TeleSummit Interview on Successful Heart Living hosted by Glynis Dinsdale
(Johannesburg, South Africa)
Aired twice in May 2016
Speaker:
Maria Teresa De Donato, Ph.D.
Naturopath,
Life Strategist, Author
Hello
Everyone, Welcome... I am Glynis Dinsdale, your host of the Summit
–
SUCCESSFUL HEART
LIVING –
“How to follow your
heart, find your purpose, live your dreams and goals and to be successful”
I am
involved with Transformation coaching and teaching and have worked for the past
20 years in the Healing world with the focus on helping and empowering women
through counselling to become focused and driven, feeling empowered and happy
within themselves.
In
this Interview we have as our guest speaker –
Maria Teresa
De Donato, Ph.D., an Italian born who has been
living in the United States for more than twenty years. She is a certified and
registered Traditional Naturopath, Classical Homeopath, Life Strategist, ad
Author and holds a Bachelor, a Master and a Doctoral Degree in Holistic Health.
As a Life Strategist she is certified in Communications, Conflict
Analysis, Negotiation & Conflict Management, and in Anger Management.
An active listener and a careful observer of human behaviour, her Life Coaching
activity started more than thirty years ago and so far has enabled her to
successfully coach thousands of people from all around the world in all sorts
of settings making them become aware of their strengths and full potential and
helping them to reach their goals and a more rewarding, healthier and happier life.
Dr. De Donato has a very strong holistic approach to life and health, this including not only the mind-body-spirit components, but also the ability to see how all is related, and, consequently, to identify similarities, differences, strengths, weaknesses and patterns in situations as well as in people. An extremely intellectually curious, creative and versatile person, she has a caring, yet very down-to-earth approach to life.
She is the Author of several books and articles. If you wish to know more about her
publications, you can visit her Amazon Author Page at
As a “speaker” she is a perfect fit for our topic in the Summit.
Thank
you so much for joining us. It is wonderful to have you here and we are looking
forward to talking to you
The pleasure is mine, Glynis. Thank you for inviting
me. I am very happy to be on your radio
show today and being able to help our listeners the best I can.
Let us get started – Tell me about yourself and your story and what makes this topic resonate with you?
I have always been a very versatile and inquisitive
person and since a very young age I found myself asking fundamental questions
about the meaning of life, why certain things happen to certain people rather
than to others. I have always been looking for answers and for a solution to
each problem. This has helped me to understand that my true calling is in
service, that is in helping others the best I can by educating, mentoring and
coaching them so that they can also identify their strengths, weaknesses, old
ways of believing and perceiving reality through which they have been
sabotaging themselves – maybe even for a very long time – without even being
aware of this reality and its dynamics.
Only by becoming aware of all of this and by taking action after having
done a shift in perception and in thinking, hence in the way we act, we can
reach a higher state of awareness and start walking on the path to a more
rewarding life.
And this, of course, has been also my own
experience, so I really know what I am talking about since – as we could
summarize – I have been there and done that several times. So I can really
relate to people and am aware of their frustration, doubts, fear and
feelings. I went through many
transformation periods in my life, had several rebirths but I am going to tell
you about my last one. One day I read a quote that said “You are in your life where you are for what you believe is possible for
you”. …. Well, the very first feelings that I experienced after reading it
were first frustration and then anger. I was angry at myself because I thought
how much more I could have accomplished in my life had I dared to do things,
had I taken action and made plans. So there I was with all my credentials, and
studies, and knowledge and great experience both at a personal and at
professional level but I could have, in fact, accomplished much more for – and
that was clear in my mind – “where” I was, was not where I wanted me to be. I
knew that what I had gotten so far was nothing compared to what I was able to
accomplish and that I even had not gotten started to scratch the tip of the
iceberg yet.
And that aha moment was all I needed to start
changing my life the way I wanted it to be.
What would you say about – how
to be successful…
The very first think to be successful is to get to know you well and to accept yourself for who you are. In order to get to know you well you need to quite your mind, relax, meditate and pay attention to what your heart, that is your deepest inner voice tells you. Your heart, your inner voice talking to you is not the voice in your head that you can easily identify with your thinking-reasoning-judging mental process that is on most of the time.
To the contrary, the only way you can really hear
your heart, your inner voice talking to you is when you are in a complete
relaxed state, focused in the now, in the present moment, aware of your
breathing, aware that you are alive. You
can quite your mind by doing some deep breathing exercises several times a day
just for one minute at a time, or just taking a walk so that you can reconnect
with yourself. Our everyday routine
keeps many among us out of balance because we get so trapped into the things
that we need to do that we forget how vital it is to be aware that we are
alive, that we are breathing, that there is much more to what it needs to be
done, that is, that we are meant to enjoy life.
and how to find your purpose ... and what about goals and dreams?
In order to find your purpose, again, you need to
know yourself well, listen how your heart, your inner voice I have been talking
about communicates with you. Let's
forget for a minute about our obligations, about our family, the jobs we have
at the moment and which allows us to make a living”. Let's start with this expression “To make a
living”. That's not at all what a job should be. Our job, whatever that is,
should be a way to express our physical, mental and emotional abilities, hence
it should be a way for all of us to demonstrate what we can really
do well, the wonderful things that we can all accomplish depending on our
nature, preferences, interests, talents and passions to bring our full
potential to life. Whatever our
situation is right now, let's ask ourselves: Is this where I want to be? Is
this the job, the relationship, whatever that is that I really want, that I
find really rewarding at an emotional, mental and physical level? I am not
saying that you need to necessarily get rid of a relationship or of a job at
once. Not at all! I am just saying identify what has not been working – at
whatever level and in whatever area of your life – and start making changes one
way or the other, take one step at a time but keep moving forward.
Ask yourself…: What is it that you really like to do
to have fun, that you really enjoy doing? That's your calling. That's what you
should be doing. Each of us has a specific place in this World and in this
Universe and we have to find a way to identify our true spot, the one that best
fits our dreams, wishes and needs and occupy that. We need to take one step at
a time to make that dream come true. We
have to sit down, calculate the cost, make plans and stick to them while being
enough flexible to change them should the case require to do so. But we need to
move forward in the direction of our dreams.
The future is in our hands and we are the only ones
who can really make that possible or sabotage it. My Co-Author, Denis Gorce-Bourge, and I have
covered all these points in order to help the readers understand that despite
what it might look like at the moment, it's very easy to accomplish great
results, to make our greatest dreams come true once we understand the dynamics
of our perception and belief system and consequent actions as result of them,
and we shift to a different paradigm.
Our book DARE TO RISE – Reshaping Humanity by Reshaping Yourself is
a wonderful tool to help the reader to accomplish that and start to wake up to
a new reality and become part of this New Earth, this New World which is
unfolding under our very eyes.
How did you manage to overcome any obstacles or challenges?
I am an action person and for many years – especially when I was young – I tried to take control over the situation by fighting it, by opposing resistance so to speak. The older I grew, however, the more I understood that I don't have to fight. Life, God, The Universe, The Higher or Highest Consciousness or however we want to call It/Him/Her is not meant to be “fought”. Whatever happens to us, whatever circumstance we are confronted with and whatever people show up in our life, they all serve a purpose. They all offer us the chance to learn new lessons, get the training we need in order to progress in life and move to a higher state of being, of self-development. In summary, we have to accept them and learn from them and remember that all that is presented to us is for us to be learned, they act like mirrors, so rather than focusing on them, we should be focusing on ourselves and see how we respond to them and what that is that we have to change within ourselves.
Did you have any fear – and what would you suggest to our listeners to do to overcome the anxiety and fear and being stuck – which leads to unhappiness and depression?
Oh Yes! Most of the human experience is based on fear. Fear of failure, fear of not being good enough, fear of not being accepted, fear of not being loved, fear of not being able to accomplish certain things. And fear is the opposite of Love so that the more you are in fear, the more you are taking distance from Love. Making comparisons between us and other people is among the greatest sources of fear and of stress since by comparing ourselves to others we lose ourselves, we lose our mind-body and spirit alignment in the attempt to match other people's standards and situations.
Doing so is a complete non-sense, it's almost
madness. We are who we are and they are
who they are, we shouldn't compete and compare with each other at all! We
should rather accept and fully enjoy our differences because they are there to
complete, to complement each other.
Being in fear means also that you have no faith that
God, the Universe, Life or however you want to call Him/It/Her will give you
what you need according to your dreams, your deepest wishes which express the
essence of your true Self. Hence by
being in fear and not having faith you are not aligned with the Universe and
since you attract what you think and what you focus on, then whatever negative
thought or worry you are having that's exactly what you will bring into your
life.
So my advice – and again I am speaking based on my
own experience – is to focus on the moment and think positively. We all have
our ups and downs, so negative moments and negative thoughts may happen to each
of us. What I am saying, however, is not to focus, not to indulge in these
moments and thoughts, but when they show up, become aware of the situation and
start focusing on something positive, on what we would really like to do, to
accomplish in our life and the bad thoughts will simply disappear.
Do you have a last final thing to say to our listeners ....
Keep a positive attitude! Dream big! Don't get discouraged when you fail or make mistakes! Keep trying, keep improving! Be happy and grateful for all that you already have in your life and have faith that whatever you really need will be given to you when the time comes. Miracles can and do happen each and every single moment. And if you buy one or more of my books, please feel free to get in touch with me and with my co-author in case you buy DARE TO RISE – Reshaping Humanity by Reshaping Yourself for we will really appreciate any feedback. Thank you. Keep shining!
Thank you so much to Dr. De Donato for being with us and of course to all our listeners and I hope you are inspired to work through challenges and to become successful at what you want in your life.
Thank you again, Glynis, it has been a pleasure.
To know more about Dr. De Donato’s activities you can visit the following sites and blogs:
