by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 22, 2011 | Media Attention, Uncategorized
I once heard Harv Eker, the author of Secrets of The Millionaire Mind, say during his Millionaire Mind Intensive…
“We have two kinds of habits…habits we DO and habits we DON’T do.” Simply said, you’re either in the habit of doing something or in the habit of NOT doing something.
This is important to contemplate when you’re assesing your current financial situation and looking for a change… a change in behavior OR in your bank account!
The thing about habits is that they are tricky little ‘buggers’. They manifest quicker than we can track and, if they are ‘thought’ habits, they can be quite illusive – so much so that it sometimes takes a great money coach to help you discover where yours are hidden.
Let’s look at some money habits. (Coaching tip: Print this page and circle which habits you do and don’t do.)
- You do acknowledge that money plays an important role in life… or you don’t. (If you don’t, then you’re probably operating under some limiting beliefs.)
- You do put a portion of every dollar you earn or make in a savings account for your ‘just in case’ situations… or you don’t. (I don’t like using the E-word, emergency, because many of us money coaches feel that if you focus on having an E-account, you’ll end up having lots of E’s and most of us don’t care for emergencies!
- You do invest a portion of every dollar into an asset that will immediately or eventually produce some type of passive income for you… or you don’t.
- You do keep track of what money is coming in and what’s going out… or you don’t.
- You do keep a budget and re-evaluate every three months… or you don’t.
- You do separate your emotions from money… or you don’t.
- You do spend less money than you have coming in each month… or you don’t.
- You do take time to educate yourself in the language of money… or you don’t.
- You do pay off your credit card bills each month… or you don’t.
- You do spend your money thoughtfully… or you don’t (meaning you spend impulsively).
Now I’m not saying that you have to practive ALL of these habits in order to be financially free but, if you did, it would work! At the very least, see if there is one habit you don’t do and make it one you DO do. I guarantee that your money situation will start to shift for the positive.
Something to think about… and DO!
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 19, 2011 | Latest News, Uncategorized
Our wonderful three licensees in Mexico were in the news last week too. Check it out (if you speak Spanish).
http://www.livestream.com/sucesostv/video?clipId=pla_0553933e-55be-4291-9c77-61d7c71f90b4&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 19, 2011 | Latest News, Media Attention, Uncategorized
Hi all,
Well, last friday, the 15th of July, was fun here at Creative Wealth in the morning. I got a call from Megan at Fox Business News about the interview I ‘thought’ we were doing on the phone or something (what was I thinking). She said something about coming to get me in a car and I realized she wanted me live in a studio!
So, Michael, the nice driver, picked me up in a nice, shiny, black Towncar and took me about an hour south of here for my couple minutes on the show.
Truth be told…I spend more time talking to the two guys in the studio about Making vs. Earning Money than I did chatting with Gary but here’s the link for your viewing pleasure.
Note to self…when you have a microphone in your ear, try not to look like you’re listening to a mouse who’s chatting with you by your ear:-).
http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/1058036600001
For those of you who still prefer to read…
http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/cavuto/transcript/kids-go-camp-learn-finances
Enjoy…
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 14, 2011 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Uncategorized, WEALTHwork™
So there we are, Jan and I this morning, picking beans in my garden. I planted three types: green, yellow and purple. Before you get all excited about the purple ones you need to know they turn green when you cook them. Imagine my disappointment because I love purple.
I had grabbed a metal bowl to put them in and we started picking. And we picked and we picked and we picked. Now mind you, the patch isn’t very big…it’s only about five feet of beans.
Where are all of YOUR beans?
Nonetheless, the longer we picked and the closer we looked, the more beans we saw, and got to pick. (Note: cooked beans are my favorite vegetable.) We just kept commenting on how many there were as compared to how many we thought were there before we starting harvesting them.
We got to thinking how this is a lot like life. The longer, and deeper, we look, listen, feel and experience anything, the more we see, hear, feel or experience that thing.
Of course, the next step is to tie the metaphor into our financial situations…mine, Jan’s, yours. What can we say…it applies, of course.
Counting Your Own Beans
We’ve all heard the nickname bean counters for accountants, bookkeepers, CPA’s. Feel free to tootle over to http://www.word-detective.com/081100.html to check out the brief history of the phrase.
But getting back to your own beans, I have found in my many years of working with people and their money, that they often just need a nudge to stop and look at their situations a little deeper.
How much does it ACTUALLY cost for you to live the lifestyle you’re living?
How much does it ACTUALLY cost to feed your family of four each month?
How much are you ACTUALLY spending on coffee each month?
How much COULD YOU save and invest if you just stopped long enough to get a seriously accurate picture of what you’re making, what you’re spending, what you could save and invest, etc.
Counting Opportunities
The other area I’ve noticed people trip themselves up in is the idea that their opportunities are limited…especially in this economy. Our culture is so stuck on the ‘job’ thing that they often can’t see the 1000’s of opportunities in front of them to start profitable businesses. And no, not knowing how to start a business is not a good enough excuse to keep yourself in the job mentality.
So if you’re struggling financially, even in the slightest, start looking around at all the opportunities there really are for you to make money (not earn it, i.e., trading your time and energy for someone else’s money) on your own.
OK, you’ve got some picking to do. Stop, look, look deeper and then be honest with yourself about what you need to do to make some changes in the way you do money if indeed you really want something better for yourself, like eventually being financially free!
Just something else to think about…
by Elisabeth Donati | Jul 11, 2011 | Media Attention, Uncategorized
(Guest Blog – by Jan Ruskin)
What Kids Believe
You might be surprised to know that, by the time kids graduate high school, they will probably have adopted the two following limiting beliefs:
Money can cause a lot of problems.
It’s better to give than to receive.
You might NOT be surprised, though, if either or both of these still ring true for you. 🙂
After surveying our teenage participants in this year’s financial literacy programs, we discovered that many limiting beliefs are well-ensconced in the teenage mind. And, without any kind of counter indications, they will go on to find evidence to keep these beliefs intact.
Limiting beliefs have the power to hold us back, only every time. If we think, on any level, that “money can cause problems”, then we are more likely to avoid money. If we believe that it is better to give than receive, we may continually resist receiving “too much”.
It’s not really difficult to see how we come up with these beliefs ~ indeed, how we take them on as truths.
“Money Causes A Lot Of Problems”
We Americans, especially, have grown up (and continue to grow up) in a society where MONEY is linked to some very big problems. We read about it, hear about, talk about it, and spin stories around it. Conflict and money go hand in hand in many of our top news stories, family arguments, and entertainment themes.
The thing we often forget to discern (for our kids as well as in our own minds) is that it’s not the money that causes the problem, it’s the people. Easy to leave that part out, but IMPORTANT to start putting back into the conversation.
“It’s Better To Give Than To Receive”
Who wouldn’t agree with this?! If you think about it, it’s really a set up. Who among us would admit we would rather receive than give? Imagine how we would look? Greedy? Selfish? Unfeeling? Here’s the important part: it’s not an either/or. It’s a both/and. There can NOT be giving without receiving. Giving is only giving if there’s someone to receive. See how that works?
Explore These With Your Family
Here are some of the beliefs we are addressing with our kids. See if any of them ring true with yours. (Let us know if you want more!)
1. Money is the root of evil.
2. Getting rich takes too much work and struggle.
3. Realistically, chances are I’ll never be rich.
4. Getting rich is a matter of luck, or fate.
5. If I get a lot of money, I’ll probably lose it.
6. Money isn’t all that important.
7. It’s not right to make more money than my parents make.
8. It’s not right to have a lot of money while others have nothing.
You can see how these beliefs might keep you from making money!
Money Is Money, Beliefs Are Beliefs
We tend to make things so complicated sometimes. In our programs, we like to keep it simple. Kids (and adults) realize that limiting money beliefs are nothing more than roadblocks to success. We play around with what’s true and what’s not, and we teach the importance of ongoing education and exploration. If kids come to know money as a tool, and not an emotionally charged issue, their chance of being responsible for their lives (and doing a whole lot of good) goes up exponentially.
It’s not too late for you either! 🙂
by Elisabeth Donati | Jun 30, 2011 | Financial Literacy, Latest News, Uncategorized
Status quo. The idea that “this is just the way things are” has never sat well with me. Not when I was passionate about health, fitness and nutrition (still am…just don’t do it for a living anymore) and certainly not while I’ve been passionate about teaching people about money.
One of the philosophies I passionately instill in the teens who attend our programs is the necessity to “question everything.”
From the time our children enter school to the time they leave, they are, for the most part, filled with facts, statistics, dates, names, places, etc. They are forced to learn these things so that they can regurgitate the ANSWERS on a test after which, they are then graded as if their ability to know those particular answers prepares them for life.
You see, I don’t believe our traditional schools are working. I know I’m not alone in this belief and this is just one of the many reasons why I don’t believe they are working.
Here are some questions for you to illustrate my point.
Has the date Christopher Columbus set foot in America ever come up when you were buying a piece of rental property as an asset?
Was the capital of Spain important when you were researching stocks or mutual funds?
When was the last time you used the War of 1812 to develop a marketing plan to launch a new website that would help you build financial freedom? (OK, so this may actually be relevant if the website is a history blog that sells DVDs of history lectures or something.)
Now don’t get me wrong. Knowing “stuff” is important. But why do we send our children to school in the first place? Because we’re supposed to? Because someone said we had to? Because it’s a law? WHY?
I want to say we send them to school to prepare them to live happy, successful lives. But the part of me that knows the origin of Kindergarten (look it up) has a hard time believing that. Especially with our current success rate of getting kids from Kindergarten to graduation in 18 years. Why 18 years? Who decided that was enough? Or is it too much? You can see how the question thing works!
From what I’ve gathered, the reason we send kids to school is to get them into college. Are you aware that this is the criteria most high schools use when evaluating their success? Not the kids’ success, the schools’!
I personally believe that schools really produce employees and soldiers, both of which we need, but at whose expense?
Next question for you – and I might add that when I ask a group of relatively intelligent adults this question, they are at a loss for answers – Where are our next leaders? And I mean leaders leaders we can look up to, believe, and follow! Leaders like JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi…those types of leaders.
Why ARE leaders leaders in the first place? Not because they know a bunch of irrelevant information. They are leaders because they QUESTION EVERYTHING and aren’t afraid to speak out to the world that there’s a different way, and perhaps a better way to do things.
I don’t begin to assume that we can change the course of our schools overnight, though I’ll suggest how we might in a later article (or you can email me now and ask), but we can begin to instill in our children, the desire to question everything, regardless of their ages.
Your next question: Why DON’T we want them to question everything? What would happen if they did?
I believe it’s the last question that might have fired up your brain. Oh no, we’ll have anarchy on our hands, no one would follow the rules (not a bad idea, really, because many of them need changing anyway), they wouldn’t do their homework. Maybe they’d learn something else that was more important; something they were actually interested in and that was relevant to their lives at the time.
Our kids must be empowered with the ability and desire to question what is happening to themselves, their communities and their world so these kids will grow up to be leaders that can, and will, make a difference in all areas of life – and the time to start growing them is now!
Just something to think about.
