Welcome to What Would Amber Do with your host, Amber Howard. Each week, Amber dances in conversation with inspirational leaders out to make a difference for what matters most to people. She brings you incredible guests who share their real life experiences of being a leader and what it looks like to live a truly created life of service to others. And now, here is your host.

Welcome back, everyone. Welcome back to What Would Amber Do? It is really an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to have on the show today Anjani Amrit. Anjani is a reformed lawyer who got tired of the corporate boys club. I look forward to talking about that and turned Eastern influenced leadership expert. Anjani is now on a mission to empower leaders, entrepreneurs, and executives to grow and transform so that they can give back professionally in ways that bring meaningful success and positive impact. Anjani is also an international best-selling author and speaker. Anjani, thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really super excited to be here.

Yeah, so good. So corporate dropout, boys club. Yo, you talk about an eat pray love journey to India, I believe. You know, share with us what has the journey been like for you to get to where you are today doing the work that you do.

Yeah, I feel like I've lived 10 lives in one lifetime. I mean, seriously, it's been really crazy. I would never have imagined my life, how it's panned out. Um, and I feel really blessed, but it's been crazy. So I started out life. Um I came from an immigrant family in grew up in a small mining town in Yorkshire, England. And my dad was a shepherd. So, you know, it came from very humble beginnings, and I always dreamed of making something with myself. So I decided I wanted to become a doctor. I didn't get the grade, so I thought, lawyer, I'll do it, be a lawyer. That's the next the next best thing, as you do when you're 18, right? And my careers teacher said to me, careers advisor, quote unquote, said he literally laughed in my face and said, You can't be a you can't be a lawyer, you're a woman. Oh, so then, yeah, exactly. It was like a red rag to a bull, and I thought, well, I'll show you. So I did it really to spite him more than anything. Um, so it wasn't a great foundation to start a career on. Um, and I I but I did drive myself to be the best of a best. I was a perfectionist. I wanted to, you know, get out of the small town that I lived in. I wanted to travel the world and I managed it. I worked for the top law firms in both the UK and Australia. And, you know, from the outside looking in, I was really, really, I'd made it. I got the status, you know, the money and traveling world, you know, round the world first class. It was insane. But on the inside, it was a very different story. I was really physically struggling with my with my physical health. I had irritable bowel, then I had um, you know, my anxiety was really, really high. I'd have panic attacks regularly. I lost 19 kilos. I was in a mess. I was really suffering on the inside. And, you know, I did question why do I not feel happy? And it didn't make sense, you know, that I couldn't, I couldn't feel happy with something I thought would make me happy. And so I started looking around for alternative ways to heal because Western medicine didn't do it for me. And that's kind of when I fell into meditation and eastern philosophy, and it really fed my soul. And I basically quit my job after 16 years, quit my job, threw in the towel, walked away from everything I'd worked towards, sold my house, and went to India with no plan, as you do. And um, yeah, I did that, and um, it opened up a whole new life for me. And I retrained in holistic medicine, meditation, mantra, energy healing, you name it, I did it yoga, and really it it healed me. I found myself, I found my purpose, I got happy and healthy, and then I reinvented myself and set up my own business, helping people, you know, get to what their purpose is, get to what they really love about life.

Wow, you said so many very powerful things there. And, you know, like that whole, you know, one of the things I love talking with people about on Johnny is like the measures for success and happiness that we have in our standards and where do they come from? And I think for many people, like anyone listening to this could really be recreated in your sharing, because I think for many of us, like, you know, sometimes it's acts of rebellion. I I can relate a little bit to the I'll show you that kind of might have been the theme for much of my life, right? Like I'll prove myself, I'll validate, I'll show you. I, you know, all of that world. But whether it's acts of rebellion or other people's standards, society's standards, you know, of what it is to be a successful, happy person. And and we see countless examples of this, you know, um, in in the in the media, you know, supposedly famous people, successful people who are deal with mental health and addiction or deal with suicidal ideation. Um, you know, I think anytime, and and a good friend of mine says that human beings are the only species that can live alongside their authentic self and so-called be successful. But like it's like there's a cost, right? There's a cost to, you know, and what I heard in your sharing, the cost to our emotional well-being, mental, spiritual, physical. And uh, I'm just so grateful that it takes courage. I really want to acknowledge you because I think it takes courage, especially when you've achieved high levels of, you know, so so-called out external success, what we're all told that we're supposed to be pursuing, to say, I don't know, but this isn't it, right? Like this isn't it, and I don't know what's on the other side. I have no idea what's on the other side, but I know it's not this, and I'm gonna have the courage and the willingness to go look for what my own happiness and and what success is for me and what living a good life is for me. So I really just want to acknowledge you for having that courage and doing that.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Thank you.

So a lot of the work that you do is centered around empowering women and and having conversations. You may you talk about the corporate boys club, you talk, you know, in in some of your materials, you talk about the patriarchy. From your experience, you know, what is the difference between matriarchal societies and patriarchical societies and and why is it so important for us, you know, to be elevating the conversation around women and women's leadership and and and how women would maybe structure how to govern ourselves or or you know, in society.

It's a great question. And I think it's important to have this conversation because there aren't any good role models, and in in our Western society, there's a lack of healthy, empowered female role models. The women who have got to the top to success, and not everyone, obviously, but the majority have got there using a patriarchal um way of operating with a patriarchal style of leadership, which is logic and rational, emotionless, disconnected from the from themselves, even. And this doesn't lead to a healthy society. If you look back at um the annals of history, and even today there are countries around the world that have a matriarchal system, and all of the studies show that in a matriarchal society, people are happier and healthier and more fulfilled and contribute collectively to their community and society. So that is why it is vital for us to be having this conversation about the matriarchy, to role model for other women that it's not only important for them to step into their feminine leadership, but it's vital that they do for their own health and well-being and then that of our community. And that way we can start to change the Western world and start to heal it because it's really sick at the moment, especially the corporate world.

I know of a Crossroads International does work in in um sub-Saharan Africa, and and my friend is the executive director, and she says we focus on women and and girls because we know that when you give whatever you give to the woman, whatever you give to mothers, they just grow, right? And the and it and and whatever resources we expend on on mothers and women and girls ends up contributing to the whole community. And I think that's that's you know, we don't honor that aspect of feminity and feminine energy and being woman is that that you know that we we do give birth, literally, but you know, also in terms of lots of other acts of creation and and and multiplying the resources for the good of the community, for the family. Um, and I don't know that it's necessarily historically been looked on as like as, you know, I I remember once I was studying um philosophy of sex in my undergraduate degree. I'm a I'm a bit of a philosopher at heart, Anjani. And and I was studying the philosophy of sex, and and we had a an instructor come in or a speaker come in who's who was from France, and she said, look, like if you look at the way society is structured, men derive their power from their minds and women derive their power from their bodies. And in and of itself, that's not a problem, except for we live in it in, especially in the Western world, in in a culture that puts a hierarchy of mind over body. So things that are created by the mind are valued more, they cost more, they're you can charge more for services versus things that are created with the body. And um, you know, I don't think it's necessarily true. I mean, I know lots of women, myself included, that create beautiful, wonderful, amazing things with our minds. So I don't think it's that simple, but but I do think if you, you know, if you the that there is a lot of beautiful things that come out of the power that's derived from our bodies, and not just women, but men as well. Um, but I don't think that's really honored in the same way that we honor, say, the gifts of the mind. It's seen as base.

Yes, and it and it's often rejected by our Western society as well as incompetency, as hysteria. You know, it's it's being labeled that way in our societies. And so I agree with you. Um, I talk a lot about matrilineal, which is it's not feminism, but it's bringing the matriarchic qualities and traits up to the same level as the patriarchal qualities and traits. So it's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, it's let's hold to onto our intellect because women do have you know as good an intellect as men do. Um, and this is beyond gender, but we're talking about how can we bring back and engender the qualities of the feminine, which are more compassion, more collaboration, flattened hierarchies, creativity, intuition, even, you know, that wisdom that that the feminine brings to our life and to our businesses. And I can tell you from my personal experience when I reinvented myself and started my own business from that, though, with those feminine leadership qualities, it was a very different way of being in the world, of running a business, of doing a job of work that is totally sustainable. It's actually joyful. You do way less work, it's way less effort, and it's all about attraction. And we're missing these qualities in our businesses and in our personal lives. And when we start bringing this back, we start to have more peace, more joy, more energy, more connection, and it happens naturally. We don't have to hard work and effort it.

I um I love the conversation that, you know, moving it beyond gender. And I think speaking about energy, just you know, we I think we all have feminine and masculine energy in us, and you know, and I I know for my own journey of being someone who's, you know, like I was dropped out of high school when I was 16, got pregnant with my youngest son, and promised my teachers that I would make something of myself. I would, you know, and I be I was very driven inside of that, you know, and and for much of my life, I'm still unlearning a lot of those behaviors that that, you know, caused me to move out of some really challenging circumstances to where I am today, but at a huge cost to my physical well-being and and my spirit. And um, you know, I love the way that it was put, that it's like, you know, we all have a core. And it's not about gender, but we all have either a masculine or a feminine core. And when we're taking actions in alignment with that core, it's like effortless, like you said, it just works. So even if you're if you're a male, if you're, you know, biologically a man with a feminine core and you're taking masculine action, same impact as a like a woman with a feminine core who's using masculine, you know, ways of being and acting in order to cause results, it it just, and and for much of my life, I can, you know, I really hear what you're saying causes exhaustion. You you end the day and you you just feel drained and tired and kind of, you know, with like you've got nothing left to give, right? And then it's kind of that experience of okay, get up in the next morning um and do it all again. So for for those listening to this conversation, if you find yourself kind of nodding at this and going, well, that's me, I can find myself, I can locate myself in that conversation, Anjani. You know, what what do you think people can do like to start shifting that paradigm or that belief system or taking new actions?

First of all, know that that is not normal. That is what society has told us is normal. It's what we learn in the West is normal. Exhaust yourself, sell your soul to the company goal, sell your soul to making a buck, and that that's your lot in life, and that that's all you're fit for. You have to know in step one, there is more to life. That is not why we are here. We are here to grow and evolve as a human being, and we're eternal beings, also. I'm just gonna put that out there. We are eternal beings, and it's important for us to understand that we're here for a much deeper purpose, and we're here to grow ourselves and then contribute back to society. So the first thing to do is to understand and get clear or have an awareness that it's you shouldn't be tolerating anything less than happiness and joy. And step two, you have to understand that you can get everything that you want. You can make money doing what you love. And in fact, if you move towards doing what you love, money flows its way to you. Things and opportunities flow their way to you because you're then on your path. If you're exhausted, miserable, feel stuck, you are off your path. And so step one is having an awareness that I'm off my path, because often people think that's my path and I've just got to, that's life. Step two is take a decision, make a choice today, just a simple internal choice with yourself to do something different, to actually think about what it is that you do love, what it is that you would like to do. Because often we don't give ourselves space to even dream it. And this is so, so sad. And every client that comes to me, you know, this is the first piece of work that we do is what are your dreams? And I recon help them reconnect to their dreams because we forget, we grow old, we we become very serious, become very unhappy, and we'll we lock ourselves in these cages. And it's important that we bust out of these cages. It's really important.

I I would actually say it's and I don't mean nefarious, like it's it's intentional or like conspiracy theorists is a group of people, but no, I think but it's designed. I think you know, if we look at children, they were born into this world with such great capacities for creativity and imagination, and and you know, and so powerful in their ability to almost instantaneously for the parents in the crowd manifest what it is that they want. But you know, the the our systems of education, you know, unconscious parenting, and and I'll I'll take responsibility for myself. I mean, for much of my life I caught I parented unconsciously, just based on patterns and paradigms from my past and what I had learned and you know, beliefs that had been handed down to me from from other generations. So it's you know, that wanting muscle, that desiring muscle is is killed. It's killed off because, you know, children are told, don't daydream, you know, be focused, like all of those. And I when I say it's not nefarious or there's no conspiracy thing, I think the system just keeps perpetuating itself because unless there's something to interrupt it, it's gonna keep doing that, right? And it's gonna keep enforcing whatever outcomes have been in place for so long, right? And and it's just it then becomes just the way it is, right? We're supposed to teach children to be focused. It's a good thing they shouldn't be daydreaming or, but we know like from neurolinguistic programming that the same area that child that when we're that you know, when children are so-called daydreaming or not focusing, that's where the eyes move when they're, you know, when they're activating their imagination and and being in creativity. So um I I love what you're saying because you know, one of my fundamental commitments is that every human being gets to live a created life of their own design based on what they authentically want. And and for most of us, the first step in that process, I think I agree with you wholeheartedly, is actually giving yourself permission. And sometimes you even need a coach or a mentor or someone outside of yourself to give you permission to dream again because it's just been worn away or eroded over time.

Yes, I I almost want to cry at hearing you say this because it's so true and it's so sad that so many of us, especially business owners, entrepreneurs, we we don't give ourselves permission to dream. And that's what kills our life force. And yes, it's not a conspiracy, it's a truth that we're educated and socialized out of our dreams and out of our imaginations. And that's okay. We just have to accept, okay, that's where we're at and on a global level. Okay, it's not a it's not a big deal if we can accept it, but then move on, but then make a change, but then make a decision rather than hating it or pushing against it, which doesn't work. We have to just start speaking up for ourselves and sharing these stories and understanding that there is a different way. And the more people who learn about this and hear this, the more that they'll stand up for themselves. And yeah, I do agree, get a mentor or a coach or you know, someone in your life who's going to support you to reconnect with who you really are, your dreams, your imagination, because that's the thing that you need to discover your purpose, to realize who you are and why you're here. It's that part of you that you have to connect with, um, not the mind. The mind is just the data processor and it will only spit out what it's been fed. And often people, you know, my age, you know, there's 40, 50 years of a lot of being fed data. And so we have to start to just unlearn. It's the great unlearning. And um, when we start doing that, when we can, you know, start to make some really positive changes in our life and in our businesses. Yeah.

I like what you said, the unlearning. And I and I and I want to talk to you next about you make a distinction between being self-conscious and self-aware. And I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that. But you know, one of the things that, you know, when I first started my journey into personal development back in 2016 and I started learning about like limiting beliefs and paradigms and context, there's lots of different words for it, like lots of different people and systems have different language for it. But I think they're kind of all pointing to that machinery that keeps perpetuating and running things. I I at first became like almost like um like thought really negatively about it and resisted, you know, was like upset or angry about those parts of myself, those, you know, those default ways of being and acting. But, you know, something that I've really grown into and and and um and and I think is so powerful is, you know, one of the ways I wound up being in life, and Johnny is like a martyr, you know, people pleaser driven, working hard, taking care of everyone else, you know, and like getting like I will do whatever needs to get done in order to accomplish it, you know. If I give my word to something and it's really important and it seems like that, I can get very much into that, like, you know, that performance and driven behavior. And it's not a place I want to be in for the rest of my life. But one of the things that I've learned is I can actually be grateful for that. There was a reason that I developed becoming that way in order to be able to deal with what happened in my life. And I don't have to make it wrong and I don't have to resist it. And I don't have to try and not be that. But that there's a huge power in getting that I could be that at choice. Like there are going to be times in life where that kind, those kinds of ways of being and acting are actually really powerful. And when they're at choice, then I'm not in a straitjack about it. I'm not, I'm not, I don't have to be that way. I'm intentionally choosing to be that way because there's something about a circumstance in my life that is so important to me or that I value that, you know, I choose to take that on. And so that's been very powerful in my own personal journey of growth, is, you know, let's be honest, like 40, I'll be 44 in August. There are certain brain patterns that are so ingrained and grooved that, you know, it they're a part of me and it's a part of my journey and my story. And it's not about trying to excise that part of yourself or get rid of it. It's just be able to, you know, be able to try on lots of different ways of being and acting and have freedom to be able to not have to be the way I wound up being in life as a function of my trauma and my history and my past. But as a create at in any moment of now, being able to choose how I want, I choose from a place of awareness to respond to the circumstances of my life. And there are times where the martyr just shows up, not gonna lie. There are times, and but more and more I'm able to go, oh, like feel the energy of that and know, oh, okay, like, and very quickly kind of bring it, bring it back to you know, being aware of that's the energy that I'm in.

Yeah, and that's all I would say that all of that and and go go you for being able to do that now. And definitely we don't get anywhere by hating on ourselves. So as our self-awareness grows, so this is the main piece of work that I do with people is help them grow their self-awareness so that we can see, so that we can shift from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, which is the tricky bit, because then we start seeing all the things that are debilitating us that are holding us back, and fearlessly loving ourselves through our conscious incompetence, so that then we can start to get consciously competent, and that's intentional living. It's living with self-awareness and deliberate intention, and that's the secret to life, my friends. That is the secret to life and loving and appreciating ourselves fearlessly as we make that shift, because as we make that shift, we change from the inside out, and then all of our relationships and how we be in the world naturally changes. We don't have to change anything outside of us, we become insourced.

I love that, and I um I actually made a note and I wrote down what you said, fearless fearlessly loving ourselves through our conscious incompetence. I think that's just such a powerful um, you know, and and a powerful thing to say and a way to be about the journey of transforming yourself and your life. And um because there are parts of the journey, you know, I I know someone who calls it like dying unto the self, right? Like they're like death cycles, like they're, you know, that there we move through these as we die from on self onto the other. We some of us in the world of personal transformation, it can sound a little fluffy at times, but you know, that journey of unbecoming the ways that we wound up being in life, you know, to survive can be at times quite confronting and quite painful as we kind of shed those other selves. And so this idea of fearlessly loving yourself on Johnny is like, I mean, I think that's the magic right there. If you can, and and and it I think we need people to help us gain those skills and those tools because we're not taught them as children, and where do we learn that? Um, you know, typically what's passed on is either passed on through the education system, and I don't know what they're teaching in Australia these days, but they are not teaching children those kinds of skills here, right? Even though things have improved over time in terms of the kinds of conversations that we're having, but it's not that conversation quite yet. And I think that's why it's so important that people like yourself and leaders like yourself and others are there, you know, um, like myself out there in the world, drawing attention to these conversations. And and sometimes it feels like having the same conversation over and over again. But and I think that's necessary, it's what's called for because you know, there's a lot of noise to get through, you know, to really be able to penetrate to people's hearts.

Yeah. I mean, think of how many, how many times a day people hear the antithesis of that. Think of how many times people are on their phones, on their laptops, watching news, you know, plugged in constantly, and they're getting the the opposite of that. They're getting that don't dream, work hard, be rational, be logical. It's this constant, this constant um data that we're getting. So we have to have these conversations over and over and over. And I'm happy to have it a million billion times if it's necessary to help enough people so that enough people start to wake up and become aware of who they really are. And then we can start to see the shift in life and things happen slowly. You know, it's a glacial pace, but that's okay too. We need to have a glacial pace, otherwise, there'd be chaos. And so we do it slowly. We do it through loving ourselves, we do it through appreciating ourselves. And I do want to say we're all a work in progress, no one's perfect. You know, I'm not perfect, I'm not a perfected human being. I'm a I'm a teacher, but I'm also a constant student. And I go through those mini-death processes. I've just been through one this month. It's been full on where I've had to let go of another kind of round of my own fears about abandonment and being all alone. And, you know, I just moved house. And so I had to go through that whole process and use the tools for myself that I share with my clients because it's important that we realize we're constantly working and growing and evolving. And so there is no perfection to get to, it's just where you're at right now and deal with whatever you, you know, that next step for you. And that way it makes it much more manageable for us.

I like that. You know, I'm a by career for a long time. I I've, you know, I worked in corporate myself and now I work for myself, um, you know, mostly change management work in in the impact sector, healthcare, stuff like that. And um I've noticed like a shift in my own thinking around how, because I used to be someone who was like very plan driven and had to have everything planned before they took an action, like the project manager and me. And I'm still doing project management, but I'm finding myself saying more things like, you know, we've planned enough for now. Like we're gonna iterate our way through this, right? We're not gonna aim for getting a 90, you know, even a 90% plan or an 80% plan. Like maybe like let's just start with a 50% plan and then we'll see how things evolve as we go. Because I think um, to the point that you just made, like it is a journey. And it, you know, and and as we move through life, we're gonna pick up so many things as we go. And and uh, you know, there are some people in my life who, upon listening to this, might think that I've become, you know, taken over by an alien. But, you know, I've really discovered, especially at a whole new level this week, just how knowing the things that we think we know like kills off the miraculous. Because exactly, you know, because like there's this whole world that this, you know, like the infinite, the eternal, the, you know, everything that's available out there is is on the other edge of what I think I know about life, myself, others, what's possible. And so if I, you know, I had that in my world, the definition of a miracle is some an event that happens in time and space, like so it's in physical reality that causes an expansion and what we know to be possible. Well, by definition, by definition, that's got it's gotta be beyond what I know. And and I've I'm transforming slowly in this regard from someone whose whole life was about knowing. I had to know everything so that I could control and have certainty and feel safe and feel, you know, like like I can manage anything that might be coming at me. Because for much of my life there was so much coming at me that, you know, I I I the more I knew, the safer I could be. And now it's like, well, you don't that doesn't serve you anymore. Actually, like wonder, curiosity, you know, going through life and being willing to to being willing to have miracles occur in your life requires me to give up that I know.

Absolutely. And it's an illusion to think that we can gather enough stuff around us, material stuff to feel safe. It's illusory, it's it's not true. The whole basis of life is temporary, everything is constantly changing. And if you look at basic physics, you know, basic physics tells us that there are infinite possibilities for life and creation. And here we are on that leading edge of creation. We are, you know, we live in creation and we are creative beings. And so if we yes, plan 50%, plan 50%, you know, don't throw everything away and become a hippie, and you know, it's not about that. Well, you can do that if you if that floats your boat, go for it, you know, go for it. But I'm saying I'm talking to, you know, if you've got a business, then obviously make plans, but then also allow for a piece of a piece of that to be the miraculous, uh you know, be on the lookout for miracles, be on the lookout for that download of oh my gosh, I just had an amazing idea. Be on the be open to that because that's what makes the difference. And I'm all about helping the people I work with make the seemingly impossible possible because nothing is impossible. It's only if we believe it. What we believe is what creates our world, our life. And so really important that we allow for, you know, we allow a little space for the miraculous to happen. And then it will, and not just once, but over and over, like daily and many times a day. It's constantly happening, and I'm constantly getting my clients messaging me, going, Angenie, you'll never believe it. And I'll go, Yes, I will believe it. So, yes, believe in miraculous things and they will happen to you.

So beautiful. I was I was giggling when you were saying that because I remember a couple of years ago I took place took part in this like rather intensive um personal development program. And, you know, it was designed to have you really bust up your paradigms around money. And I I would I started getting these downloads, right? Like, but then I would put them at the bottom of my to-do list from two months ago. So it's like, I gotta get through these other ideas, and then when I'm on the to-do list, I'll get to them, right? And then I had this epiphany once of going, like, you're not the same person you were three months ago, four months ago. If your intuition is telling you to do something, perhaps you, you know, listen to the intuition instead of going to stale old ideas and putting your energy into things that, you know, that not like maybe at the time they were great ideas, but perhaps now from from the alignment that you're in and and the energy that you're in, they're not the most effective ideas, right? And uh, you know, I think that the and I think this message is so important, especially for women um who have been, you know, indoctrinated into that kind of patriarchal way of causing results or leading, is the importance of partnership. You know, I spent the majority of my life being someone who did everything on my own. You know, I put a lot of energy out into the world, taking care of the people around me. And, you know, it's not that people didn't want to help me, no one knew I needed anything because that I was fine. I was always okay. I had everything, even if it wasn't managed or controlled or under control, no one was ever going to know that about me. And and there's just been such magic and miracles that have been created in my life, you know, over the last 12 to 18 months, including falling head over heels in love, moving to a new country, you know, all of this, you know, like the relationship I have with my kids inside of this, you know, just being in the inquiry of like what could I discover about partnership newly? Like what if, what if I don't actually know anything about what it looks like to be in partnership with other people? And what if I was just willing to to um to discover partnership in in every and get to the place where I re because I do believe that you can, you know, we have neuroplasticity, we can create new brain, we can create patterns. I've done that for myself around gratitude, to where I can be grateful for anything. And gratitude is just the you know what occurs naturally. I don't have to like do gratitude lists and and I'm not, you know, like do those things, you know. Absolutely. The access to getting to rewriting my my my mental pathways around gratitude was definitely doing those actions daily and getting up every morning and doing gratitude lists until it became second nature, and you know, but next time out to get to the point where I reach for partnership first before I do anything, like yes, you know, um, and it's more fun and enjoyable, to be honest.

Yeah, yes. And I think that's an important message for all women listening is you know, the one thing that we often don't do is ask for help. And it's really important that we ask for help, and it's not a failure. We're not being a failure if we're asking for help. We're actually letting people in. And often women are we've shut down everything because we feel like we have to do everything, plan everything, get it all done, and be perfect and have a smile on our face, and don't you ever be angry because that's not ladylike, so it's okay. It's okay to be angry and furious and rageful. They're all healthy emotions and listen to them and ask for help. It's so, so important.

I think I love what you said about feeling the emotions because I think that's you know, that's been a huge area of growth for me as well, inside of that driven behavior and that, you know, that masculine energy. And again, like there are so many times where that that energy is necessary and supportive and helpful. And but it's about whether you're coming from that as a function of choice and whether you're you're, you know, if you're not naturally aligned to that, using that to to to take action ongoingly or or cause results. But uh for most of my life, I kind of soldiered through things, right? Like I just like kept going no matter what, and I didn't deal with the emotional impacts and and having the awareness now to recognize like I have a massive capacity for compassion and loving people and understanding people's humanity and their mind and how that all works. And when I experience things that don't work for me or that feel like, you know, like I get triggered or activated, giving myself the freedom to actually put all of that aside for a moment and say, yeah, I got it. I love humanity. And I'm just gonna put that over there for a second so I can allow myself to feel the emotions of anger or pain or heartache or sadness or whatever, and then release them instead of carrying them around with me, like I did for most of my life. But I and it's part of the, it's part of the process for me now to say, you know what, I've just got to park my training because I think, you know, when you you spend a lot of time in this work, like I can tell that you have, you develop huge capacities to understand how human beings work and how humanity is the way it is. And but I think it's all it's equally as important to recognize our own physical and physiological experiences of trauma. And in, and I I keep using the word trauma intentionally, and Johnny, because I'm really out to humanize the way people perceive trauma. Um, because I think it's important. And I think the the way that people relate to the word trauma today has us cut off and disconnected and not able to be able to express our our human experiences and our shared experiences of disconnection and not being accepted and loved, and recognizing that trauma exists on a huge spectrum. And and, you know, yes, there are, you know, the extreme cases of trauma that we that we associate trauma with, but there's the everyday experiences that of being traumatized that, you know, just based on the world that we live in and the system that the systems that exist and the oppression that exists, and turning the news on at the end of the day and seeing people shoot each other and hurt each other and all of that that we carry around as human beings. So I I'm using the word trauma intentionally and often these days because I'm really out to have people to create safe spaces for people to have this conversation as well.

It's it's so important, you know. I grew up in a family of domestic violence, so I had a lot of trauma in my life, and that affected me. It affected my nervous system, um, it affected my mindset. And so I've spent years and years and decades, you know, unwinding all of that, working through that. And so, and I agree, and it makes us it's oftentimes when we've had a lot of trauma, it makes us very sensitive. And so, what we do is we shut down it's a self-coping mechanism, and so a lot of women particularly are shut down because as women, we naturally feel more, we're naturally more empathetic, but without specific tools for us to use to know how to actually relate to our emotions and regulate them, which isn't taught at school right now, but hopefully one day it will. Then the only coping mechanism we have is to shut them down. But the problem with that is it shuts our hearts down, and then we become like these rope zombie robots, what I call us, that we just ticking to-do boxes. I did my to-do box, you know, I ticked everything off my to-do list today. I did good, good me. Now I can go to sleep and I'm exhausted. So we we've got to not be scared of our emotions. I think a lot of women are terrified. If they start crying, they'll say to me, if I start crying, I'm scared, I'll never stop. You will stop. No one's ever died from feeling an emotion. You know, it's it's an energy inside of us. And if we learn to regulate to our emotions, then we can regulate them. Then we're living our true selves, our authentic selves, our best version life, whatever you want to call it. We have to bring our emotions with us. It's really important that we do that. And these days, you know, for me and my clients, it's important that we can relate to our emotions. And I do this on a daily basis. How am I feeling today? Am I feeling good or am I feeling sad? What's going on inside of me? And get that information. Our emotions are in a guidance system. They will tell you which way we need to go today. And it keeps us fresh, it keeps us flexible. That's resilience. It's being able to regulate, relate to, and regulate our emotions. That's true resilience. Resilience is not power through and shut down your emotions. That is not resilience, and ultimately it causes disease, either physically, mentally, or energetically. And so we want to make sure that we're not going down that road. It's really toxic.

I just think it's um so important. I I I I'm back at that conversation about permission. And, you know, when you were sharing about your female clients who are like, um, you know, and I I actually like really um present to my own experiences of that, you know, it's like, you know, the idea of, you know, there is such a backlog of unprocessed emotion for for the majority of my life. And um as I've been sharing my family's history and my own story more publicly about, you know, like child abuse and and and not for me, but for for other people of my family and you know, you know, you know, significant mental health concerns. Um, you know, I remember in 2016 sitting down in in a family member's therapy office and uh their therapist looking at you know me and and saying, you know, you had a horrific childhood. And I remember my initial reaction to that is, what are you talking about? And this is someone who knew a lot of the journey that my family had been through. And I that's how out of touch I was with my own experience of living my life because I had just been in it. Doing what was required in order to get to the next moment and the next moment and hold everything together. And when I did start my journey of really touching that emotional layer, started with the death of a dear friend in 2019. And they died on the, I think they died on the Wednesday. And I remember calling my friend on Thursday morning saying, like, I really feel like I should take the day off work. I had never taken a day off work to deal with, you know, I was someone who showed up at work with a walking IV, right? Like, because it said walking in it, so I can go to work, right? That was my logic at the time. But, you know, friends died, loved ones passed, and I care about the people in my life so much. And I can see it now how inauthentic it was that I didn't take time to grieve and mourn their passing. And I remember calling my friend, and I'd kind of started this journey around emotional awareness and getting in touch with my emotions, but I was still very much in this space of like, don't unplug the damn because you don't know if you can plug it again. And you know, what if, what if I become undone? Like I remember having that feeling over and over again, like, what if I become undone? Who's gonna take care of the kids? Who's gonna take care of my responsibilities? Who's gonna take like I can't, I can't go there. And so I remember calling my friend Nina and being like, I feel like what there is to do is take a day off, but you know, like we weren't that close, we hadn't seen it, but it for some reason her her death was really hitting me hard. And Nina said, you know, Amber, you don't really need my permission, but I'm gonna give you permission anyway. Like I give you permission to take the day off. And so every time I called a client, a coaching client, to cancel a call when I canceled my teaching class that night at the university, it was like another, like I had to break through it again and again and again, those feelings of you're, you know, and the all of the internal dialogue about no, it's not okay and you shouldn't do this and it's inappropriate, and what will your clients think? And and I swear to you, that started months of of crying and just releasing. And and I remember getting on a phone a few months like throughout that process with Nina again and just being like, when is it gonna stop? And and she's saying, you know, babe, it's like a nutcracking, it'll stop when it stops, but it will stop. And it did stop, but you know, like I had to give myself the space and the freedom to just release. And and, you know, I mean, considering how much stuff there was over, you know, 42 years of life, the crying was definitely not proportionate to all of the stuff. So that's you know, I think that's important to note too, right? You're not gonna cry for 42 years, but you'll cry until you don't need to anymore.

Yes, and I that is such an important thing, an experience for especially women to hear. You know, I I was speaking to a woman this week and she was like, I don't know if I'm ready to do this work um because I don't know if I'll ever stop crying. And so she's very she's very scared. And so it's important for us to understand that you won't cry for 42 years. I guarantee it, you won't. I've never had anyone yet cry for 42 years, but unless we let it out, it stays inside of us, it's toxic, it rots, and then we pass that down through the womb to our children and on and on and on it goes. And it's our responsibility as women we give birth to life. The womb is not a place to store fear or pain, it's a place to create and give birth to life. So tears are healing. We must heal ourselves so that we can heal our societies. It's that simple.

Oh, and Johnny, I could talk to you forever. And I just really, you know, I as I shared with you before we jumped on, this is my first interview in a few months because of just changing time zones. And and uh, you know, this conversation is is given me so much tonight because I can really see when I came back from Bali um a month ago and getting ready to relocate there in in two and a half months or two months, how quickly I moved into those old patterns of behavior that I associate with being here and and like gotta get things done. There's so much things, the to-do lists are everywhere, the post-it notes are everywhere. And and it's like, well, what if I just stopped doing that? You know, all of the things that need to get done are gonna get done. But what if I stopped coming from this energy? So just you know, you've brief you've brought in new life into me tonight with this conversation. I'm so grateful to you. You're you know, anyone who works with you is is clearly, you know, just blessed to have such a wise and and you know, one of the things that's so important for me when I look for mentors or coaches is someone who's done the work, right? And it's like a parent in your life and is ongoingly doing the work of using the tools of transformation, whatever they are, wherever you found those tools, um, to ongoingly take on their own personal development. And so I just really want to thank you and acknowledge you for being the leader and the and the woman and the healer that you are in the world. And thank you for sharing yourself with myself and and and all of the people who are blessed to listen to this conversation and and just uh I'm so grateful that you've come into my onto my journey and that we've gotten to meet each other.

Thank you so much. It's always an honor and a privilege, it really is. And um, thank you for having this podcast that's so important that you know all the conversations you're having are just so rich and it's really important. So thank you for your service in the world as well.

For everyone listening, thank you for coming back to the show. Uh, we'll be putting out episodes regularly going forth, even when I go back to Bali in September, because one of the things that I got reconnected with tonight is this is one of the biggest sources of joy in my life, is doing this podcast. And so uh, you know, if you want to get in contact with Anjani and find out about all of the amazing things that she's up to, including the books that she's written and the new book that's just come out, Corporate Dropouts, uh, you will be able to find all of that information in the show notes. Just thank you so much for joining us this week.

Thank you so much for joining us for this week's episode. For more information on the show and our extraordinary guests, check out what would Amber Do.com