Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Mayra Velazquez Diaz. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alright, so we’re so thrilled to have Mayra with us today – welcome and maybe we can jump right into it with a question about one of your qualities that we most admire. How did you develop your work ethic? Where do you think you get it from?
I think work ethic, as well as many other characteristics, come from home. Parents have played an important role for our developing personality and of course we have learned a lot of things from them. How to treat people, deal with issues with bosses, coworkers and customers. They held different positions in their jobs, one of those was as a teacher. Being a teacher is a challenging job, you have to talk to students, bosses, other teachers and sometimes, parents. They have developed soft skills that later we had the chance to learn.
Bosses along our careers were significantly relevant too. Nothing better than learn from experiences of people who had more time working in the sector we work. They showed us different ways to solve a problem, how to manage certain situations and the main one, being honest.
As a conclusion, we get our work ethic from people who have been part of our lives and we can say that it also represents our values and what we are as people.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
Ten years ago I decided to start a language exchange called “Tarde de Lenguas”. I wanted to help people to connect with each other without the language barrier and for free. We advised through flyers, friends and friends of friends and the first meeting ended up having 20 people, practicing and having fun with languages as the channel of communication. Tarde de Lenguas continued for almost 10 years.
At the same time, while I was working in a private school as coordinator I met one of my best friends, she brought me into the world of language interpretation. I already had a high level of english and french so she thought I might be good for this job. Now, several years later, that is still my job.
Parlante Internacional was born as a nonprofit organization and it has been evolving until it became in a language agency that covers everything related to languages; classes, interpretation and translation services, bilingual assistance, language exchanges and more. Parlante Internacional it’s like my baby, I take care of it and that’s why every job we do, we do it with love, empathy, kindness and with pleasure.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
It’s hard to choose only three but I would say, first, self knowledge. You can’t be ready to face difficulties or enjoy the good times if you don’t do anything to know who you are, your strengths and weaknesses and the way you handle situations (either good or bad). My advice is just do something about it, therapies of any kind, meditation, coaching, psycotherapy, I believe that there is at least one option that fits perfectly for each of us.
The second one, treat others well. This has been important in order to build relationships and friendships. Of course this starts by treating your family well. My advice is for people to know that these actions of kindness and empathy with others are good for them but more important, they are good for you.
The third one, fairness. When you work and you set your own prices, you decide what is fair for you, sometimes it’s easy to add a little more but I think it’s important to have empathy. In that way you give value to what you do and respect others at the same time. Advice: Practice this in your family, not with money but with actions.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
What I do is to stop for a moment. To think carefully about why am I feeling like this? Yes, maybe this is an important job or client but nothing is important enough to hurt me in that way. Meditation is a good way for changing the mood too, but I think the most effective one is to share it, with your wife/husband, your mom/dad or your best friend, it doesn’t matter who, but to let that pressure out it’s highly important.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.parlanteinternacional.com
- Instagram: parlanteoaxaca
- Facebook: Parlante Internacional
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