1	Film & TV A conversation with writer Guillermo Arriaga; Latinos in the new television season. read more...
2	Music New visibility for Los Amigos Invisibles; Paulina Rubio, La Chica Dorada, fills a gap. read more...
3	Books How Joe Quesada came to run Marvel comics. read more...
4	Sports Fernando González aims for tennis’ top spot. read more...
5	Quest Maria Marin’s motivational messages. read more...
6	Calendar Our monthly list of premier events. read more...

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The Motivational Maven

Author, life coach and radio host Maria Marin offers her unique brand of self-empowerment and believes everyone can live the life they want.

Late at night when much of the East Coast is asleep, Maria Marin climbs into her car, drives to her radio studio and prepares to listen to the worries and woes of faithful listeners across the country. It’s 10 p.m. on the West Coast, and listeners to Marin’s call-in show Tu Vida es Mi Vida, or Your Life is My Life, are preparing to light up her switchboard.
For the next hours, she’ll field phone calls from people with relationship problems, anxieties or feelings of failure about their lives. While her years of experience have trained her well to handle many of her listeners’ concerns with her trademark inspirational and upbeat motivations, every once in a while a call will come through that tests even her seemingly unending positivity.
“Sometimes I can just tell, ‘Oh, this is going to be a tough call,’” says the Puerto Rican media maven and inspirational speaker. “I had a woman call recently who was having a very rough time, she was divorced and somehow her husband lied and got custody of her three daughters. Also, her mother hated her because she was the result of her mother’s rape.” After listing other hardships she was experiencing, Marin stopped the caller in her tracks. “I told her, ‘You don’t have to tell me anymore about your life because I will just sit here and cry for you. I want you to tell me what’s working in your life.’ ”
Stopping the cycle of negativity and changing a person’s perspective for the better is essentially Marin’s signature approach. Whether through her radio show, TV appearances, personal appearances or in her weekly columns distributed through some 50 media outlets, her goal is the same—to change the mindset of her listeners and make them believe, as she does, that no matter their current situation, the potential for improvement is infinite.
It’s a philosophy upon which she’s building an empire. The former restaurant worker who grew up in Puerto Rico and then San Diego has today become the leading Latina motivational personality, speaker and author in the country. Her column reaches more than 1.5 million people nationwide, her radio show is broadcast in dozens of markets and her book, Mujer Sin Limite, or Woman Without Limits, became a bestseller and remained among the top 10 non-fiction Spanish books for a year. Honored with several woman of the year and entrepreneur awards, she has cleverly filled a niche for Spanish-language, woman-empowerment self-help and motivation that was previously lacking a figurehead.
Growing up, Marin loved to entertain. She admits she was always in front of her family, reading poems and putting on shows at gatherings. Her bubbly personality and animated, smiling face make that apparent. After working for years in the restaurant business and after a divorce, Marin decided that she wanted a different life.
“I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but I made up my mind that I wanted to do something that would use my talents and that I could make a living doing,” she says.
It was the decision to discover what that might be that set her on her path. Three months after committing to seeking a new life and career path, she found an employment ad in a local newspaper looking for dynamic speakers to help give training sessions to working professionals. She might have been dynamic, but she lacked the other requirements the ad required. Marin decided to go for it anyway. What’s the worst that could happen, she asked herself. She already knew she wasn’t qualified, so not getting the job wouldn’t be a huge letdown.
She got the job. Out of some 30-odd speakers employed by her company, she was one of two women and the only Latina. Yet despite that, and despite her heavy accent, she jokes, she became the company’s sought-after speaker. And this was a company whose main clientele consisted of high-powered white men. She was then approached to do her radio show, TV appearances, personal appearances, columns and, ultimately, a book deal followed. She also became the spokesperson for the American Diabetes Association’s Latino outreach efforts (she has had Type 1 diabetes since she was 15). And the rest, she says, is history.
For as much as her message focuses on positivity, confidence and belief in one’s self, she does have moments where she asks herself how she can possibly advise people to live better. “Who am I to be telling these people anything?” she asks herself. She has her doubts just as anyone else does, she says. But, her listeners gravitate toward her for a reason. Her self-help philosophy insists that people can fix themselves; she’s there to inspire and get people moving. It’s fear that holds people back, she says, but a confident person recognizes the fear and decides to make that change anyway, she says. She did.
That’s the message she recently gave one troubled caller who said her husband had physically abused her, but she was considering giving him a second chance. Marin says she yelled, “You cant go back! I’m telling you there are people listening in their cars, at home, wherever that want to tell you the same thing,” she says. She urged the woman that she was powerful enough to leave the situation. “If I believe so much in you, then you should, too.”