Making career decisions that are based on your heart and not your wallet is tough. It’s also important if you plan on having a fulfilling career. Don’t be scared, others have made the difficult transition and my guest today might just inspire you to follow your passions too!

Laura Peña is a motion designer who transitioned to working remotely from all parts of the world as a digital nomad. Recently though she put her career on hold to pursue a truly inspiring and meaningful passion project. It all has its challenges for sure, but as you’ll hear Laura tell you in this interview, it’s been worth every bit of it. When it comes to working as a digital nomad, Laura has had to deal with some unique difficulties. We discuss how to keep old clients and find new ones when you’re working in distant countries. Networking while travelling and working is difficult, but Laura has figured it out and it has been totally worth it.

Laura has also been working steadily on a passion project film series “She is the Universe” in which she interviews teenage girls around the world about their dreams, passions, and obstacles. This is such an amazing and important project and we discuss what it means to be driven to create and pursue your dream job.

Have you been working on a passion project? What sacrifices have you made to do so? How has it fulfilled you as a person? Leave a comment below! How do you define success? Has your idea of success changed over time? Let us know in the comments!

In this episode

• How to transition into working as a digital nomad full time
• Some of the common pitfalls of working remotely and how you can cope with them
• Dedicating yourself to a passion project of your own design
• Using meditation to unplug and center and ground yourself
• Getting outside the motion designer box and meeting and getting inspired by people in other fields

Quotes

“I realized that my freelance clients and also my clients, the ones that I’ll do everything for, they really didn’t care where I was as long as I was delivering the work.” [6:41]

“That’s the hardest part of travelling, the networking. It’s hard to network because usually for someone to like you and recommend you, usually you meet in person. So even when I’m traveling I try to keep in touch with the people that I know because you never know who’s going to connect you with whom.” [12:14]

“We think that to do something we have to have it all figured out and have all the answers, but we really don’t.” [20:26]

“If you can have fun and be inspired and from that create something else, I think then why not do it. So explore, be curious, experiment, and try to figure out what it is that lights you up.” [25:49]

“We spend so much time on the computer because this is what we do, this is our work and we love it. Sometimes it’s really hard to unplug and to even think about something else when you’ve been staring at your computer for so long that you can become really disconnected from yourself.”  [35:00]

Related links

• She is the Universe
• Follow Laura on Instagram | Facebook | Youtube
• Insight timer app
• The Good Life Project
• Ted Radio Hour
• Big Magic

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Podcast music licensed by Big Waves

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dankoch.net

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