Cheatham. Rick is a transformational speaker and a life coach, and he has a life story that I'm just super excited for him to be able to share everything that he's gone through and in the experiences that he's had, how he's been able to really discover how profound pain in his life led him towards this Powerful personal growth.

How shifting from being a victim of circumstances in his life has really led him to finding victory over adversity. And this is something I know I can relate to. I know possibly a lot of other men can relate to that. When you are in that That place of pain and these circumstances of challenges. It's hard to see where the gold is coming from there.

But when you're able to look back, you see that what has been at work to mold you into the man that you are is part of the journey. So before I share a little bit of your story, Rick, I just want to say, for being here. Thank you for being willing to share so much for doing the work that you do.

And it's an honor to have you on here.

Rick Cheatham: Thank you. Appreciate it.

Angelo Santiago: Yeah. 


Rick's Life Story: Overcoming Adversity
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Angelo Santiago: So Rick, part of your life story, I'll, I'll share a little bit from what you shared with me, and I'm sure that more will come out as we. Have this conversation, but you are a retired fire captain, 25 years of service with the Anaheim fire department. You're a husband of 38 years a father.

And these are, you know, things to, to just be really proud and grateful for, but in your life, you know, early on in your marriage, 10 years in there was your. Your marriage was on the brink of divorce. Your wife was walking out the door, taking your two boys with her. And that began part of what your journey has been on to really strengthen yourself, but, but then even more challenges came your way in 2013 in December you lost your oldest son, Michael.

And then five months after retiring in 2021, you had a fall that left you paralyzed from the chest down. And so these are bullet points that if I were to learn about this story about any man, I could see like, wow, what, what a painful experience this man must have gone through. But now for you to be on the other side of that, to have learned the lessons that you've learned to have faced the, the challenges that you face to be on the other side to talk about it.

It's, it's really impressive. I just want to say the courage that it takes to do what you're doing. I. I just want to honor that for a moment. Just say thank you.

Rick Cheatham: Thank you. You're welcome. 


Current Life and Helping Men
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Angelo Santiago: So with that being said, before we get into the experience of adversity that you face, like give us a picture of what life looks like right now for you, Rick, you know, what, where, where are you right now in life, what's the season of life you find yourself in, what is it that you're working on that you're bringing forward from all this life experience?

And then we'll rewind the tape a little bit and tell us a little bit of, of how it all came to be. 

Rick Cheatham: Perfect. Absolutely. Uh, I'm 62 years old. I'm in the retirement phase of my life. This is when, you know, we sit on the back porch and we, we rock in our rocking chairs and we have a tasty beverage and we, we think back to the good old days and how we finally got through it and we get to retire and enjoy the the fruit of our labor. Um, and in doing my retirement it became very evident to me that. Men are struggling. There's a lot of men out there that are hurting. A lot of them are hurting like I was, uh, whether that be through their career, whether that be through their relationships, whether that be through you know, primarily their, their own family and, and marriage. Uh, let's face it, if the home is not a safe haven, then Your business is probably going to suffer as well. Your career will suffer. All the relationships around it will suffer. And it became very evident to me that my need and my value that I can offer to men is teaching them and showing them how to navigate through adversity. And not just simple adversities, but traumatic adversities, and be able to find the, the blessing in it, be able to find the gift that you can share as the result of what you learned in it, so that you can help men condense time, so they don't have to go till they're in their late fifties. to finally navigate through that entire trauma cycle. And now I give inspirational, transformational public speaking events. I speak at those and I also have a coaching business where I help men one on one and in sometimes groups to help navigate their own traumatic traumas that have you know, derailed their progress. Their primary understanding of their purpose 




The Importance of Support and Mentorship
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Angelo Santiago: I want to just address real quick something that you talked about that men, men are hurting. And I just want to get real clear for if you're listening or watching this right now that, you know, trauma comes at a variety of levels.

Of ways, right? Whether it's related to divorce or loss of loved one or physical pain or emotional pain, whatever it is that you're going through. My, my hope here is that you don't, you don't minimize. You're hurt, right? Because by comparing to others, you're like, well, my heart is not about there.

You're minimizing yourself. And, and, and really this message here that I think Rick is here to share that I'm here to talk about is is for you. So Rick for somebody who's listening right now and say they are going through a moment in their life where they're in that pain. They're in that hurt. They don't see a way out.

They feel kind of stuck in this cycle of this is just how my life is. It's just suffering. I can't get out of it. I, I know there's a lot to say, a lot to work through, a lot to unpack there, but if you just have one quick message for that man who's listening, who might not see the light on the other side of this.

What is it that you would want them to know? 

Rick Cheatham: I would think that the, the, the, the best way I could equate this message. is is related to what most men are very accustomed to, which is working out in the gym. So trauma, trial, tribulation, challenges, setbacks, they are to weights in the weight room what spiritual weightlifting is to the conscious mind. So, You cannot put in the reps in the gym and expect yourself to be strong. You got to put in the reps, you got to put in the work, challenges and adversity is our weight room for the conscious mind to affirm that there is hope in overcoming those challenges. And we use those traumas and those trials as a source of resistance to help build our emotional intelligence and our That then gives us the ability to navigate with purpose.

Angelo Santiago: I love that. And like to add to this visual that you're putting, you know, for, for when we're in that struggle in our life, whatever that may be, it is the equivalent of being in the middle of, of that weightlifting set, or if you're on a run of like running up the Hill, right. And, and one thing a coach of mine always says, like, you know, never make a decision on the Hill when you're running up that Hill, never decide to quit there because that's when your mind's going to tell you, you want to quit.

So really. Finding the strength, the determination and the support that you need, because that's something I think you and I both agree on is the importance of men remembering that they're not alone. It's something that you mentioned right before we started recording you as a firefighter for 25 years as a fire captain, Anaheim.

And I shared with you as well that I spent 10 years as a firefighter myself, also in California. One of the beautiful things about that profession is, is learning how to work as a team. Learning the strength of being supported by others. And there's all other things we can talk about about the fire service, but that is one of those things.

And so to, to remember, you know, the idea of, of you're not alone, that there's mentorship, support, coaching, listening ears out there for you. And you mentioned to me that that was a huge part of your journey when it came to your marriage. 


Struggles in Marriage and Personal Growth
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Angelo Santiago: 10 years into your marriage, your, your wife, you know, said the words that she hates you, that she wanted to walk out on God, the church that she quit.

She wanted to walk out with your two boys. And you mentioned also that the mentorship and the support that you got is what brought you back together. Do you want to take us back a little bit? To what was going on in your life that, that led to that for maybe somebody who's struggling in their marriage to just hear your story and where it's taken you since then.

Rick Cheatham: Yeah, absolutely. So 10 years into my marriage I had nearly destroyed my wife emotionally spiritually She was at a place where she was absolutely done being betrayed and I was betraying her at both those levels both physically and emotionally mentally, spiritually with a porn addiction. I was suffering and struggling through this, this unstoppable, desire that I had to seek love and anesthetize my pain outside of the My relationship with my wife and what I found was that the more I would dive into that, the more guilt I would feel, the more shame I would feel, the more bitter I would become at myself became a self loathing type of, uh, experience. And. I just kept perpetuating the same problem over and over because my mind was so focused on the hurt and the pain, uh, just trying to navigate life and the pressures of, I was a newly, I was just hired by the fire department at the time. So here I am starting my rookie year, struggling with an addiction that they didn't know about. Luckily was able to keep it under the radar and didn't have anything stupid happen to me out on the streets. Like, sex trafficking, because there was so much of that. So rampant out there. I'm thinking to myself, here you are, you've got the opportunity of your life and you're going to blow it away. Because you can't get a hold of why you're stuck in this pornography loop. And what if you get caught now, what's going to happen to your career? What if your wife finds out what's going to happen to your marriage and that constant negative reinforcement and fear kept me stuck until finally my wife tapped out and she says, I hate you.

I hate God. I hate the church. I quit. And she was done. Found out. Years, years later that when she said she was done, it wasn't that she was just done with me. She was done with living. 

Angelo Santiago: Mm. 

Rick Cheatham: She had gotten to a place where she didn't even want to live anymore because the pain of dealing with an addict husband had gotten so out of control that it destroyed her spirit to live. Her will to want to live, and she had two boys.

Angelo Santiago: Yeah.

Rick Cheatham: I didn't realize that at the time. But, you know, we usually don't realize the implications of our choices in the way we think on those that we love the most. So as a result of those words I knew that I had to, I had to do something. I had to do it. now and I was able to find a man by the name of Kevin Quinn who became my spiritual mentor and his wife, Debra, became my wife's spiritual mentor. And they literally uprooted our understanding of spirituality and the role of husbands and wives to such a degree that it changed my life forever. And what that change was, was determining how to look at the relationship through the lens of what its purpose is. So my wife's purpose as a helper or a helpmeet, according to the scriptures that I believe wholeheartedly, is to reveal the enemy within the husband. So she reflects that enemy that's within him. Well, what is that enemy? That enemy is our our anger, our bitterness, our ego, our self righteousness, our self centeredness, our, our, our desire to be loved. To make it all about us and what we can accomplish and do. And so by reflecting the enemy within me, it helped me to start transitioning out of that cycle. I became a fireman had a wonderful stellar career, one that I'm very proud of. I, I rose to the levels that I anticipated, uh, finally ending up as the union president and leading them through the most trying time of our organization. And eventually ended up coming out on the other side with some success. 


Tragic Loss and Personal Injury
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Rick Cheatham: And then at the end of my career, I faced the loss of my son, Michael, who was brutally murdered at the hand of somebody who knew. He was betrayed by a friend and brutally murdered. And then I had to navigate through a murder trial. Fortunately the man was found guilty, went behind bars never to see the, the, the, the, the, the, the sunlight of day again, I hope but nonetheless, he's gone and that is taken care of.

So now I'm left with, okay, now what? I fought real hard or that year to get this man convicted. Now he's behind bars. I still don't have a son. So what was this for? What was its purpose? And I thought, well, you know, I know that I'm going to have to get to a place where I can learn to forgive.

Angelo Santiago: Right. 

Rick Cheatham: And I thought by saying the words, I forgive you, I would. transform my mind into believing that I actually could forgive a man that was unforgivable. And I thought I did. I, I buried myself in work and I, in union business. And so I really didn't think too much on my grief. I just did my job. I went to work. I did what I was supposed to do, came home. the thoughts began again. You know, you're still without your son. This man did this to you. How are you going to respond? How are you going to react? How are you going to let this define who you are from here on out? And I started to see 

Angelo Santiago: my 

Rick Cheatham: children, my surviving children, Michael's younger brother, who was, you know, just a little over a year younger I started to see him auger in and started to see the devastating effect the loss of his brother had on him. And I saw my, my daughter, Victoria, who was 13 at the time And it was devastating to her because she was just transitioning into her essence of becoming a woman and puberty was hitting her. And now she's dealing with not only the internal struggles of her growing up, but she was also dealing with this trauma. that was left behind in the wake of this man's decision to kill her brother. And by looking at them and then evaluating my reasons for hating this man, I was justified. I could see what he was doing to my family. And I had fought so hard after coming out of that addictive cycle to save my family. Cause I didn't want somebody else raising my children and I had fought so hard. Then I got home and five months later, I fell and I broke my neck. And was left paralyzed from the chest down. And I'm thinking, why me? What is going on? What did I do to deserve this? I lose my son. And now here I am with a broken neck. Laid up in the hospital. Unable to move from the chest down. And I spent the next two and a half months in rehab, inpatient rehab, learning how to walk, learning how to care for myself. And I had the support of my wife, who was wonderful through the whole process of my, my injury. She set the environment and the tone for our, our healing through the room and the way that it was in its appearance with essential oils, music, calming. Everything was just perfect. Perfectly set for my mindset to be able to walk out of that hospital. When they came and asked me, what are your goals while you're here in rehab? I said, I have one goal and I want to walk out of this place. And they said, well, we're going to have to get to work. And it took every bit of my mind overcoming my injury and the fear. Being left without the use of my hands for the rest of my life to be able to manage through that obstacle. I also had my fire brothers and sisters who were in Anaheim, California, who had flown out to help me through that process, helped me with our house, helped me get things prepared. They were at my bedside the entire two and a half months. I was in the hospital. I always had somebody from my department that was there.

Now, these people were coming, you know, nearly 2000 miles flying in and out. To see me and to help me and the nursing staff said, man, I don't know who you were in your previous life, but I can tell you this, you were loved.

Angelo Santiago: Mm hmm.

Rick Cheatham: She said, I hear people that have family 30 minutes away from us here in Nashville.

We never see them. And yet you have friends that you've worked with 2000 miles away and they're here every day. She says, that's pretty impressive, Rick. And that gave me the motivation to say, you know what? That love is enough power to change anything. So between the love of my wife and the love of my fire family, two and a half months later, I was able to walk out of there. And then the real work began because they all went home. My wife went back to work and now it's just me learning how to navigate this new normal of life. I to walk and stabilize myself and I was dropping things. Every time I would go to the refrigerator, I'd grab something, slip through my hands and I'd drop it, spill it, get pissed off. And I could start to see myself augering into this victim mentality. I'm never going to get any better. This is useless, man. I screwed up. I should have, I should have called my wife when I needed the help before I fell, but I didn't. I had to do it my way. What is its purpose? Why God, why are we doing this? And that's when I started to learn. 


The Power of Forgiveness and Mind Shift
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Rick Cheatham: And develop the mind shift to aim for the target. And it came about by meeting this young man by the name of Nick Santinastaso, who's a 28 year old man.

He's a very well known, uh, social media influencer. Who toured with Tony Robbins for several years on his stages, and he speaks on adversity, and he speaks on challenges, and he speaks on the mental shift that's required for you to get through your challenges, and I was at his one. I was at one of his talks where he asked us all to explain. You know, what feelings we feel about ourselves the most and mine was and Mike stated, I was, I lost my identity. I wasn't a fireman anymore. I was retired. I couldn't use my hands, couldn't use my body. And so the mind of my emotions. We're telling me that I was useless. And so he asked anybody in the audience that would be interested in coming up and, and, and talking to him about what their predominant thought is and the emotion behind it that you think about most often.

And most of us do think about things on a continuum. There's the repetitive thought process. I'm not good enough. I'm too old. I'm too skinny. I'm too fat. I'm too this, I'm too that I'm too poor. I'm too, I, it's always. A negative description of what you can't do instead of what you can do. And so, I went up and I talked to Nick and he, he relayed to me, he said, Do you think I'm useless? And I said, Of course not. And he said, Well, I'm kind of curious because you've just explained to me All of the reasons why you can't do something because of the function of your body. Now what I need to tell you is Nick has no legs and one arm and he was born that way. And the adversities he's had to overcome in his life and the challenges of having no legs and one arm navigating through life, he did it with such dignity and honor. It inspired the hell out of me. And then he looked at me and said, do you think I'm useless? Cause I don't have my body parts

and I'm obviously making a dent and a difference in the lives of those. I teach just like I am with you, Rick. So I ended up actually mentoring under him. So here's this 28 year old kid mentoring this 59, 60 year old man in learning how to shift my mind. To a place where I can see the gift in my adversity. And that's where the, the acronym I developed, take aim to hit your target. And my target was, I needed to have a mind shift to keep, get me out of the victim mentality into a victorious vent mentality by using the lessons of adversity. to change the direction of my life. So instead of being a victim and looking at life through the lens of fear, I could then shift over and look at life through the lens of faith and have an anticipatory expectation that through my faith, I can attract those who are like minded to help me make that transition. And I came up with this acronym A.

I. M. First of all, we have to become aware We have to become aware of the way that our mind thinks and the continual thought patterns and behavioral systems that we've been programmed to believe over and over and over that have become so ingrained in our thinking that we literally 95 percent of the time we think we're thinking on things from the past and thinking on the hurts, thinking on the pains, thinking on the adversities, thinking on the challenges, thinking, how am I going to overcome this?

Thinking, how am I going to do this? How am I going to get through this? And so we ask ourselves the wrong questions. We're asking our questions from the mindset of a victim and our mind doesn't know the difference. So our subconscious will continue to answer the questions that it is given. Why? Well, I guess you're right.

You're, you're a moron. You should have called your wife and you wouldn't have fallen coming back from the toilet. Yep. You're right. All these different mentalities or thought processes that I was going through were just, they were anchoring me to a life of victimization until I met Nick. And then I could start to see that there is a blessing behind every curse. There is a gift behind every challenge and fear is designed to keep us from that gift because fear knows what's on the other side. And doesn't want to risk our identity to achieve the very things that are going to make our lives set free and the lives of others. So I had to go back and really look at what the loss of my son was doing to me and what the loss of my mobility was doing to me and challenge it and use that as the, the, the stepping stones. to the mind shift. So awareness, then comes the intention. Once you're aware of it, you have to have intention to actually move forward in the direction of faith over fear. So now every time you're faced with these concepts in your head that you think about that are coming from a negative energy or a negative point of reference, a negative emotion like guilt, shame, fear Rage you know, you, you just name the list.

There's just disappointment, discouragement, dissatisfaction. I mean, the list is long, but we, we somehow are programmed to focus on with so much emphasis that we're aiming at the wrong target. We're aiming at the target of fear instead of the target of faith. So faith has the target of setting the intention to expect what it is. that you have the value to give. So my value is now helping men transform their lives through adversity. And so the gift that I give them are the lessons I learned through my own adversity. So I had to then come to the awareness that with my intention has to come a sense of authenticity. I have to be real.

I can't pretend that I got my shit together. Because I don't. I can't pretend like I'm a fire captain and I knew I had the answers. I was very confident on a fire ground. You put me on a roof, I was very confident with what I needed to do and accomplish. But you take all that out of me, what am I left with? I'm left with the man who looks back in the mirror. I'm left with me. So my intention then becomes that I have to focus on the man in the mirror. I have to change his mind. I have to change his patterns. I have to change his belief systems and I have to change it with such a powerful, intention that nothing can alter my direction. And then once I have the awareness and the intention, then the next thing that pops up is the mind shift. That's when mind shifting really takes place. Once you have those two in place, the shifting of the gears of the mind almost become second nature. But at the same time, you start to see the direction you're going. The mind will always kick back and Want to pop up the fear model and try to get you to not continue the pace up that hill or through that reps with, in the gym with your weights in building the the physical structure, that's all we're doing. With the mental mind shift is we're using the trauma and the tribulation as a way of shifting the mind through the reps of your trauma. And once that cycle starts to hit and you start to repeat it over and over and over, and you have these conversations with yourself, a funny thing starts to happen before, you know, it, your new patterns begin to evolve. Your new thought process begin to manifest and you start to reap the reward of the seeds of faith that you planted. It worked for me with my injury. It worked with me for my son and how it worked most powerfully with my son was this. I was justified in my anger and resentment. I was justified to hold on to that because by God, the guy killed my son. So I'm justified to be angry about that and what parent wouldn't?

Angelo Santiago: Right. 

Rick Cheatham: But when that anger and that bitterness manifest itself so strong you are down a track that is so dark that if you don't make the shift, you will destroy not only your life, but the lives of your family, of the relationships you love the most, your career, your business, and all your hopes and dreams go down the toilet. So what I had to realize is that I had to find out how I could literally get to a place where I could relieve myself of that pain and that suffering. And it came to me in the form of Nick. He said, what happens to the snake after it bites you, Rick? What, what happens to it? I said, I don't know. I probably going to kill that damn thing. He says, and if it gets away, the snake's gone, right? But what's left behind? I said, the venom. And he said, so what is it that kills you?

Is it the snake or the venom? And I said, I guess it's the venom. He says, that's right. The snake's gone. What the snake leaves behind is the venom. And the venom. That your snake left behind you is anger, resentment, bitterness, rage, hostility, righteous indignation hatred, and justifying those negative belief systems or those negative emotions will spiral you into more of the very things that you see coming up. And he said, so here's the deal for you to be

able to remove the venom, you have to be able to forgive the snake. The snake is doing what snakes do. They don't know any difference. So in forgiving the unforgivable, this, these words came to my mind was the words of Jesus Christ as he hung on a cross after being lied about, after being betrayed, after being spit upon, after being whipped with a three strand whipping, Cord that was embedded with bone chips and rock to slice open the backside of its victim. Mocked and ridiculed as a king, hung on a tree on a cross, nailed at his feet and his hands to be ridiculed and mocked as a king. And his last words to them were, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do." I thought, man. Is that the journey of faith? Is the journey of faith learning to forgive the unforgivable like Jesus demonstrated? Is learning to walk a life worthy of light mean that you have to forgive people that do heinous things like Kill your son. And at that moment I had, I made the decision. I not only had to forgive him, but I had to forgive myself for allowing me to get to a place that almost took my life away from my family. Because of that rage and that anger almost destroyed my family again. And so here's the question I pose to every man today. What snake in your life, Do you need to forgive so that you can remove the poison that's destroying your relationship, the poison that's destroying your home, the poison that's destroying your reputation, the poison that's destroying your ability to move forward? And not be stuck. What is that snake? And if it has a name, give it the name and make the mind shift to becoming aware, having the intention and shifting the mind so that you can be the best, best version of you. So that not only do you save yourself, but you change the entire legacy of your lineage. forever. . And when we can shift to that degree, we find not only value in, in overcoming our situation, but we also, we also shift gears into finding what our purpose is. And when we find our purpose and the value we bring to the table through the gifts. We received through the trauma. We can change the lives of countless people and men can learn to do this. When they learn to understand that they are leaders, and leaders lead by example.

Angelo Santiago: Let me just say, first of all, thank you for sharing all that. Typically when I have people here on the podcast, we're just kind of like going back and forth and having a conversation, but I'm just listening to your story. And I'm like, you know, you got something here to share.

And sometimes one of the biggest gifts that I can give myself is to just listen. Is that there's nothing that I need to add here. This is just something for me to receive something for me to pay attention to to open up my heart to what it is that you're sharing and then get to reflect on the question that you're posing.

You know, the question I can ask myself that you pose to, to the listeners here and to those watching is what is that snake that needs to be forgiven? So that the venom can be released. And I think that's really beautiful imagery. I can relate to a lot of that and use different words for the same thing, but it's like, what is that thing that we're carrying?

We're holding onto that needs to be let go. And, and that process, there's many different processes. I love the way that you bring that, that aim process and just a reminder, right? Like you said, behind every curse, there's a blessing behind every challenge. There's a gift. 

And back to where we started this conversation is yes, these are a way for you to face those things, to find forgiveness, to, to release yourself of the venom of the weight that you're carrying.

And you don't have to do it alone because men so often feel the need to like, Oh, I got myself into this mess. I got to get myself out. And that's not true. You know, 

that's just another mindset shift that needs to happen. So


Conclusion and Final Thoughts
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Angelo Santiago: with that being said, we're coming here to the close of our time together here, Rick.

But if, if men are curious, if they're listening and they want to know a little bit more about you, about maybe some other places where you are speaking or some of the coaching that you do and this, this aim model that you created, how can they connect with you? Where do you want to send them? If they want to ask you some questions.

Rick Cheatham: Get ahold of me. I can be reached through my email, which is rkconsulting292@gmail.com com . And I can be found and followed on Instagram and Facebook. I think you've got the links on your, on your, your podcast. Probably better for them to hear it from you than me. Cause half the time I don't even know how to operate Instagram and Facebook,

Angelo Santiago: got it, Rick. I'll, I'll take care of you.

Rick Cheatham: for the folks out there right now, I just want you to know, no matter what you're going through, no matter what the challenge is, no matter what the condition of your home is in or your business or your own mental health, there are options and there is hope, but in order to get there, we have to saddle up with people who's already done it before. Like my mentor told me, he said, you can see the chartered course in the navigation on the sea. If you have never charted that course before, you're going to need someone to lead you through that minefield. And he said, that's my job for you with you is I'm here to lead you through the minefield because you don't know how to do it yet by yourself.

And as a mentor and as a coach, that's my primary focus is to help you navigate by not telling you what to do, but by giving you the opportunity to ask the right questions so that you can find your own way. All I am is a resource. So reach out to me if you need me. That's my offer. 

Angelo Santiago: Rick. Yeah. I'll have all those links in the show notes for you to email or connect with Rick on social media. And the reality, Rick, let me just say this from, from my heart to yours. It's like, I don't care if you've been doing this for two months, one year, 10 years. I can feel the passion that you have behind this.

I can feel the purpose that you have for yourself in this. And I know that the level of support that somebody can get from another Human being that has that level of devotion to this mission. So, you keep going. I'm, I'm glad that. You came here on the podcast because I'm, I'm rooting for you. I want people to hear more of your story and connect with you. And Rick, before we check out of here, I just want to say thank you once again for being here. Thank you everybody for listening. I'd love to invite you Rick into a little bit of a visualization 

to just let a couple last words come out through you for the audience and for yourself too.

So if you're open to it, I invite you to take a nice deep breath and close down your eyes. And I invite you to see yourself on an open field. Thousands of men are with you, and you are about to address the world. You begin to speak, and I want you to finish this sentence. We are the men who .

Rick Cheatham: Lead our families out of hell.

Angelo Santiago: Thank you, Rick. We are the men who lead our families out of hell. Thank you, Rick, for being here. Thank you for listening and watching. We are the men. Please take a moment, like I said, to rate the podcast wherever you're listening or hit that subscribe button on YouTube to help us reach more listeners.

All of us know men who could benefit from hearing these conversations. I'm Angelo Santiago, and we are the men.

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