INTRODUCTION

What if there was an inner voice and a language of self-understanding we haven't been taught to hear, hidden in a conversation we've been taught not to talk about-money. If I were to ask you about your self-understanding about money, your thoughts may go to ideas about money management. But our conversation extends to what came before and goes far beyond any financial strategies or ideas-your human experience. In our conversation together, we breathe life into a renewed financial conversation as we prioritize and elevate you instead of just your numbers. There is a uniqueness to your language of understanding about all aspects of money in your life that resides in the riches of your story. Just as the Rosetta Stone helped to translate the ancient Egyptian language of hieroglyphics, the concepts I will share with you in the first half of this book will help you connect to your language of understanding so that you can then apply and expand on them to better understand others.

The search for self-identity and a sense of belonging is a journey many of us take as we seek out purpose, meaning, and knowledge of ourselves-and our self-identity and money stories are more interconnected than we would think. At first glance, it would appear that I'm talking about two completely different things: finances and self-development. But the truth is, they're one and the same. The idea of self-identity is one that we can understand, connect, and relate to because it's within us. But when we haven't connected with ourselves, we can have what feels like a blank space. With an innate need to fill that space, it's natural for us to look toward external influences, opinions, and suggestions to fill in the gaps.

In my own search for identity, I found myself continually gravitating to the richness and beauty of my cultural ancestry. It was in that connection where I felt a sense of belonging. As a child, I would listen with pride and joy every time my mom told me that I was a direct descendant of Cleopatra. It was an anchor for me whenever the feelings of being different or "less than" in the community where I grew up would take hold. My connection to my ancestry was the way I started to practice what I call "emotionalizing to the positive." Essentially, I made the decision to view my experiences as positive rather than negative. Choosing positive emotions is a learned skill that needs to be nurtured.

This is what I'm sharing with you here today: using my own experiences to illustrate the concepts I'm presenting. It's because of the skill of emotionalizing to the positive, which I have applied to every stage of my own life, that I've been able to develop these concepts through my passion as an educator and put them into practice with my clients as a Certified Financial Planning professional. I was able to focus my wealth management practice on teaching my clients how to earn, grow, and enjoy their money in the way they wanted. All of this is built on a strong foundation of positive emotions and a positive sense of self-something I sought for myself and instilled in those I've worked with.

When we talk about our money or our finances, we seem to lose ourselves in the numbers. And we become disconnected when we don't understand them. It's that void of knowledge and clear understanding that we're looking to fill with external messages. When we haven't found ourselves, or we don't have a positive relationship to ourselves, we look to everything and everyone else for answers. We seek out direction, not guidance. The difference between those two terms is significant. When we seek direction, we're looking outside ourselves for a defined path. We want someone or something else to point us in the right direction. However, guidance starts within us, and those around us will enhance that knowledge. In other words, when we know who we are and what we want, asking for guidance will serve to uplift us and move us forward on our journeys.

When it comes to money, searching for your identity and solutions outside of yourself is what you've been taught to do. But this will only cause you to be stuck in a negative loop, no matter what you do to try to get out of it and move forward. This is profoundly true when you think about your current financial situation. You're feeling stuck, but you can't figure out how to get out of this negative cycle. The problem is that you don't see yourself at the center of the loop. But now, let's shift the financial conversation around and talk about money starting from within you. Your money story is inside of you, and so is your relationship with money. So it would only make sense that the journey toward positive change starts with you! Your feelings and beliefs about money are within you-they are unique only to you, but you must understand where they came from in order to change the result. You already have the tools to make these positive changes in your life, and through self-development work, I'm going to show you how to apply them.

It doesn't matter who you are or what career or life path you're on, money is a central part of your life. It's also an aspect of your life that the majority of people have in common-and not just in the present, but throughout the generations, tracing all the way back to your origins. Even with money being central to your life, it's the topic in which you probably see yourself the least-instead, focusing on everything and everyone else. It all seems so unapproachable, distant, confusing, and incomplete. But I'm here to tell you that those feelings and beliefs don't have to remain. It's in that spirit that I'm honored to sit with you and share my passion to bring that positive shift to all aspects of money in your life. This is a shift that I firmly believe is possible and achievable-by you.

This belief that I have in your success, using the processes and tools I will share with you here, didn't just appear out of thin air. They arose through the application of a process I've developed and have continued to implement over the years. I created this process by combining my study of business, finance, and education in a meaningful way. It was the combination of my degrees and practical experience in these areas that enabled me to build my comprehensive wealth management practice as I strived to provide a different conversation on all aspects of money.

Developing and nurturing a positive and meaningful conversation about money through understanding is the basis on which I built and grew my practice. Within these pages, I reveal every element of myself, both personally and professionally, as I share with you all that comprises Cleopatra's Riches. This book is the culmination of every aspect of my being, including my connection to my origins in Ancient Egypt, to communicate with you in a way that will most likely be eye-opening for you.

The beauty, richness, and wonder of Ancient Egypt is something I've always had an admiration for, along with the intricacy of its history and culture. When I started to become aware of my own cultural background, which can be traced back to that era, I was struck by just how strong the influence of our origins can be. With that extraordinary and rich cultural context in my mind, I began to develop a different perspective about myself. This girl who grew up in a modest home in a small town in Canada, not having the material wealth of those around her had the riches of influence from the Ancient Egyptians in her blood. Through this connection came an attachment to the stories I would hear, telling me that I was a direct descendant of Cleopatra. As such, I associated positive feelings with my origins, instead of negative feelings of being "different" and standing out among my peers as a child. My heritage was something I was very aware of, and also became something I was very proud of.

With this in mind, it didn't affect me negatively when I grew up and found out that every Egyptian mother tells her daughter that she's a direct descendant of Cleopatra! Because, for me, I had the positive association and connection-and it always represented a ray of sunshine in my life. When I felt that I didn't belong in my surroundings, my heritage became an anchor to my identity, which inspired the format of the material you'll be reading in this book. I wrote this book with the heartfelt desire that you discover and become more of your true self as the conversation on money becomes the most approachable topic of all-the one in which you are the subject-matter expert, and the author of your money story.

Your money story has a rich history that traces back through the generations that preceded you. As a result of my own roots, Egypt is not only at the heart of this book but also at the heart of me as a person. Just as the Nile River was the center of the Ancient Egyptian civilization, so is money as it flows upstream through your life from the moment you were born, until the present day, and throughout your life.

Creating a strong and meaningful understanding of our views, feelings, and beliefs about money is one of the greatest opportunities we have. Until today, when this conversation about money is about to begin, you probably haven't had a chance to fully understand, connect, or reconcile the influences in your life that created your belief systems about money and the management of it. To develop a...