Episode Summary
How do you stay aligned, abundant, and grounded when life throws challenge after challenge your way?
If you’ve ever wondered how to keep your energy high, your mindset steady, and your ability to create wealth intact, even when everything around you feels uncertain, this episode will open up a perspective you’ve likely never considered. In this conversation with TEDx speaker and abundance coach, Elaine Starling, we explore the surprising truth about how difficult times can actually expand your wealth, fulfillment, and connection
In this episode, you will:
Learn why being “out of alignment” isn’t failure, but the very thing that helps you activate abundance more fully
Discover the divine logic behind life’s challenges — and the mechanism by which frustrating moments lead to expansion
Not just understand but experience how living with grateful curiosity transforms everything — from your business to the way you meet uncertainty, fear, and joy.
Press play to learn how to create real wealth from the inside out—and start thriving no matter what life brings your way.
Episodes Mentioned:
Elaine Starling’s website: https://theabundancejourney.com/
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Each episode from top-ranked women’s business coach Jenna Harrison addresses common pain points like overwhelm, decision fatigue, entrepreneur burnout solutions, and the guilt of stepping back from hustle culture. Jenna shares tools to streamline your business systems, cultivate powerful habits, and delegate with intention—all designed to help you reclaim work-life balance and boost your freedom.
Dive into transformational mindset shifts and energetic alignment that empower you to become the powerful force you were meant to be—creating aligned growth, breakthrough clarity, and unapologetic success. Whether you’re a female entrepreneur building impact, a leader navigating change, a woman founder scaling your organization, or a business coach for women entrepreneurs, The Uncommon Way equips you to design a business and life that reflect your true vision. Leave behind imposter syndrome, overworking, and people pleasing. Embrace clarity, confidence, and unapologetic success.
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Full Episode Transcript:
In this episode, you'll learn how to create money and rethink tough times
using the inner wealth method. Welcome, welcome back to the uncommon way. Oh my,
you know when you meet someone new and you never in a million years expect the conversation to go
that way, but it goes that way? Like maybe you assume you'll talk about the weather and then
you end up just doing it, just diving into the deep end. Well, that's what happened recently
between me and Elaine Starling, who is joining me in just a sec so we can rehash that convo here.
Elaine is a TEDx speaker, a bestselling author, a coach, and a podcast host who helps women
activate abundance in their lives, including wealth. During a near-death experience, she
downloaded some critically important information for everyone living through these tumultuous times,
but also everyone who wants to know how the heck they're supposed to remain high vibe
when everything's going to pop and still create money and abundance and amazing experiences.
So in this episode, you will learn why being out of alignment isn't failure, but the very thing
that helps you activate abundance more fully. You'll discover the divine logic behind life's
challenges and the mechanism by which frustrating moments lead to expansion, and you'll not just
understand, but experience how living with grateful curiosity transforms everything from
your business to the way that you meet uncertainty, fear, and joy. And now, please enjoy this
conversation with Elaine Starling. Welcome to The Uncommon Way, where high-achieving
women entrepreneurs and leaders pitch the rule book and design success on their own terms.
I'm your host, Jenna Harrison, a top-ranked business coach sharing business growth strategies,
mindset mastery, and power hoos to help you attract ideal clients, leverage your unique
genius, and scale with freedom. Let's dive in. Elaine, thank you so much for being here today.
We're really happy you're here. Thank you for having me. It's such an honor and so fun to
play with you in this arena. So Elaine and I met a while back, and we had the most interesting
conversation that I knew I just had to bring on to the show and kind of get this out there and
amplify it. And so we're just going to tease that a little bit, this epiphany that I found so
interesting, and we'll kind of work backwards and talk about how that epiphany came to be
in your life. So please share that story with us. It's so interesting.
Well, I was blessed on New Year's Day 2005 to have a stroke. And I always say blessed because
during my stroke, I got to have a conversation with my higher power, and I got a complete
download about how everything works, why we're alive, how we can live our best life, and what
happens next after this life. It's a graduation. It's not an ending. It's really no big deal.
So it was fascinating because in the middle of this conversation, I'm just asking questions. I'm
having such a good time. And all of a sudden, I call this the divine. The divine asked me a rhetorical
question. They said, okay, everything is love. You are love. The air you're breathing is love.
The chair you're sitting in is love. Everything is love. The god of your understanding is love.
So if everything is already love, how do you expand love? And I was totally stumped.
I have no clue. I kind of hope you know what's going on here.
Well, we decided to create human beings who do not think that everything is love.
That immediately creates duality. Duality gives you friction, the difference between what is
wanted and what is not wanted. And then you have two choices, the superpower of choice. You either
step back in fear, trying to stay safe and control everything, or you step forward with grateful
curiosity and love, not knowing what's coming, just trusting that there are blessings in this
moment coming for you. Every time you step forward with grateful curiosity and love,
you expand love. You expand the divine. You expand the god of your understanding. You expand all that
is. This is the rock star place to be. You have been physical many times in the past. You will be
physical many times in the future because this is how the god of your understanding grows and expands.
And be really clear here. We don't want you to be aligned all the time in perfect divine alignment.
Sure, that's the goal. Get to divine alignment. Get to unconditional love on a more consistent
basis. And we expect you to be human. In fact, we pull all kinds of shenanigans to knock you
off center and tick you off and confuse you and make you exasperated and overwhelmed and irritated
so that you will go, oh, whoops, I'm out of alignment. And then use your tools and practices
to get back into alignment. It's the being out and coming back in that grows the divine, that grows
the god of your understanding. Yeah, yeah. Elaine's making a little head explosion motion here.
Yeah, I loved when you were telling me this story because, first of all, I remember you saying that
your near-death experience was not what we read about, right? Where you just saw this light and
you were carried into the, no, it was really a conversation where they were like, good, we got
you, Elaine, quickly. Are you paying attention here? Yeah, are you paying attention? We got a
lot to share. So I just loved that. And also, I love that at this exact moment in time, there is
a lot of confusion with people. There's a lot of density and that could be anything from the big,
big macro elements, like first we have COVID and then we're having rising fascism. But it can also
be those micro moments. And for a lot of us women, those micro moments can feel even more
frustrating. Like we can handle the big stuff sometimes, but these things that happen where
you're like, again, really? Now this or now this little obstacle is popping up. And I thought this
was such a beautiful way to think about these experiences that we all have as humans, but these
are opportunities for us to grow love, to re understand again and again that we get to love.
Yeah. And one of the key distinctions that I found really useful, the divine download I received,
your vibration is the vibration of love. Now you're just like a guitar string and you know,
they have those tuning pegs on a guitar string. Those tuning pegs are your relationships and your
experiences. And what they're doing is they're tuning you into resonance with unconditional love
because you are love. You are not always unconditional love. So you're being coaxed,
cajoled, urged, encouraged, kicked to get to this space of unconditional love. And it's really funny.
I don't know if you ever experienced this when you were a kid, but when I was a little kid in
grade school, every once in a while they'd come on the loudspeaker and there'd be this.
This is a test. This is only a test of the emergency broadcasting system.
And so now every time I notice something that's kind of irritating, it could be I see something
in the news and I'm thinking whatever it is, I immediately get the sensation. This is a test.
This is only a test of the divine alignment system. Are you maintaining your inner alignment?
Please return to grateful curiosity and unconditional love right now. Cool. Thank you
for the reminder. And you know, gamify it. It is not, you can't do anything wrong, okay? You get
frustrated, you get irritated. And then especially women, we beat ourselves up.
Man, I shouldn't have done that. I can't believe. Oh, I was. Yes. You're human and it's perfectly
fine for you to be human. The divine loves it when you're human because hey, you're out of
alignment temporarily. No biggie, honey. Just take the time to get back into alignment and that will
really help us out. Oh, that is so good. Yes. I always, I absolutely agree that any kind of
obstacle that comes our way, I usually say it's an invitation to clarity, right? So it's allowing us
to get more clear on what are our values? What do we want? Who are we really? What are we bringing
into the world? And that these are, like you said about your stroke being a blessing in hindsight,
these so often are just blessings where you can look back and say, thank goodness that
thing happened. You know, thank goodness that client walked away and quit. And it got me so
frustrated. And I vowed that, you know, I was going to revamp my program or I was going to bring in
a different type of client or right. It moved me closer to my understanding of the value of
what I'm offering. I mean, these things are priceless. They're priceless. And they just
help us clarify. And the more and the clearer and clearer we get, I like to think of it as
Jedi energy, right? It's like when you become, when you just focus in and you are Jedi, right?
There's no room for second guessing. There's no room for, you know, exactly what you're about
and what you're doing. That space is just beautiful evolution. And I think that this is like a
more, you know, worldly interpretation of what you're talking about. Yeah. Where you're talking
about unconditional love. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And learning how you love to express yourself.
Yeah. You know, and sharing your gifts. And one of the greatest challenges we have
as human beings, we love to make things complicated. We'd like to see all the details.
We'd like to really dig in and, you know, play in the mud puddles, right? Soaking up all the stuff,
the texture, the nuance, right? And our clients want clarity. Yes. Showing from
details and you really understanding the details to be able to simplify and communicate things
clearly and easily so they can experience it. That is huge. That's when you learn the most is
when you teach because you get to incorporate it more fully. And one of the things that I've
discovered recently read a great book called The Expanded Mind. It turns out that you think with
your entire body and your hands when you use hand gestures. I'm teaching myself to use hand
gestures a lot more. When you use your hands, your body figures it out before your brain does.
I know it's weird. And I heard something recently that was just mind bending to me.
And it's really, really powerful. Your body is your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind
is listening to absolutely everything that you say. So how often are you complimenting it? How
often are you thanking it? How often are you praising your body? How often are you directing
your body in how you choose for it to express itself? Nice. Yes. Because the energy needs to
be given direction. Yes. Yes. And also our nervous system really sets our ceiling.
There's only so far we can go with our subconscious mind, which is our body reacting to fears and
potential threats. When we haven't allowed ourselves to grow the capacity, then there's only so far we
can grow in terms of our business or our life. Very true. Very true. I have the vision of a
teeter totter where there are extreme things happening and you're out on the edges of the
teeter totter and you really feel those massive swings. Well, the more regulated you are, the
closer you are to the center, to the fulcrum. Well, you notice it going up and down, but it's
not a big deal. It kind of makes things interesting. I love that analogy. Oh, such a good visual.
I love that. Okay. So tell me about how money is a by-product of a life well-lived.
This is one of your quotes. So I love that so much. Tell me about that. Yeah. You know,
it's really interesting. A lot of people are super focused on the external world. You know,
how much do I have and how much money is coming in? What do I have to do to get it? What do I
have to do to get it? It's all about the do, the do-do, right? And it's so easy to get trapped in
piles of do-do. And it turns out that we create our external world through our inner world.
It's who we are being that determines what we do. For example, I think her name is Carol Dweck,
and she wrote a book talking about the power of a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset.
Well, your mindset is internal. It's what you're saying to yourself, like me telling myself,
oh, this is just a test from the divine. Am I aligned or not? Hey, they're just trying to
get my awareness. No biggie, right? Yes. That is what builds everything. So it's really interesting.
I will talk to someone before they become a client. And usually they say, okay, I want the revenue.
Show me the money. You know, yesterday would be great. I want the money, revenue, revenue, revenue.
Then they talk about, well, then my reputation is going to be made. You know, once the money's
coming in, I'm going to be known far and wide. This is awesome. And ultimately, I'll get to have
great relationships with people I've admired for years, me and Oprah, BFFs. And then I push them.
I'm like, well, what else would you like? What else would be great? What else would really
inspire you and make you happy? And they really have to think about it. But finally, they say,
you know, I just wish someday I haven't earned it yet, but someday I'll be able to create
incredibly rewarding experiences just by being who I am. Just making a difference with my skills,
my gifts, my talents, loving who I am. And I know even nanoseconds of that would be so amazing.
Well, the ironic thing is everything you want starts with your rewarding experience.
And it begins inside you and what you create and then project into the relationship that you have.
And people want a relationship with you because you create a rewarding experience for them.
And you control your standards. You don't control your reputation.
Your relationships will tell everybody who you are being for them. And when those three things are
there, your rewarding experience, your relationships and your reputation, the revenue is a byproduct,
an unavoidable byproduct, because money is the energy of gratitude. Money is the energy of
gratitude. So share your rewarding experience. Share your gifts. Love who you get to be in the
world. That is the most powerful contribution you can make. Love that. I feel like I should have
set this up beforehand by asking, how do women create wealth in the world? And then you would
have got into this as the answer, right? Because this is the byproduct of all of their being.
Yes. Yes. So good. And another term you've used that I love is inner wealth. So just talk a little
bit about that as well. Inner wealth is being really comfortable and enjoying who you are,
enjoying the journey. I say the most powerful state you can be in is the state of grateful
curiosity. Because then you're engaged.
That's really said that on this. Yes, already. I've been picking up on that.
I love grateful curiosity because you're engaged. You lean in. You don't know what's coming,
and that's fine. It's like you just walked into the movie. You know you love these actors. You
know they're going to do a great job. The writers are fabulous. You don't know what's going to happen.
Who cares? It's going to be a blast. You're there with grateful curiosity to witness all
the blessings that are coming in. And when you have that inner knowing, and I love this
understanding that you are love and all of the relationships, all of the experiences you have
are tuning you so that you're resonating with unconditional love. That's all that's happening.
You're just being tuned a little bit. It's not even a radical adjustment. It's just a tiny little
shift, and it makes all the difference in the world. Because when you show up from this space,
from this orientation, from this way of being, then what happens in your outer world becomes
truly magical. It really does. Anybody who looked at my life would go, holy cow, what is she doing?
And it's not really about what I'm doing. It's about who I am being, and that beingness creates
a rewarding experience that is so magnetic and so compelling and so beneficial for my relationships
that it builds the reputation and the revenues unavoidable. So that's the inner wealth. That's
coming from the inner wealth to enjoy the outer wealth as well. I have a story about grateful
curiosity that I have to share because this was a departure for me, but I leaned into it,
and I can attest, so I'm going to just bear witness here. So my son loves roller coasters.
He just turned eight, and if he wears his little sketchers that have like a little inch and a half
lift on them, he is tall enough to be able to ride the biggest, scariest roller coasters now.
He's very tall. So he was off this week, so we took him to this amusement park that has some of
the tallest, scariest roller coasters in Europe. And so because of this, I end up on going on
roller coasters that normally I would not go on. I have a terrible fear of heights. I don't like
those drops, but what I will do are the ones that accelerate quickly or that do loop-de-loops,
but I normally wouldn't go visit amusement parks on my own because I wanted to ride roller coasters.
But in this experience when we got on the scariest roller coaster that I was going to ride that day
and I was sitting next to him and we were taking off and we were doing these twists and loop-de-loops,
in that moment I was thinking, first of all, it was a gorgeous, gorgeous day. It couldn't be more
perfect, but I thought, this is amazing, this engineering. And look at us purposely creating
thrills for ourselves, whereas usually in life we would avoid these. But we're going, we're leaning
into the fear and the not knowing and the uncertainty. And as I was literally upside down,
I was thinking, what an amazing life we lead, where humans can build these amazing feats of
engineering and contraptions. And here I can be upside down on a beautiful fall day with my son
next to me, literally like rushing through the air and then flipping the other way and then
flipping back. I thought, life is amazing. And I had no idea what was going to come next, if it
would be a twist or a loop or a quick bend. But wow, I was starting to get it why people like
roller coasters. And I just couldn't help thinking, imagine if we could allow this in our lives all the
time, right? Live that fully, lean in that fully all the time. That is so beautiful because what
you're really talking about is you leverage the power of presence. You were fully present in the
moment for yourself and for your son. And when you do that, you create these incredible memories
together. The magic happens when you can get yourself present. So I teach my clients the
five powers of abundance and presence is the foundational power. If you don't have presence,
you don't get the other four. So really being willing to be fully present in the moment,
realize that unconditional divine love is in everything. And you are on a scavenger hunt.
You get to find where it's hiding, right? You can have fun exploring and discovering and your
ability to tap in. Wow, the science behind this is freaking awesome. Yes. Yes. And there's that.
Oh, so good. All right. Well, I think this is a perfect way to segue into where people can
find you because of course they want to know the other four P's and they could come hang out with
you more in order to learn more about them. So please let everyone know where they can find you.
Absolutely. Well, please visit my website, theabundancejourney.com. And my show is a
podcast and a video show on YouTube. It's also called the abundance journey. So come and visit
because you are connected. You don't realize this yet, but your energy is connected with mine and
with Jenna's permanently just because you heard this, because you felt our vibration. And we were
sending you love and blessings throughout this entire conversation, helping you increase your
resonance with your life so that you fall in love with life and with yourself again.
Oh, I love it, Elaine. It is such a joy talking to you always. Thank you so much for coming on,
sharing some of your light. I know I can personally recommend her podcast. It's just such a lift,
just like it is listening to her talk. It's so fun. Elaine, thank you for being here.
Thank you for having me, Jenna.