You First: Embrace Your Power and Rediscover Yourself with Maria.

Welcome Back!

In this debut episode of the rebranded podcast, Maria Fuentes is thrilled to reconnect with her listeners after a three-month hiatus. If you’re new here, welcome! If you’re returning, thank you for your patience and continued support.

What to Expect:

• Empowerment for Women: This podcast is dedicated to women who are navigating overwhelming emotions, seeking self-love, and striving for personal power.
• Personal Growth: Tune in to discover tools for emotional awareness, deeper self-connection, and healthier relationships.
• Maria’s Insights: Expect weekly episodes featuring Maria’s coaching, insights on emotional intelligence, and practical advice for living authentically.
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Maria opens up about her personal journey through self-discovery, highlighting the struggles and transformations that led to this new podcast. From overcoming challenges to achieving a deeper connection with herself and others, Maria’s story is a testament to resilience and growth.

Subscribe to the podcast for weekly episodes and stay tuned for more insightful content. If you love what you hear, please leave a review to help other women discover this transformative space.

 Dive into the first episode and let’s embark on this journey to rediscover and empower our true selves together!

If you enjoyed this episode Hit the subscribe button for updates, and if you love this podcast, please leave a review. Your feedback helps other women like you discover and benefit from it.

If you enjoyed this episode Hit the subscribe button for updates, and if you love this podcast, please leave a review. Your feedback helps other women like you discover and benefit from it.

Unlock your true potential with our FREE Rediscover Worksheet tool! This simple tool will guide your self-discovery journey, helping you uncover your authentic self and regain personal power. Download now and start your transformation today!- https://mailchi.mp/mariafuentes/rediscover-yourself-the-muse

Need extra support from Maria? Join MUSE Energy, her exclusive women 's-only channel on Instagram, for more insights and inspiration! - https://www.instagram.com/direct/inbox/?thread_key=8628881520460159

For personalized 1:1 coaching, visit Maria’s website at mariafuentes.net or email her at info@mariafuentes.net for guidance.- https://mariafuentes.net/

Follow Maria on Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/_maria.fuentes_/

Transcript

0:00

You're going to start feeling less reactive. You're going to understand that everything happens for a purpose. I am going to give you some time for you to really just have the space for you to put yourself first. Welcome to You First, a Journey to Self podcast, where we empower women to rediscover their true, authentic selves and regain personal power. If you are ready for a major shift, you've come to the right place. I am your host, Maria Fuentes, an expert in women's emotional mastery and self discovery. With a degree in psychology and nearly two decades of experience, I am passionate about addressing the challenges women face most. Self love, healthy relationships, and emotional awareness. I've had the privilege of coaching so many incredible women and witnessing their transformation through the methods we'll discuss on this podcast. This show is your weekly space to shift your perspective, find inspiration within and heal in ways that feel true to you. I'm so grateful you're here. Let's dive into this week's episode. Hello, my gorgeous muses. Welcome to you. First, a journey to self podcast. I am. Ecstatic. To be sitting here recording for you guys again. You have no idea how much I've missed sitting here and talking to you all and just helping you navigate through different life challenges. And if you're, if this is your first time listening to me, thank you for coming and tuning in. And if you are back and just, you've been waiting and wondering what I've been doing the last three months. After I stopped recording self-mastery with Maria. Well, I just needed a little break a little bit of time. It actually took longer than I expected an old me would have just maybe brushed through the process. And I was so excited to just create more for you guys, but I just wanted it to rush through the process of getting really concise and purposeful of what this podcast was going to be about. So actually took my time. I hired a strategist to help me. Really get clear on my message and what I want to help you with and what my purpose for this podcast is. And as much as I love self-mastery with Maria, don't get me wrong. That was. The most exciting year and some change of my life, just having so many beautiful, amazing guests come on and helping you guys with different topics. It was self-mastery around a lot of different topics and things. And if you loved self-mastery with Marie, you're going to love this even more because this is dedicated for you. The woman that wants it all that maybe has some overwhelming emotions. It's hard. You. I was having some difficulty understanding her emotions is feeling lonely and you feel like you're the only one experiencing these things. This is a place for you to feel heard and understood. And my goal every week is to help you with that feel, just feel more confident and feel unstoppable. And the reason I named it, you first is because I realized that anything you do in life, you come first. You first, everyone else, because if you light your own path, others will just follow suit. If you want something, you have to become an energetic match to it. If you want others to love you and validate you, you have to love and validate yourself. If you want others to be, to perceive you as confident, and you have to be confident, it all starts and ends with you. And that's something I've had to learn the hard way in the last seven years of my personal development and discovery. And it's something I work on with my clients. Every single time we get on a call every single time. It's. Time for them to put themselves first and really allow me to dive in deep with them. And so that is, that's what we're going to do on this podcast. And I can't coach everyone. So my podcast is going to be. 30 25 minutes, 20 minutes. Of me coaching you through something of me helping you through something. And every once in a while, we're going to have guests come on with their expertise on anything and everything that you believe you may need, some of the things you're going to feel from this podcast is you're going to feel more grounded. You're going to feel less overwhelmed with your emotions. You're going to feel a lot less quote, unquote crazy because you're, you're so emotional about things and nothing makes sense and you feel alone because you think you're the only, you think you're the only one that's experiencing that you're going to. Learn tactics and tools to truly dive into understanding yourself deeper, you know, the relationship with yourself. You're gonna create a deeper relationship with yourself and it's going to be beautiful. You're going to have a lot more emotional intelligence. One of my goals is to help women navigate their emotions. If nothing else out of all my episodes, I want you to learn how to navigate those beautiful emotions of ours in a deeper, better way. You're going to have more self-awareness and self-acceptance because of that, you're going to, I'm going to help you reduce shame and guilt in your life. We carry those emotions with us a lot, especially as women, we feel shameful. We feel guilt. And we let us stop us. We're going to dive into our patterns and our triggers and what those mean, and really getting to the root of who we are and understanding ourselves. And that way we can create healthy relationships. We can have healthy relationships with other people and it becomes second nature and we start attracting anything and everything that we truly want out of life. You're going to start feeling less reactive. You're going to understand that everything happens for a purpose. I am going to give you some time for you to really just have the space for you to put yourself first. And if you follow me on social media, you know, showing up for yourself every day is my, like my saying my thing I show up for myself every single day. I usually do it in a form of a workout or moving my body because that's what, that's what helps me process things. But sometimes it's just journaling. Sometimes it's just me sitting in bed. Taking a little longer sleeping in whatever it is, but I show up for myself. And so you being on this podcast right now, listening to this, you committing to listening every week. And sharing this with other people and allowing them to put themselves first. That is going to get you guys. In that energetic frequency. And so I am beyond grateful if you've listened to me with self-mastery with Maria, and I'm even more grateful that during this time that I haven't been recording, you guys have listened to a lot of my older episodes. And I cannot wait to share so much with you. And as you can see, I. There's three episodes are coming live. The moment I relaunched this, which is Monday, July 29th. And the reason I did three is because I want to give you guys juice. I want to give you guys some like good things, some great content, some amazing. Feelings so that when you listen to this, it helps you grow and helps you become the best version of yourself. And relationships are really important. Also. So we're going to talk a lot about relationships, not only with ourselves, but with others. And so one of the episodes I'm I'm launching is how to like lead with your emotions as women. We are the emotional leaders in a relationship. And I am so grateful and honored and blessed to have such an amazing fiance, which I don't remember. I think I got engaged before I stopped recording. So I think that was like old news from podcasts episodes before, but. If it's not. Yes, TJ and I are engaged and I have the most beautiful relationship that we're constantly cultivating and growing and being really mindful of how we show up. And so we're going to be sharing a lot of that with you guys too. And the. The challenges and struggles we navigate through and showing up authentically here with you so that you don't feel alone. And if, uh, if you're new here or you haven't heard my story before, because I don't think I've shared my story in a few episodes, even with self-mastery with Maria. I think that the more earlier episodes, I shared a little bit about my story, but. In my story in my struggles and my challenges in my heartbreak and the things that I've had to overcome. I want you to find pieces of yourself and I want, and by me sharing the story, I want you to. I understand that you're not alone and that we all go through these things and it's how we are able to shift the perspective. And heal in a way that feels good. I also wanted to relaunch this podcast because I realized self-mastery. Had a lot of like, Heavy masculine. Like let's go master ourself. And even though I do believe in self mastery, self mastery over your emotions, self mastery over your life. So mastery over your relationships, self mastery over your body, self mastery, over everything. It's a journey. And it's a beautiful journey. And so this is a space for you to heal in a way that feels really good to you in a way that doesn't feel like man, after listening to podcasts, I was like, oh man, I have a lot to do now. I'm really just not good. Um, I'm obviously needing a lot of help. I. I, I thought I was doing better than I was, but I only listened to that podcast. No, this is going to be a place where you can relate to people and, and truths and how two things can co-exist at once and how you can be healing and still struggle and have triggers and pain and heartbreak and all the things. But you could still be working on the best version of you. And so let's dive in a little bit to my story. I, I started my self development journey and like really like digging deep into myself. About seven years ago, it was around 2018. I believe. Maybe I was 2018, so maybe six years ago or so. And it was in the precipice of me turning 30. I turned 30, 20, 20. So like the anticipation of me turning 30 was really intense for me. I felt like I needed to be in a certain place financially. I had always done pretty well. The way I worked and how I made money. I never like before then I had never had like a hundred thousand dollars years or anything like that, but I I've always been an entrepreneur at heart and a business woman, and I've loved doing what I did. And. At 28. I was so unsure with where I was with my career. And. Even though on the surface, I was married at the time on the surface, it looked like had everything. I had the husband, we traveled a lot. We had fun together. We had a big house. I had a big ring on my finger. I had all the things, the quote, unquote, things that you would think would bring somebody happiness. And I wasn't fulfilled, but at the time, I didn't know that I, I knew that when my relationship and my marriage was going through rough times, it deteriorated me and it made me feel horrible about myself. Even more. I knew that when I sat down and I thought. I'm not where I want to be financially. I'm not where I want to be with my business. It really, it was a struggle for me. I felt terrible. I let it mean something about who I was as a human about my character. About. How good of a person I am. And then, and then I would find evidence to, to the, to those thoughts and those feelings. And my family growing up was terrible. Like my mom and I don't speak, we don't, we haven't. I had to cut her off. A few years ago, probably like 10 plus years now. But her relationship with my sisters, even they were older or terrible. My relationship with my sisters, even though I've tried, haven't had not been healthy either. And so I started looking for evidence of like, wow, I'm really unlovable. No one cares about me. I'm unlovable my home. My own family doesn't even want anything to do with me, my husband and I, when we're fighting. It sucks. I'm obviously not capable of having a healthy relationship. I am sucking it up and in business, I don't even know where I'm going. I should have all this figured out. And I think we all go through that right before 30. And the reason I'm telling you the background, because it was dark. I'm going to be completely honest. Those years were really dark for me. And, and that's just when I had the awareness of how much pain I was feeling before that, I think I felt the pain, but I was just like numbing myself with alcohol is super codependent and alcohol. And I was still co-dependent in alcoholism saying during that timeline, when I started my healing journey, like 28, 29, I was just, I was so unhappy and I would drink every single day and I would do it not to have fun or to just relax and have a glass of wine. I would do it to numb myself because I felt. So uncomfortable, there was this. Resistance that I felt about myself. I couldn't even stay still, like, I, my thoughts, my mind, they would run and they were rushed and they felt so heavy. They felt so intense. I felt like I couldn't even stand myself to be honest with you. And I'm, I'm giggling about it because I don't think of the past a lot. And when I sit there and I think of it, I was like, wow, I couldn't even stand myself to a certain degree. I couldn't even be around myself and let alone have a healthy relationship or create a business that felt good or anything like that. And so I started going to therapy. But I didn't start on a therapy because I thought like, let me go work on myself. Let me put myself first. Uh, hence the whole reason I'm starting this podcast. No, that's not what I did. I thought I was going to therapy. I actually wanted to go to therapy with my ex-husband for, he refused to at the beginning. So I was like, let me go to therapy so I can work on my marriage because if my marriage is happy, because that's the only source of happiness I have right now. Then my whole life will be happy and I'll be happy. And. And I think the moment I sat down on that therapist's office and she wasn't, I don't believe my first therapist. And I say first, because I've worked with. Uh, various therapist and my background's in psychology have a degree in psychology. I've worked with various modalities of therapy. But this is the first time I was actually working with somebody for me. And she, I don't, I wouldn't say she was like the absolute best, you know, but I think she's what I needed at the time. She was very honest and just a little, like let's dig in and there wasn't, there wasn't a lot of softness, but I think I needed that because I was totally in my masculine energy at the time I was, I needed like a strong hand being like, what do you let's dive in? And the moment I opened up Pandora's box, which is my past. My relationship with my mom, my relationship, growing up with my family, how I felt my dad, that wasn't really in the picture and was a drug dealer in Miami that, you know, wasn't really around all these things. When all of that surfaced up and like bubbled up, I was like, oh shit. I don't think it's my marriage. Like I. Yes, that probably needs a lot of help, but I don't think that that is the reason I'm so unhappy. And so that was a hard, like slap to my face realization that had really nothing to do with my exterior and everything to do with my interior. And so in true fashion, of course I wasn't ready to be as mindful as I am now and give myself the compassion and empathy that I would now. I still struggled. And I was really tough on myself. And the moment I started opening up, I was really. Hard on myself the whole time that I was feeling all those emotions and I would cry. And I was like, why am I crying? All these things. I felt this resistance to the pain that I was reliving again. And then in true fashion, like I said, I started an Amazon business. I, I started working in insurance. Like I, I still needed the exterior stuff. I was looking for the outside validation. I needed to make more money. I needed to feel successful at that time. I was like, I'm going to make enough money. I'm going to retire my husband and. I still needed things so that people could be like, wow, look at her while she's amazing. Or max husband can be like, oh my gosh, my wife is great. She like retired me. You know, I, I was still searching for that. I was, as I was growing and opening up my myself and bragging myself open basically. So what I was doing was breaking myself open. And so. I won't go too deep into from that moment to where I am right now, but a lot happened in between there. That looking back has been so beautiful, so amazing. So transformative, so healing. And there was so many times I wish I would've had some more compassion and empathy. And, and that's another reason why you first was created. And I relaunched with this big purpose is because I realized that nowadays. The moment we start healing. The moment we started looking for things that maybe quote unquote, we're not doing right, or we feel like we still need to work through, or we want to be better at, we start hyper-focusing on those. And we stop living in the present moment and we start, we stopped putting ourselves first. We stopped loving ourselves. We stopped showing ourselves empathy and compassion. We think we're healing and it's like the self discovery journey and it is for we're going to that other extreme and as a recovering extremist, I can tell you that that's not healthy for us. It's not healthy to go from one extreme to the next, like complete oblivion to super hyper self-awareness where you're judging every single thing that you do. And so a lot of the work that I do with my clients is helping them find that beautiful duality of life is happening. Life has happened, but you're still here. You're in the present. You're in the moment you can desire. But you can feel gratitude. You can feel happy and you can feel sad. Like emotions are beautiful. Everything in life is beautiful. And looking back, there were still so many moments. In the last six to seven years where I was. I needed a finish line. I was like, okay. All right. Well, if I go to this therapist, then, you know, then I'll just buy like three months or four months. I should just be good with relationships. Right. I should have it all figured out. Or if I go to him, no therapy where they like rewire your subconscious and they really help you. Bring up like past things that you've pushed away to help you rewire that. I was like, okay, if I do that, then I'll be good. And then I was like, well, wait, wait, wait, let me add more. Like, what if I go do Iowasca and I go sit with plant medicine, then I'll be good. And. Even the last year, I've honed into all those things have been beautiful tools, all those things, all the things I've learned that I'm going to share with you guys, all the things that I continuously learn, all the research and the studying that I do to help my clients. I'm going to give you those so that. Your time of feeling lost is a little less. So your time of feeling disconnected from yourself is a little less because. The connection to ourselves is the most beautiful thing we have because no matter what you go through in life, You have yourself at the end of the day, right? People around you, that things you, you acquire the money, you make all these things. You don't leave with you. Don't take that with you. You don't when you die. I'm getting a little deep here, but this is like, um, I want to be the voice of your emotions. Like. The moment you pass away, you don't take any of that with you. All you take is yourself. And in that moment when you're sitting there and you're laying down and you, you know, maybe this is my time and maybe we have a soft light going. I want you to look back and be proud of the life that you lived and the love that you had and the people that surrounded you and all the amazing things that happen around you versus the regrets, the shame, the guilt. All that is. It's not there for our greater good, it's there to keep a small it's there to keep us stuck and just a different way. And so a lot of people just stay in that surface area where they don't want to really go deep and then they go deep and then they feel shame that they feel guilt and then they get stuck in that run and they get stuck in that cycle. And so we're going to, we're going to work through all of these in different areas, in different ways. And I have a lot more planned for you guys with not only the podcast, but other ways that I want to help you and incorporate things. Because this is a resource, right? But these are different resources and I'm going to have people come on here with their resources. I want to really create a platform where you can go. And it's an all in one place. I want to create a place that Maria seven years ago needed that Maria wished she had that, that community or other people, like-minded people, people struggling and having the same challenges and. And wanting the same mindset and wanting to evolve and wanting to grow and want it to have it all because I, I didn't want to compromise and I still never compromise myself for wanting it all. Like I, I'm not going to compromise the things that I want. I'm going to have it all. And what all means to me could be different for what it means to you, for me having it all right now is having a great sense of love and deep connection to myself. Having a great, deep, loving connection with my partner, with my family, that I am close to the small portion of them that I actually love and interact. With, and friends that I have, which are also very short circuit. And I've actually gone through this, like a weird shutting of friends here. And I'll have to talk about that in another episode. So. To help you guys through that, because I know as women, we go through this and different life chapters bring different things. And, and then I do want, I love entrepreneurialship. I love business. I love creating. And so that's still really important to me, but it's important to me in a different way. It's not important to me as. If I don't make money now it's gonna mean something about me. It's going to mean that I'm a failure. It doesn't mean that to me, I'm so confident and love myself so much that I know anything that happens in my exterior is always for me. I've also deepened my relationship a lot with God and my spirituality. And that's been a whole thing as well. And I hope to, am I going to talk about God too much or spirituality too, too much on here, but the hope that that helps you with your own spirituality? I think a lot of us have been lost for a very long time. So. There's going to be a lot. Okay. There's going to be a lot. of juice here. There's going to be a lot of things we're going to talk about. There's going to be. So many different areas that I hope to help you. I create the life that you want and have it all and get it getting really clear and concise to what all means to you. Because if you're a powerhouse, you want it all and you. think, how will I ever, how can I ever have it all? Is that even possible? Am I worthy? Am I wanting too much? I'm here to answer it. No. It's not too much. It's not impossible. And if I can do, and I'm on my way continuously doing it. I'm bringing along in the journey and we're going to hold hands and together, we're going to do this. And you're going to become the muse of your own life. You're going to become your own source of inspiration. You're going to become the powerhouse that you truly want to be. And I'll leave you guys with that. I hope you enjoyed the first episode and the next, the other two that I've run, I'm launching at the same time. And thank you so much for your patience and your love and the comments about my podcast when I did self-mastery and I cannot wait to share so much more with you guys. As we come to the close of this episode, I want to express my heartfelt gratitude and admiration for you. Taking the time to show up for yourself is an act of self love. And if this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might benefit. And also, if you love this episode, please rate and review us. When you do, screenshot your review and email it to us for a special gift. Our Rediscover Yourself Worksheet. This worksheet includes exercises to help you uncover your authentic self, and assess the areas of your life that are misaligned with the true you. Email it to info at maria fuentes dot net. Also stay connected with us on social media for updates and more inspiration. You can find all this information in the show notes. Again, thank you for being here and I cannot wait to continue this journey together.