Caroline: 0:03

What if your next chapter isn't something you chase, but something you grow? Maybe success isn't about pushing harder or climbing higher. Maybe it's about listening, really listening to what feels alive in you. There's a quiet moment that comes before every big change, a whisper, a sense that what once fit doesn't anymore. And if you give that whisper your attention, it can lead you to somewhere extraordinary. That's what today's guest, Tigrilla Gardenia discovered. Her story is a living reminder that your next success doesn't have to be built. It can be cultivated. This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal. I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we're here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who've navigated big career transitions themselves so you can see what it's really like to make bold changes and feel inspired to create your own version of authentic success, one that is aligned, meaningful, and truly yours. Meet Tigrilla Gardenia, a nature inspired mentor, certified life coach, and world ambassador for plant advocacy. She helps creative multipotentialites, people with many passions and a deep pull toward purpose, live aligned authentic lives in collaboration with the plant world. With more than 25 years of experience across the arts, technology, communication, and eco social innovation, Tigrilla bridges, plant neurobiology, ecosystem thinking, community dynamics, and esoteric wisdom to help people evolve limiting beliefs and thrive alongside their natural design. She is equal parts scientist, artist, and guide rooted in creativity, growth, and connection. In this conversation, we explore what it means to grow your career like a living system. You will hear how Tigrilla's path carried her from music and sound engineering into the tech world to performance art, spiritual study and life in the esoteric community of Damanhur in Italy where she discovered that plants communicate, create, and even make music. We talk about how to know when it's time to evolve, how to listen for the next right signal and how collaborating with nature rather than forcing outcomes, can bring a new level of clarity, creativity, and calm action. if you've ever felt like you have too many interests, too many pivots, or too many dreams to fit into one box, this conversation is your permission slip to stop pruning yourself and start growing in full color. Welcome Tigrilla To Your Next Success. I am so excited to have you today.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 3:49

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Caroline: 3:52

Awesome. And you know, we're gonna talk about careers, career pivots, career transitions. You have had quite an amazing story. I can't wait for our listeners to hear more about all these amazing twists and turns. But let's dial it back to the beginning. where did you grow up? Tell me about your childhood, you know, what kind of things did you love to do? What were you dreaming about, et cetera.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 4:16

Yeah, so I grew up in South Florida. I'm a good old fashioned Miami girl. You're traditional at that time generation ina, which means I'm Cuban American, I am of Cuban descent. And, born in the United States only because we were exiled. Otherwise, I would've been born in Cuba most likely. And, I grew up really multicultural because in that time, especially in the US I mean in Miami in particular, we had all the exiles that were coming in. So it was very common for us to speak in Spanish, speak in English. There was really no distinction. We had just as much of the world of Jose Marti and what was going on with the Cuban Revolution as we did of Thanksgiving and what's happening in the 4th of July. So I had really, in so many ways. The best of both worlds. It was a time of a lot of creativity. It was a moment of so much feverish like music and there was like mixing of music. Everything from the glam rock world that was happening in the 1980s to the Latin rock that was climbing up so many bands that actually came out of that period. And so music was really a very integral part of my life. And then the other part that was, so I'm this right? I didn't know it at the time. I'm a right brain, left brain person. I'm one of those people that has both. So I danced as well as was really involved in what was going on in the music scene. I loved a lot of elements of school and ended up going to, what I found out later was one of the largest schools in the entire nation, which opened my junior year. So we were seniors two years in a row and I really loved math and I just was, this sort of strange combination of rocker chick with the nerds who could, I was a chameleon. I could really easily flow between lots of different groups, which has its benefits'cause it meant I could move through tons of circles. Didn't matter if I was going with super smarty people or the misfit toys that work, hanging out in the corner. But at the same time, it also means you don't belong to everything. So you're have one foot in and one foot out all the time. And that was really my kind of upbringing, this whole mix. And melange, my brothers are much older than I am, so I had the opportunity to experience worlds that were. Very different from my own and yet play with this wide range of age demographics and music and food and, cultural ways of being. I appreciate it now and very much appreciate that in our generation we didn't have to choose between whether we were Cuban or American, which I know that many immigrants, especially those that leave for reasons similar to ours, like political feel very much the need to either hide in their little corner or to wash away their, cancel out what there are. We didn't have that at all. And it wasn't until later I remember, I was on a work trip and I was watching, I don't know, PBS or something in the hotel room when there was a special on about our generation Indian, saying how privileged we were because we didn't have to choose because there was such a huge massing of that. So it was a very interesting time.

Caroline: 7:24

It sounds amazing. So, and you were growing up and kind of experiencing that, what did you think in that moment? What did success mean to you? Or what were some tenets that you thought, ah, this is, this is what success is gonna be? Maybe this is what I wanna do, or this is what should happen or could happen.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 7:45

Yeah, so that's a really great question that I actually, it's one of the few questions I don't actually have a good answer for, and I'll explain why. While I was, I am and still continue to be a very active and even ambitious to a certain extent person. I never had the goal, like it was, I'm somebody who I'm a multipotential, I'm multi-passionate, which means whatever I'm involved with in that moment is my entire life. And that juggles and switches around. So for example, I was deeply, like I said, into the music scene, so I thought, oh, okay, I'm gonna, do a bunch of stuff relating to music. And I didn't know what that looked like because again, I jumped around from things. I danced for years, but I never thought I would be a dancer. I, was going out and spending time with a lot of musicians, but I myself wasn't musician. I was always somebody who was helping in whatever I was doing.'cause I feel like the way I enjoy events most is by being actively doing something for them. Whether I was working the door or working the till, or helping out friends, move their equipment. So I always was connected to all these, but I didn't see myself as a mathematician. I didn't see myself necessarily as somebody who was gonna work in psychology. I just felt like everything was like possibilities. And what I did know was that I was gonna go to college. I honestly didn't know what I was gonna study. So when I graduated, as a matter of fact, my freshman year, I thought I was gonna go to law school because I felt like that I I was on the debate team and I really loved to speak. So I thought, okay, law school, maybe that's it. But I couldn't even tell you what kind of law I thought I was gonna practice. As a matter of fact, my freshman year, which is very funny'cause I completely switched majors afterwards, I was going for psychology, philosophy and a minor in sociology. So that was where I was thinking that was gonna take me towards law school. I had talked, talk about those three put together, where the hell are you gonna do? I didn't have any career in mind. and so it was just really interesting. As a matter of fact, when I switched majors,'cause by my college, by my sophomore year, I realized I did not wanna go to law school. I took this one class that like proved to me I did not wanna be a lawyer. And then I was like, what am I gonna study? And I was looking around and I'm like, what are the, consists in my life like, what are the things that are always around me? And it was math. Don't ask why and music. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna be a music engineer. Where should I go to study music engineering? So I started looking around saying, what are the programs that do some form of music and engineering type thing? Turned out that the best school in the nation for music engineering and was actually in my backyard. So I had gone up to Boston from Miami and then I came back to Miami to prepare myself because I wasn't a musician at this point. I had played a little bit of piano, but I wasn't musician and it was in the school of Music. So I had to like spend an entire summer pouring myself into piano lessons of all sorts in order to be able to get up, to be able to audition. Because I had already gotten into the school,'cause I had applied to a bunch of different schools. And so I had gotten into the University of Miami, but I had not ever thought about the music program. So I was like, oh my goodness, am I gonna be good enough to be able to do this audition and get into the school?'cause it's a very highly regarded school. So it was just like this, I really, I knew the route in the sense of I knew it was college job, and most likely all the other things that go with it. But I couldn't actually tell you like, I wanna be this. And as a matter of fact, in college, I ended up doing three different internships in three different things connected to music engineering.

Caroline: 11:33

Oh, that's so cool. But nobody knows in that moment, I've come to realize now after diving into this, that people start questioning their careers and it happens at really predictable stages. And so the first ones go right along with transitions in school, so around 18, around 22. But even like most people. Go into it not not knowing, they listen to very well-intentioned, well-meaning people. Or you have this vision of careers based on what you've been exposed to in your family, for people that you know, or careers that you think sound good. So yeah, one of the things, if anybody's listening and they're in that timeframe now I now have data-driven, scientifically backed, valid reproducible assessments that can help guide somebody to say, here's how you're hardwired, and here are some careers that could be well-suited for how you're hardwired, and now let's pair into it. Your interests, your skills, your values, your goals, all of these things. So we can make a really awesome plan, and it's still gonna be 18, 22. Then every 7 to 10 years after that, a questioning period where you can either act on it and refine or override it, and then you'll start feeling it in your body.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 12:48

Yeah. I just knew, I remember because one of my older brothers is very different than I am in the sense that he was like, what are you gonna study? And I was like, dude, relax. Like I'm gonna study whatever I knew that if somehow I did know that if I followed my passion, I would be taken care of in that perspective. I didn't know how, I didn't have a line perspective. I knew that what I had to be was true to my interests.

Caroline: 13:16

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 13:16

And I knew that the first years of university were exploration. So I did not feel at all guilty. it was a little bit hard to come back to Miami because I just didn't expect it. Like I thought, oh, I really wanted to get out and explore something new, and then to find, oh, no, the place you need to go is right back home. I was like, what? Now? And I didn't want it to seem like I was coming home. But I realized that was part of it too. I just knew really deep down inside me that I had to be as completely immersed in whatever it was. And I have to say, because my background is so odd, and because I did do so many different things, like my last year of college was, of university was really hard because I wasn't, like I said, a super high-end musician. I wasn't also, I loved math, but I didn't do the traditional statistics route or some of the physics routes that are all kind of part of the engineering worlds. And I was getting this major in music engineering and a minor in electrical engineering. And I had to, and I didn't even know how to study because when I was young I had been really good. At, like I had just learned, I learned very fast.

Caroline: 14:29

Yep.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 14:30

When I got to college, I realized about my sophomore to junior year that I had never learned how to properly study. It wasn't until my senior year that in working with some of my classmates, I discovered the technique that allowed me to learn the techniques that I still use today. And had I known how to study back, like for example, I'm somebody that, I need to write, but I can't write too much during because I miss what's happening. I'm very verbal in that perspective. So what is best for me is if I'm learning, like in a class, I love having books or handouts and I love highlighting with writing little things in the margins, but or, and I have to copy that over to a notebook. So if it's in the copying process that I actually. Learn. And then if I can get into discussion study groups rather than, just reading more, if I can discuss it, that's like the cherry on top, like that's the part that's really gonna nail it for me because I'm verbal. But highlighting notes in the margins that squiggle around copying notes into a completely new notebook where I make sense of it.

Caroline: 15:44

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 15:45

That technique got me through my senior year.

Caroline: 15:48

And then what happened? Like, so now you're graduating with this amazing combination of, you know, music and electrical engineering.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 15:57

Yeah.

Caroline: 15:58

What do you do from there?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 15:59

This is another great story. So here I am, I graduate and at the time I didn't know we had the benefit because our program was very specialized and like I was one of 24 people graduating from my major and only the only two women, my se my senior year. We're talking about a super highly specialized type of thing, and so we support each other a lot. And throughout the year we had these forums where people who had graduated before us would come in and have conversations and stuff like that. I met someone there who was working for the FBI doing audio video forensics. And, he was like, would you be interested in this? And I was like, sure. Like, Who wouldn't type of thing. I thought I was gonna be doing kind of more theater sound. It was one of the pieces that I wanted to be doing because I had done various different, like I said, internships. I had interned with REM when they were recording the Monster album. I had worked for a major radio station.

Caroline: 16:56

How amazing is that?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 16:57

Yeah, it was a fun time, it was a great studio. It was like such amazing things. But I realized I didn't wanna be in the studio, so it was like a lot of things were helping me knock stuff off. And so he was like, okay, I think we have another position opening up. We'll contact you in the meantime through a friend. I got two jobs, so I was doing two jobs. One, I was working at a CD pressing plant. This is back when we used to press CDs and I was putting what's called PQ. They're the markers that tell you where the track starts and the track ends. So I was working these night shifts there, and then another newly person who had graduated from my program, I don't remember how the heck I had met him, but he was the head engineer for the Bee Gees. And he used to work at night. Everybody in my program is like on and from my school, are all over the place doing one's the drummer for Shakira, the other one works with Shania Twain. One does the major, like almost all the movies that you watch, he does a sound on it. Like there, these people are doing amazing things. And he used to work in the major department store there, creating their commercials. So I was doing these two like odd jobs, trying to figure out where I was gonna go. And, I went to a conference because we have a big conference connected to the audio engineering society every year. And I bumped into a friend who had graduated the year before me from the master's program and we're chatting and she had moved to Seattle and she was like, as we were talking, she's so what are you gonna do now? And I was telling her, and she's you know what, you would be perfect for my job. And I was like, what do you mean? She's I wanna move into this other position and so I'd love for you to do my job. And I thought, okay. And she was like, But I just wanted to let you know that if I put your name in the ring, you're gonna get an interview and you're most likely gonna get the job. At the time I had already interviewed at the FBI, but the FBI process takes six months and it was to do the audio video forensic stuff, and it takes six months to do the top secret clearance. So they were interviewing my neighbors and my like old friends and all kinds of weird stuff. So here I am doing these sort of what looks like menial jobs, but in reality were giving me a lot of experience in the audio world. And here's these two opportunities that are showing up. And I had almost forgotten about the FBI thing because like I said, they just go radio silent. You do the interview and then they're like, okay, we'll let you know. And then you go radio silent, you start hearing popups. Somebody just knocked on my door and told me they're an FBI agent and they're asking about you. And I was like, oh, okay. I guess I'm still in the running. So she puts my name in the rink. So I get, invited up to Seattle and I do this interview and I come back and it's really funny because they give me an offer, and this is about in December, right after, so I had graduated in May, and this was in December of that year. And I get a phone call like maybe a week, not even a week later. And it's like the FBI saying, okay, so your start date is, and they tell me it's whatever, February something. And I'm just sitting there going, I have another offer, like another job offer. And they're like, yeah, this happens. We just need to know within a week. So here I had this I go to, Washington DC and work for the FBI, which will be a career for the rest of my life? Because basically the trajectory is you go in there, you do this type of forensics, which is stuff like, the stuff that they made me watch, I had to watch people getting their heads blown off because you have to watch, I had to watch like fights and listen to gunshots to see what kind of guns were used. It was like heavy stuff. But that's a career you do until you retire and then you become an expert witness and that's how you make your money. For real. Or I could go to Washington state and go into the internet bubble, which at that time was like into the audio video world that was just being born online with stock options.

Caroline: 20:38

Ding, ding, ding.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 20:39

I was like, and the advice given to me was like, you're young. If the company fails, you'll just find another job. I was like. Okay, so that was it. I went to Seattle and I started at Real Networks. Back then it was called Progressive Networks, which was the first real company that was doing audio over the internet who was doing like internet radio and who eventually did the first real launch of video. So thanks to what we worked on, which was the product I originally worked on real video for, we have this video that we're here on today. It was like the precursor of that world, it was a really different, so I just followed, I just went along with the flow. I was like, here are my options being placed in front of me, and let's just go with it.

Caroline: 21:24

Wow. And so then you're there, and now you're immersing yourself into that world, and are you still doing any sort of music stuff outside. Like for your own self outside of work. Like what are you doing in your free time?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 21:38

So at the beginning, yes, like I stayed a little bit, I got into, doing sound for some bands and was working out, but then back then the internet was literally just being born. The way that we think about it today, we were still at the, what we call the bubble. It was like everything was just growing exponentially. So the hours were really long. We would, I would often get home at 11 o'clock at night, going to work at eight o'clock in the morning. I slept in my office a lot. Like it was a crazy time. Very fun. Nerf wars, like with Nerf guns and they would give us lots of toys to play with because it's the internet and you just do, and you have to have creativity and you have to blow off steam. But it was still a lot of work. So eventually that fell away. And as a matter of fact, maybe a few years, maybe about three years into me working there, a lot of things started to change in my life and one of the things that I started to really miss was I didn't have a creative outlet outside of work. Like I didn't have that anymore. And I found myself in a really big funk of not having any kind of way of expressing. I had always been part of, in the the music scene in so many different ways, and I had nothing. So I ended up. I ended up contacting some old friends of mine and got the name of a voice teacher because I didn't wanna go back to piano. And I ended up taking voice lessons. I would drive 45 minutes during my lunch hour to go take voice lessons because she was like highly recommended and I wanted to just be with somebody that I could trust. And she was, north of where we were in downtown Seattle. So 45 minutes at lunch in order to, so 45 minutes up and then 40, an hour lesson and then 45 minutes down because I was freaking out. I was like completely inside my whole expression was only my work stuff, which had lots of different avenues, but it didn't have that music, creativity. And it was actually thanks to her. That she's at some point when I finally left Real Networks and ended up at a startup, that then failed, but, which was fine because it ended, it took me into Microsoft after that. But, she was the one that was like, when I was in that transition period, she's you know what, you should just start auditioning and do some theater, do some musical theater, maybe do some, whatever, any kind of short films. Like just have some fun and express this stuff.'cause I was doing recitals with her, but I wasn't really doing anything else other than, singing in the shower, which was great. But it was, I think I needed a little bit more. So that got me into a completely different creative scene in my town and was pivotal to moving me through another set of transitions.

Caroline: 24:16

Okay, this is awesome. Yeah.'cause I was wondering,'cause once you went into that, you know, real networks position as, as fun as it is and as much as they did try to have the things to blow off, but it's like with your background of how you grew up, you did lots of things. You interacted with lots of people. Yeah. So it's, I'm glad that you realized that early on, so to say, right. Not going decades with just the FBI thing is as cool as it sounds like it could have been, not the fit for you.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 24:48

As a matter of fact, I had a friend who took my job, like he took the job that was offered to me because he came in right after me and they offered it, and just as I said, he was there. Up until he retired a few, whatever years back, and now he does expert witness. It's the trek that they do. And I was like, oh my goodness. I would've died. I would've died. Instead, at least at Real Networks. We had, of course the stimulation of the internet. We were designing things, so everything was new and different and I was doing audio quality. Most of my work was really about testing the audio. So I got to watch the Breakfast Club on laser disc every single day, about three times a day for a year. I was like, I knew every single part of the Breakfast Club backwards and forwards and backwards. I had a set of laser discs that I had to watch and encode them and test them. So I did get to meet some super cool people. I got to go to conferences and that was all great and a great way to express, plus it was very decadent back then. But, but yeah, I needed that creative outlet. And as much as I was trying to entertain myself with the softball club and home and like buying a home and all these types of things, it wasn't the same as what I had always had of being able to jump around and do all these topics. And I really needed that piece of myself. And so the singing lessons for me was like a great way of getting my foot back into that door. That when I'm out of it for too long, my body looks for it. It's, it starts to seek it out in different ways.

Caroline: 26:22

Yes. So then you mentioned something about Microsoft. So let's let, let's talk about that, that fun tangent, and then how did that kind of go from there?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 26:31

Yeah, so when I left Real Networks because there was the person who I started dating who would become my husband, who is now my ex-husband. He was actually in the same group and was destined. He wasn't my direct boss, but he was destined to become the big boss. So I was like, you know what, you're a rockstar in this company. I'm just gonna go and I'm gonna go explore other things. I had not explored other companies before, so I went to this super small little company that was doing internet radio stuff, and then they folded and I spent the next three months playing around doing lots of shows like theater and movies and stuff like that, which was great. Lots of industrial videos and then I landed this job at Microsoft, which was weird because I had a non-compete, which you can't do now anymore. But anyways, back then you could, and I had this non-compete, so I couldn't go into the creative side of it. I ended up in this other place. working on some server stuff and so I spent the next five years at Microsoft, which ended up solidifying another piece of who I am, which is this project. More project, what's called a release manager in the software world, which is somebody that kind of manages the overall project. And that was, had many beautiful things. Microsoft is today, it's a very different company than what it was when I was there, but it was both the, we used to call it like the evil empire on one end. And on the other hand it was a fantastic company that really did take care of you and gave you a lot of opportunities and a lot of abilities to do things, take classes and work with some of the smartest people in the world like I remember sitting in Windows, what's called Windows back then it was called Windows War, which is this meeting every day of the project managers connected to everything that's inside of Windows and thinking, this group of misfits,'cause we're all misfits, affects millions of people around the world. So you really have this sense of responsibility, this sense, and brilliant minds, like really brilliant minds. And they have a theater group and lots of like programs.

Caroline: 28:35

Awesome.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 28:36

So I was able to express myself in many different ways, but unfortunately, having that non-compete took me out of the artistic realm, which I had always still combined in with my work.'cause at Real Networks, I was working on audio and video. And also in this other company I was in that. At some point it was like, luckily I was still doing theater shows and such, and that's where the next pivot came in, which was that I ended up walking, so I was doing these auditions and I ended up auditioning for something. And I walk in the room and the director, I'm looking at him and I'm like, Jake? And he's like, Hey, he was somebody I had worked with at Real Networks. And I was like, oh.'Cause when you're doing auditions and you're just doing it for fun, you don't even know what you're auditioning for. You just go in'cause it's fun. And you're like, okay, I'll find out when I get there. And it turned out it was a performance piece, like a theater piece in the middle of this dance party. And I was like, what do you mean? He was like, like a rave. And I was like. I knew nothing about this world, by this point I was married. My ex-husband has two children. I had a steady job. Yeah, we were a little kooky and we were traveling a lot and doing things, but I was still on the mainstream, so I had no idea of that, this world. And he was, he ended up casting me and I ended up going into these rehearsals with these, to me, they felt like kids. They were all pretty much my age. Maybe about four years younger than I was, but to me, they felt like children because they were just so free. Like they were all these underground artistic side of Seattle that I had never met at all, that felt very close to my original roots, but in a completely different style. Like back then it was Rock and Latin Rock and the traditional club scene. And these were like underground parties and esoteric knowledge and all this other world. And I was sitting there going, this is possible. No, this is possible. And so at some point, I go to do this performance and I realize that night with the help of a good friend of mine who I had met doing theater that, I was like, I don't want my life, I don't want at least parts of my life. I need a different life. And so I went into this performance. I came out, it was an all night event. It started at seven o'clock at night. I ended up at seven o'clock in the morning. I walk out at seven o'clock in the morning and I'm like, I go home and I walk through the door and I look at my ex-husband and I'm like, I'm outta here. And he's like, what do you mean? I don't want, I don't want this. I don't want, this is a beautiful home. I loved my house, but I'm like, I don't want this. I need different, this is too anchoring for me. This is too much. And a few months later I ended up meeting, again one of the founders of the company, you might say, the group that I had performed with. And, we were, we got to become really close friends. And we were chatting one night and he was like, you should manage me. He was an artist. And I was like, okay. So I started managing him. He started coming into the office at Microsoft. He's like working on music and graphics and creating and painting, and I'm like trying to get my work done. And about six months later I was like, you know what? This is not the life I want. Like I do not wanna be sitting here. Yeah, I make great money. Yes, I can travel. Yes, I could buy houses. Yes, I could do this, but this isn't the life I want. And so I just left. I told my boss, who was a wonderful person, I was like, I'm outta here. And he's are you sure? And I'm like, yeah, I just need something different. I don't know what I'm gonna do but I'm gonna manage this kid. And,

Caroline: 32:14

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 32:14

Maybe I'll make money, maybe I won't. I had saved already from my 10 years at this point in software development, and I was like, I'm out. And that's it. I took it. I had no logical thing to say, I didn't have another job lined up. I didn't know what the hell I was gonna do. I just knew, I couldn't be there anymore. And I knew that these people made it on a lot less money than I did. And so I was like, if they can survive, I can survive.

Caroline: 32:43

Imagine what your life would be like if your career aligned with who you are, what you do best, and actually fueled the life you want. At Next Success, we support all ages and stages through career transitions from students exploring majors or careers to job seekers actively searching or re-imagining their next move to professionals committed to self-awareness and leadership growth. Stay connected and explore what's possible at nextsuccesscareers.com and follow@nextsuccessmethod on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook. This is what I want to try to help people do. Like, what is the life you want and how can your career or your employment fuel that life instead of detract from it. So that's so amazing you had this experience. Now did you have any signs in your body or what's going on other than,"I don't think this is it." Like how did it show up for you? Because Yeah, by all external measures,

Tigrilla Gardenia: 33:51

I was a success.

Caroline: 33:52

Many people would say you were very successful because you had the stable job at the great company and the house and the husband and all the, all the things, and yet the pain of staying the same became greater than the pain of leaving. You chose to leave, but like was there or how did that show up for you? Or just more of a inner voice.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 34:14

There was more of a void you might say. Like I would say that was the part that there was more missing than what I had and what was missing for me was. By this point, I think if I would've stayed at real networks, I don't know what would've happened. But, by the time this happened to me, where I was in Microsoft, I had been on multiple teams at Microsoft, and I have to say, there was maybe only one of those teams where I felt like I felt that passionate creativity emerging. I think if I would've ended up not having that non-compete clause and would've gone into some of the teams that were connected to audio and video and I tried to get into one of the other groups, but unfortunately it was full at the time. That was more about working, like product placement, and so you would've gone into Hollywood and all that type of stuff. Had I been able to get into those types of teams, but I ended up getting, keep kept getting farther and farther away from that creative source that I knew I needed to be around. I'm somebody that's very much fueled by passion. I'm, that was the void that I was missing. I had this beautiful life and I had lots of fun that we would have on vacation, but I wanted my life to feel like vacation. Like I wanted that and what these people that I met were showing me was that you could do it. And I think that was pretty much, I think I had three things going for me. One, I did have savings, like I had saved up money and I had been, I'm somebody who's very good and frugal and knows how to make her money, go a long way. I had sold my house, like I had bought a house and then I had sold it. I had also had some money put away, so I thought, okay, at a worst case, I can survive for a little bit. Two, I did just come outta Microsoft on my own volition, which means I could probably go back, like worst case scenario, I could get a job somewhere. Some software company is gonna take me because I have 10 years of experience and I know what I'm good at and stuff like that. And third, I had their example, yes, they weren't living the same kind of life that I would've wanted a hundred percent, but I was watching, we were producing these amazing events. And by this point I started to produce events afterwards. But like when I went to do that show, here was a show that, like I said, ran 12 hours, it was in a old supermarket, like a huge supermarket that had been completely transformed into this whole space, traveler space. I was seeing like theater and organization of health and wellness spaces and education and sponsorships And I was like looking around at all this going, they don't have, the money in their pocket like the Microsoft people have. But then it's not that they don't know how to do things, like they're not sitting around twiddling their fingers. They were following an ideal and a passion and even our rehearsals, like this was really important stuff for humanity and the way we were perceiving these prayer performances. And so it wasn't just Oh, I'm just gonna do some theater for some people." It's no, I'm gonna give a message. I'm gonna explore a topic. I ended up becoming a part of this organization up until we finished the series of events that we were doing. And each event was like a deep catharsis of let me understand what this means for humanity and here are these massive archetypes and here's how we're gonna create. And so where they weren't maybe as educated as I was or didn't have the refinement or the ability to like project manage in the way that I did, because I had come from this structured world, they had a level of in ingenuity and creativity. And some of them were working in really important companies that were doing. So it just showed me that there was another life than the more structured life I had always seen in front of me. And that was enough to give me a sense of oh, I can do this. And worst case scenario, I can step back into my old life.

Caroline: 38:20

And so then what happens? So you're doing these amazing performances and then,

Tigrilla Gardenia: 38:25

Yeah. So I ended up, like I said, managing this artist. Eventually he asked me to be his business partner and I ended up opening a company, founded my first company where we started to produce these events. And I thought, oh great. this is amazing. My events were growing. It was a lot of heartache. They're not easy things to do. but they were really so inspiring to do these. I loved the music. It was a whole another world of music.'cause I had come from the rock scene and this was like electronic music. And so I got to know the artist and I got to host people and it was just. Mind blowing for me because it was an entirely different experience. And then, I started to date somebody who, at some point, so actually before that I ended up in one of my performances hiring a circus, a small circus troupe, and became really good friends with one of the ringmasters who was like, Hey, do you wanna be one of our partners? we're we, we have a number of co-owners. Do you wanna be one of the co-owners and take care of this piece and do all this stuff? So I was like, yeah, and that got me into an even more expansive way of looking at performance that was more than just acting or singing or dancing. We had like traditional stuff, aerials. And I got to learn a lot about that world. And I got to learn about, acrobatics. But I also got to learn about more darker stuff. So it was really expansive, which was perfect for me. Like I was in this. I worked really hard because it was a lot of work to do for the marketing and to get everything done. And then my partner says to me at some point after we're producing these events, and he's you know what? I really wanna work with Cirque du Soleil. And I was like, okay, like I need to think twice about it. I was like, okay. I was like, okay. By this point I was also in the esoteric arts, so I was studying more on the esoteric side and had become an initiative of school. And so I was like, yeah, okay. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna clean up your Karma. And I actually have an episode of my podcast that's about this.

Caroline: 40:20

What is the esoteric side? Like? What is, what is,

Tigrilla Gardenia: 40:23

I was, I was, I walked, one of the events, one, one of the groups that the events that I was working on partnered with was with this mystery school. And so I started to study with this mystery school and I started to understand more of, the spirituality and more of what is magic and how does magic work. I had always had an affinity for that. When I was younger. I grew up with a lot of people around me from Santeria to all other kinds of different pieces. But I had again, another one of those things that just left behind. So now I got back into this and I was starting to learn about magic and Kabbalah and how is it that all this works? And I was loving. So Kabbalah is a, so Kabbala. The word Kabbalah means to receive. And so Kabbalah is really an understanding, a receiving of the understanding of the cosmology, of the universe, of how is it energetically that the universe comes into being from nothing into the world of form, and what are the major archetypes and relationships between these archetypes that make up it? That's a very simplistic way of explaining it. So Kabbalah gives you a, an understanding of how these different energies work across and how I can build anything from them. And how do I myself master them both within me and around me? And how do I then traverse through the tree of life? How do I walk through these different pillars, these different ways of being in order to elevate and refine always myself and to really step into the highest, the highest version of myself, understanding how I can navigate these different energies. So it is a very powerful system. And by this point I was already like studying, getting close to being a teacher of it. So I had, my, my own group that I was, my, my company, which I was producing these events. I had the circus that I was supporting and doing work with. I had my esoteric studies that I was starting to get into teaching. And here he's I wanna work for Cir Soleil. And I was like, okay, sure. We made it happen. He ended up a few months later, finally, got offered a job and we decided that we were gonna leave the United States to go on tour with Cirque du Soleil. And that was where the next phase started.

Caroline: 42:39

Okay, so now you throw all caution to the wind and just follow this desire and this passion to just keep creating and this your romantic relationship to just like evolve and all this and leave the United States. So where did you go?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 42:57

So he got a job on, it was a hard decision. The hardest part of that decision was we had three cats at the time and we were like, can we leave the cats? Like getting rid of everything else was easy, but we're like the cats, what do we do?

Caroline: 43:10

I get it.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 43:11

We ended up finding homes for the cats. We ended up selling everything. We got rid of our apartment, we put a little bit of some stuff in storage, got rid of everything else and'cause we decided we were just gonna go on tour and see where the heck that took us again for myself. Going back to what's your mentality of, how do you think, because I'm a Taurus, so I need home, like I need home. And so my home was this one suitcase that had a certain amount of things that no matter where I was staying, I had to build out that suitcase, which was like my little altar and stuff. And then that made me home. But I kept thinking to myself, I'm producing events in the United States. They don't happen that often. Like at this point I was producing some really bigger ones, so it took a long time. So I was like, okay, I can just fly back for when the event happens. I was teaching esoteric stuff and he was gonna be having this job, which took care of like our lodging and some other stuff. I was like, okay, we can do this. Let's just see what happens. So again, in the back of my mind I'm like, worst case scenario, I can just all leave it all and come back to Microsoft.

Caroline: 44:09

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 44:10

That was my kind of reserve that was always sitting there in the background. And, and so we end up going, where did we go first? We went London first. So we flew out to London and that was the first, stop on the tour. He came into the Raki tour. It had just gotten to Europe. I think this was like the second stop for them. And so we joined the tour there. And I was working, I was trying to like doing things a little bit of remote. This is already years ago. So we were able to do a few things online. Not as much as we can do right now, but I was able to prepare my stuff for my group back home. And, we're on tour for a few months. And I get offered a job with Circ also, which I only worked for Circ for a short period of time.'cause to be honest, that particular show was not for me. Anyways, I was on tour for a year and we went London, Amsterdam. I don't remember the order exactly. We did Vienna, we did Lisbon. We did, Valencia. We did Madrid. It was a tour.

Caroline: 45:10

Prior to this, had you done much traveling?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 45:13

I had traveled a lot in my life.

Caroline: 45:15

Okay.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 45:15

Yeah. I had traveled quite a bit. My, my family was always traveling, so traveling was a normal thing for me. Traveling in this way was a little bit different, especially again at tourists. So the idea of like, all I have is we had two major road cases which were oversized, which was a pain to even get them to Europe. And then we each had one suitcase each, and then we each had one carry on. That was it. That was all we had. Like one rolling bag, one big suitcase, one like road case each, and that was our lives. Like everything else was gone. It was like, okay. Which, that part of it was a very big switch for me.'cause I had always been used to, not just change everything relating to like work, but also change a lifestyle that I was very used to. I'm in control. This is my home. I had always been the kind of primary on the house. So that part of it was, was very odd. I was like, I gotta get used to this thing.

Caroline: 46:13

Yeah, character building.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 46:14

Plus Circ is its own little world. It is a city of 200 people. There are cliques. It is work all the time. You're in hotel rooms which are not comfortable, contrary to people's thoughts. In the US they usually do apartments for the talent, but, or for the techs, like we were, but instead, in Europe it's mainly hotel rooms. And hotel rooms are not fun for long periods of time. You don't have a refrigerator, you don't have a washing machine there. I learned how to wash things. I could take them to the tent and get them washed there, but I didn't like doing that, so I washed them all. Like in the bath, I got very good at washing things in the bathtub. Like it was just crazy times, like in that perspective. Very crazy.

Caroline: 46:55

And you have to have your card to make the lights work.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 46:58

Absolutely. And you didn't. And sometimes we had, like when I ended up working with them, we had two rooms because everybody who works gets a room no matter what. But while I was just traveling with him, we had one room and one room for a couple in, like a foreign city with just, for long. It's not good. It's hard. It's stressful. It's very stressful. Packing up, where do you go in between,'cause you have a week off. You have to figure out where you're gonna go.'cause they don't necessarily always put you up. Are there, are your visas coming in on time? When we got to Amsterdam or Visas didn't come in, so we were left out Circle was like, you can go back to the US if you want. And we're like, go where? They're like, your visas haven't come in, so we're not taking care of you. So we had to wait until our visas came in. It was craziness. There was a lot of madness to the whole thing. So much that I came off tour, the relationship ended, and I came off tour a year later. Little over a year later. And that started another pivot'cause it's here I am getting ready to break up with this person and get off this tour. And I was like, where am I gonna go? I don't have a place'cause Seattle had been my home for 11 years and I no longer had anything there. Like I didn't have a house, I didn't have anything. Miami was where I grew up, but I hadn't lived there in 11 years. So I had nothing there other than my family. What do you do?

Caroline: 48:17

What do you do?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 48:19

So here's what so funny when I think about it. It was around Christmas time, so everything is like closed'cause it's Europe, everything is closed. I am freaking out. It was not a pretty breakup. Like I was like, I was not doing well and I'm thinking to myself, what am I gonna do? I had bought a plane ticket to go back to Miami.'cause I was like, you go into the arms of family'cause whatever, where else are you gonna go? I bought this ticket, but I did not wanna go. Something inside of me was like, I do not wanna go back to the us. I'm not ready to go back to the us. This is not what I wanna do. So I decided on this whim saying, huh, I wonder if I could take a language course for a month. And so I ended up starting like this feverish search right around New Year's Eve. My ticket back to the US was like on the 6th of January or something. So here I am on like the 30th of December, frantically searching online. And I don't remember how I ended up, I think I thought. The only language I had studied long term had been French. So I was like, what if I go to France and I just study French for a month until I can get my head on straight back? This time I was like crying every day. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do. We were in Madrid luckily, which for me is a city that's very similar to my culture. So I felt very comfortable in Madrid. I thought I wanted to come back to Spain to live, but I wasn't sure. So I said to myself, I ended up like finding this school that was like heaven, but I tried to call them and they were closed. Mind you, back then, you couldn't just use your phone, although you had to buy new sim cards and every country that you were in and things like that. So I, I called the school, I leave a message on the voice message and I send an email saying, Hey, I really wanna see are, because they started like the 2nd of January or something, their new, their year, their month program. And I was like, I wanted to see if you have any space or anything like that. And they didn't respond'cause they were closed. And so I sent a message to another school, this was in near Nice. And I sent a message to another school that was, near Montpellier and they responded saying they had space, but it was a different kind of program. The one in Nice was like all inclusive. You were in school all day. They had housing for you, the whole nine yards. But the one in Montpellier was more like, you go to classes and then you're just living in the city and it's like going to school. Like literally I live there and then I go to school type of thing. And I wanted the immersive experience because I was a wreck and I was like, I can't even think straight. So I end up, I said to myself, okay, this is what I'm gonna do. I was like, I'm buying a plane ticket, which cost me a fortune because it's the last minute. I think I ended up buying it at the airport. It cost me like almost a thousand to go just from Madrid to Nice. And I had to go through. I don't, I think I had to go through Geneva or something like that. And I said, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna go to this school that I wanna go to. I'm gonna get there when they, I'll be there a little bit later than when they open. But, for their first day of like orientation, if they don't have space, I will just go to the train and I will take the train to montpellier. And I know that they have space for me. And so that's what I'm gonna do. So I ended up going to Geneva and then, ended up like, there were overbooked. So I spent the night in Geneva, which was very stressful for a lot of different things, but also very relaxing.'cause at least I had a place that was mine, that was like my space. I didn't have to talk to anybody type of thing. And phones don't work in Geneva because Switzerland is a pain in the ass. And so all these types of things. So I go to Nice, I get to the airport, I get on a cab. I am crying my eyes out, so freaked out. And I'll never forget this because he was like my little savior. I get there and it's this beautiful, up on a cliff. The school is this beautiful location up on a cliff, and I am, I'm coming out of the cab and I'm coming outta the taxi and I'm grabbing my bag. And this little man with a beautiful suit comes in very short, very demure. And he looks at me and he goes,"Mademoiselle?", he says my name and I'm like, and I said, yes? And he goes, don't worry, we have space for you. I was like, oh my God. I was like, cry.

Caroline: 52:29

yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 52:29

Thank you. So at least I knew I had a month to figure out what the heck I was gonna do with my life. So I didn't go back to the US. I was like, I'm not going.'cause if I go back to the US I'm gonna be stuck there.

Caroline: 52:40

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 52:41

So, that's what I do.

Caroline: 52:43

Wow, wow. Side note, do you have a hard stop?'cause I would

Tigrilla Gardenia: 52:47

I don't.

Caroline: 52:47

Okay. Awesome. Okay. Alright, so now you go to this immersive language school, and now are you fluent in French?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 52:55

I was at the time, I was like the most improved in the thing.'cause I started off like crap. And of course I was heartbreak the whole thing. You immersed yourself completely in it. So by the end, I got like an award for most improved and things like that. And then in that time I had met a woman in Madrid. She wanted to open, a like spiritual, esoteric wellness type place in Madrid. So I'm thinking, I'm gonna go to Madrid. I'm thinking I'm gonna go and do this with her. Because we had met, we had come, I don't remember how we met, and I was like, oh, this will be great. But she wasn't ready. And her sister lived right outside of Lisbon, in Portugal. So she's come to my sister's house. We have plenty of room for you. you can rent a room from us and figure your stuff out. And so I show up there after this, month in France and spent the next three months right outside of Lisbon, which was not a place I ever wanna live in. I'm not a Portugal person, I learned, but I was very grateful. It's a beachside town. It's very cathartic feeling in a lot of different ways. Besides the fact that we were freezing,'cause there was like no central heating in the house and it was just very cold. But I ended up, I threw myself into building a new business. I was like, okay, I'm here, I'm in Europe. It looks like I'm gonna stay in Europe, so I need to, what am I gonna do? What was the other constant? I always look for what are the constants? And the constant had been, obviously I can't produce events or stuff like that because I'm not in a place that's stable and I can't do that part of my life. I'm not going back into software because at this point I am not ready for a nine to five. So I said, I was already teaching by this point, like Astral Travel and Sacred Geometry and Kabbalah, and so I said, I'm just gonna pour myself into this. So I started my second company, eternal Light Energy and and just started to build a website, build out what my programs were. I just spent the next three months completely immersed in that and crying a lot. I spent six months where I cried every single day. I was just like, the whole life was changing and I just had to go through it.

Caroline: 54:55

That lets you release stuff though.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 54:57

Yeah.

Caroline: 54:58

So like that's amazing that feel bad that you're crying, but, Oh no. I'm a big proponent. Release all of that. Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 55:04

I am a huge proponent in the fact of you have to go through it. You have to let yourself completely go through it. And that's what I did. I was like, I'm just gonna go through this and I am gonna sit here in this like little hunched with sweaters and a space heater, and I am going to like tap, tap to create things. And I was gonna learn how to use Facebook and all these types of things to create this new world for myself. And I thought I was gonna be working with this woman, and then we did one trip together and we looked at each other and we're like, we can't do this together. She's oh, yeah, no, we just weren't compatible from a business perspective. I knew I didn't wanna stay in Portugal and I was like, you know what I kind of just went. I'm going to Barcelona. Barcelona is my, on my father's side, my family heritage, like few generations out, like from the ones that came from Cuba to Santiago were from the Barcelona area. And I was just like, I'm gonna go to Barcelona. That's probably of all of these like transitions that I'm talking about, it is the most leap of faith ones because as you've noticed in almost all of these, there was, how do I say this? There was a job or some opportunity.

Caroline: 56:19

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 56:20

I leave Microsoft because I had the opportunity to manage this person, and that eventually turned into a business. I leave the United States because I go to Cirque du Soleil with my partner. It wasn't mine, but we were there and so there was always like, something. Barcelona was the first one where there was nothing like literally absolutely nothing other than I wanna live in the place of this heritage. I feel like that's the place that's gonna take care of me right now. That's where I'm gonna build my business. I speak the language, I know the culture. That's about as much as I had. Other than that, I knew nothing. I had never been there. I got an apartment without ever being stepping foot there.

Caroline: 57:01

Wow.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 57:02

And I was like, I really know that I am at a place in my life at this point. I was in, my mid thirties and I was like, I know that I want to create something and Barcelona is the place that I want to create it. I have no idea why or how or what or anything. And again, in my mind, I had safety nets can always go back to Microsoft.

Caroline: 57:23

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 57:23

I could always go back to Miami and just start over with supportive mama and, that type of thing and get a job at target or something. I was like, at that point I was like, you know what? I've done a little bit of everything at this point. I'll figure it out somehow. So that was the, probably the real, the first jump with no safety net whatsoever.

Caroline: 57:44

And then what happened?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 57:46

And then what happened? I spent the next few years I thought I loved Barcelona. It is my city. Other than Miami, it's the place that I feel most at home. Ever. And I was convinced I was gonna stay there. I was building, I built out my business. I was teaching classes there, I was teaching classes already online. I was traveling to teach classes. I was coming back to Miami to teach classes. So I was creating this relationship with Miami. That was great. And I thought, this is perfect. I'll come to Miami a few times a year and teach, I'll be able to teach wherever anybody invites me to come. I had made some amazing friends. I was set, I was like, this is it. I made, I got life. This is it. And then a friend came to visit me and says to me she was coming through town. She is actually at the time, she was my friend's sister. I didn't know her very well, but she was coming through town, and she was like, Hey, she came to visit me and we were out in Barcelona having fun. And she's Hey, I'm heading to Italy, she was a glass blower and she was like, I'm heading over to Murano. Do you wanna maybe meet up?'cause she had other, things that she was gonna do. She's do you wanna meet up in Milana? We can go to this place, Damanhur.. She's like, you know that place that we've heard talk about with these cathedrals that are underground and stuff. And I was like, I'm always up If somebody asks me what? I'm a in human design, I'm a projector, which means if you invite me to something, I am most likely gonna say yes. So I was like, sure, let's do it. And so another girlfriend of mine ended up adding herself to this trip. And so we went and planned this trip. We met in Milan. We rented a car and drove out back with printed MapQuest maps and it was crazy to drive in this rural area of Italy. And we decided to spend a weekend out here in this town. I had gotten in touch with an old client student who had spent a lot of time here. She put me in touch with somebody who was living here at the time, who helped me organize all of the trip. She got us a place to stay and we were like, oh, okay, I'm gonna come and spend this weekend exploring this spiritual community in the middle of the Italian Alps. And just, I had no expectations. I was happy in Barcelona, I was loving it. And I come out here and it was mind blowing to say the least, because basically Damanhur is like a cross between Hogwarts and Oz.

Caroline: 1:00:08

What?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:00:09

Exactly. You have to be here to see. So Italian countryside, underground temples, esoteric community, everything is spiritually based. Like all these things. And I was telling this woman that I had just met the things that I had done in my life in my very odd background. And she looks at me and she's oh, we need you here. And I was like, absolutely not. Like I living in a house.'cause we live in community here and I'm like, me in a house with 20 people, I will kill somebody. No. But thank you so much for thinking of me that way.

Caroline: 1:00:39

Thanks for thinking I could.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:00:40

Exactly. I go back home and of course fricking synchronicity here is this crazy little thing that you just don't mess with. So I get back and my roommate looks at me. She's like, how was your trip? We need to talk.

Caroline: 1:00:53

Oh.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:00:54

So she turns out, tells me she's leaving. And she's going back to Argentina. I'm gonna need to find a new place, which sucked'cause I loved my apartment and I was like, okay, so I need to find a new apartment. And then this woman that I had met here in Damanhur calls me up and says, Hey, I spoke to the king back then. They were called king guides, who are like the head of the social side of Damanhur And they're like, we'd love for you to come and spend six months here working on a project for us. And I was like, okay. I was like six months, then I'll come back to Barcelona.

Caroline: 1:01:26

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:01:27

Come back to Barcelona and I'll rebuild my life there. Six months is not a big deal. I can do six months. And I decided to bring all my stuff with me because when I had left Madrid, after leaving Circ, I had left my stuff in Madrid and it was a pain to go and get it and stuff. I had to make multiple trips to go and pick it up and stuff. So I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna rent a car. And I'll bring my stuff down. I came back up to Barcelona. I taught a class in sacred geometry to a set of architects, and I flew to Damanhur and I started on this project and about three months into the project I was like, okay, I had been here and I had been working on this project, and I had been in the community, and I was like, you know what? I really want, what a great opportunity for me who had been a teacher now at this point for a very long time to be a student again, to like really step back into an esoteric commu and to not be a solo practitioner, to have the opportunity to do I was really looking for the community perspective, not so much the magic, because I already had the magic, but I was like, Ooh, the idea of doing things with others and stuff. So I signed up for the school, admitted action, and yeah, that's 15 years ago and I'm still here.

Caroline: 1:02:33

Wow. Wow. Okay.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:02:36

I was like, okay.

Caroline: 1:02:37

somewhere along the way, or maybe always, and it just didn't come up, but somewhere along the way, plants came into this world.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:02:46

Yes, so I'm here in Damanhur.

Caroline: 1:02:48

Is this a thread that was in the background or,

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:02:50

No, we're getting there. We haven't gotten there yet. So I'm here in Damanhur and I'm working on this project and really it's more of a tech project. It was because of my project, my background doing events and all the tech world that I knew so well. So I was like doing all their social media strategy at the time and I was working on the website and like developing a new website, which is not the website that exists today, but it was a really amazing thing that we did. And, I'm putting all this stuff together and I ended up, I'll try to make this story a little bit brief, but basically I ended up hearing this music. Remember my background is in music, so I ended up hearing this music, and I follow the music and I end up at a speaker, connected to a box, connected to a plant. And it was like this instant plant reawakening of like the plant was making the music using this box as an instrument. And I just kept staring at the plant like saying, are you talking to me? are you talking to me? And it was just this experience.

Caroline: 1:03:53

It's one day you're just, you hear something, you're like, what's that sound? You go on this exploration, but in this literally magical place.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:04:01

Yeah.

Caroline: 1:04:02

Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:04:04

Yeah. That's literally it. Like this plant literally is like all of a sudden this idea that plants are alive and conscious and thinking, I didn't have the words for it in the moment, but I was like. Oh my goodness. You are someone, you are someone that is speaking or ex or expressing or whatever words we want to use through this music. Music had always been this channel for me, this opportunity for me to experience and feel and live and all these, it had been this continuous thread throughout my entire life. And all of a sudden now here I was thrust back into it with this being that I would've never express experienced as a musician. And that took me down that rabbit hole, which is like, how is this happening? How is this work? Remember, I'm an engineer, I'm a music engineer, so I've got like a device that is all engineering and a plant that's making music. So it was like, oh my goodness. And so while I was working on, all the other stuff I was working on, I was starting to learn about this whole thing of how is it the plants and

Caroline: 1:05:06

Like it just needs a big enough speaker for you to hear or to be Like are all plants making music or

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:05:12

All plants can make music. So if they want to, basically this device is a musical instrument for plants.

Caroline: 1:05:18

This is just so freaking fascinating. I'm just like loving my life right now, learning about your life like.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:05:26

Okay, so basically you have this device is a musical instrument that works for plants. So it allows the plants to use their electrical response in order to create melodies and create notes of music. Plants can already make sounds, they make this like clicking and there's like some popping sounds and where there is a whole field of bioacoustics that's trying to figure out exactly what they mean. Are they purposeful? how do they work and all that kind of stuff. This is slightly different because it's talking about plants. From the perspective of being able to be the musicians. And so this device was something that the community built, Damanhur started to build way back in the 1970s, and so has been perfecting over the years. And so what ends up happening is that I'm working on all of this social media and with the websites, and then they pull me over to the team that's connected to the music of the plants because they're gonna launch their, we're ready to launch it on a more global scale. So I get it asked if I was, gonna work on that project as well as some other projects. So that's really what took me down the rabbit hole of first starting to work with plants. I ended up doing it on the kind of more techie I was building out, partnerships and I was, doing social media and I was doing all these different aspects of it. And then at some point I realized that I needed to step out of like the work that I had been doing inside of the community because I could feel that I was changing.

Caroline: 1:06:41

Changing in a way you didn't wanna be?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:06:44

No, I ended up growing to an next self and I was starting to realize that, a lot of the social media strategy and stuff that I was doing was cool, but it wasn't really that interesting. Then they moved me over only to the websites, which really was not what I wanted. It was the same thing that had happened at Microsoft. I kept getting back and back outside of the creative music other teaching all these types of sides. And I discovered that the kind of, in Italy, there's a very famous professor, Dr. Stefano Mancuso, he's world known, but especially in Italy. He's like a superstar connected to the plants. He was starting a new master's degree in Florence, called Vegetal Future: Plant Social Innovation and Design. And I thought, oh, that's great. I'm just gonna move to Florence for a year or two and I'm just gonna do this master's. Because we have, now being a do hurry in, we have a center in Florence. And so I contacted a bunch of people. I ended up getting into the master's degree and I was like, I'm just gonna go to Florence. So I left everything. I still had my home base here.'cause again, we live in community, but I decided that I was rather than just commuting.'cause a lot of people were just, it's a, the program was every Friday and Saturday, so a lot of people would commute. I was like, no, I'm just gonna move there. I'm gonna go experience Florence. And, and that forced me while I was doing my master's to think again, now that I've left kind of Damanhurian work. What is it that I wanna do again? Do I wanna teach, do I wanna do things? And this perspective? And I really was working very closely with the plants. And at this point I was literally collaborating. And when I finished my master's and came back, I started collaborating with one particular plant, spider plant, my business partner at the time. And just everything started to click into place. Like I started to build out more of my coaching world and eventually then ended up getting my coaching certification because, again, synchronicity took over. And with COVID, the University of Miami, ended up going completely online. I used to wake up in the middle of the night'cause I would do my classes from 1 to 2:30 in the morning.

Caroline: 1:08:51

Wow.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:08:51

Twice a week. And I ended up kind of building out that entire world, which was putting all of my knowledge of, the plants and my coaching and all my experience that had a lot of tech and business experience, everything, just putting it all together into what I do today. So that's really what takes us to today was all this chance encounter with a plant.

Caroline: 1:09:13

I'm still like, wait, what plants make music? I feel like I need to go search to find music that plants made. You know?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:09:21

Exactly.

Caroline: 1:09:22

is it choosing to make music or is that just like the energy of the universe or God, or however somebody wants to call it, coming through that plant and you just have to know to pay attention.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:09:32

No, we thought at first that it was just the plants randomly making things. But over the years, you know how musicians are, if there's music happening, they wanna make music with whatever music is. I remember my friends who would, we would be at the gym and they would clink the weights together and they would be like, oh, that's a whatever note, that's a D. And then they would start singing a tune. so musicians are like, freaky like that. And so when we started working with the music of the plants, a lot of people who were musicians were like, oh, I wanna play pick up my guitar and try to play along. And then the plant would change the music to harmonize with the human. So that's where we started to realize.

Caroline: 1:10:06

Wow.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:10:07

And beyond now that there's a lot

Caroline: 1:10:08

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:10:09

Now that there's a lot of scientific data for this, but even at that time we were like, oh my goodness. We were starting to empirically realize that plants were listening, that they had a senses that they could understand. The scientist has now caught up. I have a whole series called the Plant Consciousness Commentary, where I go through all of the science from starting from 2006, which was really the big breakthrough for plant neurobiology to where we are today. And really it was, I would say that there's three things.

Caroline: 1:10:39

That's the same age as my oldest child. I'm like, this is like, this is born and this is now how developed it is.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:10:44

Yeah, so that gives you an idea. And that's the interesting part. I feel like there's three kind of pieces that really have glued everything together with me. For me, one has been plants because plants have showed me how to look at life like an ecosystem, how to really put everything together and how to, not try to throw anything away from talents or things that you think are wrong or limiting beliefs or any of those types of things. It encompasses everything because an ecosystem is made, there's no waste in an ecosystem, so everything fits in together. Then there's been the Kabbalah because Kabbalah for me has always been a giant map. It's a way of me understanding how things fit together in the universe. It doesn't matter if you're talking to me about Jesus Christ or Buddha, or if you're talking to me about Allah or if you're talking to me about colors or you're talking to me about sounds or smells or whatever. With Kabbalah, I can figure out how they all fit into a greater mapping of kind of everything that there is in our spiritual ecosystem and put it all together and be able to see the past that they travel to get from one to the other. And then the third was, which was the damanhurian side of it, which is a combination of spiritual physics and community, which is about giving. And the ecosystem gives you the community, but really spiritual physics, which is the cosmology of the universe. Sort of laying that with the Kabbalah helped me better understand like, why am I here? What is our mission as humans? Why are we playing this game? All these different parts. And I think having all of those kind of clicked together has allowed me, which is something I work with a lot with my clients, is that as a multipotentialite, we have this tendency to think, oh no, be disciplined, be focused. Pick one, do this. As you can tell from my life, I never picked one. I have always used all of them. I found the continuous thread. I've understood how it is that I express myself. And the parts of me that bridge things together, and then I've used that to be able to move. And when you do that flow allows you to always feel safe. Whether it's because you give yourself the stories. Like for me, that I could go back to Microsoft. I can't go back to Microsoft. It's been on ages. In my mind, that's still a story. That gave me a sense of security. It was a sense of understanding that the talents and the things that I learned working at real networks and Microsoft have still served me today in a completely different way. They don't have the same names. They don't, but they're still the same principles. And so once you start to recognize that your passions really are just giving you different avenues that you filter through what I call your what biomimicry calls your deep pattern or endowment, or we call it your archetype, you feed that through your archetype. You are always going to be then expressing your true essence. And when you express your true essence opportunities just show up in front of you. They just do. And then it's just a matter of you making those choices and you can always experiment and play and step back. And, it's not that I haven't had hard times and I haven't had mo moments where I'm like, what the hell am I doing? But there's a flow that you then we say here in Damanhur,, it's about guiding the synchronicity. There's, that syn chronic flow, it seems to just like flow in front of you. And as long as you're not, I've always said, as long as you're not running away from anything, but you're running toward it, it doesn't matter if you change 17 times, you can change 25 times. You can jump. If you saw my day, you think, how the hell does she get anything done? But I get lots done, but I'm always jumping from one thing to the other, mid-sentence even. But because there's an expression and a flow and there's a trust in the process, at the end of the day, my checklist always gets done.

Caroline: 1:14:30

Hmm.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:14:32

And I'm always doing the things that feel most calling to me. Do I have the money in my pocket that my friends who stayed at Microsoft the entire 20 years? No, but you know what? I don't even need it either. I don't have those same needs.

Caroline: 1:14:47

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:14:47

If I did, my life probably would've showed me ways to get that. I have no doubt on that. But because that's not what motivates me is that ideal, that passion, that really being immersed. I love having things that completely engulf me and that part of my expression, that being the bridge, but that can engulf herself in one thing and then engulf herself in the other and have all of these different really deep pieces. As long as I'm expressing that,'cause that's, for me, that's what works. So what I work with my clients is I don't actually care what you do, what I care is how you're doing it. You have to find your way of doing it. And when we discover that everything else will just flow into place, you might do the exact same thing for a long time. You might switch around every 10 minutes, but if you know how you're doing it, like how it is that it expresses itself, you will find that path.

Caroline: 1:15:40

That's so cool. That's so cool. Okay. This community? Is it all sorts of people? Is it only women? Like what's the deal? What happened to the love life along this thread?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:15:52

So Damanhur is, so in the first city, which is where I am in Italy, in the first City, there's probably about 500 people, including children of all sorts.

Caroline: 1:16:02

Yeah.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:16:03

We also have another about 800 around the world. So people who are initiates that are connected to Damanhur, we have multiple, what we call like groups that are carrying out either centers or what we call ritual circles in the United States, in Japan, in Germany, in Norway, Australia. So Croatia, many different groups that are carrying out the work that are part of our whole community and our world. So it's this beautiful location. People are welcome to visit. You'd love to see the temples of humankind. They really are mind blowing type of thing. And so it's, yeah, it's this amazing, it's a mission. It's a life that's based on a mission. We also have schools that are open to people, and we have all kinds of alchemy school and dream school and mystery schools and other knowledge and general. But also we have then the initiatic path, which is more of, I feel the mission of Damanhur as my mission. I feel like this is part of who I wanna be and what I wanna carry out in life.

Caroline: 1:17:07

Oh wow. That's so cool. So cool. Okay. This has been so like fascinating and mind blowing. I'm curious now. How do you define success? How do you define authentic success? So for, so for me, success has always been whatever somebody defines it as. Right? And that can change over time, you're fully owning you, utilizing all your gifts and talents and potentials and amazings, and allowing your light to just radiate throughout the entire world. And how do you define your authentic success in this moment?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:17:42

Yeah. For me, success is exactly what I said before, which is when you express. Whatever it is that you're doing, no matter what that is, is being expressed through what we call your archetype. That way of being, that way that I am. For me, I'm a bridge. I need to be bridging things. I need to know, immerse myself in what both sides are, and then I need to help a company, people or connect or in that way, I like to walk people across the bridge so that you get from where you are to where you wanna be. And if I'm doing that, it doesn't matter if I'm using software. If I'm coaching, if I'm teaching a class, if I'm being a support for a program that's happening, it doesn't matter what I'm doing, but if I'm expressing that part of myself using whatever passion I have in that moment, which could be, I don't know, paper airplanes, that to me is successful because that's the thing that enriches my life. That's what allows me to accomplish my life purpose and to really connect into my soul mission. That is the part where I feel like I connect into a greater society, into the ecosystem and the community in which, as I live in those pieces, that helping people bridge the gap, you might say, is really what I do so well. And if I'm expressing that I'm being successful, sure, I wanna be able to make sure I live in a nice place and I wanna have food on the table and all those pieces. But if I'm expressing that I really, truly believe that all of that will show up.

Caroline: 1:19:11

How do people find you? If somebody wants to learn more about you, your work, this community, the things that you teach, like how do they find you?

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:19:19

So luckily I'm pretty easy because I have an unusual name, so that means that you can find me basically at Tigrilla Gardenia everywhere, whether it's tigriillagardenia.com, all one word, like putting it all together. And so first name, last name, altogether".com" Or at Instagram, or at YouTube, or on Facebook. All of those, and LinkedIn. You'll find me on all of them.

Caroline: 1:19:41

Oh, that's awesome. Thank you so, so very much for sharing your story, your amazing, beautiful path and your life. I am just so thankful. So thank you for all of that. Thank you for being on Your Next Success.

Tigrilla Gardenia: 1:19:54

Thank you. Thank you so much. It's been really fun to go through it all.

Caroline: 1:20:01

Thank you so much for our conversation. It has been such a pleasure to learn more about you. Tigrilla reminds us that success is not a straight line. It's a living rhythm. And when you align what's alive in you, the next step unfolds naturally. To learn more about Tigrilla's work and her programs, visit tigrillagardenia.com and connect with her on social media@tigrillagardenia. And if today's conversation stirred something in you. If you're ready to find the alignment that lets your life and work thrive together, I'd love to help you uncover it. You can book a free clarity call at nextsuccesscareers.com or use the link in the show notes because your success doesn't need to be forced. It's already taking root. Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.