Tatiana Quaife
[00:00:00] Tatiana: I think I had a lot of victimhood sort of mindset, I felt like I was less than, I felt like I was constantly trying to prove myself and I didn't maybe belong in certain places. I was trying to overcorrect. So there were just a lot of mindsets and belief systems that had been driving my ambition and my drive because I wanted to prove all of that wrong so badly. I wanted to prove that women, girls like me could succeed. And while there were a lot of positive things that came from that, it came from a fear of not being good enough. Right? So it was just never enough. It was like this constant chase, the wheel never never stopped.
[00:00:41] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention, gratitude, and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width of Your Life podcast. My guest this week is Tatiana Quaife, and she's a purpose-driven leader using her authentic voice and experiences to inspire and empower women leaders to turn inwards and unleash their authentic magic within.
Within 15 years of leadership experience as a Latino Executive at Airbnb. The Walt Disney Company and Procter and Gamble Tatiana experienced firsthand the pressure and challenges that many professionals face during their journeys to success. She was burned out, stressed, and overwhelmed by trying to fit in. And she knew there had to be a new, better way of achieving her dreams.
Tatiana went on a profound inner journey of unlearning and remembering so she could rise to her authentic power, purpose, and potential. And now she's on a mission to support other women to rise within so together that they can create a ripple effect of transformation, evolution, and ascension as they create new ways of living and leading, that are authentically aligned.
Wow. We had such a nice conversation. I have followed Tatiana. We've both been in each other sort of circles for years now. We were introduced by someone, a friend of both of ours, and I've loved following her journey and following her content and seeing just from the outside, what she was sharing on LinkedIn primarily.
And just during this conversation, we learned a lot about the spiritual journey she was on about a health scare. A risk that really was a wake-up call to examine her life and whether she was living authentically and doing the things that she needed to do. And we finally talked about why she decided to leave corporate.
What are some of the feelings, challenges, the fears that happen when we choose to make that decision, and what she's doing today to help other women on their journey? I love this conversation and I hope you do too. Take a listen.
Tatiana, welcome. I'm so excited for our conversation.
[00:03:11] Tatiana: Thank you so much, Aneta. I'm so excited to be here with you as well. It's going to be great.
[00:03:18] Aneta: I know. And it's so funny because you and I have never met in person. We met I think a couple of years ago, Chuck Sulereski, who I used to work with at KeyBank. And then just kept in touch with, them because he was always like a great leader. And he sent me a message once and he said, do you know Tatiana?
He's like, I think you guys should connect. I feel like you're very similar. You've got a lot of the same interests. And so I think I must've reached out to you and we connected and we've had an opportunity to talk. And then I've just loved watching your transformational journey over the last couple of years.
[00:03:53] Tatiana: Yes. Sending big love, and thank you to Chuck for connecting us. And similarly, I have loved not just watching your journey and all the incredible things that you're doing, but learning from you. You're an inspiration to me. So I'm excited to be in this conversation with you.
[00:04:10] Aneta: You're so kind. When I first met you, you were still in corporate and you'd worked at Walt Disney. You worked at Airbnb, and Procter and Gamble. You've had a lot of experience. So tell me a little bit more, maybe just about your background in terms of corporate. And also, you not only were in corporate as a woman, you also are Latina, originally from Brazil. And so you've got this overlay of this immigrant story too. So anything that you think would be helpful just in terms of your background?
[00:04:41] Tatiana: Yeah. Thank you for asking a little bit about me. I grew up in Brazil, in Sao Paulo. And since I was a little girl, I had this big dream of being an executive a big a day. I don't know why that was my big dream as a girl growing up. And the cool thing is, even though I would say Brazil is more patriarchal than the US my dad believed in me, he thought the world was going to be led by women one day.
So like, he kind of started to coach me up at a young age to be and step into sort of like a leadership role. So that's kind of what I had as like a North Star if you will, a lighthouse was to be a big executive, like a big company. That was my interpretation of what success looked like. And I remember there was this magazine in Brazil that was a business magazine.
Whenever there was a woman on the cover or a story about a woman leader, he would come and show me just to try to show me that there were women, that were already doing it and paving the way. So with that sort of dream in my heart, I moved to the U S to go to college and I met my husband in college and stayed.
So yeah, been now longer in the U S than I was in Brazil. But I feel like when I started my career in corporate it was incredible. I felt in many ways, I was living the dream of my family. At the same time, I didn't realize, honestly, how many challenges I was going to face, as a woman and as a Latina in the corporate world, especially in sort of masculine-dominated places and spaces. One thing that I'll share is I learned both because I feel people told me from an advice perspective, but also I learned and it wasn't that for me to succeed in corporate, I needed to fit in.
I needed to almost transform myself into someone else, so the parts of me that were Brazilian or the parts of me that were feminine just needed to go away. In many ways, I learned that I did the thing, I became the thing, I acted a certain way, how I talked, with gestures and sort of war terms, postures like broad shoulders,
[00:06:56] Aneta: Yes. Take up space, right?
[00:06:59] Tatiana: All of those did all of that. And the truth is in many ways it worked because I was succeeding. I was getting the next thing and et cetera, but I lost myself. I completely lost myself and I feel like life has a way of sending us more subtle signals that things are off. And then when we don't listen to the subtle signals, the signals get louder and louder until like it kind of slaps you on the face.
And I feel like I was in denial for a while. And 10 years ago I was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer, and it shook me to my core. I was not expecting to hear that. I was fairly young. And it just taught me to reevaluate everything. I'm like, wait a minute. I'm killing myself to sell laundry detergent.
Like I'm selling laundry detergent, and I'm like why? What's the purpose of this? And he just initiated this deep, like an inner journey.
Yeah, it's just completely changed everything in my life and it changed on the inside and then it changed obviously my career trajectory and my views on leadership and it opened up so much that now has taken me out of corporate and into stepping into what I feel is my bigger mission and purpose here in this world.
[00:08:17] Aneta: I want to go back but first I just want to ask, how is your health?
[00:08:20] Tatiana: Thank you. Yes. I should say I'm healthy and, yeah, it's doing well. And even though it was a very difficult, challenging time, I honestly look back at it now, through the lens of a gift and the sense that it taught me so much and woke me up when I needed sort of like me woken up and it's sending me in like a path that's been very beautiful. So now I look back at it with the lens of gratitude and I'm healthy now. So thank goodness.
[00:08:48] Aneta: Yeah. I'm so glad to hear that. So much of what you said resonated with me because I think there are some unspoken rules, but I do think that through female mentorship too, we were able to observe, this person is successful in corporate. This is how they dress. This is how they speak. This is how they engage, don't engage who they spend time with, et cetera. And you start to model your behaviors. It's almost like a classroom to be successful.
And I also, like you just felt completely lost. I didn't know what was me and what wasn't me any longer. And because we start at such a young age anyway, like right out of college, so you're in your twenties.
I mean, our prefrontal cortex is not even developed yet. And so you start conditioning yourself to these environments which are heavily masculine and that's okay, but it also does start to impact your ability to identify who you are as a human being. So did you notice that you were losing yourself or did you just now in hindsight look back and notice some of those different milestones?
[00:09:55] Tatiana: Yeah good question. I do feel like it was a little gradual. But it was also intentional on my part. I knew what I was doing. It wasn't that I didn't know what I was doing. It's one example, but I feel like it demonstrates, I remember when I first got my first job out of college, I went back to Brazil and my grandma took me shopping for business clothes to wear for my first big job. The whole family was super proud.
And we went to a Brazilian store and so we got very colorful business attire and I brought it back to, the U S and I, at the time was working at a manufacturing company and basically, the uniform was like black pants and like a white shirt, and like I walked in with this collars and I'm like, I can't wear my Brazilian wardrobe.
And so for basically, I don't know, almost a decade, all of these colorful Brazilian clothes just kind of like sat there in my closet. For many years I thought about donating, but I'm like, no, I'm not going to donate because these are like parts of me. And there will be a time when I'm going to be able to sort of get back to who I am. But I do remember the gradual shift, I think the toll of it gets bigger and heavier over time. So even though I intentionally knew what I was doing, I remember getting to a point where I would look at myself in the mirror and be like who are you?
Just felt kind of disassociated from this personality that I had developed and this armor that I needed to wear to protect myself, to protect myself, in the way that I thought I needed to be, the way that I needed to lead. So, it was intentional, but gradually it got worse and gradually I feel like I felt more of the weight and more of the cost of what that was.
I think mentally, emotionally, and physically kind of creating for myself until I had the wake-up call and I'm like, you know what? I can't do this anymore. It's costing my health. I can't take it anymore. So I need to find a way to be me and to lead, you know what I mean? And that was the journey.
[00:12:13] Aneta: Yeah. So interesting. I just had another conversation today with someone else who had a health scare, a diagnosis, a cancer diagnosis that also will corrupt. And it's so interesting when we are kind of dulled and we're numbed and we're not present and noticing these things, but it'll take one scare for yourself or someone in your family, someone nearby, and suddenly we snap right out of it like, it's immediate. So what are some of the things that you did immediately after you got your diagnosis? Because you said that things started to shift and you kind of were like, okay, why am I killing myself for laundry detergent?
[00:12:50] Tatiana: Yeah. It was immediate because at the time I just kind of had this realization that for me to go through sort of the treatment and to be healthy again, if you will, like it was an internal job. I almost kind of had that awareness that I remember. My aunt from Brazil sent me a book it was a Brazilian book, but it's basically about the infinite power of your mind translation of the title.
And it just got me started in this inner journey, understanding the power of our thoughts, the power of our minds. And it got me started with meditation and mindfulness. So when I was doing the treatments, when I was going through the things I would do visualizations, so it wasn't like I wasn't getting radiation. I was being bathed in light, you know what I mean?
[00:13:36] Aneta: Yes.
[00:13:38] Tatiana: And the light was clearing on myself. The light was bringing me back to health. And I would be meditating on the couch, it just became what I turned towards, to sort of move through it in a way that I felt could be in the highest version of me.
And then after I went through everything, I was like, wow, I like all of these things, like it's worked. I feel like it worked. So it's just okay, how do I continue? And then I got into yoga when I got my energy kind of like in strength back. And yeah. And then I just was reading and studying and it just became sort of, my main focus was sort of my inner growth. Yeah.
[00:14:21] Aneta: Yeah. I mean, meditation, mindfulness, yoga, all these things, they're ancient practices that are so nourishing and there's so much wisdom. I know some people are just discovering them now and I think maybe sometimes modern-day society needs science to prove the things that. have been working for over 5, 000 years.
So I'm happy to see that it's become more mainstream, but what would you say have been some of the biggest impacts with your practices, your daily practices in terms of how you approach work, how you approach life, or just anything?
[00:14:54] Tatiana: It's changed. I mean, it's changed everything. Every aspect of my life, I think. Even for again, type A high achievers, and busy professional people, when I started meditation or mindfulness, it was like I couldn't sit still. My mind doesn't stop always going, you know what I mean?
Like
[00:15:11] Aneta: Yeah. Everyone thinks they're special. They are the only ones that can't meditate.
[00:15:16] Tatiana: For me, that's like for those people, like over there.
[00:15:19] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:15:19] Tatiana: So I feel I just had a lot of misunderstanding of what it was and what the practice was about. And I think for me the biggest thing was realizing I'm not my thoughts, the novellas, I call it because I'm Brazilian, but like very dramatic novellas in my head and like all of it, that I'm constantly creating.
They're not me. That's not true. And so through the meditation mindfulness practice, just practicing like awareness, just greater awareness, and then over time, through other practices, learning how to shift, like it's my subconscious belief system.
So I would stop co-creating with a lot of the things that I had been co-creating with. And you were asking me earlier about growing up in corporate, as a woman and as a Latina, goodness, there are so many beliefs that I have had to, like, go deep within, sort of uproot, sort of out of me that I had been co-creating with some of it consciously, some of it not consciously.
But that had been costing sort of my ability to just be myself and to be my full empowerment and my full expression, but when you are incorporating spaces, they are so masculine, and not a lot of people of color. The idea that I needed to fit in deep down meant that I didn't think that I, as my true self, was good enough, right? Therefore I needed to shift to fit in, to be accepted, to succeed.
And a lot of from that comes like, I think I had a lot of victimhood sort of mindset, I felt like I was less than, I felt like I was constantly trying to prove myself and I didn't maybe belong in certain places. I was trying to overcorrect. So there were
just a lot of mindsets and belief systems that had been driving my ambition and my drive because I wanted to prove all of that wrong so badly. I wanted to prove that women, girls like me could succeed. And while there were a lot of positive things that came from that, it came from a fear of not being good enough. Right?
So it was just never enough. It was like this constant chase, the wheel never never stopped. And so these practices just started to allow greater self-awareness and inner transformation. So I could over time remember I was already good enough.
I'm whole and complete as I am, and it's safe and it's okay to be me and like how to express myself authentically and lead in a way that feels authentic to me like that. Because of these practices, I was able to unlearn and unravel all of that. So I could come back home to who I am if that makes
[00:18:02] Aneta: Yeah. What has the process been like to sort of rediscover who you are?
[00:18:09] Tatiana: It's an up-and-down rollercoaster transparently, I mean, there are days when I feel very clear and very present, and especially right now after I left corporate nine months ago there's such freedom that I feel in terms of freedom. And this is like a heaviness that just kind of lifted out of me.
And I can just like, breathe and be myself and live the way that I want to live and do what I want to do. There's just so much space and so much freedom. At the same time, I feel like it's been a metamorphosis, letting go and releasing the caterpillar and letting parts of me die that had been what I thought my identity was.
[00:18:52] Aneta: Like what? Can you share some of what those are?
[00:18:56] Tatiana: Yeah, I mean, I'm a successful executive at like a big company, right? I mean, It sounds shallow but that boosted my ego like it made me feel yeah, I worked so hard. Made me feel validated and important.
Again, I feel a little yucky and vulnerable sharing this but it's kind of what I had defined myself for having a calendar that was super busy with all of these meetings made me feel so valuable, so important, and creating so much impact and whatever, anyway, so there's just so many, I don't know, just so many things that I thought was who I was.
And so when going through this metamorphosis process and letting that go and letting those parts of me die, I can feel scary, messy, and wobbly.
I feel like, especially in the in-between phase when You know you're not that anymore, but you're not quite sure what the new butterfly is.
[00:20:01] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:20:02] Tatiana: So yeah, I feel like it's taken a lot of courage, I would say, and trust and surrender, which to me has been a very foreign concept because, again, you learn to like, make it happen. Go out there, and force kind of your way through it.
[00:20:19] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:20:20] Tatiana: And all of that, just letting go can trigger like some different things. So it's just being very much like a little, but more and more like day by day, step by step is just more and more stepping into the new and embodying that which now I think, almost, I don't know, nine months since leaving corporate, I feel like I'm finally sort of stabilizing beginning to, because I feel like to go through a very intense detox. I don't know if you can relate to that.
[00:20:49] Aneta: I relate. I tell everyone like the first, I don't know how long, months, you are detoxifying from the experience, you're regulating your nervous system, your calendar is completely blank. Which is something that I've never experienced before. So suddenly, I mean, because it's never empty. Not on the weekend, not when you were in school, not when you started working right away.
And I remember that being a little triggering because I was like, wait, what am I going to do? Am I a bad person if I don't sit at my desk and work for 8 to 10 hours or whatever at the beginning? So I relate to all of that. You have to intentionally choose how to spend your time, intentionally choose what's important, what you choose to prioritize, making time for things.
Maybe you just hadn't. Made time for a while. So you said you're nine months out of leaving corporate. So what stage are you in right now? And maybe tell us a little bit more about like what you are currently working on.
[00:21:49] Tatiana: Yeah. It's funny because, I had done a lot of work, a lot of inner work before actually leaving. So I thought, I'm like, you know what, I'm good.
[00:22:00] Aneta: I'm ready. I've done the work.
[00:22:04] Tatiana: I mean, it'd be like eight words, I'm doing this work. Wow. I mean, I'm in a good place, like, okay, it's probably going to feel a little weird, like a little bit, but it's going to be good. And then I feel like I laughed and I felt like a little high of look, I did it. And then like, I crashed and it was like, And yeah, it just hit me, the detox, I kind of went in a cocoon and it was pretty significant and intense. Another thing I learned was to not have a timeline.
[00:22:30] Aneta: Yeah.
[00:22:31] Tatiana: Like, okay, I'm going to give myself I don't know, 3 weeks, 3 weeks should be fine. But like, oh no, I needed more, so it's just been like yeah, the process of self-discovery of grace, of compassion for myself, just going through the journey, but yeah, I thought I was going to leave, I was going to have a few weeks to do my thing and then I was going to immediately jump into building what I wanted.
The reason why I wanted to leave corporate was because I've been getting more and more clear about my mission and what I feel inspired to create. So I'm like, that's it. I'm going to go all in. And I haven't yet. I feel like this journey has taken longer than I thought.
I have been doing some things. I've been playing. I've been in a very playful energy of exploring 1 on 1 coaching or group coaching and I've been inspired because of the journey that I've been going through to inspire other women leaders to go through this similar journey of personal, professional, and spiritual transformation. So we can rise to our fullest and truest expression.
So, that's kind of what I want to do to support and guide, to share as much as I can of what I've been learning with other women. And, I've been playing with different ways and different things, but yeah.
Well, my expectation or my plan was, and what has happened has been very different at the same time I'm beginning to feel I'm coming out of the cocoon. I don't feel yet sort of this fully embodied butterfly with the wings spread and flapping and flying around everywhere, but I'm beginning, like, okay, I can feel my wings. I can see the colors, I'm beginning to sort of play, yeah, a little bit more.
So I feel like that's the phase that I'm sort of moving into is the full sort of embodiment and living into the mission that I feel has been brewing within me for a few years now.
now
[00:24:26] Aneta: Yeah. It's so important to remember that this is uncharted territory. Like when we choose to leave no HR team is going to give you your job description, who is going to tell you here's how we onboard you. You're figuring all those things out. And luckily I would say corporate is such a great training ground for running your own business and for figuring it out. But it's also different.
You get to choose, you get to remember like I get to choose what this looks like. And a couple of things that you said that make sense is one, whatever timeline you have, like an unrealistic expectation, give yourself some grace because there are things that are going to happen that you didn't plan for, and they're amazing.
There are things that you try to make happen. And it didn't exactly work out, and that's okay. Everything is information. It's not failure. And I get, just got to the point, I think you called it surrendering, which I love. I got to the point where I said, I don't need my entire path lit. I have a really good vision of kind of where I want to be each year in my business, but I'm okay with just knowing what I need to do today, tomorrow, this week, this month, et cetera.
And then allowing myself to be open to blessings and chance encounters and the synchronicities to happen. And that's where the magic is. It's like if we can allow ourselves to be more in the moment to surrender a little bit, still have that north star where you're going, but so much of the goodness just happens along the journey.
And it's tough to become a butterfly. There's a lot of work there. It doesn't just happen. They don't just come out of their cocoon easily. So every step, every part, every struggle, every success is just a huge part of that.
Yeah, give yourself grace and celebrate all the little things every single day because there's growth every day. We weren't necessarily celebrating all those things before.
[00:26:17] Tatiana: I love that. That's such a good reminder. Yeah. To celebrate and to be more present. I feel like for me, I was always kind of leaning towards the future of what's next, what's the next thing, and just, yeah, it's your point, just being present at the moment, being open to what's going to unfold, celebrating like each moment, those are things that feel very new.
And I feel like at least for me, and I love you mentioned intentionally choosing it's such a powerful that we get to choose like you're choosing all the time. So what do you want to create? And I think for me, part of going through this metamorphosis is I knew how to create in the old way.
The thing that I learned in corporate was the many ways I learned so much. And a lot of things are very positive. But I'm learning more about masculine energy, and feminine energy, and a lot of what I had learned incorporated in terms of how to build, and how to lead comes from an immature masculine energy. Based on fear or doubt or competition or scarcity, like some of those things. And I've been very intentional and conscious of what I'm creating next and will not, cannot bring that with me.
So every time that I would begin to build, and I would sense any of those kinds of mindset or energies kind of coming with, I would like to pause, do pause do the work, do the inner work. Like release, because as you're saying, the intentionally choosing, And the creating the new at least for me, and I've been journeying through that personally recently is this integration of the masculine and the feminine energies like, what does that mean? And how do you dance between surrendering and taking inspired action?
To your point is like, it's such a dance and it's so new and I feel like there's so many of us going through this path and journey of learning that right now. And I haven't found a book or like it's not the normal basic thing.
So it's the HR department. There isn't a clear path. There isn't a, here's the 10-step thing that you do. And for, I don't know, high achieving women leaders because like we've had a path. We've known what the next ring in the corporate was to climb to. He had been very clear and now we're over here like. Yeah. There isn't a clear path. And that's the beauty of it because we're creating the new, but you feel so sometimes unsettling or disorienting.
[00:28:50] Aneta: Yeah, well, and, I would say like for me and you, we probably had a healthy dose of the masculine energy and there's the healthy, which is, it allows you to hit timelines and to do all the great things and be successful in business. There's the distortion where we get to the birth stages of burnout, which I experienced and I think you experienced as well.
It's when we spend way too much time pushing and striving and the distorted masculine. And then there's the beautiful, healthy feminine, which is the inspiration and the creativity and allowing yourself to be in flow and to be in a state that just feels good and natural.
And we're not talking about gender here. We're talking like yin-yang energies. And both of us have them within our bodies and it does feel different. And it is the play and the experimentation that allows us to find what feels right for us. And I didn't want to create my business doing it the way I did it before, because whether you're in corporate or you're building your own business if you're in that distorted masculine energy, you will get burned out in your own business.
And I was like, I want to love what I'm creating. I don't want to hate it. I don't want to regret it. I don't want to have resentment. I don't need to do that again. So I have to check myself all the time. And that's where those routines, spending time in nature, spending time with my family, having a calendar full of time with the people that I care about exercising, reading my books when I want to be outside in the sun, these are the things that I know that resource me, that allow me to fill myself up so that I can be there and do all of the things.
And if I don't do it. I reverted to the old and it never, ever turned out well. It's like never good. And so there is no exact science to it. It's just the experimentation and figuring it out for yourself.
[00:30:41] Tatiana: Yeah, I love that. Yeah, it's so true. It's like we sometimes go from what feels normal to what we were used to. Yeah. And, it's really interesting because I've connected with a lot of amazing women, especially those who similarly have left corporate and are going through similar journeys.
And I have almost noticed a pattern that if we don't consciously and intentionally go through this process that we're talking about in terms of maturing or getting to a more healthy dynamic between the masculine and feminine energies within us, we end up struggling with our business and a lot of them sometimes think they have to go back.
We have to like, go back to sort of the old and I feel like it is such a powerful time right now to have this conversation so that women can know and see that there is another way, there is another path. And a lot of it will be based on self-discovery, but also we are not meant to do it alone.
I would love to hear, you mentioned to me earlier that you went on this incredible retreat mastermind. I saw a post of you skydiving, but I feel like you talked about, the power of being in groups of other women leaders and women entrepreneurs, and I love to hear about your experience.
[00:32:00] Aneta: Yeah. Oh yeah. I joined a mastermind last year, last May, and I've been part of it for the last 12 months. It can get lonely when you move from corporate where you're interacting with so many people all day long to being by yourself. You have meetings with clients, of course, but just really create by yourself, thinking by yourself constantly.
So I joined a business mastermind and I joined one that was very much focused on a lot of reframing how we do business, doing it more from a feminine energy perspective. And it was so amazing to find my tribe, like to find these other beautiful, amazing, talented women who are doing great things in the world, who also have similar stories to mine.
And it was so inspiring just to be in the community and we meet every week. And then we did a retreat in person just now in San Diego and spent a week with these women. Doing energetic work, doing business strategy, and talking about how we want to create a life and integrated life was just so I don't know how to describe it.
It's unlike anything I've ever experienced. There's zero competition. There's just pure love. And an encouragement and just like no one's in competing with each other. There's so much space. There's no scarcity. And we practiced doing courageous things every day.
There's every day you're stretched every day, you're pushed a little bit out of your comfort zone. And I intended to be so present. To connect with people I didn't necessarily know as well. To make sure I was sitting next to new people every time we were doing a new activity.
On the last day, one of my friends skydived for the first time in December, Cindy, and she lives in San Diego. And she did it cause she felt like she needed to face some fears and overcome some fears that she had in life and her business. And since then she has skydived a couple more times. And then she asked if we wanted to skydive on Friday. And so five of us, including her, we went and it was never something that I was like, yeah, I want to jump out of an airplane.
I'm not a risk taker. I'm not an adrenaline junkie or anything like that, but for some reason, I allowed myself to just say, this is an interesting opportunity. How do I feel about it? So I sat with it for a few days and at first it was a curiosity, like, this is interesting.
What would this do for me? What would it feel like? Is this a fear? Are there things I'm worried about? And then Thursday, because it was supposed to happen Friday, we had to decide by 10 at night. And literally at like 9:55, we were sitting outside by a bonfire and Cindy's like, did you call?
And I was like, no, but I'm going to say like, ran to grab my credit card. And I called and I made the appointment for me, for my friend Caroline. And so then other people were going to do the same. So there were like five of us and we went and it was kind of like overcast skies. So we didn't know if we were going to be able to do it.
We had to wait for three hours and there were six minutes left before 5:30, which is, would have been the cutoff where they wouldn't have done any more flights. And it was like 5:24 and the guy who was in charge said, all right, let's go we're going. And so it was like, so we went from like sitting, just hanging out there to okay, we are going.
And then like so fast. And this was so interesting because the women and I talked about this. So we're like strong women, but there was something beautiful about being in the healthy, strong, professional, masculine energy of our guides, of our instructors that we were jumping with.
Because you are connected in tandem with another human being that you've never met before. And you are connected at the waist, you're connected at the shoulders, you are connected all around your midsection and you are strapped on to this person that you've never met before. It's a man, right? But they were so professional.
And the actual connection to another human, and then all of us sitting together, going up on the plane to 13,000 feet was soothing to the nervous system. It's almost like being swaddled as a baby, you're like, okay, this feels okay. This feels safe. And then when we got to the edge he's like, okay, just kind of like squat down loose knees allow me to guide you into the air out of the plane.
And then there are a few instructions, like banana back, put your head backward, tap on the shoulder, open your arms, and then just enjoy, look at the horizon because you're horizontal as you're free falling. It does not feel like your stomach is dropping.
It does not feel like a roller coaster at all. You just feel, you know, you're going fast because the air is coming, you can feel the air everywhere, but you feel like you're floating and to just look around and to see the ocean and to see everything I was like, I'm so jealous of the birds because they get to do this all the time.
And then when they pull the shoot, and now you're just coasting and it's just like super gentle. You feel like you're just kind of floating around and safe and gentle and he did some tricks and stuff like that. And then we had a beautiful landing. It was like knees up, extend your legs.
Okay. I'm going to drop you off first now walk with me. And it was like three steps and we were done like no jerk, no nothing. It was so completely amazing. And I'm still riding that high. I can't even tell you, it just felt like so much energy, so much healthy energy. And now I can see why people like to jump multiple times. Because I'm sure I'll go back again.
[00:37:52] Tatiana: Wow. That's incredible. I mean, all of it, the retreat and the jumping, just leaning outside of our comfort zone for growth and the experience of jumping. That's incredible. I love that so much. You're inspiring me. Maybe one day I will never do it. My husband has but yeah, it sounds very thrilling and freeing and exhilarating, like all of those things.
[00:38:15] Aneta: Yeah. You do. You feel so free and I think to do something like that, especially if it feels courageous, everything else seems that much easier. I can record some content. I can go do something. Jumped out of a plane. I was more scared to do a cold plunging the day before that.
We had some cold plunges, ice, and everything. And I think maybe this is why I wasn't scared on Friday. Once I did that and I did it twice and I went in for over five minutes each time. I regulated my nervous system so quickly just by breath work and then once you regulate your nervous system and your heart rate is slow and you're breathing normally, then the fear is not there.
And I wear an aura ring and I was curious to see if it would capture the heart rate increase. My heart rate didn't go up when I was up there or jumping. Isn't that weird? I know.
[00:39:11] Tatiana: Pretty incredible.
[00:39:13] Aneta: It's all up here. It's like, you're not your thoughts.
[00:39:16] Tatiana: Yeah. You're not your thoughts. I love that so much. Breathwork. And I know your breathwork is a big part of your practice and, and what you teach. I find it so incredible that just a few minutes of an intentional breath exercise can just completely change our, nervous system, and how we're feeling, everything is just incredible. Yeah. And I'm curious about business professional people who feel like they don't have time or feel like they can't meditate, I feel like cut right through it. Cause like, you know, it's just.
[00:39:49] Aneta: So fast. Yeah. Especially for people who have a hard time sitting quietly, breathwork is helpful. I mean, breathwork, meditation, and cold plunges are three ways to stimulate your vagus nerve, the fastest, and to move from the sympathetic to the parasympathetic especially if you're counting or just paying attention to your breath.
You can't have two thoughts in your mind at the same time. So that's helpful to kind of quiet everything. I highly recommend it, of course, for everybody to breathe and to learn some breathwork patterns. There are so many free resources as well, but for folks, if they want to work with you, Tatiana, what are some of the ways that folks can work with you?
[00:40:28] Tatiana: Yes, thank you for asking. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn, Tatiana Quaife. I am, I'd say, most present there right now, but I also launched my website, Rising Women's Sisterhood, so especially for professional high-achieving women who are going through a difficult time. A similar journey of personal, professional, and spiritual transformation going through that metamorphosis to create our next chapter that feels authentically aligned.
I would love to connect and yeah, through LinkedIn or the Rising Women's Sisterhood website would be what I would recommend to check out.
[00:41:02] Aneta: That's wonderful. We'll include all those links in the show notes. And Tatiana, the final question I ask everyone is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:41:12] Tatiana: Honestly. It's so funny, it's so relevant, I would say, for me right now, because I feel like I'm just stepping into almost redefining and experiencing that. But I feel like the other day I was walking in the neighborhood with nature as you were talking and I'm like, wow, okay, so going through this journey has felt like about liberation.
I feel like I'm just liberating myself from all of this gunk and all of this, all the old stuff. And I just was reflecting on, okay, what's on the other side of liberation. And for me, it was like freedom. It was freedom. Freedom to be myself fully. Freedom to live my life to the fullest and do what I love and what I enjoy with people that I love.
Whenever it is that I want to create and build what I feel inspired to create I'm tuning into right now. I'm preparing to go to spend a month in Greece.
And honestly, the idea of doing that, experiencing that a year ago, wasn't even in my sphere of possibilities, right? It wasn't there, I mean, that's not possible.
And here we are, preparing, and I'm going to spend two weeks in Greece with my husband and my daughter. She's really into mythology. We're going to be doing all the things there. And then I'm going to join a two-week retreat for women leaders on an island in Greece and my whole heart just overflows right now with so much joy and excitement about the idea and the fact that I get to like experience that.
And again, a year ago, I didn't even think this was a possibility. And I feel like it's also just beginning at the same time, things are just beginning to unfold and to me, living the full width is to say yes, yes, to these things that are unfolding. And I don't know what they are fully. I don't. And I trust and I'm open and I'm a yes.
[00:43:19] Aneta: I love that so much. I think that's a beautiful way to think of it. Like saying yes to the opportunities that are unfolding that are available around you. Tatiana, it has been such a delight talking to you, and having you on the show. I cannot wait to hear about your retreat and the big takeaways, the breakthroughs that you are going to have because I'm sure there will be many, and yeah, much-continued success for you.
[00:43:42] Tatiana: To you too. Thank you so much, Aneta. Have a beautiful day.
[00:43:45] Aneta: You too.
Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living the life that they always dreamt of living.