Have you thought about what you really want?
Is it time to redesign your life?
You’ve built a life.
But is it the one you meant to build?
The Dream Discovery Retreat (3.5 Days)
Hosted at The historic Graylyn Estate in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, this immersive 3½-day retreat invites participants to step away from the noise and focus on what’s next.
Set within elegant grounds and guided by certified facilitators, each day combines small-group discovery sessions, guided reflection, and meaningful conversations that reconnect purpose with direction.
What is our promise?
Participants leave with a deeper sense of direction, a shared language for their life and career possibilities, a supportive community of Partners, and the beginnings of a Serious Dream shaped from within — not from pressure, pace, or external expectations.
What can you expect?
- Three-and-a-half-day facilitated Life & Career Design retreat
- Private lodging at Graylyn Estate, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
- Breakfast, Lunch and Three-Course Dinner with AM/PM Breaks
- All workshop materials and proprietary Castle tools
- Guided individual reflection and small-group sessions
- Facilitated experience led by a certified Castle Consultant and expert facilitators
- All on-site program activities during the retreat
- Quarterly 1 on 1 sessions to honor your serious dream development
- One year of follow ups and celebrations as your serious dream is fulfilled.
What’s Included After the Retreat? One Year of Continued Support
Following the retreat, participants are invited into a private chohort community created to support continued dreaming, reflection, and intentional design.
Your year of access includes:
- Guided group sessions designed to support ongoing clarity and direction
- Facilitated conversations to continue exploring your dreams and priorities
- Space to reflect, recalibrate, and evolve your personal life-and-career design
- Connection with others who have completed the Dream Discovery Retreat
This community is designed to support you as real life resumes—helping you stay grounded in what became clear during the retreat.
Cost - $3,200.00 per person
Scholarships are available
Travel to and from Winston-Salem and to The Graylyn will be the responsibility of the participant.
*Guest/Companion Package rate option included
What is The Castle Process?
We are excited to share the 45th Anniversary Edition of The Castle Process for Designing your Life and Career, with individuals and organizational leaders seeking meaningful transformation and something different.
These retreats and workshops offered are unique and help you learn three lifetime skills.
- First, it involves self-reflection to identify your strengths and talents.
- Second, it involves soul-searching to find what brings meaning, purpose and joy to your life.
- Finally, it involves dreaming about the future and creating some possibilities to achieve them.
This approach is innovative and supports personal and professional growth by gathering possibilities for one's future.
- For individuals, it is a journey of self-discovery—revealing strengths, priorities, and possibilities for a purposeful future.
- For organizations, it is a powerful employee engagement and development experience, demonstrating a commitment to personal growth that few competitors offer.
The Castle Process empowers people to discover and pursue their serious dreams while helping organizations stand out as places that truly invest in their people.
Design your Serious Dream Life with Intention
This entire Castle approach is designed to help you create your Serious Dream.
This Castle poster is the foundation for the approach we take to Life and Career Design.
What will I learn?
These workshops and retreats help you learn three lifetime skills:
- Identifying strengths and talents from your past.
- Setting priorities on your preferences.
- Dreaming and gathering all the possibilities about your ideal future to build your Serious Dream.
Your castle inspires you with towers soaring upward toward your dreams and your castle supports you with solid foundations grounded in reality. Here you'll begin prioritizing and reflecting, empowering you to chart your desired life path with clarity and purpose. Here we help you discover and realize their dreams.
Unlocking your full potential involves exploring your undiscovered or yet-to-be-realized dreams and visualizing the life you truly want to live. Discovering your passions and purpose requires introspection and exploration of pursuits that ignite your soul and bring you joy.
"I like the wonderful double image of castles. A castle is fantastic, dream-like, soaring upward AND a castle is also grounded on rock, solid as forever. That's why I see castles as a visual symbol of one of the wisest things I've ever said: A goal is a dream taken seriously." - Walt Hopkins, author of the Castle Process for Designing your Life and Career .
You're doing everything right..
So why doesn't it feel right?
You may be:
- Accomplished, yet restless
- Successful, yet uncertain
- Grateful, yet unfulfilled
- Ready for change, but unsure where to begin
Most people never stop long enough to ask the deeper questions.
You don’t need to change everything.
You just need to begin.
Two Experiences
Dream Discovery workshop
Dream Discovery workshop
Dream Discovery workshop
Before you build your life, pause—and design it.
The Dream Discovery Workshop is a guided experience created for people in their 20s and 30s who want to make thoughtful, intentional choices about their life and career—before momentum turns into autopilot.
This is a space to slow down, reflect, and gain clarity about who you are, what you want, and how you want to move forward.
Workshops may be offered with possible live and virtual components:
- As open-enrollment experiences for individuals
- As custom programs for organizations, campuses and groups
Contact us to talk with our team to build your custom program.
Ongoing workshops will be offered starting in Summer 2026.
Dream Discovery Retreat
Dream Discovery workshop
Dream Discovery workshop
The Dream Discovery Retreat is a 3.5-day immersive experience created for people who feel called to pause, reflect, and intentionally design the next chapter of their life and career.
For many people, success arrives quietly—alongside a lingering sense that something is missing. Direction. Meaning. Alignment.
The Dream Discovery Retreat is a thoughtfully designed experience for people at a crossroads, personally, professionally, or creatively, who sense there is more waiting to be uncovered.
This is not a goal-setting workshop. It is not a productivity sprint.
It is a rare opportunity to slow down, reflect, and engage in guided discovery that brings clarity, language, and direction to find your serious dream.. your intentional, purpose filled life.