The Evolution Of A Dream

Dreams rarely stay the same—and that’s not failure, it’s growth. In this episode, we explore how our dreams shift as we move through different seasons of life. What we once wanted with certainty can soften, expand, or completely transform as we gain new experiences, face unexpected challenges, and discover deeper parts of ourselves. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:06

Hey, I'm Elena. And I'm Steph. And this is thanks. I needed that. A 12-minute conversation between friends to boost our moods and redirect our day.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Because otherwise, we'll just spin. So take a breath. You're with friends now. Hi. Hi. How are you? I'm great. It looks so sunny and cheerful in North Carolina.

SPEAKER_01 0:27

It is sunny and cheerful and covered in a layer of pollen. Everything is yellow.

SPEAKER_00 0:32

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

So everybody, yeah, everybody's walking around with like a headache, like a really dull headache and itchy eyes, and our throats are all scratchy. So it's like it's it's it appears beautiful. It's very Instagram pretty. Yeah. Tape tops and pollen. And then you look at your car and it's covered in yellow, like snow, like a fine. It's crazy. Yeah, it'll be like this for about two to three weeks.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Ooh.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

And then we'll all have to get our houses power washed and our outdoor furniture laundered.

SPEAKER_00 1:03

And I mean it's oh my gosh. It's that it's an annual thing.

SPEAKER_01 1:07

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Well, everything's gray here.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Yeah, gray versus yellow. That's where we are.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Yeah. Oh, damp. Sporty and rainy and windy. It sucks.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

No, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

We're really earning this weather that should be coming sometime soon. Um, I'm very excited about uh what we're gonna talk about. Um, you're kind of indulging the musical theater nerd that I always have been and always will be. Um I love her, I know. Um, but it's kind of fun because we saw this performer together. So it's a there's a tie-in here. So um I come to you after listening to a podcast, uh Amy Puller's podcast. Um, what's called Good Hang. Oh, so good. It's so good. If you're not listening to it, our listeners go listen to it. Um and she had an episode with Broadway performer extraordinaire Jonathan Groff, who's a friend of yours, who's a friend of mine, and who over the summer we saw him in the show and girls got to meet him, and it was super fun. And um he's just a delight, and so he is he is lovely, a delight, funny, down-to-earth, so warm and affectionate, and like calmed Stella down because she was kind of freaking out when she met him.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Yeah, and he was like, it's okay. Like he just like made made space for everyone in that room to be to feel however they were feeling.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Yeah, yeah, it was lovely. He's been like that since I met him when he was like 20. So he's always been that way. Um, but in in this podcast episode, Amy asks him this really great question around um lyrics of shows that he's done. And one of it was like a two-part question. I I just remember the one part was uh lyrics that you've had to sing in a role you've played that like really just like stay with you and and like resonate every time you sing them. And he was like, I know exactly um which ones those are. And so he shared them. And I it like really it the lyrics he shared stuck with me, not necessarily the show that he was talking about. So he was in a show a couple years ago on Broadway called Um Um Merrily, Merrily We Roll Along. That's what he won the Tony for that. He won the Tony for this. Um and he also won back for Spring Awakening, but for this like two years ago, um, which I'm pretty sure is why he did not win for just in time, because it would have been two years in a row, and there's probably politics behind that, but he should have won for what we just saw him do. Anyway, in the show, the interesting thing about the show is it was written 40 years ago and was essentially a flop. Okay. And um in the podcast, they talked a little bit about how when you do something good, it will somehow last. You just don't know when it will last, which I think that's an interesting conversation in and of itself. Yeah. Um, but the lyrics he um shared were from a song in the show called Growing Up. Okay. Um, and the premise of this podcast episode is that we want to talk about the evolution of a dream, kind of. And these are the ear, uh, the lyrics, um, early. Um okay, so old friends, don't you see we can have it all? Moving on, getting out of the past, solving dreams, not just trusting them, taking dreams, readjusting them, growing up, growing up. And then it goes on to say trying things, being flexible, bending with the road, adding dreams when the others don't last. So it's just this whole section uh of this song about the idea of like the thing we think we want at whatever time in our life, how it does or does not unfold, right? And then we are presented the opportunity to say, it didn't work out this way, and I'm going to continue pursuing the idea of this some other way, or I'm gonna just like be done.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 5:23

Right. Um that's a kind of a crude way of saying it, but kind of, right? Like, yeah, you know, it just really got to me, got me thinking like, you know, because it's coming out of a musical and it's that's part of who I am and part of what I love, it really resonates with me because that's why I came here.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, how does it resonate with you in terms of the evolution of a dream?

SPEAKER_00 5:50

For me, it's present day, it's going, yeah, I moved to New York to chase this dream that I really in if I think back, I really didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Yeah. Right. I and I was surrounded by kids in their 20s who had gone to all the best conservatories, had four-year degrees, had agents, like all this stuff, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Um, but I knew I had something, whatever. So I didn't really know what I was doing. Um and then as that jacket got too tight, so to speak, I kind of like loosened that up a little bit and tried on a jacket and fit, like everything just kind of like my my old fitness coach used to say, or my old health coach used to say, sometimes change comes when something we've worn too long starts to feel too tight.

SPEAKER_01 6:43

Oh, I like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 6:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:46

And I think you're one of the things that I'd say we shed that layer. And underneath that first layer for me was this like time in my life that I spent spent in the fitness and wellness world. Right.

unknown 6:58

Right.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

And then when that didn't fit me the way I wanted it to fit anymore, I shed that layer, kind of returned to the arts a little bit. You know, I it's been a bit of a windy road to where I am now, but but underneath it all, there was always this dream of purpose, I think for me. How what kind of purpose? Like purpose to be in the arts or I think in the arts I felt the purpose I felt a purpose around like I can give something here. Right. In in fitness and wellness, I probably felt even more of a purpose, to be quite honest, right? Because I could I could see its effect on people.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

It's like one to one versus one to many, you know.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Yeah, and it was also like I'm gonna do this thing, and someone's gonna say, God, I needed that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Versus in theater, you're like, I'm gonna give, give, give, give, give, and be told no most of the time.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Right. And every so often get applause.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Yeah. Um, so I think if I'm really like stripping away the layers of what was the dream, I don't think anymore that it was like booking the Broadway show. Yeah. It's fine at the time it was. Right. Did you grieve it? Mm-hmm. Yeah. I don't and I still have bits of me that's like maybe it's not gone. Maybe there's still a part of me that wants that, but I think I grieved it in LA. I think moving to LA as hard as it was, I was like, there's so much more than what I was doing back there. And it's not that what I was doing in New York was bad, but I just I think I learned about myself that I like to feel like I am giving something to people that they can use. Yeah. And I wasn't and I think that theater in the arts does that, but it's hard to get chosen to be the one to do it. Sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

And to let the dream, so maybe the dream is more about the purpose and less about the place where the purpose happens. Yes. You know, your original idea was Broadway, but the purpose kind of is the common thread in all those careers and knowing what that is is helpful because the dream keeps evolving. You you're you keep chasing the dream, you're just chasing it in different arenas, and you're allowing, I think your energy is spot on here in terms of allowing yourself the freedom to explore the dream in a different manifestation.

SPEAKER_00 9:34

And what those lyrics said that really got to me was the bit that says not just trusting them, like trusting like my dream as it is is the dream forever. Right. Now I take that, right? But taking dreams and readjusting them. It's this word of readjust.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

Yeah, it is. It's a critical skill. It's it's resilience, it's um, I don't know, it's it's not like eternal optimism, but it it is there is some of that in there of just like uh just matter-of-factness about it, like a foregone conclusion almost, like or a manifestation. Like you and I are both uh we've both identified as dreamers, we've both been accused of being dreamers, and I I say that honestly because dreamers get a lot of um flack about being unrealistic, like that's unrealistic. I remember when I was a kid and I got a lot of shame around wanting to have money. And um because I I think people assumed that the money, and maybe it was the 80s, so maybe they thought I was gonna be coked up on a you know, on a yacht like the Bible from Wall Street or something, which I wasn't. I was still chasing purpose as well, right? But in uh in abundance, I definitely was chasing a dream of abundance and not scarcity and freedom and generosity. And I got a lot of crap for that.

SPEAKER_00 11:03

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 11:04

Yeah, yeah, it's weird, it's but it's how you like me now. I mean, it's fine, it's fine because I just kept dreaming. I don't think there's anything wrong with with dreaming bigger and and dreaming bigger than I ever thought. Like I am in a place in my life where this is bigger, this is a bigger dream. My actual life is a bigger dream than I dreamt.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:29

And so we I think that is a superpower that we have, this ability to dream beyond the logic, beyond what's in front of us, and allowing whatever is inside of us to propel us forward with the faith that it's leading us to the dream realized.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Yeah. It's interesting too. Like, I I I um it resonates with me when you said um people think dreamers are well, I forgot how you said it, like crazy or like unrealistic. Um, but yet the the people that so many people like say, oh, this person resonate with me, or I love the work of this person, or I loved what they wrote, or those were all dreamers.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

Yeah, they weren't realistic either.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

They weren't realistic. So the people we actually like heroes that we look up to, I'm not saying that I'm like aiming to be everyone's hero, but like we often don't limit yourself. Yeah, the other thing when you said when you were younger, that um I've never told anybody this, I don't think. I remember, I think I think I told my mom because it was my answer to her. I was young, I'm gonna say like under 12. Okay. And I must have said something about like wanting to be famous. And she was like, which is funny. Um, and she was like, Why do you want to be famous? And I said, I think it would be good for people to see that a normal person like me could also be famous. Steph, that's profound. Really? Yeah, so I said something like that, and it wasn't like someone like me, boo-hoo, but it was like someone like me, like a kid from Ohio that like went for it. And I think that's like I've never told anybody this, and I don't even know if I'm pretty sure it was my mom who I said that to.

SPEAKER_01 13:32

Your own little hero story. You you started writing it then, yeah. And I think she's still with you. Yeah, she's still with me. I love it. Yeah, she's fabulous. She should never stop dreaming, no matter how the odds are stacked against you. Somebody's gotta just keep believing and keep going.

SPEAKER_00 13:49

Yeah, well, it's really important to also surround yourself with people who don't think your dreams are real unrealistic. And I will say that's one of the blessings of being part of the community I'm part of in New York, whether I'm actively pursuing, performing, or in real estate or um whatever it is, like I feel like I'm surrounded by people who never think any of any idea is ridiculous.

SPEAKER_01 14:12

Well, it's a concrete jungle where dreams are made of. That's right.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

And Alicia Key. That's right. Um what about you, real quick?

SPEAKER_01 14:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Anything else around like evolution of a dream that like resonates for you?

SPEAKER_01 14:29

I mean, I had pretty big evolution of a dream after going to grad school and then hating my job so much I started over in a career I didn't need two degrees to do and was commission only and fifty thousand dollars in debt, pregnant. Like real pregnant, like seven months. So I think that was an evolution of a dream. And my dream was yours being purpose. My dream was to love what I did for a living and to chase that.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

And I and I found that. Like I got that dream, I got to make that dream come true for myself. Yeah. And a lot of other people, which I'm more proud of that, that I was able to give it to more people and spread it.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Um But I think it's important to call out um to those listening who know Elena either already or are you meeting her through the podcast, that like while you are a wildly successful owner of a home building company that does an insane amount of business, one of the things that you're so incredible at that you and Jim prioritize is that you lead with so much compassion and integrity. And when you speak publicly, if I extracted that talk from the show or the conference you were, you were you were at, it's really not about building homes.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

No.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

And that's special.

SPEAKER_01 15:56

Yeah, thank you. That's yeah, it's it's true. Our our magic, our passion is in, I think, placemaking, inclusivity, and belonging. You know, your house is a milestone. It's where you grieve your greatest losses, it's where you celebrate your biggest milestones. And being a part of that is really um, I don't want to be too trite about it, but it's it's a little bit sacred. I mean, it's a lot sacred. It's your family. Yeah. And so um, it's the people you share your life with. And so wanting that to be magical.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Right? That's not realistic in home building, wanting that to be magical, right? Right. And people were like, I mean, people told us all the time how Garmin was, you know, too uh lofty, or you know, we're never gonna would turn out like all the rest, kind of thing. Couldn't scale, you know, and eventually we'd give in and just be like all the other builders. And yeah, there's um the dream was to make it magical, yep, and to keep chasing that and when it's not logical. Like the thing is you make the dream come true when you choose to make it true, when all good reason is that you shouldn't. You know, we made lots of decisions that weren't quote-unquote good business decisions, they weren't a financial return in the moment, but they were everything in terms of proving the concept, and that all came back to us like exponentially over the years. Every one of those totally illogical, unreasonable decisions we made in the name of integrity and generosity and magic came back to us tenfold. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 17:42

And that's back to that, like taking dreams and readjusting them. You're literally selling people the container of dreams, like you know, like how many moments you have in your home.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

Like it's exactly and hoping that when they walk in that space, they feel like the person they want to be. You know, people walk around with masks on all day, playing to whoever they need to play to. But when you walk in that door, and if you walk into a house that I built, I want you to exhale and feel like you can be exactly the person you've always wanted to be. Every single home, every single room, cry in those rooms, laugh so hard you pee yourself in those rooms. Like that's my dream.

SPEAKER_00 18:21

I love it.

SPEAKER_01 18:22

This was a fun discussion. It was so keeping it. I the dream resonates. Yeah, you get to keep the dreams alive, and you gotta dream bigger than is reasonable or logical.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Um, okay, why don't you influence me with something?

SPEAKER_01 18:42

Okay, this is pretty practical.

SPEAKER_00 18:44

It's sunscreen to rub all over the pollen that's all over your skin.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Exactly. Well, okay, this brand, it's called Vacation. Vacation is the brand, but they have remade some of the sunscreens that we used growing up, like the Banda Soleil orange jelly one. I don't have that one with me, but um, in like 30 SPF and 50 SPF, and it smells exactly the same as the sunscreens of our childhood, so it's like completely nostalgic. It's like a little memory journey of your face.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

You had that gold bottle with us in Florida, I remember. I was like, ooh.

SPEAKER_01 19:19

Yeah, and it's all shimmery and it makes you have a little bit of color before you have color, but you're it's 50.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

I love that. I love a 50.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

Um speaking speaking of 50, um uh it's 50 like us. I I'm really into 51. Um I'm trying to like expand my wardrobe a little bit, and you've been very helpful. There's been a lot of like FaceTiming, sending pictures of from dressing rooms, but I was on the mission to find a flat that I could actually wear a little bit, maybe on days where I'm not running around as much, right? Because usually I'm wearing sneakers. And I found this brand, is it actually by Kenneth Cole? But the the line is called Gentle Souls.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

How you know, or 50 and 51, but they're super cute. They're woven like um, they look like the bottega vanilla. Yeah, super high-end Italian designer brand. Yeah, I'm very excited.

SPEAKER_00 20:22

Yeah, yeah. So Gentle Souls by Kenneth Cole. Your 50-year-old feet will thank you. Um all right, everybody. Thank you for listening to our episode on the evolution of a dream. If you needed that, please share it with someone else who might need it, especially your friends who are dreamers.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Right. All right, bye.