Transcript
Speaker: Made on Zencastr. Because Zencastr makes every stage of the podcast production and distribution processes so easy. Hello and welcome to Fit For My Age, the health and wellbeing podcast from Abysseedah, where we don't tell you what to think, but we do hope to make you think.
Speaker: I am Michael Millward. Today I am learning about how looking after how we look can impact our lives and our careers with Katrina Valente who is a holistic aesthetician and a facialist who is based in Dubai.
Speaker: Dubai is on my list of places to visit. When I go I will make sure to make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to make my travel arrangements. That is because as a member of the Ultimate Travel Club, I get access to trade prices on flights, trains, hotels, holidays and so many more travel related purchases.
Speaker: If you would also like to take advantage of trade prices on travel, use the link in the description to access membership at a discounted rate and we'll all be travelling at trade prices.
Speaker: Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of Fit for My Age that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to. That will also be worth telling your friends, family and work colleagues about.
Speaker: Now, hello Katrina. Hi Michael, thanks for having me. It's great. i'm I was certainly very interested in the work that you do, but how did you get interested in in it in the first place? And did I pronounce athesthetician? I didn't pronounce it correctly. I know I didn't.
Speaker: Aesthetician, esthetician.
Speaker: It's one of those words, right? But how did you get interested in it and what does an athestician do? Okay, so um ever since I was a little girl, it's a bit of a cliche, but I always wanted to be a beauty therapist. I had older cousins that would always dress me up and put makeup and paint my nails and all the rest of it.
Speaker: But i didn't actually step on the path until I was 28. And I went to private beauty school and over five years, I got qualified in everything to do with aesthetics, facials, massage, waxing, nails, all of that. And I built my business in England, in Peterborough.
Speaker: At the age of 32, I decided I wanted to travel a bit and I had been on holiday to Dubai. And I phoned up an agency in London and Dubai was the first job they had in. So Here I was, and I've been here 29 years now.
Speaker: wow So um I've traveled the world as a visiting expert internationally in anti-aging and wellness and holistic therapy.
Speaker: And um I've actually moved on a little bit now from the aesthetics, and I'm doing a lot more mentoring and coaching, and i have online courses. ah Aesthetics, the way you look,
Speaker: defines a lot about a person, how well you respect yourself, how well you take care of yourself, because as we know, or may not know, you have three seconds to make a first impression.
Speaker: It's very quick, isn't it? Three seconds and someone has already made an assessment and a judgment about you as an individual. Yes, absolutely. Right.
Speaker: So now that you've your career career your career has progressed into helping other people and do the sort of work that you do and explaining it on a global basis, visiting expert, etc.
Speaker: What sort of people do you see as clients nowadays? ah Well, I mainly focus on women that are in business. There's so many women in business now, and that runs the masculine energy, the drive, the all doing energy. And there's a lot of women that are burnt out, you know, they might be successful.
Speaker: They might have lots of money, but they feel empty on the inside. um So I target these kinds of women and bring them back more into the feminine energy.
Speaker: The feminine is the all receiving energy. It's where our creativity is. And as woman, living in the masculine all the time is very bad for our nervous system because at the end of the day, we are not men.
Speaker: And the reason i went down that road is because I lived like a man myself for 20 years. i never got married. I never had kids. And at the age of 60 today, i don't want younger woman to make the same mistakes that I did.
Speaker: This is very interesting because the previous guest was someone who talked in very similar terms and realised that their passion was a completely different career. They wanted to be in the criminal justice system as a prison warder.
Speaker: And they they qualified and the only prison they could get to by public transport was a high security prison because they didn't have a car. And they went in, started work and realized that they would not be successful as a prison guard by trying to out-masculine the male prisoners.
Speaker: they had to learn how to be female and feminine in an assertive, strong way, because it wouldn't benefit the prisoners, it wouldn't enable them to do their job well, and ultimately they decided that trying to be something that they are absolutely fundamentally not would not be good for them either. And you're saying that women in corporate careers, in a whole range of different careers, I suppose, face exactly that same sort of issue.
Speaker: Absolutely. And it's become common ground in nowadays. um There's so many successful women, you know, they're at war with men.
Speaker: Men used to fight wars for women. So where did it all go wrong? You know, at the end of the day, we cannot get away from our genetics and we are made different for a reason.
Speaker: And that reason has been really skewed in modern society where women don't really need men anymore for financial support or even emotional support.
Speaker: But I think, you know, i always say female empowerment is over. We are already empowered. What we now need to look at is the divine feminine energy, who we are in essence, because they're working and operating from that place. You will earn more and work less. And I had living proof of this myself because I used to go to the Maldives a lot for work.
Speaker: And there you're on a desert island. There's nowhere to go, nothing to do. So you have to go with the flow. And it was in these times where I made the most money effortlessly. Because i was living in the feminine energy and it was a real wake up call for me.
Speaker: And so I think a lot of women nowadays don't even understand the concept, don't even understand where they're operating from on an energetic level. And it's something that really needs to be discussed, understood and talked about.
Speaker: Yes, let's do that. Let's start by asking, what do you mean by feminine energy and masculine energy? What's the difference between the two? Okay, good question. So the masculine is you are the man. So the masculine energy, the feminine energy, it's in each and every one of us, whether we're male or they female.
Speaker: The job of the masculine energy is to get up in the morning, get going, get things done. As a man, you should be the protector, the provider.
Speaker: The woman is the all-receiving energy. She works for her pleasure. She lives in her creativity. She is the home.
Speaker: She takes care of the home. She amplpleies amplifies a man into his greatness by being his backbone. Never a truer word was said. Behind every great man, there's an even better woman.
Speaker: So we each have our roles to do in life. But nowadays, men women are too much in competition with men, which in turn is actually emasculating the men.
Speaker: And there's less alpha males around than there was 20 ago. Right. Now, when you mention alpha males, there is this element at the moment, 2026, where there's a lot of emphasis on the negative aspects of alpha male, alpha masculinity.
Speaker: What do you see as the positive aspects of alpha males? and My father... You know, I had ah a great role model. He was a gentleman. He took care of us. He would never dream of letting a woman pay for anything in his presence. So, you know, I'm going back to what a real man looks like. He he provides, he protects, he takes care of his woman. Right, the ideal father for daughters. It's very simple.
Speaker: Yeah. Every daughter needs an ideal man as their father so that then they can make the right choices about the type of men that they are going to support when they're adults themselves.
Speaker: Exactly. Right. Okay. Now, if we all have this masculine energy and this feminine energy and we make decisions about which route we are going to go down, but what would be the signs for a woman that she is over-emphasizing or over-playing the masculine energy that she has in her life?
Speaker: She's on the treadmill. She's always in her head. She's always running to the next thing. She's always organizing herself. She never gives herself any time. She never makes time in the day to just stop for a few minutes. And and she's just constantly on the go.
Speaker: This is the masculine energy at play. Right. So it sounds as if that type of woman is probably overly competitive. Right.
Speaker: Yeah. And probably competing with herself more than she's competing with anyone else without actually realizing it. Yeah. Right. So what would be the impact of that on a woman's health?
Speaker: So it's burnout. Her nervous system is shocked. She's aggressive. There's no softness within her personality. And, um,
Speaker: she, it will lead to illness, migraines, all kinds of things like that, you know, because a woman is not meant to operate like that. She's meant to flow.
Speaker: Women are meant to go with the flow. Intuition. We use our intuition to make decisions. But when you're in the masculine, it's logic that makes the decision.
Speaker: That's really interesting. Having had several conversations this week with men where we have actually used the expression, you know, what is the logic of this situation? Where is the logical solution?
Speaker: And that is so true. And yet very often when I'm talking to female colleagues, it is they will use expressions like, well, I just don't feel this one.
Speaker: this This just doesn't feel right to me. And I suppose that is their subconscious use of their feminine energy to say, is not something you should do. Absolutely, it's the feeling, the all-being energy. Right.
Speaker: It also sounds as if the real clash that you might get in a workplace is going to be when you have men and women working together is a lack of understanding of the way in which the different genders make decisions is going to result in Let's say more discussions. We won't say arguments. Conflict. We'll say yeah more discussions and longer, it and takes longer to make a decision.
Speaker: Yeah. And also men don't like to be competing with a woman that they think is better than her, them or more driven or making more money. Because ultimately, that wasn't really the way it was supposed to be. And, you know, I always say hate me for saying it, but feminism was one of the worst things that ever happened to women. You know, if you look back and and really look into it, you'll see that women back then didn't want to work. They didn't want to go to work. But the government made them go to work because it was a way that they could get more money out of the people through taxing.
Speaker: that You know, um don't get me wrong. Look, women should have their careers. They should make their own money, of course. Enjoy what you do. But there's a limit.
Speaker: There is a limit. And we've crossed that limit a long time ago. yeah It isn't really possible to have everything all at the same time, is it? No.
Speaker: As a woman, if you've got a family, your children will suffer. If you're working full time, something has to give. Yes. You cannot do it all.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. So I suppose... thinking about it right back to the start of careers, when girls are given careers advice, if they're lucky enough to get any careers advice in a school, then that careers advice really needs to take account ah of female psychology, genetics, and lifestyles that women want to lead and more education about if you go down this career route, this is what it will mean in terms of lifestyle.
Speaker: rather than this idea that you can have everything for the whole of your life. exactly right and what seems from what you're saying it seems that what is happening is that this hasn't happened in the past and that is creating quite well i suspect quite a large number of women in particular who create a good marketplace a good supply of people who go down this route into burnout which is there where where you have developed your business
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, it was, I've always worked with high net worth individuals, royalty, celebrities. I've been flown on private jets to treat one of the richest families in the world.
Speaker: And I'm very relatable. And, you know, I've been an empath and a healer for 30 years. So I guess that's something that is intrinsically a part of me.
Speaker: And I, you know, i think we all have a mission in life and through my lived experience in my career, this for me is a natural progression.
Speaker: Yes. Yeah. And you are, I suppose, from what you're describing, someone who's built an understanding of how to manage female energy, and the masculine energy to create a good life for yourself. So you're a living example of everything that you're talking about.
Speaker: Well, I'd like to think so. It hasn't always been easy. You know, I mean, I never got married or had kids because I was so focused on my career. yes But, you know, if you were to ask me today, would I have done things differently? Definitely. Everyone would have done things differently. when If anyone asked that question, would all if they're totally honest with themselves and would say, yeah, of course I would have done things differently. And do become aware of how the decisions that you've made have impacted the life that you, the decisions that you've made in the past have impacted the life that you live in the and in the present and in the future. Yeah, we would all probably do things differently.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, you know, I believe that as humans, we came here to love and be loved. The end. It's a lonely life when you're home alone every day.
Speaker: So I think women have to really be brutally honest with themselves. And, you know, your career is not everything. And as you get older, you're going to realize that.
Speaker: And hopefully my lived experience will help women understand that they do have other choices. Yes. You've developed a model around this for providing the support. Can you tell us a bit about the model you've developed?
Speaker: Yeah. So i have them three online courses. One is just purely um secrets to eternal youth, which is eight videos talking about different things, superfoods, skincare, essential oils, crystals, how colour affects you,
Speaker: emotional therapy, detoxing. And then the other two courses, i have a six week course, the radiance reset. And it's a coaching course where I coach the individual. And then she has the online course to back up the coaching that we go through together.
Speaker: And it's about learning how to become a woman again, basically noticing all the signs, And then the 12 week course goes even deeper and I called that the Valenti method, because it is my method through my lived experience. And we I give you the the weekly coaching with the the support of the online course and a very extensive workbook to fill in.
Speaker: And then we discuss it together. Right, okay. What sort of people are opting to take those type of activities to support their lives? Oh, you know, businesswoman, woman in corporate, woman that are lost, woman that want another way, single woman that have never managed to get married because their careers have been in the way. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay. What sort of challenges do you think those people face in trying to implement what they're learning from you?
Speaker: The challenges would be to, they have to relearn how to be a woman. It doesn't happen overnight because they've been so used to living their life in a certain way. It becomes normal.
Speaker: So it's a pattern interrupt where they have to really be at become aware of their every living, breathing moment and opt to react or behave in a different way.
Speaker: That sounds like a very steep learning curve. No, I mean, it's step by step, you know, at the end of the day, we are woman. So we do have the remembrance within our, you know, cells of our body, if you like.
Speaker: um But it it does take practice and it does take perseverance and you have to want to make the change. Yeah. So there's sort of like an element of the genetic programming which has been um adapted to fit in to a masculine world and take on more masculine roles.
Speaker: And so it's not so much a process of reversing that, but switching a different switch within the way in which people think and the way in which they act.
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, they just have to do things like have more fun in their life, make more white space in the diary, stop booking appointments back to back to back, give yourself some breathing space in between times, meditate, you know, cut off the phone at a certain time of the evening, things like that.
Speaker: Yeah, I love the expression you've got there, of like creating white space in your diaries. It just means that like there's an element of like white noise, white space, this just space to do whatever you want to do because there's there's nothing, you are free.
Speaker: And going back to what you were saying about intuitive decision-making and imagining that that is actually quite emotionally draining at times, I should think,
Speaker: That white space gives you time, correct me if I'm wrong, but to rebalance, to get back to some sort of state where you've made the decision, you've dealt with that it emotionally, and then you can get your emotions back into um an alignment sort of thing. But I don't think you're talking about hysterical emotional decision-making feelings.
Speaker: it's It's not about doing that. it's It's about being calm and at one with yourself. Yeah, a woman has to have space in her day. She has to have quiet time because that's where the intuition drops in. That's where the thoughts and ideas come. If she's constantly doing, doing, doing, she leaves herself no space to get these divine messages or to be able to even think straight.
Speaker: So this is where men and women are very different. Yes. And I'm thinking very much as a man at the moment and thinking, okay, I've got a team.
Speaker: We've got men, we've got women, we've got all sorts of different people on the team. What can someone who is a male manager do to support someone who's going through your program?
Speaker: He needs to first understand how women operate. We Are Not the Same. a very good book that I read many, many years ago, and I actually met the author, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus by John Gray. And it's, I mean, he wrote it, don't know, maybe 30, 40 years ago, but it's still relevant today because men and women are intrinsically different and we cannot treat a man differently.
Speaker: from our set point because we are not a man and vice versa so you have to talk to a woman understanding how they operate because they operate very different from a man yes yeah it sounds like one of the things that needs to happen is for men to understand women more yeah right And then we would be able to get more out ah of our female team members if we understood i mean how to manage better. good example, sorry to interrupt, a good example. If I'm speaking to a man, i would say, would you take out the rubbish?
Speaker: That is a direct command. If I say, could you, that's a question. Could you implement what's the word? It implies that you maybe could not.
Speaker: But if I say, will you or would you, that is a command. yeah I'm not asking you, I'm telling you, but in a nice way. right You see the difference? i'm I'm sitting here with a huge smile on my face.
Speaker: and Thinking like, yes, it's exactly that. It is exactly like, yeah even when a man talks to another man, if you ask a question, you will get... Well, yeah, maybe tomorrow.
Speaker: Yes, of course it will. But when? But if you issue an instruction in a nice way, if you provide the instruction, which we'll think in this terminology will will describe as guidance as to what you want to have happen. So you issue instruction.
Speaker: Yeah. you wish her an instruction Yeah. And that makes it, that puts logic around it and makes it easier to fulfill what it is that the person has asked for rather than can you, which is like, well, yes, I can, but I don't want to, so I'm not going to.
Speaker: Yeah, exactly. So it's little things like this. Language matters when you're dealing with the opposite sex. Women are all about the feeling energy.
Speaker: Men are all about the doing energy. Men are very simple creatures. It's the woman that complicate things. Ah, so women are to blame. It's the, it's the, at that though, is because women are thinking about the emotional side of things and emotions are not like the two plus two equals four that men are looking for.
Speaker: Yeah. Right. Okay. And also another good example is if, you know, your wife comes home and she starts complaining about what happened at work, the man automatically wants to fix it.
Speaker: When the woman just needs to get off her chest, she needs to speak about it, get it out of her body. She doesn't necessarily need a solution for it, but the man will always try and give you a solution because that's the way their heads work.
Speaker: hey You know, one of the things about Fit for My Age and the podcast that we produce at Abusida is we ah we say, you know, it's not telling you what to think, but it certainly is designed to help make you think. And you've certainly made me think. And I'm looking, thinking about my career and the women that I've worked with and thinking like we should have had this conversation 30 years ago.
Speaker: Because yeah it would have been, yeah i can I can see how were things might have been different. but But today, Katrina, it has been fascinating. i hope we get to expand our conversation in the future. But say for today, thank you very much. It's been it very interesting.
Speaker: You're most welcome, Michael. I've enjoyed it. Thank you so much. Thank you. I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director Abu Sida. And in this episode of Fit for My Age, I have been having a conversation with Katrina Valante.
Speaker: You can find out more about both of us by using the links in the description. If you've been listening to Fit for My Age on your smartphone, you may like to know that 3.0 has the UK's fastest 5G network with unlimited data. So listening on 3.0 means you can wave goodbye to buffering.
Speaker: There is a link in the description that will take you to more information about business and personal telecom solutions from 3.0 and the special offers available when you quote my referral code. That means that the description is well worth reading.
Speaker: I'm sure you will have enjoyed this episode of Fit For My Age as much as Katrina and I have enjoyed making it. So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe.
Speaker: You'll probably also want to tell your friends, family and work colleagues about Fit For My Age as well. Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think.
Speaker: Until the next episode of Fit for My Age, thank you for listening and goodbye.
