Catalina Valentino 🔥

Who made the rules for when is ‘acceptable’ to #work?

I recently had a conversation where I mentioned the fact I had worked until 7pm that day.

“That’s toxic” they said.

🤔 Toxic or efficient?

See I’ve learnt to understand my body:

💡that day I didn’t start until 10am
💡took a couple of #breaks as I couldn’t focus
💡went for lunch with a friend
💡 THEN worked til 7pm

👑 It worked for me and that’s all that matters.

🎙We need to remember that we all work differently, and #efficiency isn’t measured by the outdated working day.

I don’t like labels.

I think we’re all just a bunch of regular humans doing regular things, putting a bunch of labels on things.

I feel like everyone I meet nowadays has some sort of label; high functioning anxiety, depression etc.

🔥 I’m not doubting the sincerity of the problem, I’m doubting the legitimacy of the person saying them.

We hear one thing we relate to and jump straight onto labelling ourselves.

SOMETIMES it’s not depression.

Sometimes 👏🏼 it’s 👏🏼 just 👏🏼 a 👏🏼 ‘bad’ 👏🏼 week 👏🏼.

😏 How about instead of using these labels as excuses, we use them to understand our #strengths & weaknesses and perform better as individuals.

👏🏼 That way those who really need that #support can it more effectively and efficiently.

IT’S MY BIRTHDAY ❤️

I was grateful to have celebrated in New York…

But recently I’ve been getting to grips with balancing;

💪🏼 Hustle hustle hustle.

And

🫶🏼 “Investing” time into those I love.

It’s not easy - heck - it’s taken me 6 years to get here.

But that lesson sure couldn’t have come on a greater day!

So today is a day for family, my do not disturb on and I’ll BRB.

HOLY SH*T I WON!!

Was exactly my reaction on Friday night when I won Midlands Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2022!! 😍Midlands Business Awards

Overwhelmed, overjoyed and perfectly in line with everything that’s in the works for this month 😏

Big appreciation to my support system ❤️ and to my IG & LI community, you’ve helped me more than you’ll ever know 🧡

Let’s keep growing! 🔥#entrepreneur #youngentrepreneur #awardwinning

The hardest thing about being multicultural is not fitting into either culture.

🌶️ 1. When I go to Colombia, I look a lot paler than most my family. But I’m also too tanned to be fully British.

🌶️ 2. If I had the choice, I’d prefer to salsa with my UK friends over dancing to English pop (although who wouldn’t 👀).

🌶️ 3. Sometimes I’m scared to speak #Spanish in front of my Colombian family - even though it’s near perfect - in case I mess up.

🌶️ 4. My full name used to be an issue for most people to pronounce over here, so I used to abbreviate it to make it less ‘foreign looking’.

🌶️ 5. My family and I celebrate slightly different #traditions, and I used to hate feeling different from all my friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my #heritage, but sometimes you feel like an outsider to both cultures 🥹