MeeT MARCIA WIEDER: aN  Inspiring Speaker, Best-Selling Author, Global Visionary & FOUNDER OF DREAM UNIVERSITY

Marcia has not only collaborated with 3 U.S. presidents but has been a repeat guest on the Oprah Winfrey show. She’s also had her own PBS television special and has trained thousands of people from all walks of life.

She also is the founder of the Dream University® which is committed to helping you achieve your personal and professional dreams.

It’s such a pleasure to have you on the #DESIGNWITHDOT blog Marcia!

1. Why don’t you share a little bit about what your career has been like over the last thirty years?

I’ve dedicated 30 years of my life to helping people all over the world—people just like you, to help them achieve their personal and professional dreams. I’ve worked with three United States presidents. Not the current one.

I’ve written 15 books on the topic, many of them bestsellers, which I’m very proud of. I’m the CEO of a company called ‘Dream University’ and we had a graduate program called the ‘Meaning Institute’, which was about living a meaningful life. I’ve helped raise money and built fourteen schools in Kenya. One of the things I’m most proud about was four years ago at the top of my career. I pulled the plug and moved to Italy. This was really my first foray back into the world. It was really important. I have a belief that just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it’s the only thing you’re here to do. So I took some time to follow my own wisdom and guidance and clear the decks and get rid of what was no longer true for me and to take some time… and this is my re-emergence.

It’s very exciting and there’s a lot of unknown. I started saying a few years ago: ‘We are moving into a period of unknown’. The skill to develop was to get comfortable with uncertainty and the way to get comfortable with uncertainty is to do stuff that you don’t know how to do. It’s counterintuitive. But this is how we develop ourselves and can expand and become happier, more creative, more alive, and more engaged with light. I think it’s extraordinary when somebody finds a path and they stick with it. It becomes a path of mastery and many people were shocked that at the top of my career I walked away. But I’m really happy that I did it and now I have a saying: ‘There’s the dream you have for life.
And then there’s the dream that life has for you’. When these two meet, it’s a magical extraordinary thing. Sometimes we have to clear the decks and make some space for new dreams.

2. What actually brought you from Rome to your new city Lisbon?

Rome was fantastic for immersing myself in beauty and deidentifying with all. I had been a speaker, author, coach, teacher and workshop conductor. I left all that behind and immersed myself in beauty and as much as I loved it, I was getting fat on pasta. Also, I really started getting a little bored to tell you the truth. One day I started really seeing and feeling that it was time for me to give back. You know the saying: ‘To those much is given much is expected’? So, I came to Lisbon for four reasons. One, I had friends and community here, which didn’t really have in Rome. Rome was mostly about traveling all over Italy. So, I have friends and community here, which was lovely way to land. Two, most people here speak English and makes it a lot easier for me to contribute, to bring my gifts. Three, it’s closer to my aging parents in Florida—I can get there directly. Four, most importantly is, Lisbon is alive. I mean even during these crazy times– in Lisbon, there’s incubators and accelerators and creative opportunities, and I wanted to be in a city that had buzz and energy so that I could contribute in ways that still haven’t been completely revealed. But are starting to peek through the clouds.

3. What is your formula for dreaming? How can we dream and make our dreams come true?

One of the reasons we wanted to bring this to your tribe is that I’m going to be hosting two free one-hour webinars called ‘Create Your Future Now’. That will give you the link and you can sign up for those and they’re completely free. You can catch the replay in the link at the end of this blog. And in those calls, I’m going to take you through an experiential process and most importantly open the line for life coaching. So, you’ll get a lot more information there. The promise is you’ll leave an action on a dream that you’re passionate about. Even if you’re in need of a new one. The short answer is, you know in American school we learn the ‘ABC’s’. At Dream University, we teach the ‘CBA’s’. How to get ‘C’, clear. This is the hardest step for most people, getting clear about who you truly are, what you truly want and what you don’t want.

Discerning the ability to say ‘no more’ or ‘no, thank you’, opens the space for what you truly do want. ‘B’, believing in yourself and your dreams is a choice and during the free webinars, I’m going to take you through my doubt removal system. So, you’re no longer stopped by fear, doubt, or other obstacles. The number one way that we sabotage our dreams is by projecting our fear and doubt into the dream by saying but ‘what if’. ‘What if’ I move to Portugal and I don’t make any friends’? ‘What if I quit my job that is so unsatisfying and I don’t really have the skill set or the confidence to start my own business’?

I’m going to teach you during these free calls how to separate it out, get you to clarify something, that maybe you want a personal or professional dream, it could be something for your body our your business, your heart, your soul, it doesn’t matter what the dream is. I can help you. I’m going to show you how to overcome doubt and fear. And then, ‘A’, take action. Where long-term dreams die is when you plop them on a to-do list. For example, ‘I’m going to write a book’ or ‘I’m going to start my business’, you know, you have to take big dreams and break them down into projects and develop practices to develop greater muscle. So that you can live, what I think is the most important thing, live in a way where you trust yourself more fully.

When we trust ourselves, we dream bigger dreams. We take greater risks. We live in more integrity with our heart and soul. We can accomplish more, faster and you can make one call or both calls. And if you register for them we’ll send you the link. Even if you can’t be live on the calls, they are four o’clock in Portugal, 8 a.m. in California—the live coaching is incredibly valuable. I think what I’m going to do is in the first call, get everybody set up and in action and then, the second call, see what happened. Did you do what you said you were going to do? Where did you get stuck? Where did you get derailed? And how can I support you? And I’m going to teach you that the number one shortcut for making any dream come true is your ability to articulate your dream with clarity and passion and how to make specific requests. Most of us suck at that. I’m going to give very practical, meaty material.

Again, ‘CBA’, get ‘C’, clear about who you are and what you do and don’t want, ‘B’, believe in yourself and your dreams, prove that you’re more committed to your dream then to any doubt, fear or reality by ‘A’, taking action on your dreams. That’s it, in a nutshell.

4. This is Marcia Weider. She’s the CEO and founder of Dream University. She’s been teaching people how to achieve their dreams for the last 30 years. How did you actually find out that this was your calling to help people, to help create their dreams? What was your journey like?

A long time ago. I noticed that I had the ability to make stuff happen. I would get an idea and it would happen or I would say something, and it would happen. This was in the 90s. I remember saying okay. I’m going to try to write a book. I’m going to see if there’s a methodology here and the spiritual part of me actually said I’m going to treat this book as though it’s a correspondence course with God. If there’s something that wants to come through, it’s going to come through and I started out. I created my 12-step method. I started writing out what it is that I actually did and that was the beginning. Then I said, well, let me see if I can use this with another person and we had great results. Then I tried to put it into a small group and then it became a keynote. I was on Oprah with it twice, and it really sprung out of that. I’ve written fifteen books, but my last book was that Wall Street Journal bestseller and it had a one-word title. The title is ‘Dream’. The subtitle is ‘Clarify and Create What You Want’. But the first sentence of that book says so much and it’s shocking and silly that it took me fifteen books to get to this one sentence. Dream is a verb, it’s also a noun. ‘You can have a dream’.

When you get the dream, however, it is a verb. It’s about putting yourself in relationship with what you truly want. With the life you want to create. With the world you want to create– that’s a game-changer. So, I started slowly started branching out and then I trained and certified over a thousand life coaches. We call them ‘dream coaches’. This work is being taught in schools, prisons, battered women shelters, within companies and organizations, but for me it’s a thrill when I find kindred spirit like you Dot and with your dragons, who really get that ‘wow, we can create the life that we want’. Yes, it’s true, life is going to throw us all kinds of stuff and I believe that enlightenment consciousness is about how we react and respond to what life is giving us, but the most important part of these free webinars that I’m going to host is the first word. ‘Create’ your future now. Create– we are creators. We can create a very different reality, a different time, a different world at a time when the world truly needs, not only needs our dreams but needs us to act on the dreams– as a verb.

5. How did you actually become discovered by three US Presidents and help them create their dreams and vision?

Well, I was president of the National Association of Women Business Owners in Washington DC, and my office was in the National Press building in the good old days, when you could walk up to the White House and I’m praying I will see that again. Recommendations though, by word-of-mouth. It was challenging. I was very young and I’m little, looking very petite and young. I had to learn how to speak with clarity and authority and credibility for people to take me seriously, and that’s when I learned that that was one of the most essential skills to get people to help you on your dreams.
Not having enough money is not an obstacle when you learn how to inspire and invite people to join you, and help you and hire you and maybe even invest in you. So, I will absolutely be talking about that during the webinar.

6. Can you share a little bit about how to enroll people into your NGO or your charity?

In order to master manifestation, your ability to make your dreams come true, you need to master the skill of what some people call enrollment. People hear enrollment, they think of college or they think of the old landmark or training. Enrollment, for me, is inspiring somebody to join you and it comes down to two practices. One, you have to inspire them. So you have to believe in it yourself. You have to be congruent with what you’re saying and what you’re thinking and feeling but the part that we’re really not so good at is after you inspire, then you have to invite them. So, the ability to make specific requests and make it easy for people to say ‘yes’ is so critical when it comes to growing your dream. You build your dream team by inspiring people and inviting them. Some people are really good at inspiring but not so good at inviting and some people are very good at inviting but not inspiring. It really comes down to these two skills.

Your ability to inspire people comes from speaking from your heart and they can feel it and you have to tell them what’s so great about this. That’s really it. ‘Why should I?’ That’s the inspiration and then inviting them to join you makes all the difference in the world. I’ve seen people go further, sometimes with passion and commitment then with skill and gobs of money. Your ability to share your dream in an inspiring way, starts with you having ‘C’, clarity about what it is. And a lot of us don’t have a dream.

A dream for me is simply something that you want and you know and then strategy, which I am going to talk about on the first webinar, is actually the easiest step. Getting clarity about what you really want and believing in yourself and your dream. That’s the stuff that most of us need some work and some training on. I’ve developed methodology and tools and skills to make it fun and easy and accessible and it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a dream. Maybe you could stop saying: ‘I don’t have a dream’, and start saying: ‘My dream is to have a new dream’. Then, we can move toward what you want because sometimes if I say: ‘Well I don’t have a dream what’s wrong with me?’. That doesn’t really serve you. Instead, it’s really about this idea about clarity about who you are and what you do and don’t want. These are going to help you move forward.

You can have many dreams, but we want to make sure that you’re taking action on them. You’re not just talking about them.

7. I just want to ask you one last question and what is your dream for 2021? Where can we find you in 2021? And where should we be looking out for your content?

I’ve been approached by a university in Portugal about possibly helping to develop an Academy of Purpose. I’m looking to see where can I have the greatest impact now. I feel that I’m being called to work more with leaders, but I’m also being careful not to default back to who I was and what I was doing before. It’s a tricky place. I’m no longer who I was and I haven’t fully stepped into who I’m becoming. What I do know is I can contribute and I can serve from wherever I am. I’m not currently writing a new book. I’m allowing myself some time to land and also sending a lot of love and healing energy out, as a lot of people are really challenged now. I’m practicing being a bright light in Lisbon and sharing my joy and signing people up. But I am starting to get more invitations to come back out and I’m just feeling my way back into the world. I want to be a visionary philanthropist. I want to dream big crazy wild dreams, and then support people in making those dreams come true and by philanthropist, I love the idea of giving generously of my time, energy, love and resources. It’s not just writing a check. It’s giving in your gifts– to contribute to making the world a better place. So, like anybody that you know, I’m bored. And you can hear I don’t even have total clarity about what my dream is. But, I know who I am and how I want to use my life and that’s a great place to start.