“Grownups can be dream killers.” A stop-you-in-your-tracks truth that opens a deeper conversation about courage, safety, and choosing possibility again.
In the final episode of Beyond the Quo for 2025, Stacey Luces sits down with Yulimar Trumbo, an investor in the future of entrepreneurs and a world-class sales facilitator who has worked across 40+ countries with Fortune 500 companies, NGOs, and government sectors. Together, they close the year with honesty, humor, and depth, exploring what 2025 revealed and what 2026 can become.
They unpack why intentions create alignment while resolutions often create pressure, why authentic connection matters more than proximity, and how protecting your time is really about protecting your life. Through personal stories about family, entrepreneurship, partnership, and change, they discuss leading yourself first, trusting what your body knows, and building “a new same page” in relationships and communities.
🎧 In this episode:
• 02:39 Intentions vs. resolutions
• 05:06 Decisions that shaped the last decade
• 10:47 Protecting your time and saying no
• 26:24 Dreams, courage, and refusing to shrink
• 29:07 Youth, innovation, and social entrepreneurship
• 39:36 Relationships, loneliness, and real connection
💡 Key Takeaways:
• Intentions create alignment. Resolutions create pressure. Intentions invite your spirit to rise toward what’s possible. Resolutions demand compliance. This episode reframes the New Year as alignment, not self-correction.
• “No” is autonomy in motion. Practice it early and often. Self-betrayal starts small. If you override yourself in minor moments, you’ll override yourself when the stakes are higher. Boundaries are built in the everyday.
• Courage must be protected or it will be negotiated away. “Grownups can be dream killers” isn’t an accusation. It’s a warning. When safety becomes the goal, imagination shrinks. Courage is the cost of a future that’s truly yours.
• Transformation begins with a new internal language. Words like sacrifice, balance, guilt, and control quietly drain power. Replacing them with center, integration, responsibility, equanimity, and surrender changes how you lead, love, and choose.
You’ve already done the quo—now it’s time to go beyond.
🔥 Feeling inspired? Don’t keep it to yourself!
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✨ Connect with Stacey: staceyluces.com IG @ Stacey.Luces LinkedIn @StaceyLuces
✨ Connect with Yuli: LinkedIn @yulimar-trumbo