Hi, Iâm Nathalia and I write Dear Self,
TLDR;
There are 3 things you should know about me.
Everything I do is about building a fulfilling life â for myself and others like you.
I believe that expressing yourself is the way you get everything you want in life.
I write biweekly on my 2 publications on Substack about it. And thatâs my invitation for you:
Dear Self, â Return to Yourself & live a fulfilling life
Diary of a Brand Therapist â Find Your Voice & Build Your Brand
Who am I?
I was born and raised in Brazil, but since my teen years I knew 2 things would be true:
I would have my own business.
I would live in a different country.
The reason for the first was that I wanted to have control over my life. I wanted to make decisions that aligned with the life I wanted to live without having to ask permission from someone else.
The reason for the second was that I never felt like I belonged to the place I was born. I didnât see myself living the life most people around me lived â an automatic life where people are constantly moving to the ânext step,â or not moving at all, without actually reflecting if thatâs something they want for themselves and why. It was like most people were living on the surface, disconnected from themselves. I didnât want that for myself.
I wanted a connected life.
Thatâs when in 2018, when I was 28 years old, after having discovered that I had Portuguese citizenship, I bought a flight ticket to Portugal and never looked back.
It was the best and hardest thing I ever did in my life. I had no plan at all, only a burning desire to discover who I was and build a life that made sense for me.
Like everything in life, every choice comes with a trade-off. And the trade-off I had to make at that time was to start professionally from zero in a country with no connections.
I had been building brands for years for others, but I had never built mine. All it took was one move and all those years of work fell apart. I was no one again.
But from our biggest struggles also comes the biggest growth, because I realized that if I wanted real freedom, my work could not depend geographically on where I was. I started building my business online now.
I moved countries to build a fulfilling life for myself, but I still didnât know who I was. And when you donât know who you are, you become very fragile to what other people think of you.
I was a couple years into communicating online and building my brand when I received a message, soon after I published one video, from a âfriendâ whom I admired at the time. He said that what I shared was bullshit.
That made me feel embarrassed about myself, my point of view, who I was. After that event, I stopped communicating online for almost 5 years. Once again, I was stopping myself from the chance of building the business and life I dreamed about because of someone elseâs opinion about me.
Those 5 years were hard. Building a business without connecting with other people was impossible.
Eventually, I was pushed to get a job again. Itâs crazy to reflect now that I was so scared of what other people would think of me that I preferred to get a job I didnât want, than express myself online and run the risk of people not liking me.
It was only when I did the inner work to start trusting myself and speaking my voice without fear that I started truly building a life that feels fulfilling â in work, life, and relationships. Not because everything is perfect, but because every part of it is my choice. And because Iâm not hiding who I am anymore to please others. I own my story.
I thought that I had to change countries to belong. Now, I know that true belonging is about the courage of owning who you are.
A fulfilling life is only possible if you express your truth, both in your personal relationships and in your brand and business.
And this is what I write about in my two publications:
Return to Yourself & live a fulfilling life - Subscribe to Dear Self,
Find Your Voice & Build Your Brand
When you subscribe, please write back to me, and tell me your story!
