It's October, and the voice that grades your year is getting louder. In this episode, Catalina talks about the last three months of the year: why they can feel heavy, why comparison hits hardest in the fall, and why the end of the year is not a report card.

You'll get one honest story, one behavior science takeaway (action comes first, motivation follows), and one tiny step: pick one goal, shrink it until it feels silly, and do it for three days.

Tired tonight? Let showing up be enough.

"It's not a big deal." "Other people have it worse." "I should just be grateful." Sound familiar? This week I kept hearing people name a struggle and then take it back in the same breath. In this episode, we talk about why minimizing your problems feels like relief but keeps you stuck, why gratitude and struggle can exist at the same time, and one tiny step to give your feelings permission to exist: drop the "but."
🎁 Want the free one-page guide? Comment SHOWUP on my latest Instagram post and I'll send it to you.

At the top of a volcano in Guatemala, my first instinct was to call my dad. He passed away in 2025.

I came back from an amazing trip, and a Rosalía concert that gave me chills, and I was exhausted. Mentally, physically, emotionally. In this episode I share the backstory: my dad's cancer, my own diagnosis while he was in remission, his cancer coming back, and losing him. For six, seven years, someone in my family was always sick.

As a behavior analyst, I talk about why grief doesn't follow stages but cues, and why the best moments can make the absence hit hardest.

Your tiny step: next time you reach for someone who isn't here, say it out loud.

You can be grateful, exhausted, and grieving all at once. I'm not figured out. I'm just still here. And so are you.

This week's episode is different — longer, quieter, and without the usual behavior science breakdown. Sparked by a car-ride conversation with my teenage son about purpose, alignment, and feeling like enough, we sit with a question a lot of us carry: what happens when you're doing everything "right" and it still doesn't feel like it's landing?

No framework today. No study. Just a story and a few minutes to breathe together at the end — a guided meditation to help quiet your mind instead of adding to it.

If you've been carrying the weight of expectations — your own or someone else's — this one's for you.

We're back to our usual rhythm next week. For now: you are worthy by existing.

🎧 Comment SHOWUP and I'll send you the meditation as its own voice note to keep.

I had a free hour to do the thing I love most — and then the phone rang. Again. This week: why “balance” was never the right goal, and what behavior science says is actually running your calendar. It’s called the matching law — your time goes where the payoff is fastest and loudest, not where your values are. Plus one tiny action that asks you to fix nothing at all.

I almost cut the most personal part of last week's episode. I almost didn't publish this podcast at all. This one's about the spotlight effect — why we massively overestimate who's watching — and recording in my second language while criticizing my own accent. Like we say in Spanish: no eres monedita de oro. One tiny action: do something visible and imperfect, on purpose

I've rewritten the same to-do list five or six times — paper, iPad, phone. This week I finally asked why. It turns out one item on that list carries grief I didn't want to face. A behavior analyst's honest look at avoidance: what it's really doing for you, and the one question to ask before you fix anything.

I quit everything I start — brands, projects, even books. And I’m a behavior analyst, so helping people follow through is literally my job. In this first episode, I share the story I’ve never told out loud: the brand I abandoned, the fear behind it, and losing my father to cancer. Then the science: why you don’t lack willpower — your plans just require a version of you that doesn’t exist yet. Plus your first tiny action: five minutes, one abandoned thing. That’s it.