Day 71: Elisabeth Donati

December 10, 2009 at 12:01 am, Category: Featured, Inspiration

“Pulling yourself forward from a point of already having envisioned it and seeing it done and seeing the change is so much more positive and easier than being angry and frustrated …”

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Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Elisabeth, for joining us today on this interview.  Before we go into the questions, can you please introduce yourself?

Elisabeth Donati: Absolutely.  My name is Elisabeth Donati, and I live in Santa Barbara, beautiful Santa Barbara, California.  I run an organization called Creative Wealth International and our goals here are, in a nutshell, we teach women and teens and kids about money; specifically, how to think differently about it.  We ask them to think outside the normal realm of finances and go a little bit deeper, and we do those in programs that are incredibly fun and effective.  That’s who I am, and that’s what I do.

Toni: Thank you for that!  When you think about the work that you do — or even just in your personal daily life — and you consider that word, inspiration, who do you think you inspire and how do you do that?

Elisabeth: I was thinking about that this morning, and I think that my goal is always to inspire anyone I touch because I think that’s our official goal in life.  But one of the things that I teach in all respects is that we lead and teach best by example.  I think the best way that you can actually and I can inspire others is actually to live inspired; to be inspired; to show people that I’m inspired to do other things.

Specifically, in terms of who I inspire, obviously I said everybody that I come in contact with.  I like to inspire them to think differently and to think outside their box.  One of the things that I love doing in my coaching in inspiring those people is just to literally ask them to think past — somebody coined this term a couple years ago — the arbitrary rules of our lives and the arbitrary rules of the world, the Universe … and having them think outside of those arbitrary rules to find their inspiration.  I love that.

In terms of who I inspire, again everybody, but specifically women and teens, because I find that women are so – and this obviously is a generalization – but I find that the majority of women that I talk to and work with need to be inspired completely differently.  Because in the context of money, which is what I teach, women have a difficult time ascribing meaning to money — and so do kids — because it doesn’t really mean anything to them other than to buy stuff.

I think the best way to inspire somebody is to constantly ask them to ask different questions of themselves.  That’s kind of my favorite thing to do is just getting them to question things that they otherwise wouldn’t have questioned before.

Toni: When you’re doing that and you’re creating that space — whether it’s working with teens or with women and you’re asking these different questions — how do you think that that then translates into them exploring their potential differently?

Elisabeth: Well, again, asking them what their current potential is.  We all have, I think, a set boundary, and a lot of people call that your comfort zone.  And I always call it your discomfort zone, because the bigger the comfort zone gets, the less discomfort you experience because you’re much more comfortable doing everything.

The first thing in order to get somebody to explore more potential, you have to get them to realize where they got their current potential.  Because potential, just like anything else, to me is this box that we put ourselves in.  I have this much potential to make this much money to do this with my life, can’t go above this tall of a mountain, I can’t drive past this kind of a car, I can’t have this kind of a relationship.

Before you can go outside the potential boundaries, you have to recognize both where the boundaries are and how those boundaries got there, which is actually more important than the boundaries themselves.  Because until you can describe your own boundaries or lack thereof — if you’re good at it, you get sense of it — it’s really difficult to explore.

Once I get people to explore the boundaries and where they came from, then you can ask them to see things differently, hear things differently, feel things on a different level or kind of on a different plane of their lives.  Because all of a sudden they can step out and they go “Oh, wow … I didn’t see that I had put that boundary on myself.”  If you can ask them to literally live on a different level once they recognize their current boundary of the potential, it’s amazing what can happen.

Toni: The current boundary or the current potential … does that also maybe translate into a self-belief?  It sounds that way a little bit to me, like you’re helping them also to know this is what you think you might be really good at as far as what your potential is, but let’s talk about some other things that you might be really good at that they never believed that they had that potential.  Is that part of the work that you do as well?

Elisabeth: Absolutely.  One of the things that I love doing once they kind of recognize their boundaries and where it came from is I like to ask them and help them discover what makes them tick.  What does somebody say to them that causes them to be passionate about something?

Yesterday, I had a luncheon to go pick up a little grant check from an organization in town here, and I serendipitously sat next to this incredible man who had the same passion as me in terms of the fact that we’re teaching children the wrong way, very effective, and he and I had a 30-minute just incredibly passionate conversation and are going to be able to do some things together.

Asking them to ask themselves what is it that drives you to this passion?  A feeling of movement toward or away from something can be inspiration, or showing them where potential is for them, but really getting them to find out what makes them tick.  In all of us, different things tickle us and drive us to that place of being impassioned enough to make a move.  When you’re impassioned enough to make a move, like I said, either toward or against something, then your potential just sort of expands exponentially with that organically.

Toni: When you come at the word inspiration, for you, what do you need to be inspired?  You made a comment earlier in the interview, you said you know you need to live an inspired life and to set that example.  So what inspires you?

Elisabeth: A whole lot of things inspire me, and I was thinking about the question obviously, earlier.  I think the biggest thing that inspires me is when I think something possible.  It’s hard to be inspired if you think that something … no amount of energy you put into it or money you throw at it is going to change something.

I used to live, when I was younger, with this context that things were fair or unfair, or the unfairness of that.  It was really hard for me, like the injustice of something not being fair.  Then, when I came to the realization that there’s no such thing as fair, then what you begin to realize is that you can reframe it in a way that allows you to turn it into inspiration towards something or simply let it go and move on.

When I see that something is going to touch somebody in a positive way, that inspires me towards movement, and I think it doesn’t take a whole lot.  I think just as with, you know, about everybody else, when you also see someone out there and you keep yourself in tune with or connected with or in front of other people that are both inspiring others toward action and being inspired themselves, again it is like a snowball effect.

For me to be inspired, I have to be inspired by others and for me to inspire.  It’s sort of a … I try to put myself in this center where I’m surrounded by and staying in touch with … for instance, I don’t watch the news.  I don’t read the  paper.  I haven’t read a newspaper or listened to the news or watched television news in years.  I don’t find it helpful, beneficial, inspirational or anything.  What I do is consciously and purposefully put myself in front of and expose myself to lots of things that inspire me, and that’s one of the things that keeps me inspired.

I constantly am looking for opportunities, though.  That’s probably the other thing.  My eyes are open.   I constantly look for ways to be inspired.  And you know, because you’ve been doing all these interviews with people, and you know as much as others that when you look for what you really want, you find it.

Toni: I would like to ask you to clarify a statement that you’ve made as well, because I wrote it down and underlined it — and that’s what I do on these interviews — and people who have been listening to these, certain words just kind of jump out at me of what all of you are saying.

And what you said here was that there was no such thing as fair.  That you realized at some point in your life that there is no such thing as fair.  That was one of the first things that you spoke about as far as looking, the change that you went through to live an inspired life and to be inspired.  Can you help me and help others understand what you mean by that?

Elisabeth: When I was younger, I would see things that would happen to somebody and I would say “That is just not fair that that happened”, and then I noticed the emotion, the physical visceral sensation, because I really like to get into my body.  What’s my body saying versus my head?  Where is that unfairness thing coming from, and how am I feeling it.

What I realized is that it used to cause an anger in me and made my stomach turn sour.  It was just not a pleasant feeling.  What I came to realize is that until you come – and this was for me – until you come to the understanding that things just are, right?  We always say, it is whatever it is and until you just accept it, it is there.  There is no such thing as fair, and we’ve made that up.  Why do we think there should be fair?

Somebody asked me the other day, if there was somebody standing on the street outside of a store and he was getting signature for the gay rights, the marriage gay rights in California, and he said “Are you for it?”  I said “I’m not for it, and I’m not against it.”  He said “I don’t understand.  How can you be neither for it nor against it?”  I said, “Well, I’m neither for it nor against it.  I am neutral.”

He says, “Well do you believe that everybody has a right to do this?”  I said, “I believe that we have no rights.  There’s no such thing.  We are not born into the world with rights.  We are born.  Period.”  He was dumbstruck.  He had no idea.

There’s no such thing as fair, there’s no such thing as rights.  We are.  Until we get to the point where we realize that we just are and that’s our complete 100% choice … once we get to the point where we realize we have choice, which is one of my favorite subjects in our camps.  Every single program we teach is all about choice.  The underlying thing is we have a choice to think, to feel, to move, to be inspired, all of that.

I don’t know if that clarifies, but there’s just no such thing as fairness, and until you realize that everything just is, is, you can’t go at it from a positive.  And I guess that’s the whole point.

There’s a difference between being inspired to move at something because you’re pissed off and angry about it and being inspired and moving toward change because you see the beauty and the incredible positive part of change.

I have found for myself – I can only speak for myself – that when I approach something from a point of being angry or feeling like there’s this sense of injustice, there’s always this undercurrent of negative, sour, yuck — for lack of a better way to say it.  When I move toward it from the sense of “Oh my God, look how beautiful it would be”, then I have a completely different sense and a completely different result.

Toni: It almost sounds like it’s a visioning process, in a way.

Elisabeth: Totally.

Toni: If you’re doing part of the visioning and you’re in this “I need to, I want to move forward, it must look in this positive light” because if it doesn’t, then almost why bother?

Elisabeth: Yes.  I think it also has to do with pushing yourself versus pulling yourself.  Pulling yourself forward from a point of already having envisioned it and seeing it done and seeing the change is so much more positive and easier than being angry and frustrated and unjust and people have the right to do this.  It’s like, oh bull …

Toni: How does all that translate for you in exploring your own potential?

Elisabeth: I just literally have to … in order for me to explore that, there’s a lot of things that I have to need.  I need to be alone.  I know that one of the things that I absolutely have to have is alone time.  My ex-husband did not understand that.  My current boyfriend absolutely gets that.  We spend two or three days together, and he goes his way and I go my way, because we both have to have this alone time just to move forward in any way.

I really need new environments, new people and energy.  I found that I’m one of those people that needs a lot of variety.  There’s a great book I would recommend to anybody that’s listening called Get Motivated by Tamara Lowe.  She divides us all into, she calls it DNA, I think it’s something … I forget … in needs and awards.  People either thrive on variety or they really thrive on things remaining the same, stable.  I’m a variety girl, and if I don’t have a lot of variety in my life, I can’t do anything potential wise.  I just feel stuck in this little glass sort of thing.

The other thing — which is probably why I have concentrated my life over the last 10 years on the financial realm — before I was in finances, I was actually a fitness trainer and ran health clubs, and I have a degree in commercial industrial fitness.  And I realized when I switched to money, my purpose didn’t change.  I’m still empowering other people to take care of themselves. I’m just doing it through a different realm with the money.

What I really have realized is that for me to explore any of my potential, my basics have to be handled, which is how and where I go with the kids and the women.  I say women, but I also work with men.  And my trainers, obviously there are a lot of them that are men.  Being able to help them get their basics covered, because when you’re worried about money you can’t explore anything.  You have to get past that whole money thing.

The whole idea that you teach best what you most need to learn, I really think that for most of us that’s very, very, very true.  It doesn’t mean that we’re not good at what we are teaching, it means that we got good at it because we needed to learn it.

Toni: It’s so interesting, Elisabeth, you are probably the sixth person that I have interviewed in a row that has used that exact same quote.

Elisabeth: It’s true.  I went to a lecture last week from a guy who preaches ayurveda from India and he did a 45-minute talk on relationships, and he was angry.  His wife was there sitting on the floor running a Powerpoint, and all I could think of was, “You hate your relationship, oh my God.”  I left there with the saddest feeling in my heart for this man because he was preaching something he really wanted to get, but he didn’t get it, you know?

Toni: That is so incredible, and I bring that up because it’s so … with everything that you’ve talked about in this interview — and you have given so much information in such a short period of time, and I know for myself I’m going to have to listen to this again because there’s a lot to pull out of here — but how you talked about who you inspire.  But how you go about that, the way you’ve described potential — needing to know where you’re at now with potential — to what inspires you.  And to just know that things are the way they are and we need move on from that, the 100% choice issue is amazing.

You’ve given an amazing wealth of information, and I can’t thank you enough on behalf of the people who will be listening to you and reading this interview post, what you have given today.  For that, I am incredibly grateful.

Elisabeth: I’m absolutely honored to be part of the Project, and if any of those words help inspire anybody towards anything positive in their life, it’s a worthwhile venture.

Toni: Thank you so much, Elisabeth, and I hope that we speak again soon.

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For more information about interviewee:  www.elisabethdonati.com

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