Amateur Stand-Up Comedian

Hey, Cadre. Family doctor Carrie here. I know we're super intentional around goal setting, especially at a company like Cadre where we embody wellness. And just in general, as people who want to succeed in life, who want to be better every single day, whatever the case may be, goals are really important. And you might be the type of person that has a long list of goals. You might be the type of person like Luke on Cadre, who writes goals every single morning, reviews them every single night. Or you might be the person that just has some kind of vague goals about what you want to accomplish this year.

That's okay. Whatever it is that you do with goal setting, keep doing it. But I also want to invite you to try something. I want you to also make a bucket list. Now, you might be saying, okay, thought they were the same thing. So let me just explain. A bucket list item is something that is maybe outside of your career goals. Maybe it's outside of your family goals. Maybe it's just something like, I want to do this one time in my life. I want to go to that place. I want to experience this thing. Maybe it's an experience that you've always wanted to do.

It's a check off item. Most goals have multiple steps to accomplish them. Like, I want to get in shape. That has multiple steps that come with it. It means eating right. It means incorporating exercise into your daily routine. A lot of times, our goals can be so audacious, and they require so much intensity and effort, and, like, a long time length. Bucket list items can be that, but it's also something that eventually you get to check off. So this term bucket list actually came about before the movie was made.

But there was a movie made about this, about these two guys who ended up bonding because they found out they were dying, and they started checking off list items off their bucket list. So if you're thinking about bucket list items compared to goals, goals are things that are probably going to continue to evolve. Maybe you will. Then, you know, once you reach that goal, you'll make another goal in that same category. Maybe, you know, it's something that's just constantly a moving target for you. But a bucket list item is something that says, if I die tomorrow, this is what I want to accomplish.

This is what I want to check off. And having been through my own near death experience with trauma, I used to make my bucket list really intense. Like, I had a lot of things on this list because I've had this experience where I could be dead tomorrow. So I want to live each day as if it's my last. That doesn't mean that I go frivolously, spend money and just go, you know, throw caution to the wind and don't work and just go travel and do all the things. But I make a point of checking things off my bucket list on a regular basis because life is so short and there's so many people that when they get old, they're like, I wish I would have done that.

I wish I would've done that. Now I'm too old to do that. Now I'm, you know, it's too old to travel, whatever the case may be. So travel now. Do it now while you're young. And again, that doesn't mean throw caution to the wind and, you know, be irresponsible about it, but do the things, because you could die tomorrow. That's the whole point of a bucket list. And so I have checked off so many items on my bucket list in the last 1015 years. One of them was skydiving. I always wanted to go skydiving, and I thought it would just be, like, the thrill of a lifetime, let me tell you.

It was. And when I got there and signed up, I didn't realize that I could actually skydive solo on my first jump. There are some states that allow this. So I ended up doing it. My first jump was solo and, you know, took a four hour class, signed my life away, jumped out of the plane, and pulled my own chute and made it to the ground. And I'm still here to tell the story. That's the most miraculous part about this. But, like, that was always a goal. I had a bucket list item that I wanted to check off.

Now I could see myself becoming, like a regular skydiver. I love skydiving. It was super fun. But unfortunately, I have too many other hobbies and interests that have taken priority. But another bucket list item that I just recently started sharing with people, and now, here's the other piece of this, is you have to actually tell someone because they're going to help you hold accountable, just, like, goals. And you wanna put a date to it, because if you make your bucket list of things, like your wish list that you always wanna do, and you never actually visit it with a date, you'll never actually get it.

You'll never check it off. And so the latest one that I have, that I now recently started telling people, because this makes it real, this means I actually have to go do it, is I wanna do stand up comedy at, like, an open mic night. At a comedy club, and it's always been a bucket list item for me. I just didn't realize it was actually attainable until I started seeing that there's open mic nights at comedy clubs and, like, I can go do this and I'm gonna actually do that. So I'm telling everybody on the Cadre community that I'm gonna be doing this by the end of April 2023, and I will have to report back because now I have put this out on the Internet, on the newsfeed of the app of Cadre, and now I actually have to accomplish it because I'm nervous.

But it's just one of those things I've always wanted to try. And I might freeze and I might pee my pants. I don't know. But it just sounds like a really cool thing that I want to try. And it's been on my bucket list for a long time, but unfortunately, I never put a date to it, hence why it hasn't happened yet. So I want to invite you to try this. Make your bucket list, and you might want to think about these four categories. I actually read some research about bucket list items, and there's four main categories, travel, treasures, experiences, and accomplishments.

So when people write these things down, they are actually way more likely statistically to do them. And then when you tell someone about it and you put a date next to it, by this date, I'm going to have that accomplished. You're even more likely to actually do it, and I just want to invite you to try it because it says here 83% of people make their bucket list by themselves. That's fine. Make it by yourself. Maybe it is something you make with your spouse or your family, but it's okay to have your own bucket list item, but then you need to go tell someone about them, and you need to put a date by it, just like I did with this one.

So I want to invite you to try it. I know you're probably inundated with goals, and maybe it's, you know, your company, maybe it's your personal outlook on just starting the year off, but I want to invite you to also make that separate category for bucket list because it's so much fun when you go to plan your vacation for 2023. When you're like, come April, May, you're like, gosh, I could use another vacation. You know, like the holidays were a while ago, and you start to make your plans, maybe for a fall vacation.

If you've written down a bucket list item of somewhere you want to go, you are more likely to go review that list locations when you're planning a vacation and actually check it off than if you didn't write it down at all. So try it. Write down your bucket list, whatever that looks like for you, tell someone about it. Tell us here at Cadre, and we would love to see you guys. Just check this list off. It's going to be such a fun year together. God bless.