"What does happiness mean to you? Think about satisfaction. Where am I? Maybe you're close, but what would make it the ultimate? That's where your dreams are."

In this episode of Lead with Culture, Michele Marquis, a senior executive coach and certified Dream Manager from Floyd Consulting, explores why dreams are so crucial for personal growth. Michele teaches us how to reignite the dreams that life’s demands may have dimmed. We also answer questions that unlock the dreams we didn't know we had and discuss the power of collective input.

In this episode, you’ll discover:

• The importance of recognizing and challenging limiting beliefs
• The value of dreaming big and creating a roadmap for achieving those dreams
• How to dig deeper into what truly makes you happy and fulfilled

Things to listen for:

(00:00) How to build your legacy with dreams

(01:48) The importance of having dreams and encouraging others to dream

(04:20) Thought-provoking questions for identifying dreams

(06:30) How to address limiting beliefs and pursue happiness

(17:08) Examples of dream starter questions

(26:54) The importance of accountability in achieving dreams

Resources:

• Floyd Coaching
• The Culture Assessment
• Matthew Kelly’s Books
• Floyd Coaching’s Blog

Connect with the Host & Floyd Coaching:

• Kate Volman’s Linkedin
• Floyd Coaching on Linkedin
• Floyd Consulting on Facebook
• Floyd Consulting on Twitter
• Floyd Consulting on YouTube
• Floyd Consulting on Instagram

Legacy is now. Your legacy is not. When you die, you're building your legacy every day. Live your life intentionally with some of these dreams. Put your dreams out there.

This is Lead With Culture. I'm Kate Volman, and on this episode, we are talking about how to start dreaming again. It's going to be a very inspiring episode. I'm very excited because I'm joined by Michele Marquis, who is one of our senior executive coaches. Michele, this is such a great topic.

Yes. And Dream Manager. I am a Dream Manager also.

And certified Dream Manager.

That's right.

She has all the certifications needed to help people dream again.

And even if they're not doing Dream Manager coaching, we have fourth quarter coaching, other coaching. Dreams always come up.

No matter what, dreams always come up because that's what we are working towards and we know that. And we wanted to do this episode because obviously we are an organization that we are talking about the dreams of the people that we work with. Right. I mean, that's really how conversations start, is tell us about your dreams. What dreams do you have for your life personally and professionally over the next 1212 months? And then that's really so much of what we do with any type of our coaching is we're focusing on those dreams. And sometimes when we ask people about their dreams, we kind of get these, like, wide eyed, oh, I'm not sure. And sometimes people even say, I don't actually really have any dreams. And we kind of laugh because we know that's not true.

And so we challenged them a little bit. And so I thought, hey, let's do this podcast because it's a good reminder on reconnecting with your dreams. And we all have, we all have dreams, but, you know, so often we forget about them or things, life gets in the way and we stop dreaming. So.

Yes.

And Michele, you were just telling me about one of your girlfriends, and I think this is very relatable because a lot of the people that we work with, they have kids that for most of their life, they've been focusing on their children. So tell us a little bit about your friend that was kind of dealing with exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah, she's in a big transition time of her life. Her daughter, just only child just went off to college. Her husband retired. She owns her own business. And when I started asking her some of the questions, right. So it kind of helps her. Like, I'm going to call them prompts, like, I'll call them prompt questions to help her start thinking, because she, when I said so what are some of your dreams? She didn't know what to say. She was like, oh, I've been dreaming for everybody else, not so much myself.

So it was a great process for her to go through. And what was interesting was, and one of the things I was going to talk about was, you know, get a partner. If you can get a partner to do this with, it really helps you to dig a little deeper because I didn't get her. I didn't let her get away with, well, I don't have one on that one. You ask another question, go a little deeper. And then sometimes she even went back. She goes, oh, I know what my dream car is. You know what I mean? Like, she didn't have it right away.

But as you start to go through this process and start really asking yourself what matters most to me, what's really important in this time of my life? Because again, she's getting older, right? She's heading toward the fourth quarter of her life. So what does she want to be more intentional about over the next five years? Ten years? So it's really looking, when I talk about dreams with people and they say, I don't have any, I say, okay, well, where do you want to be in five years? How do you want your life to be different five years from now? That seems to unlock something with people, right? They get out of the present or the short term and start to think, well, in five years, I want to retire, I want to pay off my mortgage, I want, blah, blah, blah. Then all of a sudden, it opens up a little bit. It's really all about looking at what's most important to you, what are all those possibilities? But also looking at the long view, like, five years from now, ten years from now, where do you want to be? And then looking at all the different aspects of your life.

And I love that question because it really does kind of pull us out of that day to day. It reminds me of one of our favorite Matthew Kelly quotes, which is we overestimate how much we can achieve in a week or a month, and we underestimate what we can accomplish in a decade or in a lifetime. And I think it's so easy for us to do that. Cause we're so day to day, we have to get things done, and then all of a sudden we're like, oh, my gosh, how did a year already fly by? We have to be really intentional. And we do this with the Dream Manager program, right? We have those immediate short term goals and then that three year dream, and then we talk about that five year dream, and it gets you. Okay. We actually. There's a lot that we can do to support those dreams and questions obviously change lives.

We love a good question over here. We have. We love collecting great questions. And so we wanted to ask a couple of different questions to kind of get you in that dreaming mindset. And also, we'll throw out some dream starter questions towards the end of this episode to kind of help you create that list of 100 dreams that we encourage people to create. And even if you're listening and you're like, I'm a Dream Manager, or, I've already done this, I'm telling you, it's crazy. Every time we do a dream sermon, we've done a lot of dream storms. Every time there's something else that gets unlocked, there's something else that I think, oh, you know what? I can't believe this isn't on my list.

Or, you know, you've met new people, you've read different books, you've listened to more podcasts, you're expanding your knowledge, and so you're thinking, oh, I never thought that maybe I would want to go visit New Zealand or whatever.

Yeah. So that was my second thing is make sure you're asking people what their dreams are, because you will find some that you never thought of. Yeah, that was the second most important thing, because when I'm coaching someone and I start to share, well, this. This is what other people have put down as a dream under a certain category, and they're like, oh, I like that. Or they use that again as a prompt to remind them, oh, yeah, I do want it. I want to do this. But it helped them to really dig deeper and think about what they wanted.

Let's dig into life changing questions. We love a good life changing question.

Okay, awesome. And this can be found in do what you love. The first one, which I love, is what beliefs are holding you back from pursuing the life that you want. I feel like it's number one for a reason. Right. Because that is really the block for so many people. Oh, I can't do that. I've never been creative.

I'm not really good at that. But that's. Those are some of those limited beliefs that we have in our head, and we picked them up along the way somewhere, because if you look back as a child, right. You didn't even have those kind of beliefs. You just did it. You weren't even thinking about it. You just had that instantaneous passion. Love of life.

It's getting that a little bit back, like, spark that back in yourself and really be honest and look at what are those beliefs that are really holding you back right now?

Yeah, it's so interesting how that plays out. I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day, and I said, you know, cliches are cliches for a reason, because you know that. What's that phrase? Ignorance is bliss. It's almost like when you're in your twenties, it's almost like you're a little naive to the world. And so you, I mean, when you're a kid, obviously, it's even more. You just get out there and do anything. But even when you're in your twenties and you're kind of starting your career and your life, it's you. You're a little naive to, like, the fact of what life can actually be, all the twists and turns.

And so, at least for me, I found that in my twenties, I was just, like, full force with anything and everything. I had an idea. I didn't think about it. I was like, oh, idea done. Let's do it. Idea done, let's do it. And then all of a sudden, you get some, you know, some failures along the way and some criticism and critics and all the things that happen. And now, obviously, today was social media and so many other things that kind of stop us from pursuing some of that creative work that we want to pursue.

It's just become a little bit harder. We think through things a little bit more. We want to be almost too strategic sometimes instead of just, hey, I'm just going to go after it. I'm just going to try this. So it's worth, it's worth considering. Like, what are those things that are holding you back and not just identifying them, but really coming up with a plan? How am I going to get over this? You know, how am I really going to get over this sense of if it doesn't work or people are going to criticize me or what if I fail or all these things, it's. Does it really matter? No.

Yeah, I remember this comes up a lot when people are looking for another career, right? So maybe they're looking for their encore career or they've been in this industry forever. Well, I can't go to another industry. I don't have any experience. Why do you believe that? So anyway, I've done that so many times with people, and 100% of the time, they can't believe that they ended up getting what they wanted again. They had their own limited beliefs, and they just couldn't break through it. And I love what you said. Like, what's the worst that can happen? You don't get called for an interview, but you just start putting it out there. And you design your resume for the job that you want, not the one you had.

So, yeah, this is a big one. This is a big one. Let's do a couple others. So what truly makes you happy? I feel like that's another big question to ask yourself. Like, how satisfied are you in your life? And look at all the different areas of your life, not how happy you are, but think about what does happy mean to you? Like, satisfaction. Like, where am I? Like, maybe you're close, but what would make it the ultimate? That's where your dreams are. Your dreams are right there. Because, again, I talk to a lot of people and they're like, I don't have any dreams.

And if I have a dream, I just make it happen and I do this. And that's where I really push people. Well, what else? What else is it that you're really after? And if it's ten years from now, what do you want to be saying about your life over the last ten years? So getting them back into that? Okay. Yeah. So I need to do things right now to really influence where I'm going.

It's such a great question to consider, especially when you are in a place like that person. Because when everything is good and you're feeling like, oh, you know, a lot of us are kind of complacent when it comes to where we are, right? We have a job. We in, like, we're fine. We're. It's fine.

It's fine.

Everything's fine, you know? And so when everything's fine and your back's not up against the wall, you're not dealing with anything horrible. It's. It's. It's why people stay in jobs they don't really like and relationships that aren't very fulfilling. And because we're scared of what's actually on the other side, and we're like, ah, it's fine, which is fine. However, when we really think about what truly makes us happy, and you question, and when you have someone like Michele challenging you, what would make you really, truly happy? And there might be some things that you can do immediately that would enhance your life in a really big way, and it wouldn't even take that much extra work. Like, that's what I feel like is so interesting with some people's dreams, is almost, almost all the time. We recognize in our clients that they'll say I've been talking about, like, I, we were working with someone and she had wanting to buy this new car for like years and years and years.

She never let herself do it. And she like, finally put a plan together to save up the money to figure it out. And within, like six months, she had her new car. She's like, I've been talking about it for like five years, and I finally put the plan in place and now she is just rolling along in her new car and she can't believe that it took so long. So it's the same thing. And within any dream that you want to do, it's like, I feel like people don't give themselves enough credit for what they are capable of. So when you give yourself permission and you actually start to consider what your life could look like, how it could be better, what that future really could hold for you, oh, then there's no stopping you when you really believe that's right.

And once you start doing that, it's amazing how many more dreams that you end up having and get really excited about it. Because if you can get one done, just one, then you really, again, those limited beliefs go away. You gain that confidence to know that, no, I can do this. I do have the power of doing this, and I'm capable of getting it done. Yeah, absolutely. Want to do one more?

Yeah.

Okay. In what ways have you settled for mediocrity? And that's sort of what you were just saying, Kate, right? It's okay. This is okay. I'm good. I just want to plug one more time this 24 regrets of dying people that Matthew has out there in video. That's another really powerful video to get you dreaming because you don't want to be saying that when it's the end. Right? And it just goes through all of those areas of your life and gives you some really good food for thought about your life. So when you listen to it, get your own ideas together, but then rewrite your story right now.

Like, do it right now because you can. You have all those choices that you get to make. But if you don't have your dreams written out and you're really focused on them, no one's going to make your dreams happen for you.

It's so interesting, too, because they say the same thing, right? Like, the people that they're interviewing, they say the same thing. And it's a. They're saying that for a reason, because these are all of our biggest fears and doubts and reasons, excuses that we make for not pursuing our dreams. And it's so interesting when they talk about how I think one of them is around. I wish that I lived for me like, I wish I lived for myself and not for my parents, my kids, my spouse, you know, just truly for, for you. And listening. And that means listening to your dreams.

Yeah.

Matthew puts it beautifully. Your dreams are your dreams for a reason. They're inside of you. They're not going away. This is why they're in you. And we kind of can maybe push them down and try to avoid them or make excuses as to why we shouldn't pursue them, but they, they, they never really leave. And it's almost like I look at it as, hey, listen to it. It's been a couple of years.

Yeah, you, you just got to go after it. I mean, and then if the worst thing is it doesn't work, well, the cool thing about it is it's going to lead you somewhere. Because I really believe that some of our dreams aren't actually not meant to come true. They're actually just meant to lead us in a different direction. But had we not had that dream, we never would have gotten to where we are today. And that is a beautiful thing. And we, we hear stories like that every single day. We've got to pursue those things that are in our heart.

Those dreams that are in our heart, they're there. They're meant to guide us. You know, Matthew has another video where he talks about dissatisfaction and how dissatisfaction is actually good.

Good.

You feel dissatisfied. Good. There's a reason why it's showing you something.

That's right.

That's such a great example for everyone listening. They're like, all right, we get it. We should go after our dream. All right, we get it. We get it. We love it. We need to pursue something, but we hope that, that this is inspiring you in some way, because, look, we, at Floyd, we, we joke about the fact that this is what we do for a living.

Right?

So we talk about dreams every single day. This is not what everyone's thinking about every day. This is not what everyone's talking about all the time. Not everyone is immersed in personal development like this and just talking about through their dreams with their families, their friends and I, their colleagues. And so it's just a reminder to continue to dream. And we encourage people to create that list of 100 dreams. And a lot of people give us some pushback because it is a lot of dreams. It's 100 dreams.

It is a lot. We're not. That's what it is. But we're here to push up, push ourselves. We're here to strengthen that dream muscle. And so we wanted to leave you with a couple of our dream starter questions to start kicking you off into creating the list of hundred dreams. And if you already have a listen, hey, this is your opportunity to add on to that list, because even if you have 100, get to 200, get to 300, just keep on adding it to the list.

Absolutely. I want to add also that by going through this with someone else, I always learned something about that person. Now, my friend that I was with this weekend, I've known her for 25 years. 25 years. And I was like, you want to learn Spanish? I never knew that, that you wanted to do that. I mean, she was naming things, and I was like, wow. I got to know her in a totally different way.

Wow.

So I encouraged also encourage people to talk about this with people, even your children, asking your children, what are their dreams? You'll be amazed at what comes out of their mouth. The first starter question, if you could travel to any five places in the world, where would you travel? Do you want to know what the number one number, the number one answer is?

Is it Italy?

Yes.

Is it?

Yeah.

Everyone wants to go to Italy.

Isn't that awesome?

Yeah, maybe it's like an e pray love thing. Elizabeth Gilbert really just shone the light on Italy. Yes.

Yeah. And some people, it's funny because some people just rattle off five, and some people like, I'm really kind of a homebody anyway, so we talk about, well, how about in the United States? Is there any place you always wanted to go? And so another one is actually falls under another category, but it's visit all of the national parks in the United States.

Yeah, that's a good one.

That's in the top five for sure. African safari is a lot of times that shows up. In fact, I have one client who, it was her five year dream, and she is booked, paid, ready to go, July 2025.

Oh, that's amazing.

Yeah, yeah. What concert, show or performance would you like to experience from the front row? So this is a lot of different answers for this one, but it is usually music. It's a musical. It's usually a performer.

Yeah.

You know, like Bocelli. Someone wants to see Bocelli. Garth Brooks. Just had Garth Brooks come up pink. Actually, my sister, that was her big dream, and she went last week.

Oh, I heard. I hear her shows are amazing.

Yep. Front row. She went by herself. She colored her hair pink. Oh, yeah.

I love that.

She said to me, thank you so much for encouraging that dream because she goes, I never would have done this.

I love it.

She had it on her heart. Really wanted to make it happen.

So that was really, that's awesome.

What aspect of your physical health would you like to improve?

That's always a good one because we have a lot of, a lot of our dreamers have a, have a dream of getting more fit, more mobile, wanting to be stronger.

Yeah. Number one is I want to lose weight.

Yes.

Then we have to get into the conversation, how much weight and why? Why do you want to lose weight? And so we have this whole, oh, this one's a really good one. But it's so important, right. Because as we get older, when you start looking five years from now, ten years from now, what you're doing right now in the physical sense is definitely going to impact that.

Yeah.

So this is a big one, but usually, usually it's weight. I should actually add up all the weight that my clients have lost. I bet thousands. I bet it's thousands of pounds.

That's another example of when you actually write it down and you have some support holding you accountable. It's people that have been trying to lose weight for years and years, and all of a sudden they are on a good plan. They have a dream. Right? Like, it's one thing to just say, I want to lose weight, but when you have that dream in place and you know the why behind it and you have that encouragement that you need, it's almost like, I mean, how many times do your clients show up and they say, the only reason I didn't eat this is because I didn't want to tell you on the call that I ate. Like, I, you know, I was, I stuck to my diet because, or I went to the gym four times this week because I told you I would. I didn't want to, but. And it's wild. And then all of a sudden, 3612 months go by and they're like, wow.

And the transformations are incredible. Incredible.

Absolutely. And at every age, every age group that I've coached, and sometimes you have false starts, right. They'll be like, oh, I did really good. And then the next session I said, while I cheated and I did this, it's okay. Let's get back at it.

And that's right.

It's the combination, right. It's the exercise and the diet. So anyway, okay, so I hope everybody's got something on their list right now. What's one relationship you would like to improve? Everybody has one. I thought one of the most unique was with myself.

So what's interesting about that is every time we do a dream storm in a group, that is the first thing that comes up. Every time. So we do. We do that fun little exercise where people can text in their answers. It shows up on the screen, and almost every time, myself is the first answer.

Yeah, well, that's smart, right?

It's.

It's smart with you.

And I just think it's beautiful that that's the answer that so many people put because, you know, I think people are really hard on themselves. People are mean to this.

Yeah.

Like, who needs critics when you have your own inner thoughts?

That's right. I always used to say that nobody could be harder on me than me.

Seriously. People were. I mean, people are really hard on themselves. And. And it's another reason why I think coaching is so great, because you have that person that's reminding you of the good that you do, of the success that you've had. Because we're so kind of wired to talk about what I didn't do right this week, what I didn't get right. This wasn't good enough. I need to do better, whatever it is.

And so to have that is really important. So I love that.

Awesome. Okay, what skill or ability would you like to possess? So some of them are musical instruments. Like, I wanted to learn the skill, like an ability to, like, play the piano. So a lot of that comes up with that question. Some of them are more professional. Right. Like, I want to be a better decision maker. I want to be more of a risk taker.

If you didn't have any fear, which activity would you try? What do you think the number one?

Is it skydiving.

Skydiving. So I always say this. So if I said, okay, I'm picking you up tomorrow, and you don't have any fear, we're going to go. Would you go? And I said, no, I'll never not have that fear.

All right, what's one more? We'll end with one more.

Oh, boy. They're both so good. I have two.

Okay, all right, we can do two more. Two more.

Quick, what character trait would you most like to develop in yourself?

Ooh, let's see. Is the top one patients.

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Everyone wants to get help. Everyone needs help with patient.

I say 80%. Say patience. 80%. Like, what makes us so impatient as people?

Ah, well, it's gotten worse because we're just like, we get everything now. Push of a button.

Yeah. Yeah, it's big. All right, what qualities do you want others to remember you for. This is part of a legacy dream.

Yeah. What do people say for that?

Loving, loving, encouraging, kind, compassionate. But then when they do that, then I say, okay, on a scale one to five, what would you rate yourself right now? None of them ever say, you know, I'm fives in all of them. So then that starts the discussion of your legacy is now. Your legacy is not. When you die, you're building your legacy every day. So that's always a huge aha. Moment for people when we talk about that, because if you truly, you want to be remembered for these things, are you being kind? Are you being compassionate?

Yeah. You can't be remembered for things you're not actually practicing on a regular basis.

Yeah. So it's about being intentional. It's about really digging deep into what matters most to you. Live your life intentionally with some of these dreams. Put your dreams out there.

Start dreaming again. All right, awesome. Well, we hope that this episode has inspired you to put some dreams on your list and definitely to bring these dream starter questions back to your family and your colleagues, your friends. I love the idea of, you know, bringing some. Some friends together or going out to dinner and doing this with them, because, like, like you said, Michele, I love that we get to know more about everyone in our life simply by asking about their dreams. Plus, people are usually not having that conversation, so that already kind of shifts people's mood and they start thinking, oh, Michele's the kind of person that asks me about my dreams. I like that. So I want to be the kind of person that's asking someone else about their dreams, and then they can go back and tell their family, oh, my God.

Somebody today asked me, what's your dreams like? Who asks that?

They get so animated when they start to tell you if they have some dreams, that it's, like, unleashing this energy and passion in people. Those people, like, they like to talk about their dreams also.

Well, if you are thinking, okay, you're putting down your dreams, and maybe you have some dreams that you've had on your list for quite some time, and you haven't yet necessarily achieved some of those things, you have everything that you need to achieve everything that's on your dream list. And so we want to support you in that. Accountability is such a big. It's such a big reason why people don't actually follow through on their dreams.

Right.

It's like, it's crazy. We are so good about if we make promises to other people, we don't want to break them. And yet when we make promises to ourselves, we break them all the time as if it's no big thing. You know, we have something on the calendar that's important to our friend. We're going to go, if we have something on the calendar that's important to us, I'll get to it later. And we take it off the calendar. So we've got to be intentional. That's the key word.

The key word today is intentional, intentional dreaming. And so we want to be able to support you in that way. So if you're thinking that life coaching, our Dream Manager program or our fourth quarter coaching, really all the coaching that we do supports our clients with their dreams and we want to do that for you. So if you're, if you're curious at all what coaching would look like, then please go to floydcoaching.com and fill out that form. We're going to talk, you're going to talk to someone on our team about what that looks like for you. If you wrote down some of the dreams from these dream starter questions on that call, we can talk through what some of those are and what we would be able to do to support you in achieving those over the next twelve months, a year, three year, five years, whatever, whatever dream and you want to put in place. So we would love to chat with you. Go to floydcoaching.com Michele, thank you so much.

This was so awesome.

Thank you. Keep dreaming everybody. Let's go.

Keep dreaming everyone. And until next time, Lead With Culture.