by Elisabeth Donati | May 17, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
Have you ever been sound asleep in the middle of the night having a pleasant dream and been rudely woken up by a dog barking nearby?
And then… just as you’re getting back to sleep, the dog barks again? And again? And it feels like the dog is never going to stop?
Financial Dogs
When this happens to me I go through my options…
- I can try earplugs…but past experience tells me they don’t work because I still KNOW the dog is barking so I continue to hear the barking through the earplugs.
- I can put on my earphones and listen to my iPod to drown it out as much as possible.
- I can lay there and fume.
- I can get out of bed, put on some sweats and go searching for the culprit and try and remedy the situation myself.
I am going to use this example to draw a metaphorical connection to money and our financial situations.
Financial Reactions:
I’ve talked about reacting versus responding in an earlier article. To recap… the way we ‘react’ to certain financial “events” is always related to our core money beliefs and what we make money mean about ourselves, our lives, our families, and life in general. Our reactions also have a lot to do with what we believe should be or shouldn’t be – in terms of money and wealth. Responding is essentially a thoughtful, or conscious, reaction.
Using the dog barking scenario as a metaphor, we can respond to a financial event in these ways:
- Try to ignore it completely. (This seldom works because it always resurfaces, usually bigger and worse.)
- Try to cover it up with false ideas of what’s happening in our financial lives. We can gloss it over, make it seem all shiny and fine but underneath it all, our financial situation still needs our attention.
- We can whine that it should be a different way, get mad because no one ever taught us about money and investing and basically be financial victims for the rest of our lives.
- Or, we can just get up and do something TODAY to change and improve the situation once and for all.
Now whether the metaphorical dog stops barking is another question. You may, you may not. Sometimes there are simply things out of our control. This is where our concept of ‘ultimate financial freedom’ comes into play and we’ll continue exploring this idea in the future. The point is that you CAN learn to make these uncontrollable things mean nothing at all.
Here’s an all too common example…
Let’s say you have spent the past 10 years spending more money than you have coming in and wake up in the middle of night to $40,000 of debt (aka “very loud barking dog”). You finally realize that you can’t handle the debt anymore, you can’t pay it off, you’re not making enough money to even pay the minimum payments and you lay awake at night listening to the dogs barking…perhaps even imagining them coming into the house and biting you to death.
But the fact is they can’t bite anymore. There IS no such thing as debtor’s prison and as wrong as all of those decisions you made were to spend money you didn’t have, you can’t change the past.
You CAN, however, change the present and the future by CHOOSING to do money differently right now. AND you can CHOOSE not to make the fact that you have learned a valuable lesson this way mean you’re a bad person or a stupid person or anything else for that matter. You just took a while to learn the lesson. Period.
If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always gotten.
The question becomes…what are you going to do differently from this day forward? There are simple answers to this question:
- Choose to do money differently from now on.
- Make decisions based on a plan, aka, a budget.
- Make decisions based on how you want your future self to live. You DO know you have an older version of yourself living inside of you waiting for you to make the right best decision today, I hope.
- Get help reframing what your mistakes and current financial situation mean (i.e., it only means you didn’t have the tools you needed at the time).
- Learn why you made the choices you made in the first place and learn how to make new ones now and in the future. A great book to read and program to attend is “Secrets of the Millionaire Mind” and Peak Potentials “Millionaire Mind Intensive“. I require all of my coaching clients to read the book and attend the program if it’s in their area.
- Consider hiring a financial coach…and I don’t mean financial planner or advisor, although they are an incredibly valuable player in your financial team. I mean a financial ‘coach’. Someone who can help you discover the financial belief system that was driving your old self and help you craft a new belief system that will take you where you want to go now instead.
- Practice, practice, practice breathing through this new shape until it feels like somewhere you can live.
The Anticipating Factor
Let’s go back to the dog barking in the middle of the night to explore further…
So there you are…laying in bed on night five after being woken up by the dog down the street the four previous nights. You’ve gotten up twice, put on your sweats, wondered down the street and asked the owner to quiet their pooch. The situation? It’s quiet. Dead quiet.
You lay there not being able to fall asleep because you’re waiting for the dog to start barking…again. But it doesn’t. The quiet remains. And still, you can’t fall asleep.
Why? Because your past experiences create anticipatory reactions in your body. You actually lay there EXPECTING the dog to start barking.
Comparing that to our financial lives, we often spend our days ANTICIPATING ‘the other shoe to drop’ as is often said. Even when things ‘seem’ to be going well, we just know it can’t be this good. Things can’t be all better. The situation is bound to get screwed up AGAIN. Right?
But it doesn’t have to be this way!
How to change your anticipatory response
If you Google “Anticipatory Response”, you’ll find a myriad of articles on ‘physical’ pain. But what about the emotional pain our anticipatory responses bring about? They are equally as painful and can be just as challenging to change as physical anticipatory responses.
So here’s the simple way stop expecting the dog to bark…
- Focus on something else when you realize you’re anticipating the dog to start barking.
- Know that this anticipation is all based on the past…not the present or the future.
- Continue to focus on something else until you relax and fall asleep.
- Repeat as necessary.
I know, I know…this is often easier said than done but the fact is…it IS a simple process. No one said it was easy. Learning the process is well worth the effort, I promise you!
Next time the dog barks in your financial neighborhood, how will you react? Will you be the victim or take charge and do something about it? Will you let it control the rest of your life or will you choose to learn from it, let it go and live in the peace and quiet of wise financial decisions in the future?
And finally, if another dog DOES bark in the future, will you be able to smile at it, knowing it’s just a temporary disturbance that you don’t have to react to at all?
by Elisabeth Donati | May 11, 2010 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Media Attention, Uncategorized
So, here we are, a financial education company who’s mission it is to teach basic, but immensely critical, financial principles to kids, teens and adults, primarily focusing on women.
We send out emails and such about our programs and most of them contain the words ‘wealth’ or ‘money’ or ‘financial’ and you know what? A lot of what we send out ends up in people’s spam folders.
Search Engines Hate Money
Why? Because regular people who have poor financial beliefs and think that emails shouldn’t contain anything to do with MONEY, have decided FOR US, the general public, that we don’t have enough sense or ability to filter our own emails.
One of the aspects of money that Creative Wealth teaches is how our core money beliefs, our financial foundation as I call it, dictate our wealth potential. If you think that money is bad in any way, shape or form, you do whatever it takes, usually subconsciously, to get rid of it.
Our societal financial beliefs are one of the most amazing things I have ever studied and wondered about in my life. They are reflected back to us in almost everything we do and the fact that we, as a company, can’t even send out legitimate emails about our financial education programs just shows you how pervasive the belief that if it has anything to do with money or wealth, it must be a bad thing.
Just a little something to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | May 10, 2010 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Uncategorized
Most people probably don’t know that my educational background, and first love, is health, fitness and nutrition. I delight in using the knowledge that I know to create an environment INSIDE of my skin that provides me with the most optimum living experience I can create.
My fitness background includes the usual aspects: aerobics, weights and stretching. I taught all of these activities in my ‘former’ life, but when I started skipping down the path of “financial literacy for kids”, I bowed out of the physical fitness industry in favor of financial fitness. I turned my focus to better equipping kids and teens to handle their money.
As I have traveled along this path, I discovered the beauty of another ‘fitness’ activity that not only reconnected me to my first love but has provided me with invaluable financial lessons in the process. The activity is yoga.
With the introduction of yoga into my life, and in particular, a class I take here in Santa Barbara with Eddi Ellner of Yoga Soup, my eyes have opened wider to the financial metaphors available to us through the practice of yoga.
Let me explain…
Yoga is referred to as a practice because there IS no getting it RIGHT (because there IS no right). Yoga practice has us remember to breathe into all things…essentially all of the beautiful shapes our bodies can rest or move into and out of.
With yoga, you are constantly adjusting yourself…again, not because there is any RIGHT to adjust into but more the experience of being in the moment; breathing, moving your should blades slightly down, breathing, shifting the weight onto the outside of your foot, breathing…you get the picture. And all the while you’re noticing things that you might not have noticed if you hadn’t slowed down to concentrate on breathing and making adjustments.
FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENTS
During my foray into financial education and coaching over the years, what I notice most when working with adults, is their money habits…the habits they do and the habits they don’t do.
I remember hearing this wonderful distinction at one of Peak Potential’s great seminars. Harv Eker told us we have two types of habits…habits we do and habits we don’t do and that we’re in the habit of not doing the habits that might actually move us forward financially.
Let’s explore the idea of financial adjustments to see how they relate to our often unsupportive and unguided financial habits. Here’s what I want you to do…
The Latte Factor
Identify a habit that you normally do with money. This could be a physical behavior habit like spending money on coffee every morning (that you could have made at home a lot cheaper) or a limiting thought habit thinking you’ll never have more than enough money to live on. Whatever it is, see if you can imagine yourself in that habit. Feel what you feel in the midst of it. Identify the thoughts that go with it.
Next, take a few deep breaths and consider how you might ‘adjust’ this physical behavior or thought habit to better serve you. If this exercise is becoming a little confusing, stay with me anyway. I’ll walk you through the examples.
BEHAVIOR ADJUSTMENT
Let’s say you adjust the number of days you buy coffee from every morning to three times a week. At $3 a shot (no pun intended), you went from spending $60 a month on coffee to $36 a month…you save $24 a month.
Now, for people who haven’t learned how to look at the time value of money, $24 may not seem like a lot of moolah. But that’s $288 per year! If you invested that $24 a month for 30 years at even a measly interest rate/return of 5%, you’d have $19,974.21 in your financial cup instead of nothing which is what you’ll have if you keep buying coffee every day.
Imagine if eventually you adjusted to two days a week and then one day a week as a treat. Imagine the money you’d have by investing that money instead.
Financial Thoughts
THOUGHT ADJUSTMENT
Now let’s look at how to adjust that unsupportive thought you are in the habit of thinking…the one that convinces you daily (perhaps even hourly) that you’ll never be able to really have the money you want for yourself (or whatever your particular thought habit is).
The thing that would be helpful, once you’ve put yourself into that head space, is to inquire into where and when you first started thinking that thought. I promise you it’s not YOUR original thought so just know that it came from someone else or something that happened to you earlier in life that you misinterpreted.
If you can nail down exactly where it came from, great. If you can’t, no biggy. You can still adjust this thought and here’s how:
First, state the thought out loud.
Next, write it down.
Now, write the positive version of it. In this case, I have more than enough money to live on.
Next, turn that positive statement into a question like this: “WHY do I have more than enough money to live on?” This is called an AFFORMATION and is a question form of an affirmation that many people are already familiar with. This process was created by dear friend, Noah St. John. Click here to learn all about this powerful form of mind transformation and manifestation.
Finally, write this question down, print it on sticky notes and put it in several places around your home and ask yourself this question as often as possible.
End Result: You slowly move from habitually having a nonsupportive thought to habitually having an empowering thought which, by the way, often brings you the very thing you were blocking out in the first place. Try it!
When you begin to see how making small adjustments in your financial habits have a huge impact on the direction you’re traveling and where you end up, you can begin to look for possible adjustments in everything you do.
Financial Adjustments
THE MOST TRICKY FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENT
For most people, the most challenging adjustment to make concerns a core belief and that’s the belief that there’s actually something we must do, be, have or go to ‘in order to’ be happy, successful, rich, free, loved, etc. ad nauseum.
The whole point of yoga (or so it seems) is to learn to love and accept what is. Be in the here and now and make it all OK. Just as the Buddha taught that peace is in the now and that nonattachment is what relieved humans from suffering, practicing the ability to let your financial situation be perfectly OK where it is AND with each adjustment you make in the future, is the ultimate financial adjustment.
FINANCIAL ADJUSTMENT AND CHIROPRACTIC
You might be asking yourself why I didn’t relate financial adjustments to chiropractic adjustments. This is why…
Chiropractic adjustments, for the most part, are forced on you by someone else that you’ve empowered to be the expert over your body. What I’M talking about are adjustments that start on the inside, initiated by YOUR wants and desires to be in a different financial situation, do more than you’re currently doing financially, have more experiences in life that require money and create life the way you dream it can be.
By looking at the millions upon millions of possible financial adjustments that can positively support your life, AND breathing into and loving exactly what is right now, you take control over your experience of life. And as I am prone to saying, THIS is what financial freedom is all about!
For more information on teaching your children and yourself about money, please visit our website at www.innerwealthpublishing.com.
by Elisabeth Donati | May 6, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
I’ve always considered reacting and responding as two different types of behavior relative to an outside stimulus. This week I’ve been thinking about the differences within a new paradigm…money, of course!
The definition of ‘react’ is to act in response to something, and doesn’t have anything to do with whether the ‘acting’ part is positive or negative; it can be reciprocal, in a reverse direction or manner, in opposition, or in agreement to the stimulus in question.
The definition of ‘respond’ has to do with reacting favorably, or more slowly, to a stimulus which is asking or needing a reaction from you.
If I can make this simple: Reactions are quick, almost instinctual actions to stimuli. Responses are more deliberate, controlled and, I might even add, peaceful.
The Catalyst: My Visit With Mom
The reason I’ve been exploring reacting vs. responding this week is that I have just spent the past two weeks tending to my mother who got very sick and ended up in the ICU for more than a week and, as always, I search for metaphor and comparison between all things and money.
When I visit her, I always notice that she has a tendency to ‘react’ to things in her environment: news in the paper or on TV, comments from friends, little things that happen during her days. It’s not her reactions to these things that I notice most; it’s how I feel, and what I think, when she’s doing the reacting.
What I notice is that my general peaceful demeanor is disturbed; her stark reactions catch me off guard as she swears at a news anchor’s opinion, disagrees vehemently with an article about immigration or expresses herself in any number of ways that begin with, “Oh ____!”.
I notice that, as the days go by, I become less tolerant of her reactions and become more passive in my stance toward the things she is reacting to. I don’t do this to be contrary…I rarely even verbalize what I’m thinking…I simply choose to take a more peaceful position as it better serves my spirit.
When I first arrive, I react poorly to her reactions because they’re fresh and new (again) and as the days go by, though I am less tolerant OF her reactions, I don’t react so much as choose no reaction. In other words, I remember I can choose to respond with no reaction at all. (Though, in truth, less tolerance is a reaction of sorts…it’s an ongoing inquiry for me:-)
OK, let’s explore what the concepts of reacting and responding have to do with money and the financial situations we find ourselves in.
Financial Reactions
Reacting to Money
Our financial reactions greatly affect what we do with our money. We can learn volumes about our financial thoughts, beliefs and attitudes by noticing our reactions.
Once you become aware of the reactions you experience on a regular basis, you’ll be able to take a normally stressful financial situation and transform it into an event that you need simply to respond to. As you’ll see, when you respond to money matters from a non-emotional place, you’ll begin to experience TRUE financial freedom in your life.
When we can change a reaction into a chosen response, it means that we’re in control again and that’s when we start to feel better about ourselves and our lives.
Where To Begin?
The first thing to recognize is the energetic difference in your body (specifically your nervous system) between when you’re reacting and when you’re responding. The former is what most of us could label as a knee-jerk reaction. Something happens and we instantaneously ‘do’ something…and it’s that something we do that we need to become aware of. Responding, however, has a more peaceful energy to it. It usually involves breathing!
The next step is to recognize the emotions that accompany the reactions you’re having around money.
Here are two question you can ask yourself:
- Do I regularly get upset when a negative financial event happens in my life? Do I get mad, swear out loud or at others, hit something, eat or drink something unhealthy, lose myself in TV or in some other way, attempt to escape the situation?
- On the flip side, do I get excited when a positive financial event happens? Do I feel ‘up’, talk fast, feel happy and excited, spend money in order to celebrate the event?
You’ll want to look next at what happens AFTER you experience the initial reaction (whether upset or excited). Do you experience a let down of sorts? When we experience anger or excitement about a situation, it often dissipates quickly and we can find ourselves in an emotional state that many describe as ‘being in limbo’…you’re not really sure where to go or what to feel at this point. One thing is for sure, however, most people in this position feel completely OUT OF CONTROL at this point.
With money, we tend to react instead of respond to our situations because no one ever taught us that the everyday roller coaster ride is actually pretty normal.
MONEY would find this ride inconsequential, perhaps even a bit amusing if we asked it, and doesn’t care a hoot about whether its intrinsic value is up or down. But WE make it mean all kinds of things about ourselves and our lives and, hence, have many opportunities to react to those meanings.
And this is where our financial problems begin and herein, also, lies the major key to making a massive change in your financial situation so you can experience true financial freedom. You MUST (and I mean MUST) change the way you ‘see’ money in your life in order to morph your reactions into controlled responses. Let’s explore some ways to do just that.
Transforming Reaction to Responding: What You Can Do Instead
Once you begin to notice your reactions to all things financial, you begin to have the power to craft more supportive, premeditated responses which will help you change the way you ‘do’ money. The following steps will help you improve your financial situation and bring you more peace of mind than you had ever imagined money could.
Step One: Notice which particular financial situations you react to the most. If you react to almost everything related to money, start with something small. Examples of events that might trigger a reaction:
- someone doesn’t pay you what they owe you when they are supposed to.
- your hours are cut at work.
- a client cancels a job.
- a check that someone gave you bounces which causes your account to be overdrawn.
- your interest rate on your credit card goes up.
- your car breaks down or needs new tires.
- you son loses the new $75 soccer shoes you just bought him.
- your daughter calls home (or emails) from college saying she has two cavities.
- the price of your favorite coffee drink goes up 25 cents.
- the white shirt you wear with several of your favorite outfits gets a big stain on it.
You get the picture…
Step Two: Know that you are NOT the only one that these things happen to.
Step Three: Reframe Step Two as follows…
“Things don’t happen TO you, they just happen. How you RESPOND to them is based on who you’re choosing to be in the moment.”
Step Four: Notice your ‘reaction’ to one of these events. Write down exactly how you’re feeling about the event IN YOUR BODY. In other words, use phrases like this, “My breath gets shorts, I can’t take in a deep breath, my temperature goes up, I feel my heart racing, I get a headache, I get nervous and shaky.” Resist labeling the reaction as much as you can.
Step Five: Ask yourself what you were thinking right after the ‘event’ and right before the ‘reaction’. Write that down next. It could be something as simple as “Oh, jeesh, it’s just one more thing I have to deal with and I already have too much on my plate” to “Oh no, that’s going to cost me everything I have in my savings. NOW what am I going to do?”
Step Six: Once you write down what you were thinking, take a breath. Take several breaths actually because this next step can be taxing on the ole’ noggin. You must, at this point, begin a deeper inquiry by asking yourself this next question: “What do I believe about money, wealth, finances, myself, others or the world that caused me to react this way?”
I’ll tell you right now…this part is SOOO worth the brain and heart time I can’t begin to express it to you! You MUST do this step or nothing will change. NOTHING! It can’t.
Until you discover, uncover, unearth the belief (foundation) beneath the thought which is beneath the feeling which is beneath the reaction, you will continue reacting and continue to get what you’ve gotten to this point.
Note: This step can take some time, or the answer can come quickly. And sometimes the initial answer isn’t really the answer. You have to be willing to go deep on this on. Think of it as a ladder of inquiry that goes DOWN instead of UP.
Step Seven: Once you have the answer to Step Six, the fun begins. YOU now get to design and craft a new belief that serves you instead of wreaks havoc in your life. YOU get to choose and this is where it gets exciting!
Take the new belief and craft a new thought around it. Play with the thought. How does this new thought make you FEEL? When it makes you feel good instead of bad, take the next step back UP the ladder. With this new belief and new thought and new positive feeling, how will you CHOOSE to respond now to this financial event?
Wow, now you’re getting somewhere.
OK, I’m going to be Jan for a minute and ask you to GET REAL here. You KNOW this is going to take some energy. You know this may take more self-inquiry than you’ve ever done before or have ever been willing to do.
The keys to transforming your financial reactions into supportive financial responses is right here…being served to you in a simple, straightforward, easy to understand, step-by-step process.
The big question…the biggest question is “Will you do it?”
If peace of mind is worth enough to you, you will. If not, you won’t.
Now THAT’S something to think about!
by Elisabeth Donati | Apr 29, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
Positive thinking, powerful prayer, and raising your vibration. Is this how you’re going to create financial security? Without getting real with your money, none of this will make a difference. No zero’s will be added to your bank balance.
Until you acknowledge and accept where you are and where your money is, all of the positive thought in the world has no place to land. Without a foundation of reality, all you’re living on, really, is a lottery mentality. You’re waiting for fate to deliver a miracle, a magic spell, an inheritance without anyone you love having to die. Am I being harsh? You bet I am.
Are Your Finances Sad?
Getting real often takes a shoulder shaking, attention-getting event…or hitting rock bottom. I’m here to get you into reality BEFORE tragedy has to strike to get you to look at your financial situation. And, if you’ve already hit bottom or are in the midst of a crisis that is impacting your financial well-being, then you already know that it’s time to change course.
Question: How long are you willing to live on hope?
Most women (and men) avoid, hide, or pretend to be something they’re not when it comes to money. We either have too much or too little. We don’t want to be judged based on our financial status and yet we keep defining ourselves that way.
We hide what we make and we hide what we don’t make. We avoid conversations (and sometimes entire relationships) based on our discomfort around money. Often times, we avoid the conversation with those we love most. And if you don’t think this has an impact on your availability for intimacy, it’s only a matter of time before you find out you’re wrong.
Again. I know I’m being harsh. That’s because I want THIS TO BE YOUR WAKE UP CALL.
How long will you operate at diminished power? How long will you wait to live a full life…to experience the things money buys? Another month? A year? Five? Ten? How much time do you have for this charade? Seriously.
We’re in the business of shining a light on your darkest, most vulnerable places and MONEY will almost always lead us there.
I’m not talking to you from some high horse, you have to know. I’ve been there. I’ve lived many years with only half of me available for relationship. I know how exhausting it can be to make up for the part of you that’s not there. I’ve lived in avoidance, shame, guilt, delusion, hope, prayer, unworthiness, depression, fear, fog, paralysis… you name it.
It wasn’t until I looked in the mirror and, yes, GOT REAL with money that I started to find my financial footing, my solid ground, my creative self, and my inherent resourcefulness.
The good news? EVERYONE can find financial freedom by getting real.
Don’t think about it anymore. Just call for your personal assessment today.
(You can contact Jan directly at jan@innerwealthpublishing.com for more information about “Getting Real With Your Finances”.)
by Elisabeth Donati | Apr 21, 2010 | Latest News, Uncategorized
Most of us define Financial Freedom as follows…
“Financial freedom is when you have more money coming in each month passively (i.e., you’re not trading much of your time and energy for it) than you have going out in expenses each month.”
Makes sense, huh? I bought into this definition for a long time. Until…
I started thinking deeper about my financial beliefs. Even though I’ve been teaching financial literacy to kids, teens and adults for years, I constantly examine my own financial thoughts, beliefs and attitudes about the green stuff we use each day.
My subconscious has hinted several times that there was a separate, deeper meaning to the phrase but it hadn’t quite gelled yet…until this morning…and I’m not even sure what sparked the re-evaluation of it.
Financial Zen
The contemplation of financial freedom went something like this…
What if the ‘freedom’ part is really about freeing ourselves from the the grip we allow money to have on our lives?
What if financial freedom is really a state we can choose at any time…regardless of our current financial situation?
I’ve contemplated this before…called it Financial Yoga.
I now truly believe that ‘financial freedom’ is a place where we can choose to live, regardless of what is happening in our lives financially. And I’ve visited this place quite often over the past several months because I have had to ‘let go’ (in so many ways) of all of my real estate investments. Thankfully, visiting this place has enabled me to be peaceful during this process.
I simply chose to NOT make ‘the situation’ about ME. And now that I’ve graduated from this expensive real estate course, I’m grateful to have been able to find ‘freedom’ during the process.
No, it’s not as easy as it sounds AND yet it IS. You just have to decide what’s more important to you: the peace of mind you can have from reframing the meaning of money in your life or the stress you choose to feel because of whatever financial situation you’ve put yourself in in the first place.
If you have children, you can begin to insert this new paradigm of financial freedom into their little sponge-like psyches at an early age. First, by setting the example of living in this paradigm yourself (always the first step) and, second, by having conversations about the concept of ‘freedom’ with your children, even before you think they are able to understand it. (It’s never too early.)
Wouldn’t it be great if we all grew up with a sense of peace and calm about The Money Game so that, as adults, money didn’t define who we are? We could just learn the rules and win the game. I can only imagine what a different society we’d live in.
Just something to think about…
