Feeling stuck in a life that’s not yours? Here’s how to design a purpose-driven life (and gain financial independence along the way)

• Breaking Free from Limiting Beliefs: We discuss how societal conditioning often keeps women boxed in, believing their empowerment comes from external sources rather than from within.
• Meena’s Journey: Meena shares her personal story of breaking away from traditional expectations, pursuing her dreams, and creating a successful career.
• The Power of Financial Independence: Financial independence plays a crucial role in empowering women to take control of their lives and create the future they desire.
• Shifting Mindsets to Overcome Societal Conditioning: Meena provides actionable advice on how women can embrace their inner strength and take bold, intentional actions to redefine success on their terms.
• Practical Tips for Empowerment and Productivity: Learn how celebrating small wins, building financial literacy, and creating a supportive environment can pave the way for empowerment and productivity.

“Empowerment is actually something that exists within us.”

“Ultimately, the reason we are not able to create what we want in our life, it only boils down to two things. One is our beliefs, which is our mindset, and second is financial.”

“Behind every challenge lies an opportunity.”

“Stop living in a story. Stop living in a program. Reinvent yourself.”

“Take action. Progress is more important than perfection.”

Have you ever felt like your potential was boxed in by expectations, traditions or beliefs that went through the for generations, women have been conditioned to believe that empowerment comes from outside sources, approval, validation or the support of others rather than realizing the incredible strength that lies within them. These beliefs often shape our choices, leading us to undervalue our capabilities and remain stuck in roles or situations that don’t align with our true desires. 

Many women feel they must sacrifice their happiness, ambition or well being for the sake of others, while financial independence, an essential key to freedom, feels out of reach for too many but what if there’s a different way? 

What if he could rewrite those narratives, reclaim your autonomy and step fully into a life that aligns with your unique vision and goals? 

Well, in today’s episode, I’m joined by Meena Adani, a trailblazer who broke free from traditional expectations to create a life of empowerment and success. She’s here to share how she shifted her mindset, embraced her inner power and took bold actions to redefine what success looks like for her on her own terms. 

Welcome to the Peaceful Productivity Pod. And together, we redefine productivity and find your sweet spot where happiness.

While this podcast is about productivity, I often pull from my motherhood experience as it’s been one of the most transformative experiences of my life. It brought so many lessons, but one of the biggest was realizing how much of my life I had spent boxing myself in, playing small sticking to roles I thought I had to fulfill. And while I started working with coaches and mentors, and I started having really open and raw conversations with other mothers. I had this one pivotal moment or realization or aha moment when it hit me, no one was holding the lid of that box down. The only thing keeping me where I was was myself, and once I had cracked that lid open, a whole new world of possibilities unfolded, and it’s why I’m so excited to share this individual authorization I had with Meena Kumar Adnani. 

Meena is an extraordinary woman, a lawyer, senior corporate executive turned high performance in business coach for women, and a best selling author and a motivational speaker. She is known as the architect of dreams, and for a good reason, this conversation took place a few years ago, but it really has stayed with me to this day. I remember how inspired I felt and the Goosebumps her words gave me, and the deep connection I felt with her, because it was really at the time where I started to crack open the lid on my box. So without further ado, let’s hear from Meeina.

MEENA KUMAR ADNANI

As women, we have been conditioned to believe so many things, which is not true, and we as women think that empowerment is something that exists outside of us, but empowerment is actually something that exists within us, because we grew up not being told about how we are so much more capable than what we have been meant to believe. I grew up in a very, very traditional environment. I’m Indian, so I come from an Indian family. When I was a kid, to me, it was very obvious that my life was supposed to be. It was like literally panned out for me. When I’m 17, I’m supposed to be married off. And then, of course, education is not even something that I had seen any anyone pursue in my family, not women, not men, but as a kid, none of this made sense to me, so I wanted to make sure I had education, and I don’t know how, but it was very clear to me that in order for me to have control over my own life, I need to have financial independence. And if I have financial independence, I don’t have to follow the route that has been created for me. And so that’s why, as a kid for me, my dream was always to be a lawyer. 

I remember being five and telling my uncle that I want to be a lawyer when I grow up, and he laughed at me and said, Oh, you mean you’re gonna have your law degree above the store while you cook for your husband. So can you imagine, for a five year old, how that feels. And at first I was traumatized, because I was like, wow. Maybe I don’t understand much about like, how it operates in the adult world. But at the same time, my heart was like, No, this is not this is not real. It just felt like what I wanted was so powerful that it just had to happen. And so 15 years later, I qualified as an attorney in the UK and also in New York. 

So as a girl from that background, I became the first educated person in the family, not just a woman, but the first person, and I happen to be a woman. 

Ultimately, the reason we are not able to create what we want in our life. It only boils down to two things. One is our beliefs. This is our mindset. And second is financial. It’s only these two things. Mindset, as difficult as it is, it’s something that you can work on financial unless you have the financial independence. 

It’s very difficult for you to be able to create the life that you want unless there are other people providing for you. So either if you’re single, you have family providing for you, or if you’re married, you’re dependent on your husband. And time and time again, I see that women are in situations, and I know a lot of women who are married and in situations where they would rather not be but because they don’t have the financial freedom, and at the same time, they also have to worry about the kids. They stay in unhappy marriages, and oftentimes not very good, I mean, oftentimes abusive, only because they feel they need to make that sacrifice for the kids. And this is a training, you know, generations after generations, women have been taught to believe that it is our responsibility to sacrifice that in itself, is the biggest lie, because you can be done and have anything, but the fact is, behind every challenge lies an opportunity. So it is literally how we train our mind to identify either a challenge or an opportunity. Both exist. 

It’s all about what you focus on, you know, I love this analogy where, you know, there’s a story of two men who were in a room, and they were both looking out the window. One is looking at the blue skies and appreciating and admiring, you know, the beauty of nature, and the other one is looking at the garbage can and saying, you know, that is still free. So ultimately, you are both staring at the same window. One is seeing beauty and the other one is seeing dirt. So it’s how we are, and the way we view the world is how the world shows up for us once we wake up. The fact that this is it, this is not a dry run, this is not a rehearsal. This is your life. This is it. This is it. There is no second chance. And so stop living in a story. Stop living in a program. 

You know, we we all live very automated lives. We live a life of on autopilot. You know, this is how I was born. This is how I am. I’m an introvert. I’m not confident. Who says, you know, all these stories are not real. We got to get out of these stories and reinvent yourself. And I love this quote by Joe Dispenza. He says that either you are either being defined by the memories of the past or the vision of the future. And so, you know, I would say that I wish I had my I wish I believed in my vision a lot sooner. That’s one second, is I wish I had just worked with a coach earlier, because it’s important, you know, like I said, Success is exclusive. It’s important to make sure that if you’re going to start something, don’t try doing it yourself. You can. It’s just a long way. It’s better to work with someone who’s already got this strategy, who’s already established it, and it just follow through. And at the end of the day, you know what works, what doesn’t work for you, and you can tweak it. I mean, that would be the second thing, I would say. And third is take action.

ANNE RAJOO

Wow. What an incredible story and message Meena has given us so much to reflect on, especially the reminder that empowerment starts with us, not from external validation. Two key takeaways stood out for me, first, the power of the mindset to overcome societal conditioning, and second, the importance of financial independence and creating that life you want. 

Now let’s tie this into peaceful productivity. Empowerment and productivity go hand in hand. 

When you reclaim your in exchange and take control of your financial future, you’re also building the foundation for a more intentional, aligned and peaceful life. So let’s talk about a few actionable steps that you can start taking today. 

First of all, celebrate small wins. Empowerment grows when we recognize you. Celebrate our achievements. Start by acknowledging your strengths and capabilities. Set small, achievable goals that align with your values and passions. I used to have a strength job where I would jot down my accomplishments because it was difficult for me to even remember the things that I did well. I was just always doing more, never looking back at what have I actually achieved. So a strength job is really a physical jar or box or whatever, where I would write down on small pieces of paper what I did well, where I felt I had utilized my strength, and I would put these pieces of paper in the jar. And when I had a day where I felt a little low or wrestled with self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy, I would pull from that jar. I would take a couple of papers and make them allow myself. 

Or you can have a folder where you keep screenshots of positive comments from clients and testimonials, a positive words folder. It’s really just the point that you recognize your achievements and you know, giving yourself a little pat on your shoulder, and you’re saying, Well done, and ideally, celebrate with something that makes it even a little bit more special. And it doesn’t matter what kind of reward it is, it doesn’t have to be anything in particular. It could be a really small, tiny thing, but with the intention to reward yourself. And the most important key there is that you give yourself permission to celebrate yourself. 

The second action item I would love to share with you for this episode is to build your financial literacy. Financial Independence is a cornerstone of empowerment, and it starts with small steps. Set up a simple budget, explore ways to save regularly, and as I always emphasize, focus on the work that brings or that moves the need and that generates income, instead of all the shiny objects that are trying to grab your attention when I do a productivity audit with my clients, I very often see that there’s very little focus and time on the financial side of things, and the financial power should probably become its own episode at some point. But what I always suggest to my clients is to create a dedicated date for finances. So I have a weekly finance Friday, just as I have a weekly CEO day, I have my finance Friday, and that’s a full day. It’s just a couple of hours, but I check, what are my expenses that are coming up next week? What are the invoices that are still outstanding? Which invoices still need to be sent out, and at the beginning of the month, I do a monthly forecast, and at the end of the month, I check, where am I really? In reality, compared to my forecast, and I worked with a coach to create this forecast, because it wasn’t something that testified I knew how to do and secondly, I’ve come from skilled because I told myself that I’m not good with maths and that I’m not good with figures. I realized if I want to run a business, I need to know my figures, so I would track my expenses. 

I would have a nice Excel file that I would send to my accountant, because, again, I do not want to do my own accounting, because it’s just not something that I think I’m really great at, and I just feel my own energies better use somewhere else. But I had this track really well, and you might blame my inherent German precision and accuracy, and it came really easy to me. It is probably not the case for everybody. These things were in place. But at the end of the month, I still had no clue. Was I in profit? Was I in the reds? What was actually happening? You know, when I take my revenue and I take my costs out, and so I was really working in the dark. 

So having a document that helps you to forecast and to really put things together, to plan financially has been a big game changer for me, and so I have put this document into my brand new Peaceful Productivity Toolkit. I spoke about it in the past few episodes. It’s a toolkit that is designed to help you really. It’s a toolkit that is designed to help you on your Peaceful Productivity journey with templates, with prompts, with different elements that I have used in my business or that I have used when working with clients, and my financial forecasting sheet is one of them. 

The Productivity Toolkit is still being developed right now, as I record this episode mid-January, but there is a waitlist. So if you’re interested in these kinds of templates and tools, please go on my website www.annerajoo.com/waitlist, put your details in there, and you’ll get early access and a couple of nice gifts as well. 

So, if this resonated with you, I’d love to keep the conversation going. Connect with me on Instagram. That’s where I usually hang out. That’s @_annerajoo_. Share your thoughts, insights and your small wins. I’m incredibly happy to celebrate with you, small wins, big, wins anything in between. I would love to hear from you. And if you’re not the kind of person who goes into someone’s DMs, just share the episode with a friend and spread the word about Peaceful Productivity. 

And of course, as each week, please come back next week, we are actually in the next episode, I will be joined by Jolie Rose Gonzales, an art therapist and wellness expert, and we will talk about creativity. Creativity is, in fact, an important design piece for productivity. It’s not just about artistic expression. It’s about approaching life and business with a mindset that allows for innovation, problem-solving and finding joy in the process. Creativity helps us see challenges as opportunities. Approach tasks with a fresh perspective and craft systems and solutions that truly align with our unique needs and values in peaceful productivity. Creativity isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. It keeps us flexible. fuels our passion and reminds us that productivity isn’t to stop getting things done. It’s not getting them done in a way that feels good, inspired, and is sustainable. So don’t miss this conversation, it’s going to be a game-changer for embracing creativity in your everyday life and work.

Until then be peacefully productive and catch you next time.