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Sarah Cols: The Dream Catalyst
Sarah Cols: The Dream Catalyst
Guest: Sarah Cols
Career: Experience Designer & Dream Catalyst | La Casita de la Magia Creator
Based: Nomadic (Co-living spaces across Europe)
Project: La Casita de la Magia
www.lacasitadelamagia.com
Instagram: @lacasita.delamagia
Episode Description
Sarah Cols spent six years as a career counselor in Brussels asking unemployed people about their dreams—questions most had never been asked. She was brilliant at helping others chase their dreams whilst feeling increasingly trapped in her own role. Then the perfect job offer landed: everything she wanted on paper. Her body said no.
She walked 900 kilometres across Spain on the Camino de Santiago with no preparation and an injured knee that had already required three surgeries. She went expecting solitude and physical healing. Instead, she discovered that transformation happens in community, not isolation. Strangers walking together for hours without even exchanging names had deeper conversations than she'd ever had back home.
In this conversation, Sarah shares why she turned down her dream job by improvising on a phone call, how the Camino taught her to be grounded in the present instead of planning the future, and why collective experiences spark more growth than solo inner work. We explore the golden cage of job security, the magic of spontaneous decisions, and how she's now creating La Casita de la Magia—a travelling sanctuary helping nomads reconnect with forgotten dreams.
This is a story about listening to your body when your mind says yes, trusting intuition over rational answers, and becoming a catalyst for others whilst building your own dream.
Timestamps
00:00-00:27 Introduction
00:28-01:31Guest Intro
01:32-05:29 Career counsellor in Brussels
05:29-09:37 The breaking point
09:37-12:55 Career breaks and discovering workaway
12:55-15:23 Second breaking point
15:23-20:02 The spontaneous phone call
20:02-22:39 The Camino decision
22:39-25:56 Walking the Camino
25:56-28:12 From career counsellor to dream catalyst
28:12-31:32 Community over solitude
31:32-34:37 Current work and lifestyle
34:37-38:46 The journey is the dream
38:46-38:59 Closing
About This Podcast
Real conversations with successful digital nomads who've built sustainable location-independent income. Strategic insights on how they transitioned, what income streams they built, and what they wish they'd known earlier. No travel tips or lifestyle fluff. Host Ibi Malik helps ambitious professionals transition to nomadic careers without income sacrifice.
Host
Ibi Malik helps ambitious professionals transition to nomadic careers without income sacrifice.
To watch the video follow this link: https://youtu.be/GOa2BPv7_VU
Follow for weekly episodes featuring professionals who've successfully built nomadic income streams.
Episode length: ~39 minutes
Published: 20th February 2026
Episode #7
Guest Reflection
I sat down with Sarah at Chateau Co-living in Normandy, where she was working as a community facilitator and living as a guest. Over our conversation, she told me about helping unemployed people find their dreams whilst stuck in corporate herself, the moment she realised the importance of listening to your body, and why walking 900 kilometres across Spain taught her that community, not solitude, is where transformation happens. This is the story of someone who realised that helping others chase their dreams only works when you're brave enough to chase your own. Today, she creates La Casita de la Magia, a travelling sanctuary helping nomads reconnect with their dreams.
The Career Counsellor Who Asked About Dreams
For six years, Sarah worked as a career counsellor in Brussels helping unemployed people find work.
"I would help them and guide them back to employment. But hopefully also, one of their dream jobs. That was always my purpose, at least."
Whilst the system saw numbers and mandatory appointments, Sarah saw people with dreams they'd forgotten.
"I would start the interviews with that. What is one of your biggest dreams? What makes your heart beat?"
Many had never asked themselves. But Sarah never stopped asking. The irony was that she was helping others find their dreams whilst feeling increasingly trapped in her own role.
When Covid Changed Everything
The first two years were brilliant. Then Covid forced everything remote.
"I was missing the human contact and the human connection. That was one of the reasons I got into that job."
Many people she worked with weren't comfortable with technology. Some didn't have the technology.
"I felt more and more disconnected from them."
When they returned to in-person work, the job had fundamentally changed. Ministers made decisions without understanding what was happening on the ground. People became numbers. The system wanted efficiency. She wanted to help.
"We had to do more and more interviews a day with less and less time. How are we supposed to help people if we don't have the time to understand their living situation?"
"I felt that in the working environment, I wasn't aligned with their values anymore."
One perk remained: career breaks. She could take up to five years off, unpaid, with job security when she returned.
"I always loved travelling. That's like my soul, what nourishes my heart."
It was her safety valve. Until it wasn't enough.
The Body Says No
Sarah applied for new jobs. Working with young adults might reignite her purpose. She had interviews. One went very well. They wanted to hire her.
"On paper, it was everything I actually wanted or thought I wanted."
Then she got the call offering her the position.
"I started really listening and paying attention to how I felt and also paying attention to my body. I didn't feel that sense of excitement, which really surprised me."
They wanted her to start in a month. She asked for the weekend to think.
"Monday arrives and I'm like, I have no clue what I'm going to tell them because I don't have a rational answer. I'm just going to pick up the phone and see what comes out of my mouth. Usually when I'm spontaneous, that's when I speak from the heart."
When it was time to call them back, she still didn't know her answer. She let her intuition take over, trusting that the right answer would come as soon as she started speaking. It did. The answer was no.
"I knew that I wanted the freedom to be able to travel. And I knew that that job wouldn't give me that."
Sarah chose uncertainty over security. Freedom over safety.
The Camino: Where Stories Changed Everything
After declining the job, Sarah needed space. A friend had walked the Camino de Santiago the year before.
"Suddenly it hit me. I was like, okay, I think I want to go walk."
She had no walking experience. No physical preparation.
"I told my friends and family, I'm just going to go walk a few days and see where it leads me. But I ended up walking the whole thing and walking for six weeks and 900 kilometres."
Initially, she went for physical reasons. A knee injury, torn ligaments, three previous surgeries. She wanted to prove her body could heal differently.
But the Camino gave her something unexpected: presence.
"All you're thinking about is, do I want to walk today? Do I want to rest? You're scanning your body. So you're not thinking at all about the rest. That grounded me so much."
And then there were the people.
"The Camino is all about encountering people. I loved asking them why they were doing the Camino. What brought them here? What are they looking for? That's when I realized, I love hearing people's stories and helping them reconnect with their dreams."
Sometimes they had deep conversations without even exchanging names.
"It was not about your identity. We were having deeper conversations, and sometimes it was even easier to talk to people that I didn't know."
What amazed her most was the resilience.
"People are so resilient. They're always choosing the positive side of things. Even though they've gone through a lot."
The Camino showed Sarah what she wanted to do. Create spaces where people felt free to explore, to be vulnerable, to dream. And to witness the resilience that emerges when people reconnect with themselves.
Community Over Solo Healing
Before the Camino, Sarah assumed transformation required solitude.
"I was like, oh, I'm going alone on this healing journey. But actually, that's where I learned the most. That was the missing ingredient to my personal growth."
The missing ingredient was community.
"We're stronger together than alone. Inspiration thrives when we're all together. When you're having fun, when you're being playful, creative. That's where usually all the answers came to me."
This insight became the foundation of her work. Co-living spaces offer community for nomads who are constantly moving, constantly starting over. And Sarah realised that's exactly where she needed to be.
Living the Dream Whilst Helping Others
Today, Sarah is a full-time nomad. She splits her time between working as a community facilitator in co-livings, organising get-togethers, trips, and activities, and living as a guest in these spaces.
But her real work is something called La Casita de la Magia. The Little House of Magic.
It's not a physical place. It's a living experience that moves with her, a pop-up workshop concept that exists wherever she goes. As Sarah describes it: "A sanctuary in the making, part dream, part becoming, created to help people reconnect with their dreams, deep desires, intuition, and their joy."
She designs immersive, playful, poetic experiences inside co-livings. Guests become dreamers, invited to explore what truly matters to them in a playful way.
It's the perfect manifestation of everything the Camino taught her. Community over solitude. Play over rigid structure. Dreams reconnected through joy, not force.
"Freedom is one of my highest values. Being able to travel and meet super interesting people from all different sides of the world. It's what nourishes me. So in order for me to live my dream life, I also have to listen to how I feel joyful and fulfilled."
La Casita de la Magia isn't tied to one location because Sarah isn't either. It's a sanctuary that travels, that adapts, that meets people where they are. Just like she needed the Camino to find her path, she creates spaces for others to find theirs.
"Currently, the experiences I create, you will find them in existing co-living spaces and hopefully one day in my co-living, my casita."
One day, La Casita de la Magia might become a physical place. But for now, it's exactly what it needs to be: a dream in motion, helping others reconnect with their own.
The Catalyst Effect
Sarah helps people reconnect with their dreams whilst actively building her own. When I asked how she reconciles this, her answer was profound.
"The people taking part in the experiences I create, they're actually inspiring me and contributing to my dream. For me, the journey is the dream."
She sees herself as a catalyst. Someone who sparks wonder.
"It's all about helping each other out, cheering for each other's dreams. If we can all be that person in someone's dream or vision, that's how we spread the energy."
It's a ripple effect.
"If you're following your dreams, you're inspiring others to do so. And then that person starts reconnecting with their dreams and they inspire other people around them."
From Asking to Living
Today, Sarah splits her time between living as a guest in co-living spaces and working as a community facilitator, whilst creating La Casita de la Magia experiences that help people reconnect with their dreams. It's a far cry from the Brussels office where she spent six years asking people about their dreams whilst ignoring her own.
The difference now? She listened. She listened when her body said no. She listened when the Camino taught her that community matters. She listened when she realised this is the work she was always meant to do.
Sarah spent years helping others find their dream jobs. Now she's teaching them how to reconnect with the dreams they'd forgotten they had.
She's doing it by living proof. By choosing freedom over security. By walking away from a safe job. By trusting the uncertain path. By creating a sanctuary that travels with her, helping nomads explore what truly matters.
She's the dream catalyst, spreading wonder one co-living space at a time.
The real lesson? You can't help others find their dreams whilst ignoring your own. At some point, you have to stop asking and start living.
Sarah made that choice. And in doing so, she's showing others that maybe they can too.
Digital nomads and location-independent professionals featured on Ibi's Digital Nomad Stories podcast share insights into building sustainable remote careers. Listen to all episodes: Ibi's Digital Nomad Stories
View all episodes
By Ibi MalikSarah Cols: The Dream Catalyst
Guest: Sarah Cols
Career: Experience Designer & Dream Catalyst | La Casita de la Magia Creator
Based: Nomadic (Co-living spaces across Europe)
Project: La Casita de la Magia
www.lacasitadelamagia.com
Instagram: @lacasita.delamagia
Episode Description
Sarah Cols spent six years as a career counselor in Brussels asking unemployed people about their dreams—questions most had never been asked. She was brilliant at helping others chase their dreams whilst feeling increasingly trapped in her own role. Then the perfect job offer landed: everything she wanted on paper. Her body said no.
She walked 900 kilometres across Spain on the Camino de Santiago with no preparation and an injured knee that had already required three surgeries. She went expecting solitude and physical healing. Instead, she discovered that transformation happens in community, not isolation. Strangers walking together for hours without even exchanging names had deeper conversations than she'd ever had back home.
In this conversation, Sarah shares why she turned down her dream job by improvising on a phone call, how the Camino taught her to be grounded in the present instead of planning the future, and why collective experiences spark more growth than solo inner work. We explore the golden cage of job security, the magic of spontaneous decisions, and how she's now creating La Casita de la Magia—a travelling sanctuary helping nomads reconnect with forgotten dreams.
This is a story about listening to your body when your mind says yes, trusting intuition over rational answers, and becoming a catalyst for others whilst building your own dream.
Timestamps
00:00-00:27 Introduction
00:28-01:31Guest Intro
01:32-05:29 Career counsellor in Brussels
05:29-09:37 The breaking point
09:37-12:55 Career breaks and discovering workaway
12:55-15:23 Second breaking point
15:23-20:02 The spontaneous phone call
20:02-22:39 The Camino decision
22:39-25:56 Walking the Camino
25:56-28:12 From career counsellor to dream catalyst
28:12-31:32 Community over solitude
31:32-34:37 Current work and lifestyle
34:37-38:46 The journey is the dream
38:46-38:59 Closing
About This Podcast
Real conversations with successful digital nomads who've built sustainable location-independent income. Strategic insights on how they transitioned, what income streams they built, and what they wish they'd known earlier. No travel tips or lifestyle fluff. Host Ibi Malik helps ambitious professionals transition to nomadic careers without income sacrifice.
Host
Ibi Malik helps ambitious professionals transition to nomadic careers without income sacrifice.
To watch the video follow this link: https://youtu.be/GOa2BPv7_VU
Follow for weekly episodes featuring professionals who've successfully built nomadic income streams.
Episode length: ~39 minutes
Published: 20th February 2026
Episode #7
Guest Reflection
I sat down with Sarah at Chateau Co-living in Normandy, where she was working as a community facilitator and living as a guest. Over our conversation, she told me about helping unemployed people find their dreams whilst stuck in corporate herself, the moment she realised the importance of listening to your body, and why walking 900 kilometres across Spain taught her that community, not solitude, is where transformation happens. This is the story of someone who realised that helping others chase their dreams only works when you're brave enough to chase your own. Today, she creates La Casita de la Magia, a travelling sanctuary helping nomads reconnect with their dreams.
The Career Counsellor Who Asked About Dreams
For six years, Sarah worked as a career counsellor in Brussels helping unemployed people find work.
"I would help them and guide them back to employment. But hopefully also, one of their dream jobs. That was always my purpose, at least."
Whilst the system saw numbers and mandatory appointments, Sarah saw people with dreams they'd forgotten.
"I would start the interviews with that. What is one of your biggest dreams? What makes your heart beat?"
Many had never asked themselves. But Sarah never stopped asking. The irony was that she was helping others find their dreams whilst feeling increasingly trapped in her own role.
When Covid Changed Everything
The first two years were brilliant. Then Covid forced everything remote.
"I was missing the human contact and the human connection. That was one of the reasons I got into that job."
Many people she worked with weren't comfortable with technology. Some didn't have the technology.
"I felt more and more disconnected from them."
When they returned to in-person work, the job had fundamentally changed. Ministers made decisions without understanding what was happening on the ground. People became numbers. The system wanted efficiency. She wanted to help.
"We had to do more and more interviews a day with less and less time. How are we supposed to help people if we don't have the time to understand their living situation?"
"I felt that in the working environment, I wasn't aligned with their values anymore."
One perk remained: career breaks. She could take up to five years off, unpaid, with job security when she returned.
"I always loved travelling. That's like my soul, what nourishes my heart."
It was her safety valve. Until it wasn't enough.
The Body Says No
Sarah applied for new jobs. Working with young adults might reignite her purpose. She had interviews. One went very well. They wanted to hire her.
"On paper, it was everything I actually wanted or thought I wanted."
Then she got the call offering her the position.
"I started really listening and paying attention to how I felt and also paying attention to my body. I didn't feel that sense of excitement, which really surprised me."
They wanted her to start in a month. She asked for the weekend to think.
"Monday arrives and I'm like, I have no clue what I'm going to tell them because I don't have a rational answer. I'm just going to pick up the phone and see what comes out of my mouth. Usually when I'm spontaneous, that's when I speak from the heart."
When it was time to call them back, she still didn't know her answer. She let her intuition take over, trusting that the right answer would come as soon as she started speaking. It did. The answer was no.
"I knew that I wanted the freedom to be able to travel. And I knew that that job wouldn't give me that."
Sarah chose uncertainty over security. Freedom over safety.
The Camino: Where Stories Changed Everything
After declining the job, Sarah needed space. A friend had walked the Camino de Santiago the year before.
"Suddenly it hit me. I was like, okay, I think I want to go walk."
She had no walking experience. No physical preparation.
"I told my friends and family, I'm just going to go walk a few days and see where it leads me. But I ended up walking the whole thing and walking for six weeks and 900 kilometres."
Initially, she went for physical reasons. A knee injury, torn ligaments, three previous surgeries. She wanted to prove her body could heal differently.
But the Camino gave her something unexpected: presence.
"All you're thinking about is, do I want to walk today? Do I want to rest? You're scanning your body. So you're not thinking at all about the rest. That grounded me so much."
And then there were the people.
"The Camino is all about encountering people. I loved asking them why they were doing the Camino. What brought them here? What are they looking for? That's when I realized, I love hearing people's stories and helping them reconnect with their dreams."
Sometimes they had deep conversations without even exchanging names.
"It was not about your identity. We were having deeper conversations, and sometimes it was even easier to talk to people that I didn't know."
What amazed her most was the resilience.
"People are so resilient. They're always choosing the positive side of things. Even though they've gone through a lot."
The Camino showed Sarah what she wanted to do. Create spaces where people felt free to explore, to be vulnerable, to dream. And to witness the resilience that emerges when people reconnect with themselves.
Community Over Solo Healing
Before the Camino, Sarah assumed transformation required solitude.
"I was like, oh, I'm going alone on this healing journey. But actually, that's where I learned the most. That was the missing ingredient to my personal growth."
The missing ingredient was community.
"We're stronger together than alone. Inspiration thrives when we're all together. When you're having fun, when you're being playful, creative. That's where usually all the answers came to me."
This insight became the foundation of her work. Co-living spaces offer community for nomads who are constantly moving, constantly starting over. And Sarah realised that's exactly where she needed to be.
Living the Dream Whilst Helping Others
Today, Sarah is a full-time nomad. She splits her time between working as a community facilitator in co-livings, organising get-togethers, trips, and activities, and living as a guest in these spaces.
But her real work is something called La Casita de la Magia. The Little House of Magic.
It's not a physical place. It's a living experience that moves with her, a pop-up workshop concept that exists wherever she goes. As Sarah describes it: "A sanctuary in the making, part dream, part becoming, created to help people reconnect with their dreams, deep desires, intuition, and their joy."
She designs immersive, playful, poetic experiences inside co-livings. Guests become dreamers, invited to explore what truly matters to them in a playful way.
It's the perfect manifestation of everything the Camino taught her. Community over solitude. Play over rigid structure. Dreams reconnected through joy, not force.
"Freedom is one of my highest values. Being able to travel and meet super interesting people from all different sides of the world. It's what nourishes me. So in order for me to live my dream life, I also have to listen to how I feel joyful and fulfilled."
La Casita de la Magia isn't tied to one location because Sarah isn't either. It's a sanctuary that travels, that adapts, that meets people where they are. Just like she needed the Camino to find her path, she creates spaces for others to find theirs.
"Currently, the experiences I create, you will find them in existing co-living spaces and hopefully one day in my co-living, my casita."
One day, La Casita de la Magia might become a physical place. But for now, it's exactly what it needs to be: a dream in motion, helping others reconnect with their own.
The Catalyst Effect
Sarah helps people reconnect with their dreams whilst actively building her own. When I asked how she reconciles this, her answer was profound.
"The people taking part in the experiences I create, they're actually inspiring me and contributing to my dream. For me, the journey is the dream."
She sees herself as a catalyst. Someone who sparks wonder.
"It's all about helping each other out, cheering for each other's dreams. If we can all be that person in someone's dream or vision, that's how we spread the energy."
It's a ripple effect.
"If you're following your dreams, you're inspiring others to do so. And then that person starts reconnecting with their dreams and they inspire other people around them."
From Asking to Living
Today, Sarah splits her time between living as a guest in co-living spaces and working as a community facilitator, whilst creating La Casita de la Magia experiences that help people reconnect with their dreams. It's a far cry from the Brussels office where she spent six years asking people about their dreams whilst ignoring her own.
The difference now? She listened. She listened when her body said no. She listened when the Camino taught her that community matters. She listened when she realised this is the work she was always meant to do.
Sarah spent years helping others find their dream jobs. Now she's teaching them how to reconnect with the dreams they'd forgotten they had.
She's doing it by living proof. By choosing freedom over security. By walking away from a safe job. By trusting the uncertain path. By creating a sanctuary that travels with her, helping nomads explore what truly matters.
She's the dream catalyst, spreading wonder one co-living space at a time.
The real lesson? You can't help others find their dreams whilst ignoring your own. At some point, you have to stop asking and start living.
Sarah made that choice. And in doing so, she's showing others that maybe they can too.
Digital nomads and location-independent professionals featured on Ibi's Digital Nomad Stories podcast share insights into building sustainable remote careers. Listen to all episodes: Ibi's Digital Nomad Stories