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Joseph Liu
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Finding Where You Belong with Dorna Lakayan
Have you ever felt a bit out of place in your current job? Do you ever feel more like an outsider than an insider at your company? Have you ever struggled to fit in at your workplace? In episode 103 of the Career Relaunch® podcast, Dorna Lakayan, an architect and designer, describes her international journey to figure out where she belongs, the challenges of penetrating new professional circles, and the emotional dynamics of running your own business I also share some thoughts on fitting into new environments during the Mental Fuel® segment. 💭 Key Career Change Insights While your instincts can serve you well, over time, logic and reason can overwhelm that instinct as you progress in your career, which can stop you from making brave leaps that align with your true ambitions. Some days, you may wake up and feel like you’re making zero progress, but you still have to find a way to bravely put one foot in front of the other and make consistent efforts to keep moving forward both socially and professionally. You often hear stories of success, but what lies beneath the surface are often lonely, challenging days where things haven’t gone according to plan. It’s part of the journey and helps you get where you ultimately want to go. When people don’t respond in the way you want them to, it may not relate as much to you as it does to their situation or own struggles. If you’re going through a tough time in your career, trust that this shall pass and life will go on. As long as you’re enthusiastic about what you’re doing and excited about your future, opportunities will arise. 💪🏼 Listener Challenge During this episode’s Mental Fuel® segment, I challenged listeners to find an anchor point that’s consistently served you well, kept you grounded, or just helped you feel more in control. Identify an activity, skillset, person, or place you can reconnect with regularly to create that sense of familiarity that serves as a source of comfort, confidence, and certainty as you face those professional and personal challenges around you. 📖 Episode Chapters 00:00:00 Overview 00:01:07 Introduction 00:02:39 Chat with Dorna Lakayan 00:44:07 Mental Fuel 00:51:08 Listener Challenge 00:51:41 Wrap Up 👤 About Dorna Lakayan, Architect Dorna Lakayan is an interior architect and furniture designer with Persian and Norwegian roots. With Studio Lakayan, she transforms houses into dream homes and brand identities into memorable venues worldwide. Her approach focuses on inhabitants being the center piece of a space, complementing habits and lifestyles through mindful space design and visual harmony. Her philosophy and approach center on the idea that “A good space creates space: to feel, to think, and to be you. Be sure to check out her Lakayan Loves series where she shares her favorite icons in the world of architecture & design. Follow Dorna on Instagram and LinkedIn. 👍🏻 Did You Enjoy This Episode? Please Let Us Know! Review: I’d also love for you to leave a positive review and rating for the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, which helps my show reach more people who want to relaunch their careers. Follow: Be sure to follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, or Android to get each new episode on your device automatically. Full instructions. Stay in touch: Follow the Career Relaunch® podcast on X and Facebook. You can also follow host Joseph Liu on most major social media platforms. Connect with Joseph 💬 Comments, Suggestions, or Questions? If you have any lingering thoughts, questions, or topics you would like covered in future episodes, record a voicemail for me right here. I LOVE hearing from listeners and aim to respond to every single voicemail I receive. Leave Joseph a Voicemail You can also leave a comment below. Thanks! 🙏🏻 Thanks to BrandYourself for Supporting Career Relaunch BrandYourself offers simple tools and services to help control what people find when they Google you. To clean up, protect, and improve how you look online, visit BrandYourself.com and use promo code ‘RELAUNCH’ to get 50% off a Premium membership. 🎵 Interview Segment Music Credits Comastudio – Background Meditative Ambient Music Bio Unit – Summer Rain Lama House – Tales of the Deep Podington Bear – Ice Climb Podington Bear – Dog and Pony Show Podington Bear – Night Vision Cora Zea – Velvet Uniform Podington Bear – Chimera Joystock – Acoustic Inspiration 📄 Interview Transcript Joseph: I am looking forward to talking with you about a lot of your geographical transitions, and the ups and downs you’ve experienced along the way, your recent decision to start your own architectural firm. But I’d love to start by just first getting a snapshot of your life right now. What are you focused on both personally and also professionally at this moment? Dorna: [02:55] For me, they are not really separated from each other. Maybe being a designer, I have always lived, eat, breathed design, sort of an attitude. My life is design and it’s really intersectionally going forward together. But my focus these days mostly is, of course, establishing my life here in the new country, new city, finding new friends, new colleagues, new collaborators. I’m figuring out what’s next. Joseph: You haven’t always lived in Amsterdam. So, let’s start at the beginning and move forward from there. I’d like to actually go all the way back to your childhood when you grew up in Iran, which is where you’re from. What do you remember about your life in Iran as a child? Dorna: [03:45] I think after coming to Europe, my biggest memory of Iran relates to the sun. It was a very sunny part of the world. Especially when you are a child, maybe you are more curious. You see more, you observe more. So I remember a lot of patterns, a lot of colors. We live in a part of the world where the sun is available. So a lot of architecture and a lot of things are built around it. The shadows. The concept of actually shadowed spaces and sunny spaces or light spaces. So there’s a lot of things about the architecture. Of course, I remember, but then, I came from a family where architecture was important or art was important. So maybe that’s why most of my memories are around it as well. Or maybe I was just curious as a child to become an architect, I don’t know. Joseph: Were your parents also involved in some sort of design or architectural industry? Dorna: [04:49] My dad is a civil engineer and my mom is an artist, or used to be. It was never a profession, but she was just into art. So she would paint and make a lot of things. As a child, I was a very preserved child. I wouldn’t show so much of my emotions. To help me to show more as a child, my mom taught me that I can create things and show things with creating stuff. I had ended up sewing, knitting, and all of those little things that a child can do. Painting, and writing cards and notes, and things like that. So that was my daily routine of creating. Joseph: In most cases on this show, we would typically feature somebody who has a certain professional background and then they switch sectors and they maybe switch roles within a company. Now, in your case, you from a very early start, wanted to become an architect. At what point did you realize that and how did you know you wanted to become an architect? Dorna: [05:44] Yeah, the thing is I didn’t have the title, so I didn’t know what I wanted to become is an architect. That was the whole. But I knew that I love to create and I love to do things within spaces. For many years, I had a title for myself. I called myself the psychologist of spaces. Because I really thought, or I still believe that, that you can somebody’s feelings, emotions, habits, a lot of things about how easy your life is by having good space. And then, as a child, I called myself a psychologist of space, of course. But then, my best friend then was an architect. One evening, I saw a book in their home, which is the drawing of, or a picture of, the Frank Lloyd Wright’s waterfall house, the Fountain House. And then, when I saw that, this interaction between outside, inside was so interesting, and how the waterfall had gone under that building and all of these beautiful things. So I went to his father and said, “What should I do? What kind of profession should I have to be able to do this?” He said, “You need to be an architect.” That was the day I realized I needed to be an architect. Joseph: For those people out there like me who have never been to Iran, how would you describe the overall professional scene in the city where you grew up? Dorna: [07:23] When I left Iran, I was quite young. I was 24. So I can’t really say much about the professional scene because I worked only a few years there. But generally speaking, architecture and civil engineering, which are the dominant jobs in the field, are quite masculine. So you don’t see so many females on the — I didn’t. I don’t know, maybe now, it has changed. All I remember was that you needed some sort of support from somebody. But then, that can also come from the fact that I was very young. So I needed mentors and people who would help me. Generally, Iran is a country full of architecture. There is a big history and a very rich history about architecture in that part of the world, so you learn a lot. But it’s not practiced that way, of course, anymore. Joseph: What ultimately led you to decide to leave Iran behind? Dorna: [08:26] I don’t think you make this decision in Iran. You kind of grow with it, which is a kind of sad part of their story because it’s, according to me, one of the best places to be. Due to the whole situation in that part in the Middle East, with all the complications it has, I think as a child, if you have the ability to grow
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