How dreams, identity, and borrowed courage shape the journey of becoming

In this reflective conversation, Nathan Freeburg sits down with Dr. Linda Schubring and Brian Schubring to explore the prelude and postlude of Unfolded: Lessons in Transformation from an Origami Crane. Together, they unpack how dreams shape identity, why borrowed belief matters, and how our personal “maps” can never be erased—even when they’re marked by struggle or uncertainty.

Key Themes:

• Dreams that shape us—even when they aren’t fulfilled literally
• Borrowed belief and the courage to try
• Identity, growth, and integration
• Why our creases and imperfections matter
• Living “unfolded” as a daily practice

Key Quotes:

• “The clues about our greatest potential lie in the creases of our dreams.”
• “No one can erase your map.”
• “Unfolded is a mindset and a practice.”

Transcript

Prelude To Dreams And Identity

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Make peace with it. Let the creases unfolds, crumples, and faded parts remind you that you are human, that you remind you that you are on a journey, that your identity cannot be erased by either what you're called or how you're labeled or what kind of box that you're put in. And going back to this love story, this self-love story that we wrote, don't let anyone take that away from you. And you don't have to let even the hard parts or the painful creases tell a story that you're you're less than. Just fold that part away into the new shape that you become.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

And with that idea, let that part of your map teach you again. Because with what you read about what Linda said, Nathan, no one can erase our map.

Why A Prelude And Postlude

SPEAKER_02 1:02

You are listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. Our consulting team has been doing this work for the past 25 years so that leaders are mentally engaged and emotionally healthy. To learn more about what we do, you can click the link in the show notes or visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting.com. Hello everyone, my name is Nathan Freeberg, and today in the podcast, we're going to be talking about parts of the book, Unfolded, Lessons and Transformation, from an origami crane that you may have skipped. The Prelude and the Postlude. Now, in Unfolded, the Prelude and Postlude, they sort of act like bookends to the entire journey. The prelude, written by Brian, opens with a dream that he had, sparked by someone who believed in him before he believed in himself. And the postlude with Dr. Linda Schubring sends us back into the world, reminding us that we are shaped by our folds, our creases, and the people who walk alongside us. Today's conversation is about dreams, identity, and courage, about what it means to be trusted, to try, to let go, and ultimately to help others fly. Now, as you listen, pay attention to the dreams that shaped you, the voices that helped or hindered you, and the ways our own story might still be unfolding. This is the Leadership Vision Podcast. Enjoy. Brian and Linda, welcome back to the Leadership Vision Podcast. We are recording on Unfolded Lessons and Transformation from an origami crane. Now, listeners, before you hang up or push pause, yes, we've talked about this book a lot, but I think this is going to be a different angle because we're talking about the parts of the book that are sort of outside the story, if you will. Brian Lynde, I have a lot of questions to ask you about this, but is there anything that you want to say about the prelude and postlude before we get to those questions? Why did you include these? I haven't read a lot of books with a pre and a postlude by two different authors. Tell us a little bit, and then we're going to jump into some of these questions.

SPEAKER_01 3:06

Because it's us. So it's a reflection of how Brian and I work together, how we do life together. In the introduction, we map out the book. And as we're mapping out the book, we kind of invite people like if you want to read it, you can. If you don't, maybe just stick to the story. When we were leaning into the story, we just didn't want the hard start of the allegory. We wanted to give, like you were saying, Nathan, some background of where this came from, as well as how do we launch people into the world? So it begins, yes, with Brian.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Well, Brian, I want to start and ask you a question about dreams and identity. So your story or your prelude is a story about how your dad let you fly an airplane at five years old, which back in the 70s you could do that. Now there's too many laws. More anymore and seatbelts. But you write something to the effect of that the clues about our greatest potential lie in the creases of our dreams. Do you remember writing that? Mm-hmm. I do. You talk about your dream to fly, fulfilled, check, and then later in life, at age 20, your dream of being a pro hockey player is shattered. Which, by the way, I want to talk separately at a different podcast about that. So my question is how do you know, how do we know when a dream is something to pursue versus when it's something that's really meant to just shape us in some other way?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

Good question, Ethan.

Childhood Flight And Hidden Dreams

SPEAKER_00 4:34

In my case, I did not know the power of that dream that was hidden in the creases until I wrote the book. Because I knew that the story of me flying a plane at five years old was there. I knew that that was there. But it wasn't until we started writing the book where I really began to ask the question where did my preoccupation with flight come from? So a lot of experiences in childhood, like they're just folded away. We forget about them. And when I was writing the book, it's so key about our main character learning to fly that I was like, where did that come from? And this is where the story began. My childhood home was beneath the flight path of our international airport. My father had a private pilot's license. I flew in airplanes growing up with the first six or seven years of my life. This was a huge part of my life, which I kind of forgot had such an important part. And that experience also ignited a dream of mine to become a pilot as a career. So there are many different layers to that experience that I didn't really unfold until the writing of the book.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

Well, I want to dive into that a little bit more, and maybe Linda, you can answer this question as well. But when so, Brian, your story kind of starts with someone really trusting you at that age before you could fully trust yourself. So I'm curious how important is that sort of borrowed belief, borrowed courage, whatever, in helping people sort of find their dream, find their courage to fly, whatever it is?

SPEAKER_00 6:10

I love that borrowed term because at the moment I didn't realize that my being educated was actually the planting of seeds, planting out of the seeds for a dream. So sometimes the borrowing of seeds plants something that will never go away. And that's what I think is beautiful about what my father did. My father just has this unique way of coming alongside of someone and helping make their dreams a reality without superimposing his idea or his dreams on you. And with learning to fly, that was exactly what it was like being a passenger, being comfortable in the air, learning how to do the walk around pre-flight checks, watching him go through the book, him telling me what was in the book and all the check downs for that. Planting seeds, planting seeds, planting seeds until he said, you know, take us home.

Borrowed Belief And Planting Seeds

SPEAKER_02 6:59

Yeah. Good luck. Thousand feet or so in the air. Don't land it, but go. Interesting. Linda, anything you would add from that? I feel like you are someone who has been the borrower and the borrowee in a lot of different dreams. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I' such an interesting borrowee. I don't know if that's a word, but it is today. You know what I mean? We'll add it to Webster's eventually. We'll campaign for that. Hearing Brian's story and hearing how he began to even learn lessons in the writing as we were even writing this chapter together. I started to immediately feel that I had no dreams. Really? Yeah. That um I'm like, oh, like I didn't have a dream like that, or I didn't like and I and I started from a place of lack. That's why the in the opening part, the prelude in on page XIX of our book.

SPEAKER_00 8:03

19. On page 19.

SPEAKER_01 8:05

I know, but it's the special Roman numerals anyway. That's why those four questions that are a little bit poetic were written there in particular about, you know, did you have a dream you wish that would come true, or something that pulled you through, or something that feels the most to you, or something that would land in your queue. And for me, I just thought maybe I've always waited for dreams to land in my queue. And then the more that we wrestle, the more I was like, oh, I've had tons of dreams. I really married a dreamer, so compared to him, I'm I am not a yeah, I'm married to you. I'm not a dreamer. But yes, and I pursued dreams differently. And so for me, I found enjoyment of watching bearing witness to someone begin to talk about the dreams that they had and the new things that Brian was actually learning in the actual writing of the process of the book of the chapter.

SPEAKER_02 9:02

Linda, you on page 89 you say no one can erase our map.

SPEAKER_01 9:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:09

The map meaning the people, the places, everything that has shaped who we are. Your identity. Does that idea change at all when we think about growth, healing, transformation? Uh I think especially when our maps feel so like torn and ripped and like you really want to erase your map, but expand on that a little bit. And I highlighted, I don't know if you can see this, a lot. And I'm just like, I just need to ask your more open-ended question that all we don't have time to go through all this. But can you pull on a thread there somewhere?

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Yeah, I can because it's all it's the my intuition says, yeah, just erase it. Yeah, get rid of it. Find a new piece of paper. Oh, find something more clean. Oh, yeah, you don't want to just let that go.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

Flat. No more.

Naming Dreams Without Comparison

SPEAKER_01 9:57

My counterintuition says make peace with it. Let the creases unfolds, crumples, and faded parts remind you that you are human, that you remind you that you are on a journey, that your identity cannot be erased by either what you're called or how you're labeled or what kind of box that you're put in. And going back to this love story, this self-love story that we wrote, don't let anyone take that away from you. And you don't have to let even the hard parts or the painful creases tell a story that you're you're less than. Just fold that part away into the new shape that you become.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

And with that idea, let that part of your map teach you again. Because with what you read about what Linda said, Nathan, no one can erase your map. Right. And to be honest, in my map, in one corner of that map is an airport. Like there's no getting around it. And to think about the writing of the book, for me to unfold myself to get a better look at this, I had to let that part of my map talk to me. Like, why is that part of the map there? What did I learn there? I don't visit that part of my map often at all, but it is there. And I think that some of the most profound lessons we can learn in life is to sit with the parts of our map that are maybe faded by the sun, a little more dusty than we'd like, maybe even unfamiliar. This is interesting because we're on vacation. I was talking to a man who had read this part of our book, and it sent him into such a reflective moment with the toys and the play and the people of his early life and how that still carried into this day. Again, a part of his map that he hadn't thought about, that he hadn't listened to. And he and I had several conversations on vacation about just that short moment of his life and how much he valued it and how much of it he still carries to this day. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

One of my nine-year-olds has dyslexia and some other struggles. And it's with all this map talk, it's just like this is a part of her map, but how do we not let it become that what did I say, that that messy part that she wants to erase and I don't know, leverage it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Right. And so if you look at other people's maps and you realize, oh, they also have dyslexia, or they also have this, and they've been through that, and they had an airport in their corner too, and the corner of their map, that's where we start to draw connections of like, oh, this makes us human. Oh, we're not alone in this expression of our identity.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Yes. Well, you both talk about the role of characters and community in different ways in your pre and post-salute, and obviously it's a huge part of the book. So how do we become, I think my biggest question in all of this is how do we become aware of which are the voices that are helping and shaping our dreams and which are the ones that we might need to ignore to push out. Maybe that's our own voice. Like, how how do we balance all those things?

No One Can Erase Your Map

SPEAKER_00 13:25

Well, I would invite the listeners to start with listening and not naming or placing value on the voice. It's simply listening. Who and what are the voices that I'm hearing, and then asking, what is that message saying about me that's true? And what is that message saying about me that is untrue? Because I think sometimes we want to listen to a voice to name it and blame it. And what I'm asking is just listen. Just listen to what about that is true or not. What do you think about that? What do you which part? The listening first. Because I know we have characters and we name the characters and what they represent, but to listen first, I think we're so out of practice as people with actually listening with open ears. We immediately assign value.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Yeah, that but that was the point of the story.

SPEAKER_00 14:17

So Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:20

So we're so that when people are reading it, they can't help but have a image or a name come to mind. But then we keep going. And and we try to show the complexity of some of the characters, also the straightforward nature of some of the characters and their voices and who and what they represent.

SPEAKER_02 14:42

I love that. I have kind of one final question for you. I wrote this down a lot because you said unfolded is a mindset as much as it is a practice. So I'm wondering if you could capture for us like what does quote unquote living unfolded actually look like in everyday life? And maybe you could tackle what does it look like for a leader, for a parent, for a team, being a team member, just for an individual. What does it mean to live unfolded as a practice?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Yeah, I love that question. Like when I read it, I'm like, yes. For me, my first reflection on that was a very small one. And the question is: are there habits, practices, or tools that we use every day that familiarize ourselves with unfolding? Which simply means being open-minded, being open-hearted, or being present. Are we in that practice?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Yeah, the mindset is curiosity and the action is do something with it. Like don't just stay stuck where you are, don't just let the same habitual patterns draw your mind's eye back to the negative aspects of who you are. So when unfolded is a mindset and a practice, for for us, we are living the unfolded story. And so we almost have a shorthand around the Schubering household where we're saying, Oh, yeah, that's that. Oh, my my wing is just bent a little bit. Oh, that didn't. Yep, let's try that again.

SPEAKER_02 16:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:22

And it gives us permission of we don't just arrive. Because even in the arrival, that's not where the juicy parts of the story is. Juicy parts are in the journey, and to live unfolded is the continuing transformation that we can go through as humans.

SPEAKER_00 16:38

And the expression of living an unfolded life is to remind ourselves that we too are a part of the process of another's unfolding. Yeah.

Making Peace With The Creases

SPEAKER_02 16:49

If I were to answer that, I would just add the whole try of living unfolded means that you just approach everything as an opportunity to learn, to try again. Ooh, that didn't go well. What am I going to do next time? As we close, here's the invitation Unfolded leaves us with. Our dreams don't disappear, they evolve. Our stories don't reset, they integrate. And our potential doesn't belong to us alone. It's meant to be shared. Now, whether you're at the beginning of a dream, in the middle of trying, or finding your way back home, the call is the same. Notice the creases, trust your map, and have the courage to fly again. And when you do, turn around and help someone else do the same. Thank you for listening to the Leadership Vision Podcast, our show helping you build positive team culture. To learn more about us and what we do, there's a link in the show notes, or you can visit us on the web at Leadership Vision Consulting dot com. Make sure you like and subscribe to us on all the socials and all the YouTube, or join our free email newsletter at Leadership Vision Consulting.com slash subscribe. I'm Nathan Freeberg. I've Lydia Schubring.

SPEAKER_00 17:59

And I'm Brian Schubring.

SPEAKER_02 18:00

And on behalf of our entire team, thanks for listening.