Your Happy Hour - Conscious Self-Care

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

In this episode, we chat with Ana Maria Olaya Vargas - Vice President of Strategy, Pricing & Interchange at Mastercard - who shares her journey from Colombia to Europe, her insights on the importance of consciously choosing self-care as a foundation for success, practical strategies for integrating agile care routines into daily life and how introspection, accountability and self-compassion can transform your well-being in significant ways.Also check out her beautiful sister Mafe Olaya whose work here which has helped many transform their lives. The Feels is all about having those honest conversations, the power of community for personal growth and taking those actionable steps towards being our authentic selves.Thanks for tuning in! Keep it raw and real out there xYHH is produced by swartkat.co - captured via riverside.fm & shared via rss.com.

It's the Friday Feels and we're back with your first sip of the weekend. You're now tuned in to this week's episode of your happy hour. I'm your host Nicole Carmine and it's amazing to have you here. Joining me this week as we uncover the truths about being a human and a working professional. What are you up to this Friday? Well, whatever it is, this moment is just for you. And we're back with another feels episode. It's so wonderful to have you all joining us today again.

And we're still talking about the theme, surprise of self-care, which is a really interesting theme. And I really love that we are kind of finishing this season on this theme. It is always surprising to me how we think about self-care. And I'm really privileged today to chat to. a guest who I'm also getting to know through this podcast. And it's such a big honor to welcome you to the field space and to the Fields Podcast and specifically the Your Happy Hour series on this podcast. So big welcome to you, Anna Maria, Waila Vargas, and I hope I'm saying it all correctly. You've got a

beautifully long name. A big welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Nicole. Thank you for the privilege for opening your space also. to give me the opportunity also to share my thoughts on this very exciting topic. And I know I have a very long name and I have also funny stories about that. It's such a privilege and a pleasure. And so tell me a little bit about you. I mean, I feel like you can give me a better journey into your life. I know that you are working in strategy pricing and interchange and specifically a

economics, but I feel like you've had quite a journey beyond that. You, you know, I mean, working in corporate like MasterCard is something specific, but you've lived in different places. You've really climbed like a trajectory per se. So take us a bit of a journey on how you got to where you are today. Yes, certainly. So I'll start sharing. So I'm from Colombia.

So I was warned, ward and raised from in Bogota. and 2,600 meters altitude city, so that's something that everyone knows. But yeah, Colombia is not all tropical and sun, so I'm more of a cold weather type of person. And since I was 12, I always dream with having an international experience. I was always very passionate about languages, about multicultural. So I always dream about having this experience of experience studying abroad. And then I did plan it in a way that, so in Colombia we finish our studies, like our basic statistics.

Then we have some working experience. So I did some experience in investment banking. And then I decided to come to France for to pursue my master's with the initial idea just to call for a year and go back to Colombia. So I've never saw myself really living abroad. I stayed, well my main motivation to stay in France was because of love. At that point, I met an Indian person. So I also had a very nice view of that culture.

So it was an amazing experience. It didn't work out. But I decided to stay because I also started realizing how the war from multiple perspective looks like. And I started pursuing my career in sizing opportunities in corporate finance. And so I joined MasterCard in 2016 as a senior analyst. And then I've had a journey until where I am today as vice president of pricing and interchange for Europe. Wow.

Yeah, well, it's amazing that you've embraced like this traveler's life, you know. I think and living in different places teaches you so much about yourself and what you like and what you don't like. And I guess also on the theme, you learn how to take care of yourself in different ways. So what does it mean for you when I say the surprise of self-care or, yeah, what comes up for you? Yeah.

And it's very interesting because when I saw the surprise of self-care, my first reaction was self-care shouldn't be a surprise. And that's actually how I see. To me, self-care, it should be the infrastructure. Like without self-care, you are not able to, in my case, to perform. to dream, to reach the places where you want to, either physically or mentally, and to support others. So self-care, to me, it should be the foundation of how you live life. And I know that it might be very ambiguous, but making sure that your body and your mind, they are in sync. I think it has been for sure

one of the factors of how I have conducted life. And reaching to the point where I am now, I am sure that would have been not possible without taking care of my mind and my body. No, it's so true, and this is exactly why we chose this topic, you know. So it's kind of, it dates back to season one when I had a co-host, and we were talking about how surprising it was to us that when we take self-care, life is better. And like, how come, how come is it like that, you know? And so it's true. I think we can't do much if we don't start with love within ourselves.

So what's that journey looked like for you? you in your life. Yeah, so to me it had a before and after with COVID actually. And probably it could have been the journey of many of us. I always like to the sports. My father was always motivating and was to move to the sports. I was playing tennis when I was in Columbia. But I think I never connected all the different dots. It was only after COVID and also because thanks to my sister, My sister, she's a big, big pillar for me, especially in discovering that aspect of my life. So she has been the one in the family to tell us we need to eat better, eat healthy, sleep better, meditate. But all my parents and myself were listening to her but without really understanding it.

And after COVID, she enrolled into a program that it was called Healthy Habits. And in such a moment of stress, you're more open to look into other things. It's such an emotional and physically stressing situation that I was more open to pursue or to discover all the things that she was dealing with me. So I enrolled with her in this online program and it was an eye-opener because understanding life from these four pillars, from nutrition. exercise or movement, sleep, and your mind. So mindfulness, meditation, and how everything just fits together to me was the starting

point of how I now try to conduct my life and why actually it's so important in my daily life, my routines, my habits. But yeah, it has been an amazing journey from there. I love that. I love that. And I agree with you. I think that period of time in the world, as much as a lot of negative stuff happened, a lot of positive things came from that because we really had to sit with ourselves

and ask ourselves, who am I? What do I like? You know, if I'm just by myself, like, here's this person in the room with me. And it's an interesting experience when you get to know yourself in that way. Yes, exactly. I think that it starts, for sure it starts within. It needs to start Because there are a lot of people discuss about changes out in This has to be like an in-out So you start really with an introspection

We start and it can go really deep It can go to what's my purpose in life And what do I want And what's my nort And then all out goes into out Into how you start thinking about what you eat About how you move about But to me it has been like an in

out introspection. A lot of people, they tend to see it the other way around. They might start seeing it as a physical appearance. And then they start taking care first on their body. And then eventually, I think they look into the inside. If it goes those deeper levels, to me, it has been the other way around. First introspective and then more like understanding my body, it's a fundamental part. It's my, it's a precious resource. And then, of course, all the decisions that I take about what I eat, so I became also vegetarian. I also through that journey, because I also start making reflections about myself. And smaller things, like taking more care about my skin. It has never been something that it used to do before, like it's a skin.

care. But now I see it is not only about vanity, but it's a package. So when we talk about self-care, to me, it's all the end, the mental, but also the physical, but it's an integration of how you feel and how others also perceive you. Because I think that's also the beauty of this. It's when you start in and out, then you start sparkling in a way that it creates that positive way echoing that authors also start getting a positive impact out of that. Yeah, I love that. I mean, I'm just getting goosebumps as you're talking because it's true. It's true.

And I do think it does start within and then you get to shine your light because I sometimes like to think of it as like if you had to look at yourself as a blob, you know, like from the top. your body is just never getting that spirit that you have in you in the world but if you get to shine that spirit in the best way and one way to do that is to make sure you look after yourself and so that you you know can walk up the stairs when you're 90 years old and whatever it is so I think it's it's something that does start within and maybe that does take us by surprise at times because we we like oh well okay if I just take what is in here and and really translate that through my vessel into the world and shine my life the best life is easier in a way and it flows

better but yeah I guess society doesn't always it's not always been like that I think we're kind of awakening to this now in some way yeah and it's interesting as you say because I do feel it's it's it's it's I felt that I have been living like in autopilot. You don't even think about these things. You just live every day as you know, have you seen. And then from one moment,

you kind of opened your eyes and you select wait. And there is actually a very nice quote from an American novelist, Aunt Lemmet, I think it's her name, who says that it's amazing how everything, almost everything in words when you unplug it for a minute, even yourself. I love that.

You really think about that. It's true. When something doesn't work, what's the first thing we do? We just unplug it and we plug it again. And that's what, to me, these moments of self-reflection to pause sometimes, it really helped because it's, it just needed. And to not run into the autopilot that we tend to go with life because of work, because of routines because now more than ever life goes in such a fast pace that we need nobody else

will come and tell us come stop we need to do that ourselves we are the only ones responsible for us to say how do I adapt my way of living with the conditions that we have today with this fast information everywhere, where do I put the limits? And we have that choice. So it's, but if we don't go out of the autopilot, it would be very hard for us to identify the strategies that we can put in place that work for us, that we can adapt in our life, and really take care of ourselves, because nobody else will do that for us. Yeah, I think accountability is a big part of self-care. And sometimes I get, I think we get, I think we it sold this idea that, you know, their self-care in a box, their self-care whatever you

order on Amazon or I don't know where if it comes from, maybe a skincare product, but in the end of the day it starts with your taking responsibility for how you look and feel and and that's hard I think for us as humans. I find sometimes a topic that comes up often on this podcast is that like how do we really settle into the idea that we need to take accountability for ourselves, you know, so it's a tough one? I think accountability needs to always come hand in hand with self-compassion. Because if first you understand, like it's a journey, like first you understand there is something I want to change, right?

And there has to be very deep motivation and reasons why. Otherwise, people, they have the power to change if they really want to. And I've seen it. Once you make the decision, because that's the first step, and you make the decision to change, and then you start exploring, okay, how do I do this? How do I navigate to find a lot of information? Or you might have this a spike of motivation to say, I don't know, and now I'm going to work out four days a week.

Because now I'm motivated, I want to work out. sports is very important for my body, for my mind. I think you start the one full of motivation. Day two, something else happened. Day three, you didn't do it. And then you're like, okay, this is not for me. But if you have self-compassion, if you say like, okay, probably I should not start with zero to four days, but let me start with 20 minutes for two days. Let me see, smaller steps. Then when you start defining specific step and you go smaller, then you have evidence that you can do this. And if something happens, then you also have the self-compassion to say,

it's okay. Tomorrow I will try it again. But I think a lot of time that's what happened is that we get this sudden rush of getting everything now. And you need the patience of working it out every day and the capability to be flexible enough when things they don't go according to plan to also have that self-compassion of saying, It's my decision and I can adapt it to my life circumstances to because life happens and goes sometimes out of control. How do I make sure that I adapt my plan to how life decides to root me?

But that should not be an excuse to run into autopilot. Like that's why I always having that moment of like, okay, I wanted to work out for days a week. suddenly I have now a working trip I cannot what can I do maybe if I just bring some more clothes sport clothes and I try to do a five minutes stretching that's okay I'll already be okay with that

and then you adjust your plans with your life so that's I think indeed accountability but self-compassion needs to come hand in hand yeah I really agree with that I think we're not as kind to ourselves and we like we expect the best and then we just don't give ourselves the chance to get there.

So it's kind of like these, I'm hearing like unplug and raised, self-compassion, accountability, adaptability. Those are really big, important words in the self-care routine, I guess, as a human, that we have to cultivate for ourselves. Yeah, and it evolves as well. It evolves with the moments of life. It also, objectives also can change, plans can change. So it would be very hard to say, okay, I got it.

I have everything figured out. Now I take care of myself. You can start and also you need to adopt with how life evolves accordingly. So to me, self-care, it's also a journey. It starts with the awareness, but the end point, it would keep evolving. And that's also part of that self-compassion of thing. And today, in this moment of my life, this is what I can integrate and this is how am I going to adjust it. But what it has really worked for me is to have a plan.

And from the learnings from my sister, because she has a beautiful concept and a method and she works with a female Latin entrepreneurs on all this and teaching them how to do that. That's why to me she has been an amazing pillar. And one of the things that she has helped me a lot to integrate is the what I call the weekly planning and the weekly reflection. So there is this methodology where she helps women, mainly women, because it's where we take the most burden, especially with women who have kids. It becomes even bigger and heavier, that back that they carried every day. But if you start decomposing everything, okay, how do you? how does next week look like? What do you want to do?

What do you want to achieve? And you start planning it a quarterly. And then at the end of the week, okay, what did I do? And it doesn't need to be hours of that. It can be 10 minutes. Like we spend a lot of our times 10 minutes scrolling into non-useful information sometimes. You could dedicate the same time into this very structured approaches that really will help your long-term wellbeing. that to me has been essential.

And it's reminding me a lot of like agile, how agile coaches will say, let's do a weekly planning and then a sprint retro, you know. Yes, yes. And it works, it really works because it does help you move the needle a little bit and it helps you reflect back and take a moment for that. And not to do it in a space of look how much I didn't do or failed or whatever it is, but from a space of,

oh actually maybe I didn't understand that I could balance my energy better in this way or maybe I you know and so I think that that's amazing I definitely need to implement more of that in my life so thank you for the reminder and I would love for you to share a little bit more about what your sister does I know you mentioned that she's got this is there a specific name that we can shout out yes so well it's it seems panicked for the moment because it's for her mother tongue and it counts but I think the message is that do still apply. So she initially created a company called Coherenti. Coedentis is like a merge between the word English, Spanish of coherence with the Latin roots. So she's an architect, interior designer. So her journey starts there. But her passion actually lies in all this,

in organizational, on habits, on self-care. So she created a program. and today she has like coaching one-to-one coaching but also on an online program that she's called in Spanish is called harmonia in action or like harmony in action because for her and this is the concept that I love the most every time we talk about we need to have a balance in our life she talks about we need to have harmony in our life the difference about that is if you think about a balance it means that you need to put equal weight all the time for that to be in balance. And life is not like that.

The harmony is to say it evolves. Like probably this week, it's a little bit like more work intensive. So I know that I will dedicate more this and that's how my weight looks like. So she shares like Notion templates. So I'm using Notion to organize my life. having weekly self-reflections, things very, very general, like having a to-do master template. Because I am someone who tends to put a little bit aside the smaller things.

Like, I don't know, there is a bolt who is not working anymore, so I need to change the bulbs. Those are the type of things I will kind of procrastinate the most because, like, That's not important. But what happens every time I enter to that room, there is no light. And I'm like, oh, I need to change the balls. That's a very specific example because she told me everything that happens, just put it on your notion.

And then you start having a list because everything that is in your mind, it creates a mental charge. Once you put it somewhere and then you plan for a date and time for that. Otherwise, it would never happen. So these are the type of practices. and I ended up changing the bulb after I integrated this. And it has been there for months. So her methodology, it also looks into all these four pillars.

So her program is called Eres, also in Spanish, which is like to be, because she talks about intentional on energy, especially for women, because we also need to map our energy in our business, month is not the same. We are psyched with. We fluctuate and that's also we need to recognize it. It talks about movement. So everything that's exercise, be very compassionate about what's your level and how you can integrate. So habits. And she talks about deco habits. So she integrates the expertise of being an architect to the habits of saying like if you have a, if you want to drink more water, just put the bottle of water next to.

do it. So then every time that you see it, you will remind yourself to go and drink waters and things about bigger helps. And sleep, of course, a lot of good information around the importance of sleep into anything that we want to achieve. Sleep is so important and I'm realizing more and more the older I'm getting how important sleep is. And I really am excited to dig into that and see what she has done. And I feel like it's something we can definitely share with the fields community because we all need that. And it would be wonderful to have more people living their fields life in the best way. So thank you for giving a shout out to her. And on the topic of shout out, I'd love to also mention we do people, places,

and spaces each time. And I'd love to mention a newsletter that I receive, and I don't read many of them. But I always read this one, and it's called The Creator Spotlight. And I just love your feels, guys. Whatever you guys are getting up to making that newsletter, it's great. It's really impactful. It's concise. It has like really great sections.

So I just want to add that to this shout out for this week, for helping us kind of have guidance to live our lives in a better way and we'll put all the links in the socials as well as the podcast description for you to check out. So on that, I also want to ask you if you have any gems of the week and this is a little section that we do

that's around gratitude or something you've learned. So for me, I moved recently into a temporary place and it's just been such a change of being outside of Paris into the inside and being in the buzz and maybe the sun coming out and the heat as well has made a difference but I just feel like a new human in so many ways and so I've just had so much gratitude for for that for new space new chapter being able to kind of feel like I'm stepping back into my own life in some ways and yeah that's just been really lovely to embrace and also give myself time to race like I've needed a lot of sleep so I've needed to be compassionate with myself in that So, yeah, and what about for you? Jimmy, I think this wages, I think I have two grateful moments. One, yesterday, so yesterday it was 25th of May.

It's a day where most of the world has a holiday, a bank holiday. But in France, it's a very specific, it's a very particular one because not everyone has that one. So I didn't. And I'm very grateful because it felt that it was, I was giving a full day without emails, without calls, where all the word just stopped. And I could indeed pause and organize. I had like around three weeks that I had been moving for work, that I was not able to cut up into my week. So yesterday I'm extremely grateful that everyone had time to rest yesterday because it gave me time to

to plan and to understand and to have those times of reflection for my work mainly. And I'm bringing it up because I recall even during the day to say I had to go and bite my lunch because even the cafeteria was closed and just going, seeing everyone so chilled and happy. I was very happy that everyone had time to rest. And like, this works amazing. So for someone who had to work a day that everyone was off, I was actually extremely grateful. And the second one is actually, it's, so it's going to be my birthday this Friday.

So, and I'm taking also to today's to travel with my boyfriend to Venice. So I'm extremely grateful for that to give also me the opportunity to celebrate my birthday with him. But again, in a moment where it's quite a very high peak at my work, I still part of self-care and self-attention to say, this is important. Nothing is, this happens once a year. Your birthday is only once a year. So having the time to say, I'm going to prioritize this time with my boyfriend to travel to

Benis. So grateful that I can take also those times and spaces and honor it to my. myself. Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Well, happy birthday for Friday. I hope it's a wonderful day and that this next year cycle around the sun is just fantastic for you and full of surprises of self-care and things, you know. So it's really a beautiful gem. Thank you for sharing that. And I also want to say thank you to our partners, a little quick spotlight for them that make this possible. And that is our partner, RSS.com. Help us distribute this into the world,

as well as Blender Bombs, bomb company, which is talking about self-care and nutritious things. They give everyone nutritious snacks, and they're mostly in America, but you can order them worldwide. And they've given our audience a wonderful discount if you order with the fuels,

as well as BNE SIM, which is a travel sim and really, really affordable data. And they've also given our audience a discount. answer. Reach out to us on the socials if you want to learn more about that and we'll give you the codes and a really big thanks to them for making it possible for us to host this and just have these wonderful conversations and I actually only have one more question for you on today's episode and that is what is in your stack. Do you have a book recommendation, maybe something you'd like to read or that you've read and you can share it with our audience? Yeah, I have to

book recommendations. One, it's called The Chimp Paradox by Doctors T. Peters. It's an amazing book because it's very didactical. I think he's a psychologist, if I'm not mistaken. And it's, it talks about the brain and how in our brain we have three, we have a human, a temp, and a computer. And it's an amazing book to help understand how our brains work, how our emotions, work, how do we manage our emotion and how we process information? First on understanding each other and then how to use that information to interact with others. It's an amazing book if you want to really understand how to better interact and relate to others and manage your own emotions and mindset. once you understand that when you have peaks of, I don't know, you're very sad or you're very

angry at something, why does it happen? And he even had like images of a chimp, of a human, he's quite detected. It's a lovely, a lovely book. I really love it. And the second book, I think it was also a book that to me was a very pivotal for all, all this, especially on self-care. it's by Roving Sharma. It's called The Monk who sold his Ferrari. It's also, it's a very quick one to read. And it's a book, it's a story of a lawyer.

I think he was in New York, having what society might consider success. He had it everything. He had job, he had money, but not the human relationships. He didn't have friends. He didn't feel happy which is life. In a life that was very abundant from a materialistic perspective. He didn't feel himself. So he went through a journey to the Himalayas to understand the purpose of life. And it's a very nice, nice story. So fully recommended. These are great recommendations. Thank you.

Thank you for sharing those. I have to read both still. I definitely will be adding them to my stack. And for anyone who's listening, all the books that get recommended on the podcasts are on the website for you to check out. And I wonder what everyone is feeling about self-care and accountability and all these wonderful things that we get to have the privilege of doing and being as humans, you know, that we sometimes forget about. But I'm so happy that we could chat about this today. And thank you for sharing your hearts are openly. And just, yeah, you have a beautiful calm and very light way of speaking and beginning. So thank you for sharing that with the world. No, thank you again, Nicole, for this beautiful project that you have. I could say the feels,

it makes us feel good. So thanks again for giving me the opportunity to also participate to this beautiful space that you have. Means a lot. Thank you so much. If you haven't just yet, follow Friday Feels on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and LinkedIn. You can share with us all your feels this week by tagging us at Fridayfeels.com. And you can also find the website at that handle. And now, as you ease into this weekend, take a moment. Celebrate who you've become, what you've overcome and what is yet to come as you do the crazy and cool things that you do as the authentic you.

You know the truth about life and work is that it's hard, but the beauty is this global working experience that you're in while we earn it together. So keep connecting, empowering and inspiring this week. And of course, keep it raw and real. Until next time.