The Wisdom We Share Podcast

Redefining Success: Anjani Amriit’s Journey from Law to Spiritual Purpose

• Anjani • Season 1 • Episode 1

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In this intimate episode, co-hosts Robin and Anjani switch roles as Robin takes the interviewer’s seat to explore Anjani’s remarkable personal journey.

Anjani shares candidly about her early career in corporate law, the sexism and harassment she endured in a male-dominated field, and the turning point that compelled her to walk away. What followed was a powerful transformation discovering meditation, Ayurveda, yoga, and spiritual practice, which ultimately brought her back to her true purpose of healing and uplifting others.

Together, Robin and Anjani reflect on the importance of redefining success through the lens of joy and authenticity, and how aligning with our soul’s calling can transform our lives.

In this episode, you’ll hear about:

  • Anjani’s determination to break into law against all odds
  • The hostile and sexist culture she faced in corporate settings
  •  The life-changing crisis that sparked her shift in direction
  • How India, meditation, and spiritual teachings reshaped her path
  • Her mission to mentor and support women from disadvantaged backgrounds
  • The role of puja and mantra chanting in her daily spiritual practice

Learn more about Anjani’s work and offerings by visiting her website: www.anjaniamriit.com

A deeply inspiring conversation about courage, resilience, and what it truly means to lead a life aligned with your higher purpose.

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and it's really like a quest you know like the Vision Quest can you find your way out of the maze ha ha and here's a maze let's put you in it and we're like these little mice that are running around trying to find our way out of the maze to get the cheese and the ones that go their own path and maybe carve out their own path are the ones that grow the most and the ones that try and stay with conventional wisdom and what we're told we should and must suffer the most and it's not their fault and it's a big reason why I'm doing this podcast with you because I think people need to hear these stories so that a they don't judge and blame themselves and b they have something else that is a role model for them in terms of what me what does success mean to you and yes it's okay to go your own way that's Stevie Nicks song you can go your own way it's such a beautiful song but it's such an important message and when we do go our own way that's when we get happy that's when we are joyful that's when life becomes easy and that's when Grace happens in our life Grace starts to flow in our life welcome to the Wisdom We Share podcast where ancient truths and modern intelligence weave together to inspire ground and shape us for a wiser awakened life I'm Angie Amrit and I'm Robin Wald and together we bring you fascinating conversations from the worlds of spirituality science and human behavior so you can connect to your own inner wisdom joy and clarity elevating the way you actually live your life hi Angie how are you doing today I'm doing good I'm a little bit vulnerable feeling vulnerable uh but otherwise I'm good okay okay well let's see where our conversation goes I'm so excited to just spend this time with you and to get to know you better um you know we don't really know each other that well and I'm very very excited to learn more about you um so I do know that you were professionally trained lawyer and you worked in law for a while I would love to hear more about that like what kind of law did you practice what LED you there and can you tell us more about that and then are you still doing any law or did you completely pivot where are you now like please fill me in that's a lot of questions but let me try and answer them and I'll remind I'll ask you to remind me sure um how did I get into law I got into law because my careers teacher laughed in my face when I suggested it I and I thought very loudly at him well I'll show you so that really was the reason why I got into law because I didn't get the grades to get into medical school because what I really wanted to do was to help people and I wanted to be a doctor at the war zones um working working there you know at the cutting edge at the coal face and so I I decided to do law he the careers teacher literally said you can't be a lawyer you're a woman and that wait now where was this where were you in high school and because yeah in high school in the UK OK where I where I grew up and and um you know in the in that era of the 80s where it was a very male dominated I think it still is industry but also world right the western world anyway and women were expected to do more women kind of things like have babies and meet their husband's needs and I didn't want to do that I I wanted to better myself quote unquote what I thought at the time because I didn't really have any self worth so I did get into law I not only got in I started as a claims investigator because I couldn't get a job anywhere because of my accent I'm from Yorkshire this isn't my original accent I had to take elocution lessons wow I had to basically change who I was to get into law and I did I complied I complied with everything and well except the decision to be a little bit of an Fu to the you know like you can't do this so don't tell me what I can't do I'll prove you otherwise and I will do this it sounded like you actually were on a mission to like succeed at something that maybe you were the odds were not necessarily in your favor yeah 100% you're right you know I never thought of it like that because I I even had to beg to get into law school I literally had to beg the dean because he said to me oh your grades aren't really great um and we're already full but um we've got one person that's dropped out and so I'm going to let you in but you will have to prove yourself so every step of the way I've had to prove myself had to prove myself and and I did because I ended up in the top circle law firms in the world so the top three law firms I ended up working there from being a claims investigator working for British Coal I clawed my way up to the top and I did it for 16 years corporate mergers and acquisitions and then later in my career I moved into entertainment as law as well so I specialised in entertainment law and and and that's unheard of as well usually if you if you go into one area of law it's hard to switch track yeah you typically don't and so yeah but I did so I succeeded kind of in two careers in that in a very male dominated office space where the partners would walk past me in the corridor and literally ignore me like literally as if I wasn't there so it was it was a very difficult time yeah so interesting so a few things that tells me about you first you're no pushover and when you set your mind to something and you want to succeed you're gonna pull out all the stops and make sure that you prove yourself again and again and again and succeed I'm also curious though besides the success and besides the accomplishment which you really accomplished something extraordinary right so that's great did it make you happy was it fulfilling no I hated every minute of it I did I hated every minute of it there was no joy at all it ate me up from the inside out and it destroyed me I used to say to myself when I was going into this the Super Flash building in Sydney so I practiced in England and then I emigrated to Sydney in 2000 yeah when the Olympics were on um and I I would say to myself I'm gonna check my soul in at the door now every morning that I went in and I would and I would literally just something inside would just die when I went in there and I had to become this other person in order just in order to survive to fit in to survive to even receive work from the partners so yes yeah um I would say really soul crushing yeah very soul crushing yeah hated it yeah so I don't know if we spoke when you interviewed me last week you know that I started out in civil engineering and so not that different a story than yours slightly different I was actually encouraged by teachers of mine to go into engineering because of how few women were in engineering and how unconventional it was for a woman to go into that field so instead of being told no no no you can't do this I was being told go go do engineering because you're smart enough you have the math and science skills they need more engineers in the field be a groundbreaker but in the career world very similar to what you're saying it was such a sexist environment I put up with so much harassment it was like it was really terrible and I really did not find joy in it but I didn't last 16 years the way you did going through your career I kind of got out pretty quickly I stayed for four years in that field and then I was like no no no I'm out of here well you're cleverer you're you're more cleverer than me because um because yeah I I can be stubborn I think and I I guess for me I didn't know what else was out there so I I probably just stuck to what I knew but that reminds me of something that happened when I cause I it was a very sexist environment for me too there was a lot of um a lot of things that went on and one in I'll tell you one incident that happened sure I had to fly to Hamburg on a deal with these two other males so one was my um was my um partner so he was the partner one of the partners of the firm and then a senior associate and I was the junior so we all flew to Hamburg for this deal and we did we did the first day and I got thrown in at the deep end like oh yeah you're you're gonna do this no experience no idea they just would throw you in and see if you swam um it was an initiation it was a total boys club and then we finished for the night had dinner went to our rooms and then about midnight I guess this knock knock knock on the door I was asleep it woke me up and then the and it was the partner calling my name and asking to come in and I was mortified I was terrified I didn't know what to do I didn't I've never actually told anyone this and I it it was crazy because I felt embarrassed I felt shameful I felt like what is he gonna do if I don't open the door but I know what his intentions are if I do open the door like he was an old guy in his 60s and that happened all the time all the time and you know I was lucky so you're really like a survivor of that environment hmm yeah yeah still got some scars I reckon ha ha ha yeah I'm sorry you experienced that yeah I'm really sorry that and I'm I'm sure that many women who are listening to this conversation have similar war stories where in their professional lives they were not treated professionally as a colleague as a peer as an equal and were treated as someone to take advantage of or to harass or you know created a hostile environment um yeah and I'd say to any of those women it's okay and you should and must stand up for yourself and no job is worth it and call it out and call it out to someone that might not be HR it may not be HR but someone who you know and trust at work who will hear you and who will champion your cause it's very important that we gotta stop it yeah so what was the final catalyst ultimately for you saying I'm really done like I'm not doing this anymore I'm shifting track I had um a 19 year relationship with someone so he was my first and and only partner at the time and I'd I'd met him when I was 15 so and he was eight years older than me so we were together 19 years and we had emigrated from the UK to Australia together and he had had a motorbike accident and we we had no family in Australia couple of friends but not really much of a social network and he was in a hospital up in the mountains far away from the city and I got a call saying we don't know what's you know if you'll even live through this he's broke his back it's really bad we're going to have to helicopter him back to Sydney because only there can they have can they operate on him and and you know I will you come of course and so I was like well yes so I or I was on a deal so with mergers and acquisitions you're on deals so this is like you're buying or selling a company or or doing a joint venture and they last for months so I was heading this deal so I was the head person that the clients all came to I was delegating all the work so I went to someone else my my you know peer got someone else on the deal they were like yeah sure sure OK you go and I'll cover for you I told all my team I'd let the clients know and I don't think I even went that day I think I went the next day once I you know got all the work sorted out so I went and I got back to work three days later I only had three days off he had in that meantime had this really bad operation you know full on operation he survived it but um he really it was a long recovery process after I'm sure when I got back to work the HR woman hold me into her office sat me down and said you dropped the ball yeah so zero compassion really just a lack of any humanity or empathy or understanding of the situation I well we could get into a whole conversation about family leave and and what your rights are or were in the situation but okay so you that was just information that you could no longer ignore like I'm in the wrong place in the wrong field with the wrong people I just knew that I just said to myself in that moment what am I doing here I've given everything of my life I haven't had a family you know all of my days and hours are spent after this I've sacrificed everything and you tell me that I've dropped the ball where is your compassion where is your humanity you are a woman the fact that it was a woman got me more than anything how could a woman a mother say that to another woman that was it for me I I was I was done it took me a few weeks to leave a few months I think but I I that was it I was done so what did you move towards well simultaneously at around the same time I had been getting involved in some meditation and this was way before even yoga was a thing in at work or even in the west and I had done a meditation class or two and that was really helping me start to find some stability and really settle a chronic anxiety chronic panic attacks and I was finding it very very helpful and I at at the time I didn't realise it but I found my first spiritual teacher and he was running the meditation classes and he had a guru that eventually became my guru even though I had no idea about gurus and wasn't looking for one and you know that was all a bit woo woo for me but that energy was starting to flow to me during that very tumultuous time and so I ended up making a some would call it rash decision some would call it crazy but there was a retreat coming up to India and I just knew every fibre of my being was saying to me you have to go and it made no logical sense it was very irrational not anything I'd ever done before I was a lawyer for goodness sake I put my house on the market I quit my job and I went to India not knowing how old were you at this point I was um in my mid 40s OK so the astrologer in me is like wow I think this was must have been your Uranus opposition haha it was this is because Uranus is this energy of sudden impulsive unexpected unplanned for change opportunity for change that helps you to align with more authenticity in your own life and it's breaking up with all the things that no longer serve you that feel like they're like a noose around your neck so this is the quote midlife crisis transit like 42 to 44 like we break up and we shake up our lives and if we're not willing to make the change consciously the universe plays with us and gives us a situation that we can't ignore so that we're forced to move into change and take a risk and you know kind of move into something new and then that leads into the Saturn opposition which is really re evaluating what you started and committed to at 28 and like am I still committed to that I don't I I don't know if I'm willing to put in another 14 15 years of effort and energy and time and you know sweat and tears for this I need to do something different what's next so I love that the universe came along at that time and was like Angie we're here to support you go to India find your guru yeah and so tell me how that turned out because I know you through a mutual friend of ours as a spiritual person we connected over spirituality I didn't even really know any of your you know corporate and legal and all of this other stuff I know you as someone who is yogic and bringing consciousness into the world so how did that trip to India change you it was entirely transformative for me I I remember leaving the airport got out of the airport and as soon as I stood on Indian soil my legs literally buckled I've I dropped to the ground sobbing I'm not gonna cry I dropped to the ground sobbing and all all that was playing in my head was I'm home I'm home I'm home and it made no sense to me I was like what is going on here but I was home and I knew it my soul was home and and it everything that was missing in my life was there everything all the answers to all the questions I had about life why are we here what is my purpose it was all answered in India and wow and it just it was such a game changer and it just blew my mind it was so different so foreign I didn't really know any of the culture but it felt more real and more authentic to me than any of my entire life up till then so yeah it was a big game changer and LED me on to then studying I became a yoga teacher I studied ayurvedic medicine I studied it in Australia and then went to India and studied it trained in both Australia and India um I'm studying Jyotish astrology now now so um so anything eastern to me is wisdom it's wisdom and it's ancient and it's unchangeable that's wisdom when it's something that's unchangeable and I loved it I remember studying Ayurveda and it was in Sanskrit and it was if I'd already studied it whereas when I studied law it was like trudging through quicksand it was very I couldn't remember cases and it was really difficult with Ayurveda that's fascinating yeah it's like I knew it and I remembered it from another life that's what what I realized yeah and I just loved every minute of it I started applying it for my own life I I got healthy I cured my irritable bowel syndrome I cured my anxiety and panic attacks I became happy I became healthy I found my purpose I found my calling and I was I just became joyous and joyful that's what happened I love this so much because I often when clients come to me for coaching I often find that their definition of success doesn't always mesh with or include joy which is why I said about your law career wow you achieved a lot of success but were you joyful and there was no joy in that and now you're really redefining that wow there was so much joy so much joy in this it was so natural it was so easy it felt right it felt like home and there was no slugging through anything and I almost feel like how impactful would it be in the world if people redefined what success looked like in terms of how much joy something brought them you know or how much ease something brought you know it's like that feels more successful than the corporate ladder or the big bucks or you know any external status you know yeah so and the irony the irony with that is that once you follow that joy and once you are fulfilled what happens is the money and the success flows naturally you don't have to think about it it will come to you because you're then in your element I vedically speaking I was out of my element in law I was doing a fire job and what I do now it's more nurturing it's more loving and it's more aligned with my nature which is ether and ether which is space which is intuition psychic ability clairvoyance tapping into divine wisdom higher intelligence so I'm now in my element in my in my work and that's what is success it also I love that and I love that you're speaking the language of elements um but I think it's also goes back to what you knew you wanted at your core you really knew you wanted to go into medicine and you found your way back to a healing profession which I think is amazing right we often know so one of my stories is that you know when I was in high school I was pretty I was like a straight a student I was good in everything I could have pursued anything I wanted but people pushed me towards engineering because of my math and science ability that not every person or every girl had so I got pushed to engineering and by sophomore year I just thought I really don't wanna be an engineer I wanna study religion and philosophy and spirituality and I was teaching myself Buddhism and meditation and taking religion classes but I trained for engineering so I did engineering and I pursued different careers that always sort of felt this isn't exactly right but it makes sense and this is what I should do and ultimately it all brought me back to spirituality and mysticism and religion and that's what I do so I think there's again this inner knowing this inner wisdom which is so much of what our podcast is about right how do we really listen for our own inner knowing and truth and trust it enough to follow it instead of kind of dismissing it and ignoring it and listening to external louder voices because you came back to a healing profession in medicine and I came back to religion and spirituality but the route to get there and maybe that's part of the journey too we have to sort of try what doesn't work for a while and have some upsets to kind of like redirect us you know yeah I think it's the mill where we learn lots of lessons we grow as souls when we are out of our element and it's really like a quest you know like the Vision Quest it's can you find your way out of the maze ha ha and here's a maze let's put you in it and we're like these little mice that are running around trying to find our way out of the maze to get the cheese and the ones that go their own path and maybe carve out their own path are the ones that grow the most and the ones that try and stay with conventional wisdom and what we're told we should and must suffer the most and it's not their fault and it's a big reason why I'm doing this podcast with you because I think people need to hear these stories so that a they don't judge and blame themselves and b they have something else that is a role model for them in terms of what me what does success mean to you and yes it's okay to go your own way that's Stevie Nicks song you can go your own way it's such a beautiful song but it's such an important message and when we do go our own way that's when we get happy that's when we are joyful that's when life becomes easy and that's when Grace happens in our life Grace starts to flow in our life yeah and from a you know from a spiritual perspective this idea that we're all born with a certain curriculum or dharma or natural attunements or like what is my purpose for being born right I was born at a specific time and place into a specific environment with certain gifts and skills like why what's that for and I think that the more we align with what come what's natural and right and home for us and the joy is like you know kind of this validation of like oh yes this is the right path this feels my my calling right um then we can actually serve our soul came here to serve for some you know some purpose and and when we just stay with conventional ideas of success or what everybody else thinks we should be doing or thinks we should prioritize and value it's really at a disservice not just to ourselves personally and our soul in our own life but to the whole of humanity because then we're not fulfilling the purpose we came here for in our piece of you know our thread of fabric in the whole tapestry you know so I love this so tell me about like right now where you find yourself what's important to you in this moment what are you working on working on this podcast which is very important to me I'm also working on my charity so I've been mentoring marginalized disadvantaged women women from domestic violent backgrounds I'm from a family of domestic violence myself I grew up in one and um without any judgment to my parents because my parents simply inherited that from their parents and their parents and their parents so it's it goes into generational but what I what I Learned from that whole experience which was very trauma inducing for me which LED me to have to do a lot of self development and trauma healing myself was that um people need help and it's not their fault and in any perpetrator there is a victim within that perpetrator and so a big part of my mission now is to help disadvantaged women to regain their self esteem cause I know what it feels like even though I was in the top three law firms in the world my self esteem was zero and my shame level was 1,000,000% and so this is what happens when we're in domestic violent environments or when we haven't had the opportunities that a lot of the western people have had is that you know I'm I'm an I'm from an immigrant family as well and I haven't had a silver spoon in my mouth I didn't have anyone saying to me you can do it um I I had no one really to raise me and and put me on the right path I had to kind of find out myself my grandma was a big role model for me she was big in service she was a nurse she did a lot of charity work and so that is the most important thing to me is this charity it's called house of Amrita and I've been bootstrapping it myself for a long time and I'm formalizing it now where we're going to be having mentorship and scholarship programs for these women to mentor them to help them build their self worth regain their self esteem so that they can start to contribute to their own lives and then back into society cause women are the glue of society that's why we're getting so unstuck these days and then from there it's working with corporate organisations so getting women in corporate positions to then mentor our mentees and it's a two way win win because the corporate women when they've mentored someone they get to feel really good about themselves and they get to see it it really changes their perspective on what they want out of their careers and um I've done it a few times and it it just works so well it's a really really good formula for healing lots of trauma and even women in corporate have gone on to heal their own traumas so um that's really what I'm most excited about there's lots of other stuff going on that you would look at and go oh wow you're really successful there but what means the most to me I would say is this podcast and the charity wow wow I'm so inspired listening to you talk about that I actually used to um I was on the board of directors of a domestic violence organization and and shelter for women and children for like 18 years and I worked in a shelter doing direct service for women and children so this really speaks to me also and I love that you're doing this and I did not know this about you so thank you for sharing me with that with us and um I think as we wrap up I'm just curious is there I love um kind of daily ritual and spiritual practice and I'm just curious if you have any daily practices for yourself that really keep you in connection with your soul with your higher consciousness um anything that you think would be helpful for our listeners to hear that they might also try or engage in yes I do have a non negotiable daily practice and I do have to put a caveat first this is the lawyer in me because I I don't want people to hear this and go oh my God I'm not good enough you know I'm not doing that um because I do wanna say that it's taken me years to get to this non negotiable practice and I've been on and off with spiritual practices from pranayama to meditation to yoga on and off on and off for years my practice these days is um it's puja and mantra chanting so puja is um it comes from a Hindu um background and it you know it literally means flower and love but what it is is it's a it's a little ritual that you do to um a photo or with an idol or an image of the divine and what you're doing is you're actually sitting there chanting mantras or sacred sounds that are very very powerful that literally change your biochemistry and when you when you do this ritual what happens is you get to focus on the divine you get to focus on your own divinity and so that starts to become front of mind and rather than those quirky things that play in your head you know like I'm not good enough or I can't do this or I'm really scared or there's not enough money if you do this if you do mantra daily that mantra actually takes over and that's the record that plays in your head and it substitutes the other self sabotage voice and over time that becomes so embedded that that the other stuff doesn't get in and so and it's also a back tea practice so any back teas out there it's about offering devotion to the divine so that you ultimately become real self realized as that as love and so there's a couple of ways to get to god or the divine one is through jnana well there's many but one is through jnana wisdom and and another is bhakti and so I follow the bhakti path of devotion and offered love and devotion to my guru to to Narayani and through that love I get to receive the awakening consciousness so it's a win win and often people think oh you're giving your power away but it's it's actually about discovering your true nature yourself it's an inward discovery if that makes sense at it makes absolute sense and I am really looking forward to future conversations between us and with guests on the show and with experts we bring in to really understand their spiritual practices and to go deeper into Bhakti practice and what that might look like for someone who's just beginning to learn to have some kind of devotional practice that opens their heart and you know elevates their vibration in those ways so thanks for sharing that yeah my pleasure you can just start with Om very simple that's a mantra Om everyone knows Om and that's a great way to start so how I started amazing amazing well I loved this conversation and I did learn so much about you and you really inspire me and I think it's obvious to me like what a beautiful soul you have and that you really just want to bring healing you know into this world and to help and support people and I think um you know as we continue on in this podcast and as we meet new people I know that you're gonna bring that energy and it's gonna really benefit everyone so it's beautiful thank you thank you thank you so much for tuning in to the wisdom We share podcast we hope today's episode sparks some new insight imagination and practical tools you can integrate into your daily life continue this journey with us by subscribing sharing and dropping us a review until next time stay wise

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Anjani Amriit

Host
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Robin Wald

Host