Make Your Dreams Come True!

Good morning. Happy Friday. I've got my fuzzy little buddy here. Everyone should be pretty content with their respective couch positions and bones. I hope everybody had a great week. I'm gonna see if anybody jumps in here, and I will get started. Lots of notes today. No, I didn't, like, write a book for my live stream today. Good morning, junk food junkie. How are you? Okay. Yay. We are live. It's Friday. I'm only, like, a half a mug of coffee in, but I'm still gonna bring the heat. If you tuned in last week, which I know you did, junk food junkie, I was auditioning for national anthem appearance at a pro sporting event.

I just want to give you an update. No word yet. No phone call, no email, no word. And I heard from my dog sitter yesterday. A friend of hers also auditioned. Good morning, Chris. And has also not heard back. So they must be going through, like, video submissions. And who knows how many people auditioned to do this, and they only have a certain amount of spring training games. So I don't know. I may or may not get chosen, but either way, I just wanted to update you guys. Whatever happens is great.

I still loved the experience of auditioning. It was great to be, like, on a real microphone and not my living room, like, wireless karaoke mic and down on the baseball field. Like, I got the feeling of it, even if I don't get chosen. So one more opportunity for you to go after your big dreams. This idea that, like, if something crosses your path, like, there's no reason why you shouldn't just go out and try it. Okay. So today, that was just a little anecdote about last week. Okay. My nurse did not get the best of me.

Thank you, junk food junkie, by the way. I actually did a good job. I think it was really sweet. One of the moms who was in the stands, who was there to support her son, who was doing a guitar rendition of the anthem, everybody seemed to have somebody with them to, like, videotape them or whatever, and I'm just, like, rolling in, you know, just me. Hi. And she totally videoed it, my audition for me, and took some photos without telling me she was gonna do that. I'm glad she didn't tell me because I would have been, I think, like, more nervous to know somebody was videoing it.

And she's like, let me send this to you. You did such a great job. We were so impressed. I was the first one to audition, too, by the way. First one. They were like, okay, they got all these papers we'll start with Risa. I was like, um, why me? That was just, like, the universe going. Well, you chose to be here anyway. What's up, Luke? So, anyway, no word yet on the national anthem. I will keep you guys posted, and, yeah, all the things. So today, we're gonna keep it short and sweet, and I always say that, and I promise we will, but I was thinking about what I wanted to talk about today, and usually I get a pretty fierce download about what I want to talk about.

And I've actually had a crazy busy week with work. It's just been, like, client after client, which I haven't had a lot of in person clients in a while. I'm already feeling like, just sort of like a new energy for 2024. And I hermited a lot last year. I kind of stayed home. I got the puppy. I felt like I needed to sort of do an audit of my life, do an audit of my friends, do an audit of work, clients, all the things. And I had a really quiet year. I didn't go to another country like Taylor Swift for a year and then re emerge with an album.

However, I did get really quiet with myself, and I did do a lot of thinking, and I told myself that no more hermiting for an entire year and saying no to everything, 2024 is going to be a different year. And turning the page from 23 to 24 and just feeling like, okay, I don't want to stay small. I don't want to stay quiet. I don't want to stay home as much. And just kind of getting into that mindset and really working toward manifesting it has already been fruitful for me. And so my conversation with you today is kind of related to that, but it's about.

I want to talk to you about the importance for me, and this may not mean anything to you, but when we're here and when I'm talking with you and we're having a conversation around making your big dreams come true, I like to share what works for me and see if it can't spark something inside of you. So, for me, the reason I showed you all those notebooks when we first hopped on here and journals is because, for me, one of the biggest things that has proven to work is writing things down. Down. It's whiteboarding.

It's doing to do lists. It's journaling. It's doing notes in my iPhone. It's using a calendar. It's writing down my goals. It's writing a letter to myself every year that I open the following year, just to see what my progress has been. To be able to look back and see what you were thinking, feeling, and doing at any point in time gives you a reference point for where you're at today. And I personally have been writing. I love to write. Anyone who's really close with me knows that they come to me for any edits and revisions or copywriting.

But writing is a stress reliever for me. It's a way that I get, like, everything out onto paper. I would say I'm a better writer than I am speaker, and so it helps me sort of formulate my speaking brain. I think I might have a little undiagnosed ADHD, and sometimes my brain works a lot faster than, like, my mouth. I don't know, and I can't really think of the right words. But when I'm writing something down, I'm wittier, I'm funnier, I'm more thoughtful, and I'm just, like, a little bit more creative, I guess.

So I wanted to pull out a journal page that I found from April of 2002 and just share. This is really personal, you guys, but that's how we. That's how we roll here at Cadre. I wanted to share this, like, one little snippet, and I want to encourage you to practice writing all your thoughts, your feelings, your goals, your dreams, most importantly here, because that's what we always talk about down on paper. But this was so a little backstory, if you don't know. I was in a car accident in 1999, and I kept this journal, this little chunky notebook.

I started it in 99, and then I continued to do notes about my surgeries that I had from 1999 to 2002. So I would take notes and say things like, me in a nutshell. Oh, my gosh. Funny. This was April 12, 2002, and the page that I'm gonna read you is 410 o two from a completely different journal. That's so weird. And the difference in how I was feeling was pretty crazy, but it would, you know, I would just write down, like, how I was feeling, you know, if I was feeling unorganized, not fulfilled, like, things that I would write down.

But I look back, and I can't believe I thought I almost lost this. And imagine four years of, like, keeping notes. And this isn't every day for four years. This is just, like, poignant times around the times of surgeries and just the feelings that I was having of depression and anxiety around. Would my face ever look normal? And would people ever look at me without seeing a huge scar on my face? Imagine like, losing that train of thought and, like, not having it. But imagine being able to look back and read how far I've come and how scared I was and how I thought I looked and all of the feelings that I was having, being able to look back and say, I really overcame.

I did it. I proved to myself that I can come out on the other side. So, anyway, this little excerpt I just found, and it's literally like a single page from, like, the start of another journal. Um, let's see. I don't necessarily know where I've been in life or what road I'll be going down from here on out, but slowly I'm figuring out me. I'm putting the pieces together, and I know I'm going on to do wonderful things. Somewhere inside me is a spirit that keeps me going and pushes me to do more, not just for myself, but for others.

I know this is only the beginning of a long and glorious journey for me. And, like, I think about everything that I had gone through. My car accident was in 99, and I had my last surgery in 2002, so probably shortly after this. But I think I was starting to feel these feelings of, like, I'm gonna do big things. And a lot of times in my entrepreneurial journey, people will say to me, like, did you always know you were gonna be a wardrobe stylist, or did you always know you wanted to do x, y, and z?

And it's, the answer is, like, no, I didn't. But I think when I look back and read that, even back in, like, 2002, in the hardest times of my life, that I knew that I was gonna make an impact on people. And I believed in myself enough to write it down and to say, like, I'm gonna come out on the other side of this. Like, I'm so proud of myself when I go back and I read that, like, because if you look at the other things in this journal and you read how I was feeling and what I had to go through, I even saved, like, the surgical notes from, like, post op procedures and things that, like, the directions on how to take care of my scar and the things that I had to go through were, like, you know, vinegar and water soaks every 2 hours.

I had to set an alarm to wake up, to treat a third degree burn, which is essentially what they did on my face, so I could grow new skin and treat it with vinegar on an open wound, on basically a third degree burn every 2 hours for, like, two weeks. The things that I was going through were really painful. So I think this message here today is just a reminder that, like, when you write things DOwn and when you are feeling away, like, it helps you to express, but it also gives you a reference point for how far you've come.

And, you know, keeping track of your journey, I think, is important because in those times where maybe we're feeling really weak, we can look back at some of the things that we said to ourself years ago that will help us feel strong in that moment. And then if you're feeling, you know, really strong, you can think back and look back and say, you know, my little girl self or my little boy self or my childhood self has come such a long way. And I just feel so grateful for my own words because I use them now as an adult all the time.

I save thank you cards from people. I saved the last handwritten letter that my grandfather wrote to me while he was really sick and dying from cancer. And I had written him a card, and he wrote me back in response. And I just love these handwritten letters. They're so special. So if you don't hand write to people, now is your sign to start doing that. So, anyway, I want to just read what jungfu Junkie said. I find when I can't write something down, I make a voice memo on my phone, so I have that idea or thought to write down later.

That's so great. We're so lucky. We have technology today. I'm such a, like, early millennial, and I. I want to write everything down, like, in my handwriting, like, get it out on paper. But, of course, I use my phone all the time, and we're so lucky that we have that. So, anyway, all of this to say, and I hope this message came across clearly, because my mind is all over the place. But the point of this is to say, like, capture your journey. Write down your goals every year. I know that Luke talks about goals all the time on here and with his team at Cadre, and there's a reason for that.

We need to track our progress so we can celebrate where we're at right now. And also, remember that you always come out on the other side of your hardest days, because you're here today. So whatever your hardest days have been or whatever they're going to be, you will survive it. I promise you, you will come out on the other side. And if you can track your progress and give yourself something to, like, look at and say, hey, I made it through that. Like, what a great way to celebrate yourself, because at the end of the day, you are your own biggest cheerleader.

You are your own biggest advocate. You are responsible for surviving and getting out on the other side and overcoming and cheering yourself on. And it's you. You have yourself for the rest of your journey. So if you can capture your thoughts, like what a gift to your future self. So I will leave it at that. And I hope that this resonates. Dempsey says hi. You want to say hi? Yes. See, I'm such an old man. Look at this face. Who doesn't want puppy snugs? If anyone wants puppy snuggles, come on over to Phoenix.

We're here waiting. Lots of kissies for you. Lots of loveies. Everything in life isn't roses. Just sometimes the orchids are just as great. Ooh, junk food junkie. I love it. Put it in the community feed. I love you guys. Happy weekend. I'll keep you posted in the community feed if I hear anything back about the national anthem. Thank you for cheering me on. Thank you for creating the safe space for me to literally share pages from my journal. I'm not going and doing that necessarily on Instagram or Facebook or even with my closest friends friend group.

Like, there's something really special about this platform that allows me to be my most vulnerable self. And what a gift that is. So anyway, I love you all. Happy weekend. Talk to you soon.