Anna (00:04):
All right. Welcome, Elaine. Thank you so much for joining the podcast today.

Elaine (00:09):
Oh, I love being here and thank you for having me. Yeah.

Anna (00:12):

Yeah. I’m super excited to talk with you. Like I just told you, I’ve been stocking your website, figuring out all the good questions to ask you. So I would love, I would love to, for you to introduce yourself to our audience and tell us about all the roles you’ve, you’ve played in your career and how that’s kind of influenced where you are today.

Elaine (00:32):

Yes, well, I’m Elaine Turner. I’m from Texas, so I’m born and bred Texan. And I I’ve gone through recently a huge career shift where I had 20 years, I was in the fashion retail business and I’ve just recently about a year and a half ago have transformed and moved over to personal growth. So really utilizing my experience with women in fashion, retail and servicing women, mentoring women, managing women I own and ran the company. I sort of felt as deep desire to really take what I had learned and take those lessons with women and kind of come into, I would, I like to kind of like a new aspect of myself, what I’ve learned, the wisdom I’ve gained and sort of offer up that wisdom to women and build women up. So it’s, it seems like this huge difference. Like a lot of people are like, how did you go from fashion to empowering women in this way? But it really isn’t as big a job because my business was so fully solely focused on empowering women through clothing and fashion and body image issues and all of that. So it’s really been a little more seamless. I think people probably think from the outside.

Anna (01:49):
Yeah. I can imagine it does seem similar for sure. So what, why is your thing is self-worth like, why, why

is helping women discover their self worth? Like, why is that so important to you?

Elaine (02:02):

Well, really ultimately I think it’s the foundation of everything. I think everything is built upon knowing that we are sourced from a place of homeless, right? So knowing that it’s sort of like lack versus abundance, really it’s a scarcity versus enoughness. So I think if you, in your life feel like you’re working, you’re walking through your life, half of yourself, then everything that you do, every choice you make, every leadership decision and being a mother, being a wife, being a friend is not going to be from a whole hearted place. And so I really look at worth as an inherent eternal divine birthright. And I think once women adopt this as there’s nothing outside of myself. So regardless of anything that I do, any accomplishment, any failure, catastrophic failure, divorce, or business that didn’t work or lost friendships or whatever it is that you are inherently whole inherently enough, and nothing really can alter that.

Elaine (03:08):

And so I think until we, as women truly adopt this place from abundance and we’re free to fall, we’re free to fail. We’re free to stumble all while knowing that we’ll never give up because we know we’re essentially whole we’re no, we’re good. So we know we can rise up. And I think that that’s something

that I think, especially as women, it gets really muddy for us. We are very caught up into the external people, pleasing outside expectations you know, perfectionism, nurturing others before ourselves. And we lose that sense of well, who am I? And this whole matrix of life.

Anna (03:46):

Exactly. Yeah. And I love how you talk about attack. You talk about that right now because so many of our, so many in our audience are going through career change and, and, you know, setbacks from the pandemic and everything. So the message of just we can rise up is, is I think really good right now.

Elaine (04:04):

Absolutely. And I think there’s something really inherent in the idea of, you know, I like to look at it, like if God gave us the weakness to fall, then he also gave us the strength to rise. Right. And I think what happens is women, as we lose sight of that strength, strength to rise after any fall, you know, we get very we forget our resiliency. And I think we begin to start thinking that we have to live in reaction mode to what happens to us rather than really knowing that we do have a sense of internal worth and control over how we show up within our challenges. Right. I think sometimes we get into the specialty, like we feel helpless, but really, I think we have an opportunity to ask ourselves, well, who can I become within this challenge rather than the victim of the challenge, right.

Anna (04:57):
Yeah. I love that. Who can, who can I be now because of this,

Elaine (05:02):
My whole life’s been, yeah.

Anna (05:04):
So what are some examples of, instead of living in reaction mode that our listeners can do instead of,

you know, what, what, what are some examples that you’ve seen?

Elaine (05:14):

I mean, I mean, I think first off I’m a huge proponent of grace, right? We’re all human and let’s be blunt. Most all of us go through periods of we’re living in reaction mode because we’re trying to survive, right. We’re dealing with children or, you know, our business demands or whatever it is, an ill parent or whatever. And so I don’t want people to think that I have all the answers. I mean, I, you know, I’ve kind of had a hard day today. I mean, I walked through the earth just as vulnerable and fragile as anybody else, but I think when it comes to living in reaction mode, I really believe that the source of how you combat that is through awareness. It’s really about being aware first and foremost, 80% of it is I am living in reaction mode. And once you can address that name, it, no, like I know I’m doing this, you know, I’m surviving, I’m living in reaction mode.

Elaine (06:04):

Then I think you can bring that objectivity around that you can bring your awareness and you can decide to kind of soften your lens towards it. Say now, okay, now I can know how do I take those steps? You know, there’s, even if they’re slow steps to really take compassionate action of how I can start to see things more clearly, how I can be more mindful and thoughtful within my reactions with other people

with what’s happening to me. I think it’s really hard because I think people don’t realize how they go through life. So unaware, you know, they just think it’s just happening to them. When in reality, we’re all a real big piece of the puzzle of all of these reciprocities and mutualities of all the things, all the interpersonal relationships that we have. We’re not just, it’s not just everything’s coming at us.

Elaine (06:53):

Yes. Things happen to us. They’re out of our control, but we are a definite part of how we’re showing up within that. And so I really go back to awareness. You, you have to bring awareness to what’s going on in your life. And when you start seeing a thread, right. Of some things that might be detrimental, whether it’s, you know, some hardships at work or some difficult conversations or some failed relationships or whatever, it’s okay to bring a softness and compassion around that and say, okay, this is happening. How can I bring myself more awareness around this and decide how I really want to engage in this from a place of compassion self-compassion for myself and for others. Because once you’re compassionate towards yourself, you’re easily more compassionate towards other people. So I really everything. And I’m going to bring that up a lot. You might get a little, feel, a little redundant, but also much for make as back to self-awareness is how you combat re living in react.

Anna (07:49):

Yeah. So, so how, how do you become more aware? Like how do you like in your daily life, are you doing this every day? Is there like a time in your routine you have, because to me that I’m in reaction to what I’m like, I don’t have any time I’m surviving.

Elaine (08:07):

Do you think that some days you, aren’t going to have time and you know, you’re going to have to also just chalk that up is one of those reactive surviving days. But I think if you can carve out and I tell women this, because I think it seems so intimidating for a lot of people, but if you can just carve out five to 10 minutes a day and I like to call it a stillness practice or a contemplate of practice, and it doesn’t have to be meditation, you know, I don’t, I don’t like to build walls around what that looks like for you, but if you do some of that inner work and you, and you think about, you know, what do I need right now as one of my big things and questions I pose to women, I think can transform your life is asking yourself when you know that you’re in a state of suffering or reactivity, what do I need right now that could offer me a sense of security, a sense of a sense of wholeness.

Elaine (08:56):

And it could be, I need a nap. I need a really connected call with someone that I love deeply. I need to journal. I need free floating journaling. I need to get all this mind dump out of my head. I need to, you know, it could be, I need this stillness. I need a meditation. I need re reflectivity. I need real serious mindfulness practice, whatever it looks like for me, it’s restorative yoga. I do a lot of restorative yoga. I mean, I try to do it every day, but if I don’t, I at least do it three times a week. So that’s my thing because it brings the body into the equation because you know, we’re such a top-down society. Everything’s so much about our brain, but really our body is a second intelligence. Our body is there to heal us in such a, it knows before the mind, it really does.

Elaine (09:43):

So for me, it’s restorative, yoga and journaling. I’m also a huge reader. It gets my mind off of my own world. And I learned something about something else, but it could be something totally different. I’m

never, it’s not a one size fits all model. I mean, it could be, you know, for some people, I really believe if it’s, if it’s sleeping, it’s because your body needs to sleep, you know, don’t fight it, you know? And so I think that it can be so many different things for so many people, but it’s really about carving out, you know, those 10 minutes, it can be 10 minutes a day where you know, that you are in relationship with yourself.

Anna (10:19):

Yeah. So good. So I want to, I want to move into talking about limiting beliefs. Cause I know that’s something that, you know, you, you are, you know, a lot about. And when I was reading your website too, I noticed you’re a rock bottom moment as well with your daughter and the story of not being good enough. And I love, I love if you could share that.

Elaine (10:39):

Yeah. I, I, you know, I’ve been through a lot of chronic challenges in my life and I have a special needs daughter. Who’s 16 and she’s been a real gateway for me of sort of understanding some of my own ones. Right. And some of the things that I need to bring healing around. And she and I have had a journey together that has really been, you know, people always think like, Oh, well then you’re her caretaker. And so she really learned from you, but really life doesn’t work that way. You know, it’s really both of us in a mutual reciprocal relationship of, I learned just as much about myself through her as I think she does through me. And really that story was about when I shut my last store down, I had a big retail operation where I designed and manufactured all my own luxury goods.

Elaine (11:27):

I had 12 stores at one time and we just got into a position, my husband and I who ran it together and decided this wasn’t really sustainable, you know, from an emotional or financial point of view, it just retail had shifted. Were women are really transferring more into the digital age. And, and we were at a size where we weren’t really able to pivot in a way to restructure the whole business when we were really structured on a retail platform. So anyway, that’s a whole other conversation, but it was a really devastating time for me. I went through a huge identity crisis, like who am I now? What’s going on. And that moment when I pick my daughter up from school and I hadn’t really told her what had happened, just cause I was kind of dealing with it on my own. I don’t think I was quite ready to process it with her.

Elaine (12:11):

And she looked at me and she said, well, mom, why are you picking up? Because you know, I had a nanny pick her up cause I worked during the day. And I said, well, and I thought, well, this is good a time as any. And I just said, you know, I shut down a lane Turner and she just looked straight at me and her very literal beautiful way and said, well, that’s, that’s too bad. And I really loved the pink. So I have a lot of pink and you know, I love the bags and everything you did, but I love you more and I love being with you. And for some reason, her putting it so simply to me, and I realized, you know, I don’t need to be all those things to be whole, like I thought, you know, you buy into it like this.

Elaine (12:52):

You know, but then I look at this child who knows more than I do my work. He looks at me and say, Oh well, you’re my mom. You know, I love you just the way it does. We don’t need that. You know, we can show up however we want and, and we’re whole. And so that really kind of sent me down this path of like, well, how do I offer this to other women to know that your job isn’t you, your marriage, isn’t you,

you know, your children, aren’t you, I know that’s so hard for some women to Excel, but they’re not, they are a part of your story. And they’re a part of your inner relational sort of view of yourself. But you are this eternal, divine being who is whole and here for a reason and here for a purpose. And, you know, I just think that we decide we are all the roles right outside of us, instead of realizing that the roles are not the truth of who we are. They’re a part of what we do on the earth and how we go about learning, right. Because so much of how we learn is through others and what we do and our failures and our accomplishments, but it’s not really the truth of who we are. And I think that that’s something really important for women to understand, because I think that we get very caught up in our outside identities. Yeah. That’s down a really, really fragile road, right?

Anna (14:10):

Yeah. Definitely a mom, a mom of two right now as well. So I’m like nodding you’re like, so how two and six? Yeah. Two girls. Yeah. Two year old and a six year old. Yeah. So I I’ve gone through this journey myself too, of figuring out, you know, what my purpose is and work. And also as a mom, homeschooling mom now apparently new this year, that’s been a fun pivot. Yeah, definitely. So, so yeah, figuring out my purpose is deaf is something I’m about teaching as well. And we talk a lot about that too. So what, what, how, how does someone, you know, who’s, who’s doing everything for everyone else. How do they take that second to really identify what, what their purpose is, what they should be doing?

Elaine (15:07):

Well, I think that when it comes to purpose and kind of our offering, if you will, I think that number one, it’s not, you know, there’s no guide, right? There’s no three step process, but I think it, if I had to kind of boil it down, I think it it’s really about maybe the idea of doing the inner work and deciding that you want to build some awareness and accountability and really authenticity around who you are, your natural tendency, tendencies, how you show up in the world. We’re all unique. You know, we’re all connected, but we’re not all the same. And I think that’s really important is once you start to realize now, who am I and start to explore that it’s not always easy work, but you start to explore that. Then you can awaken to some of the limiting beliefs and narratives and falses that you’ve attached yourself to, and really start to rewrite and flip that script of, wait a minute.

Elaine (16:00):

Why have I always felt like I was a burden? Or why have I always felt like I wasn’t enough and really start to look at that for what it is and realize number one, so much of that is not our fault. So much as detrimental cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions unrealistic expectations that are put upon us as women. And, and I think a lot of those are, I won’t go too deep into this gets really deep work, but a lot of that is early childhood programming and wins that we kind of attach ourselves to. And then it shows up in a variety of ways as we age. But once you start to look at that stuff and really start to excavate it and deconstruct it, then I think you can kind of get out of your own way and start to really wrap yourself and compassion and start to give yourself that, how do I even describe because grace is so important to me, but it’s just like this, you know, it’s like never ending infinite grace.

Elaine (16:53):

You know, we have to give ourselves grace and start to see, you know, maybe it’s not so much about my resume or my set, you know, I think a lot of women look at their purpose and they think, well, what am I good at? And that’s what my purpose is. Well maybe, maybe you could look at it a different way. Maybe you could say, yeah, I have some super powers. I have some strengths, but really what community am I

the most passionate about serving? I think when I have looked at my life and I have looked at it from that perspective, rather than I’m a good speaker, I’m a good, wider, or I’m good at fashion when I’ve looked at it as who am I here to serve. That’s when I feel like the journey has fallen much more in place for me rather than a technical skillset, right?

Elaine (17:35):

Because you’re going to learn the skills once you know who you want to serve. So if you want to serve the elderly, you might not have a degree in geriatrics, but you know that your passion, you know, that there’s this purpose and reason, then you’re gonna figure out how to serve the right. And for me it’s women, it always has been. And you know, there’s been lots of different vehicles and ways that I’ve wanted to serve women. Now it’s a little different than it was before, before it was through fashion. But you know, once you know who I want to serve, I really think the universe lines up behind you. And I think that that’s, that’s a really, when I talk about purpose and I’ll talk about manifestation, I really like to look at it as coming from that source. You know, who, who am I here to serve and how do I get out of my own way and start?

Elaine (18:22):

Cause I think so much of us we’re so caught in our minds we’re so we convince ourselves that we’re not worthy when in reality, once we can do that in our work and we realize we are worthy, then we can show up from a place of, we can actually be, I think rather than you know, I think so much of life is actually becoming and being who you want to be rather than like saying it or even doing it. You have to show up as the truth of who you are. And I think that’s when your purpose and all of those things start to line up because I think we get muddied. I think we get confused that, you know, well maybe since so- and-so told me I was good at this and then that’s my purpose, but in reality, I think it’s much deeper than that. And I also think purpose can be a really heavy, loaded idea for people. I think people can become really burdened by the idea of what’s my purpose. But I think that if you just go into that place of like, you know, who be, who you were made to be and have faith in the truth of who you are, but you got to do some work along the way, you know? And I think that that’s, that’s key to manifestation and purpose and all of those things. Yeah.

Anna (19:35):

Yeah. And when you focus on who you’re here to serve to it, I feel like it takes the pressure off too. You know, it’s like even us talking here, we’re not nervous cause we know it’s, it’s helping someone, right. It’s serving someone and for, so for me it like takes off the nerves when you can figure out who you’re serving too. And you can just

Elaine (19:53):
So great. I agree. So

Anna (19:56):

The last question I want to ask you, cause you’ve gone through a lot of, you’ve gone through a lot of change and that’s kind of what our audience is kind of going through right now too. How do you, how do you make confident decisions? Like those big decisions you had to make huge, huge ones you had to make? How, how did you know that? How did, how did you make those decisions? Competently?

Elaine (20:16):

You know, I think decisions it’s like we walked through life, making a million decisions a day that we’re not even conscious of. Right. but I think that at the heart of really sort of strong decision making is again having that awareness. There’s this quote I wanted to, cause when I read, I loved your topics, but there’s this quote by Victor Frankel, I’m going to read it to you really quickly. It’s between stimulus and response. There is a space in that space is our power to choose our response and our response lies our growth and our freedom as human beings. So when you go through life and you’re thinking about these decisions, number one is consciousness that, Oh, I’m making a decision right now. Like an example is I got an email today that was really triggering. So I had to make a decision of how I was going to respond to that.

Elaine (21:11):

Right. And I know you might think, well, I’m talking about big, like who should I marry? But really life is just a series of choices. And then we live with the consequences of those choices. So I had to create that space to pull back from that email and know my natural tendencies are, I mean, very emotional. So I tend to process things through my heart. Well, a lot of people don’t a lot of people processings or head or in their body. So I knew that I wasn’t going to react in that moment because it would be like, okay, that hurt my feelings or it might not be received. And it doesn’t mean that I don’t need to be honest and truthful about who I am. I, I should have no shame around that. I’m more of a feeling person, but you also want to communicate that in a way that will be heard and received from whoever you’re communicating to.

Elaine (21:55):

So when I start to think about confident decisions, it’s creating that space of knowing who you are and how you react to things. Right? That’s the first thing is having that. Self-Awareness the next big thing I would say is making sure that you use all parts of yourself when you’re making a decision. So like for me today, I didn’t just make it through my heart. I went to my head and I went into my body, allow yourself to use all parts of yourself. When you decide you’re want to make a really big decision. Like if you’re going to buy a house or if you’re dating someone or whatever it is, don’t just be in reaction mode to what your default mode is like, Oh, I just always, you know, I go into denial or I just don’t really decide that I’m going to process that, be aware of that go, Oh, I’m doing that right now.

Elaine (22:40):

So I’m going to access another part of me or go to that person you love and trust more on the earth. It is different than you, that processes and ask them, say, Hey, look, I’m feeling I’m, you know, like I said, it feeling it this way, or I’m saying, how do you see this for me? You know, someone that you really trust. I really believe in trusted advisors. We always, probably a lot of us have at least one. And then, you know, I’m also kind of basic about decisions. Like I really believe in like writing stuff down like pros and cons and allowing the mind to get logical about it. Cause I know I’m so feeling that I need sometimes to get really tactical and logical about how I’m gonna make decisions. But I guess my big three are self awareness and use all parts of yourself and have a trusted advisor.

Elaine (23:25):

You need someone that has some objectivity. Sometimes we’re all too close to things like for managing people in our house. I know with my daughter, you know, our therapist, she saves us because she’s more objective. She’s not living with Marley. So she helps us in a way that brings objectivity around our situation. So I would say those three things really, you know, and I don’t want to get too woo. I don’t

know a ton about your listeners, but allowing yourself to maybe also get more engaged with your intuition. I’m a really big believer of our intuition and doing practices that allow you the space to access your intuition. And this all takes time. That’s the thing about life is there’s not any quick fixes, right? We all have to do that work. And I think you’re right when you said, but yeah, we’re so busy and we’re also, but then you also say, what choice do I have?

Elaine (24:17):

I have to carve out a certain amount of time for me to show up in this life a more evolved, transformed human cause we’re here to learn. So we can’t just stay in reaction mode. I mean there’s times in our lives where we’re busier than other times you have young kids. So, but there’s also, there’s also still opportunity in those times to give yourself that gift of, of awareness and stillness. There is it’s just has to be done in a very unique way for you. It might be at midnight, you know? So I would say those three things on decisions as your intuition and all those things.

Anna (24:55):
Awesome. So where can our listeners find out more about you Ilene?

Elaine (24:59):

So my website is a good start. I’m Elaine turner.com. I’m very active on Instagram and LinkedIn. So if anybody is interested in you know, taking e-courses from me, I’m in between launches right now, I’m getting ready to launch my discover course again this late this spring. And then I also am doing one-on- one coaching, especially for women leaders. Cause I ran a company for 20 years. So I focus a lot on leadership because I think that that’s a huge opportunity for women in the marketplace is to really empower women to really believe in their leadership qualities. Cause I think we questioned a lot of that, but but yeah, it would be Instagram, LinkedIn and my website.

Anna (25:46):
Awesome. So what is your final words of wisdom to someone who, you know, what do you want to

share with our listeners about being worthy and being leaders right now? Final, final, last thoughts.

Elaine (26:00):

I would say that knowing that regardless of what’s happening outside of you, you’re worthy. And I think we get very caught up in our culture of attaching ourselves to false narratives that really have nothing to do with us that are outside of us, whether that’s meeting other people’s expectations or people pleasing or a cultural idea that we should adhere to. And I also think separating yourself from your successes and your failures and knowing that you’re here for something greater. It’s not just about what happens to you. It’s about knowing who you are within that and knowing that you can become, you can still, you still are the whole eternal, incredible human being within your challenge. You’re not your challenge. Be careful to identify with your challenges and your, your challenges are not your identity. I love that.

Thank you so much for being here and sharing all of your wealth of knowledge and experience with this. I really appreciate you having me. Yes, definitely. Thanks. Okay. Bye.