Izanami Martínez: “I share for His glory what I live by His grace”

Izanami Martínez is currently among the most important social media influencers in Spain. She has 745,000 followers on Instagram and 64,000 on YouTube. In her bio line defines herself as a ‘wife, mother, anthropologist and author. Daughter of God’.

With a degree in Humanities and another degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology, Izanami began her entrepreneurial career at an early age. In 2011 she founded Nonabox, an innovative online platform for baby products. The project was an immediate success: in 2014 Nonabox had a turnover of 800,000 euros and had distributed over 70,000 boxes in countries such as Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Austria and France.

After selling Nonabox, Izanami undertook new challenges. She has worked as director of Labs at M&C Saatchi, has been a mentor at Top Seeds Lab, an associate professor at The Valley Digital Business School and director of Doctor 24, an online platform that seeks to redesign the concept of healthcare.

She is the founder of Soulgate, a platform focused on the application of neuroscience. Over 800,000 people and organisations have gone through her courses and programmes.

However, her entrepreneurial success has not been without personal challenges. At a critical point in her life, Izanami faced a deep depression that led her to rethink her mental health and her entire life. At tha point is when God came to meet her.

After being discharged from a psychiatric unit, Izanami has used her personal experience to inspire others. Spanish news website Protestante Digital talked with Izanami Martínez about her career and her faith journey.

 

Question. How do you describe yourself as a person and a professional?

Answer. I am a daughter of God who by His grace is blessed to put the gifts He has given me at the service of others. I am a wife, a mother and an anthropologist.

I give lectures and trainings for companies and organisations on the anthropological and neurobiological keys of our behaviour and how to activate our design to treat others as we would like to be treated. I also share my faith journey on social media.

Q. What events or stages in your life have shaped your personal growth?

A. We only grow in adversity. When I look back, I am grateful for every pit into which God has allowed me to fall. Because now, I not only have the experience to go down and show the way back, but I can testify to His mercy, His justice and His greatness.

God has allowed me to seek Him in pleasure, in the recognition of others and in self-destruction. He has given me two beautiful children who have made me connect with my reality as a woman, and has taken me to the abyss of depression to break my pride and reduce to dust the personality from which I sought love where it was not.

Q. How was your conversion process to Christianity like? What changed in your life after that?

A. I was born into a New Age family and grew up believing in reincarnation and practicing reiki, regressions, witchcraft, astrology and tarot.

At that moment God put in my heart the desire to read His Word. I started with Genesis 1 and did not stop until Revelation. I came to know a just God, who hates and punishes evil and in His infinite mercy enables us to do good.

I wanted to go deeper into the Word and to receive baptism, so, due to cultural inertia, I started a four-month course of Catholic catechesis. In the classes I heard beautiful testimonies and at the same time, they taught me ideas and practices that were contrary to the word of God and His commandments.

My reasoning was: I believed in God, I believed that Christ was God, and I believed in His Word, so out of logic and obedience I was not going to put any human idea or tradition above His Word.

Months later, looking for a church to join and continue my discipleship, I discovered on the internet that I actually was a Protestant.

Surrendering my life to God has been completely transforming. Asking Him to remove from me and my life everything that distances me from Him and to renew me completely has made me a new person in Christ that is totally different from who I was (thank God).

Knowing that I am loved, justified and saved by Christ in spite of all the pain I have caused, makes me live each day as a gift and use it with the strength He gives me to live for His glory.

Q. What role does your faith play in your daily life and how does it impact your personal and professional decisions?

A. I try, to the extent of my ignorance, to contrast every impulse, intuition, action and decision with His Word.

I ask myself personally and professionally if what I want or plan is putting anything above God and will prevent me from treating others as I would like to be treated.

Q. How do you handle the criticism or challenges you have faced when sharing your faith openly in a public setting?

A. With peace. God gave me a childhood and youth full of rejection and criticism. I learned that what we say to others speaks of who we are and that those who have pain to vent by hurting others will look for any reason to do so.

Now that I know that I am a child of God and that I am loved by Him, there is no opinion that can shake or break the identity that He has given me.

Q. How did you start your professional career and what are your greatest achievements?

A. I started my professional career as an entrepreneur and I continue to do so. I love entrepreneurship because it allows me to continuously learn and to design and share solutions that add value.

The turning point in my professional career was when I left the results of my work in the hands of God. With the full confidence that every yes is a blessing and every no is a protection, the anxiety for the future and the toxic self-demand have disappeared.

Q. What inspired you to work in social media and why?

A. Social media is an extension of my research and divulgation activity. I learn and connect with other realities and share what I learn there.

Q. How do you define feminism from your personal and faith perspective?

A. The same as the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language: feminism is to defend equal rights and opportunities for men and women. God created us different and complementary, equal in value but not in challenges and potential.

“Discrimination is not Christian because it implies contempt for the value of the life of others”

This is exactly where the ideological confusion of some feminist deviations lies, defending that in order to be valid we have to prove that we can do the same as men, and that feminism is about labelling our biological differences as cultural in order to make us interchangeable, whereas feminism is quite the opposite, valuing our diversity and including it in a fair way according to our design.

Q. Is it possible to harmonise Christian principles with the fight for gender equality? 

A. Of course! Any discrimination, for whatever reason, violates the commandment to love our neighbour as ourselves. Discrimination is not Christian because it implies superiority and contempt for the value of the life of others.

We are called to fight for equal rights and opportunities, to defend our diversity by design. To make our challenges and the value of our potential visible. To claim equal rights and respect as women, not by being more like men.

Q. What challenges are still to be overcome in the fight for gender equality within evangelical churches?

A. As a new Christian, I do not have enough knowledge of the reality of evangelical churches, so far I have only attended two of them.

Q. What are your plans for the future?

A. We are working on the creation of an online community to delve deeper into the Word, grow in faith and share testimonies. A virtual home like the one where early Christians gathered to live their faith and honour God.

Q. If you could sum up your mission as a content creator and influencer in one sentence, what would it be?

A. Sharing for His glory what I live by His grace.

“Put your trust, your identity and your criteria in God. No matter how good our intentions, we humans act out of fears and wounds”

Q. What advice would you give to someone who is looking for a deep change in their life, whether personal or spiritual?

A. Put your trust, your identity and your criteria in God. No matter how good our intentions, we humans are fallible. We act out of fears, wounds and automated behaviours and we easily tend to put our own desires above the wellbeing of others.

Only when we stop seeking validation and happiness in humans, can we connect with the peace that allows us to walk through the trials and follow the narrow path.

Q. How would you like to be remembered professionally and personally?

A. I would like my life to be a testimony of His greatness and for everything to point to Him.