Money Blocks and Ego Deaths – when a Gypsy Decides to Get Rich

From the journal of a gypsy: a very personal story about money blocks, abundance, ego deaths, identity shifts, self-sabotage, purpose, and, unavoidably, (half) a lifetime of traveling.

From what I can remember, I wanted to be rich and successful since I was a little child. No, it’s more than that – I knew I was going to be rich and successful. Whenever my parents would talk about my financial future, such as retirement, I would laugh at them, thinking to myself: “As if that was relevant to me! By that time, I will be so rich that some state pension money is really not going to make any difference!”

It is rather astonishing to me that I would have such a high level of certainty when I had no game plan and not even the slightest idea what could make me rich or, indeed, what I would do with my life career-wise. It is even more astonishing considering my socio-economic background: I grew up in a paradigm of perpetual scarcity and an ever-present fear of running out – of resources, food, money, you name it. My parents grew up in communism and the modest dreams that they dared to dream within the limited world they lived in were crushed by an unfair, hostile system. Growing up, all I perceived around me was people working hard to make ends meet, people complaining about having to go to work at jobs they didn’t enjoy, people trying to save money. Nowhere did I see examples of success or of living from a place of ease and satisfaction.

It would be logical for me to say that I have no idea where that certainty came from. But I believe I do know. I believe we all have intuition working in our favor and that we all inherently know what is meant for us and what we are capable of. I believe we can remember the future. And I believe that our true heart desires are meant to serve us as our compass. I think there’s something to it when people say our desires are “God-given” and that if we have a certain desire, it means we have everything we need inside of us to be able to achieve it in this lifetime.

If we listen to our sincere desires and follow our excitement, we will walk our destiny path, live a fulfilling life and, as a byproduct, serve as a source of inspiration, light, healing, and wisdom for others. When you are happy and lit up and your cup is full, you cannot help but give from the overflow. 

I want to reiterate that the desires would better to be sincere and heart-sourced. With materialistic desires, such as the desire to possess massive wealth, we need to be careful: is this truly my own heart-sourced, authentic desire? Or do I just want money because that is what everybody wants and so I think I also need to have it, otherwise I cannot be happy? Is it sourced from me or is it sourced from the outside, from a pattern of thinking that only when I have wealth will I achieve external validation, and only then will I be happy?

We can all be happy, no matter our financial situation – that is a simple fact of life and I will exemplify this further below. I believe that from a soul’s perspective, we choose our life’s purpose, the lessons we want to learn in this lifetime and the things we want to experience before we incarnate into a physical body. For some of us, our purpose can be achieving massive wealth and then becoming a source of inspiration, wisdom, influence and power so that we can teach others how to elevate themselves, invest in the issues that stir our hearts, donate money to those in need, support important causes such as human rights issues or environmental disasters or perhaps donate money to the political candidates we believe could make the necessary changes we want to see in the world.

Some of us, however, don’t require a lot of money to live our life’s purpose. Some of us are here to demonstrate that it is perfectly possible to live an extraordinary life without having a lot of money. Wealth and abundance go way beyond possessing large amounts of money: abundance comes to us through chance, fortunate encounters, miraculous coincidences, in forms of opportunities, lessons, free resources, love, gifts, generosity, and fair exchange with others. Some of us are here to be a living example of that and teach others that abundance does not mean being so wealthy that we have everything we could possibly need. Rather, abundance means knowing that if we need something, we will have access to it.

Let me give you an example.

A mentor of mine told me a real story about a girl, let’s call her Abundant Alice. Alice was living it up – she was at every worthwhile party. You’d find her lounging by the pool, enjoying picturesque beaches, sleeping in luxurious villas, and cruising around on private yachts.

Here’s the fun part: she wasn’t rich and she wasn’t paying for these luxuries – these things were constantly being offered to her. You see, Alice was it – everybody wanted her around! If you were throwing an epic party, you’d better make sure to have this high-vibe, high-fun chica around to entertain and elevate the crowds! Her energy was a blessing to every gathering.

Before he got halfway through the story, I knew where it was going. The theme was all too familiar and this girl’s magical way of landing things for free didn’t surprise me at the slightest.

“I totally get it,” I said. “I am kind of doing that too, but I am not at her level.”

“But you could be,” he replied with a steadfast knowing in his eyes.   

“Yeah… I am working on my ability to receive; I’m not at quite there yet,” I explained. “I am comfortable receiving an offer to stay at somebody’s place while they are away and need someone to take care of their dog, but to stay at someone’s luxurious villa for free while they could be renting it out for profit? I don’t think I’d feel quite worthy or able to receive that much.”

“But you could,” he insisted, his eyes piercing me with conviction.

The story had me think a lot. Who could I be if I fully leaned into my ability to receive and explored what my version of living la vida Abundant Alice could look like? How much could I receive? What could I experience? How much trust would it require on my side to allow myself to fully lean into this lifestyle? Am I capable of this?

The concept isn’t foreign to me at all: I’ve enjoyed so much free lodging throughout my life that I have often thought that paying for accommodation was an unnecessary waste of money. Call me crazy:

During covid, I didn’t pay for accommodation for 15 months. Last year, after I quit my job, I did it again for 8 months. Accommodation comes to me in various ways: sometimes, I stay with friends and family members. Sometimes, I am offered to stay with strangers: for example, last winter, I stayed with a friend’s mom as well as with the mom of a total stranger from the internet – in both cases, the daughters weren’t even in the country! Once, a friend was remodeling a rental apartment and let me occupy it for the duration of it. Another time, a family member expressed their desire to spend more time with me and offered to travel to a destination and get an Airbnb. Then there was this random contact I met once and never spoke to again in 8 years who offered me to stay in his pretty apartment after seeing my Facebook post: “you possibly don't remember me, but travelers should help each other,” he said. I also recently met an older lady who had just settled into her new Airbnb, which happened to be in the same complex as the Airbnb I had just checked out of (to be sure, an Airbnb I did not pay for). We met in the yard and chatted for about 5 minutes when she offered me to use her spare bedroom. Fifteen minutes later, I had moved in and several months later, we are still very close friends, calling each other regularly.

Apart from free accommodation, I have also often been invited to experiences, for example, I was recently treated to a vacation in Disney. The stories go on and on.

Clearly, I have a talent for this. I have been shown time and time again that I am always taken care of, always provided for, always safe. I was always aware that something higher was working in my favor. As I started to gain an awareness around energy and the laws of the universe, it became clear to me to that I was surrounded by abundance and that I could attract opportunity and miracles in the most improbable ways and places, when I was operating from a joyful vibration of calm excitement and trust.

I’ve been expanding my capacity to receive and learning to enjoy the gifts life bestows upon me, guilt and shame-free. Feeling guilt and shame around receiving and being provided for is a common theme which so many of us experience. We are taught that being independent and self-sufficient is desirable and that giving is virtuous, while receiving is bad, unproductive, shameful, and a sign of weakness. It is not. In fact, we would all benefit from learning how to receive more, with more ease. If you want to earn more money, you need to learn to be comfortable receiving more money from others! But this is a whole other conversation for another time.

How do I choose to experience abundance going forward?

I am at point where I am asking myself whether the path of Abundant Alice may have become a curse in disguise, blocking me from advancing towards where I eventually want to get to.

I aspire to become a rich, sovereign, independent, influential woman. Now that I have worked on my capacity to receive, I want to work on the giving. Going forward, I want to experience being the person on the other side who creates opportunities and abundance for other travelers on the journey of life, just like I have received abundance in various forms from other friends and strangers on my path. Being that sovereign and independent person to me looks like waking up in my ideal space that is filled with my own energy, not somebody else’s, among other things. Becoming the source of other people’s abundance looks like having a spare bedroom and an overflow of resources that never run out, no matter how much I share and give.

To me, life is all about experiencing and I want to experience as many different things as possible. Why else would we even be alive, if not to experience? I feel a strong calling to shift gears and start experiencing life in a very different way. To experience abundance anew. To create myself anew.

It has become very apparent to me that in order to allow myself to pursue that new life, I need to let go of my attachment to the old one. If I want to experience more personal power, independence, and agency, I may need to shift my identity from Abundant Alice in wonderland to a go-get-it woman in the business-land.

However, I have enjoyed this lifestyle so much. I have enjoyed feeling like Alice in Wonderland, serendipitously sourcing accommodation, transportation, invitations, gifts, opportunities and so much more, as if by magic. I have enjoyed being provided for. I have loved living on the edge, the not knowing – not knowing where I am going, where I will be sleeping, how I will get there and how my travels and life will unfold. I’ve enjoyed the feeling of surrender, of relying on the universe to take care of me, to throw me the next breadcrumb to follow. I have enjoyed pulling miracles out of my ass last minute and then sharing my surreal stories with the world. It’s an exhilarating way to live. And exhilaration can be addictive.

Even more so, I have cherished the improbable encounters, the friendships formed, the stories exchanged, the experiences shared, the camaraderie, the adventure, the sharing and exchanging, the love and connection with the people who were blown onto my path because I chose to rely on divine orchestration to get what I needed rather than solely on my own agency.

Traveling this way has been incredibly rich and has formed the concept of ME. You see, I started traveling at 16 when I was a poor high school student with no resources. It’s not that I couldn’t afford hotels – I couldn’t afford hostels! I couldn’t afford to eat out, nay, I couldn’t even afford a cup of coffee!

So how on earth did I manage to travel? I took every opportunity and invitation I bumped into. I created opportunities. I found paid youth exchange programs. I put all of my will and conviction into landing an opportunity to study abroad and I did – twice. I became an au-pair and took care of some kids in a foreign land. I stayed on couches of friends or friends of friends. I didn’t eat much. I carpooled, couchsurfed, hitchhiked, took long buses and dirt-cheap flights, I slept at airports, volunteered, pet sat, found the cheapest hostels… I’ve really done it all.

And I wouldn’t change any of it. I am so grateful for my background and the limited resources I had because they pushed me to be creative, industrious, resourceful, resilient, bold, and trusting. Had it not been for the constraints, I would have never met all the amazing souls or experienced all the wild adventures. The stories, love, joy, care, wisdom, culture, and healing that were exchanged between me and my various hosts, drivers or hostel roommies fill my heart to the brim. I have lived a rich life full of adventure, joy, serendipity, surprises, adrenaline, connection, spontaneity, love, friendships and fun and I am utterly grateful for it all. Truth be told, if I died today, I’d die content.

But not to worry - that ain’t happening anytime soon! Because there is so much more to come and I am ready for it!

When the blessing becomes the block: time for an ego death

I operated this way for half of my life. I have loved this life. I became so good at doing this, at being this. I have mastered this. I became this.

And so, how could I let this go? This is what I know and who I know myself to be. If I let this lifestyle go, won’t that be the end of Claire? Who would I be?

I know it’s time to step up and expand. I feel it in every cell of my being. I want to become the next version of myself. I am tired of the constant travel. I am over the thrill of not knowing where I am going or where I am sleeping. I am done living on the edge, in a way where everything is too unpredictable to even put a call in my calendar. I’ve had my fun, I’ve grown up, and got tired. Now I want stable. I want ease. I want less random and more plannable, predictable fun.  

Though there are parts of me which don’t want this to happen, especially my ego. In order to make this shift, I need to let go of many things and essentially allow the old version of me die. We can call this process death & rebirth, the metamorphosis of the caterpillar into a butterfly, an ego death… I’ll go with the last one here, as it does a good job suggesting just how painful this process can be, when the ego tries to hold on with everything it can; it sure does not want to die.

So, what are my ego and all these different parts of me - which want to stay in hiding, play small, and keep safe - terrified of?

There are parts of me that are scared that if I became rich and successful, I would forget who I am and where I came from. They’re scared of feeling like a fraud because that’s not where I come from; I don’t come from money! They’re scared of being called greedy, bad, wrong or immoral if I want money! They are scared of becoming disloyal to the family line if I step out of the scarcity and merely getting by. They are scared of becoming entitled and forgetting to be humble.

Then there is a part of me that wants to stay broke because it takes a lot of pride in having achieved what I have achieved, namely, having been able travel the world as I please, learn 6 foreign languages, live in 13 countries and study at the leading universities of 4 different countries while being the person that I am: someone who grew up in a small, boring town and a culture of scarcity and survival, without any role models who could model the path for me and with virtually no money. This part of me is stuck in the rather irrational fear that if I suddenly have money, I will be cut off my past and off my achievements and people will view me – and judge me – as some rich bitch who has it easy and doesn’t understand the struggles and obstacles of the ordinary folk.

Another part which is also focused on what I’ve achieved wants to scream it out loud and teach the whole world that if I could have achieved what I have achieved and live the life that I do given my circumstances, then chances are most other people can do that, too! It pains me to see people stuck in misery, stuck in an unfulfilling routine, a job they hate, a relationship that feels dead or in their hometown when they feel called to experience the world. It genuinely hurts me! I want to scream this from the rooftops: “You don’t have to live like this! You get to be free! You get to live a life you love! You get to live your dreams! You deserve to be happy! There is so much more to life!!!” It is my purpose to teach others that they have the possibility and the power to change their lives and pursue their joy and freedom! And a part of me is scared that if I now start having money and pursuing a lifestyle of fun, joy, travels, and freedom becomes easy for me, I will lose the right to preach to others that they too can travel and follow their dreams even if they don’t have money.

Let me be clear: I know that these things are not true, but there is a part of me that is invested in this fear. This is how our subconscious minds work – and this is why we struggle to get what we want! Our subconscious sabotages us because of irrational fears that we are not even consciously aware of! 

Finally, there is another part that is terrified of the unknown – what will my life look like if I get rich and life becomes more comfortable? Namely, it is afraid that my life will become boring. I’ve had so much fun, met so many people and learned so much through all my hitchhiking, couchsurfing, sharing accommodation with other travelers, traveling on cheap public transport or becoming a volunteer somewhere – all this because I didn’t have money. I am a sucker for adventure – would there be any left if I had money? Will traveling be any fun if I start flying business class, taking taxis, and sleeping in cozy hotel rooms or private villas? Will I meet any people if I am not forced to share? If I take more control and ownership over my life, will there still be room for serendipity? If I am fully independent, will people care for me? Also, if I were a rich person, then it wouldn’t possibly make any logical or moral sense for others to pay any money on my behalf, so would I ever experience that nice feeling of being treated or invited by others? If I am rich, perfectly independent, and things gets easier, WILL LIFE BE WORTH LIVING AT ALL?!

Do I actually think that? No. But a part of me sure does and really doesn't want to risk see me become an entitled rich bitch with a cushy and boring life!

So this is where I find myself: at the edge of a cliff, staring into an abyss. The life I want going forward is a single step away – and I’ve been unable to take that step, because parts of me have been terrified of the unknown, terrified of what awaits me in that dark black abyss.

I realized that in order to facilitate that transition and ease those voices that are afraid of losing touch with where I come from and who I have been up until this point, I get to fully claim my story, my process, my identity, the becoming and unbecoming, the transformation, the fear, the resistance, the desire, the vulnerability and the power, and the lessons that I’ve learned, lived, and wish to share with the world. I figure that if I share my story openly and let others know where I am coming from, then I can improve my odds of not forgetting who I am.

And so this is what I am doing – claiming and sharing my story and my process. I am doing this for myself – I need to express this, get it out, put it out there.

My hope is that it may inspire someone, spark an aha moment or encourage others to pursue their dreams, explore their conflicting thoughts or express themselves more authentically.

Before concluding, I want to briefly elaborate on the following points:

Purpose

I believe we all have a knowing why we came here, and our desires are of big help, guiding us towards where our souls want to flow. However, living our purpose doesn’t mean doing any one particular thing. Rather, our purpose gets imprinted in the quality of our being, in our essence – and we infuse it into whatever we decide to do in this life.

I am sure that there are less and more powerful ways to embody and execute our purpose and I think that it is only reasonable to expect that we will glide up on the scale throughout life, as we learn to embody more of who we truly are and expand in our self-confidence, power, and influence. I also believe that our perception of purpose or of its execution can change over time – and that can lead to our identities changing significantly over the course of our lives.

For me personally, I know that my purpose is to inspire others to live a bolder, more expressed, more fulfilling life. In the past, my desire to travel the world the way I did guided me to inspire those who met me along my way, hosted me or helped me out to live more joyfully and carefree, to trust more. Now, my desire is to create more stability and comfort for myself, which will enable me to preserve a lot of my vital power, previously spent on figuring out my logistics, and then channel it into my creative process and into building structures to influence and help people in a more focused and intentional way. (The discussion on purpose is much broader than the scope of this piece allows for, but if you’re interested in exploring the topic deeper with me, stay tuned for my upcoming podcast episode no. 33 on the topic!).

Desire

We are often told that desire is bad and dangerous. I agree that paying attention to our desires can get dangerous if we are not conscious but I can’t agree that desire is inherently "bad”. Discernment is key. Is it a healthy desire or is it unhealthy? How can we know? Firstly, by asking ourselves whether pursuing it will create more peace, joy, and love or whether it will cause us to experience stress, greed, manipulation or fear; secondly, by asking ourselves whether it is an ego-sourced or a heart-sourced desire. An ego desire will arise from our need to look good in front of others; a heart desire often has no logical explanation and just feels good in our heart.

A desire for money can be fed by both – our ego wanting to look impressive and our heart wanting to experience more of life, be able to gift more freely, and have a bigger influence in the world. It is crucial to be able to identify all the intrinsic driving forces and distinguish which one is at the driver’s seat. Our task is to get crystal clear on where our ego is trying to take control and then make sure that our egotistic desire does not drive us in any of our pursuits.

Our ego will always be present and that’s perfectly natural; we are not trying to annihilate it. The key is to make sure that every time we go and take action, we get clear on what part of us and what energy or guiding emotion (e.g. love/generosity vs. greed/anger) is sourcing that action. It is not the action that we take, but the quality of the energy behind that action that sources the quality of the outcome.

Self-sabotage

Next, I want to briefly elaborate on the concepts of irrational fears and parts theory, which is one of the main approaches that I employ in my coaching and healing practice. To illustrate, I want you to think of something that you really want. Why don’t you have it already, if you really want it? Why don’t you just go and get? So many other people have achieved that thing, why don’t you? In this day and age, there are countless resources which could help you get the thing you want, so why don’t you just follow an expert's advice and go get it?

The reason is this: there is a part of you that says you want it, but then there are other parts of you, which you may not be consciously aware of, that don’t want that thing – because of various fears, some of which may be completely irrational. For example, you say you want to start your own business, but a part of you believes that it will require you to work really hard and you really don’t want that, so as a result, there is now an internal fight going on between the part of you that wants a business and the part that doesn’t want a business, because it doesn’t want to work. Until you become clear about all the different parts of you moving in different directions on the inside and resolve their internal fights, you will continue to experience self-sabotage an inability to move efficiently in your chosen direction.

Abundance

Finally, I want to elaborate on the concept of abundance. It is a paradigm: you either live in abundance or in scarcity. Either you believe there is always enough and you will always be able to access anything you need or you believe everything is limited and run around trying to secure more for yourself in constant fear of running out and going without. Unfortunately, most of us live in scarcity and even though we try hard to shift into abundance, our conditioning, past experiences and the constant “evidence” from the world around us make it very hard to let go of that survival-driven fear and make that shift.

Abundance doesn’t equate with money; money is just one means of securing resources. As I would hope the Alice example above demonstrated, there are numerous ways to receive and secure the resources we need or desire, and so there is an array of different ways we can choose to experience abundance.

You can experience massive abundance by living the backpacker or couchsurfer lifestyle: allow yourself to receive and your heart will explode with gratitude for the kindness and generosity of strangers and for the miraculous ways in which you always happen to come across the very thing you need.

You can choose to live a life of abundance the wonderland way: by embodying a frequency of knowing that your unique energy is your entry ticket to the lavish party of a life that you desire.

Or you can choose to experience abundance while being fully at source of your experiences and firmly rooted in your own independence and initiative, by becoming a wealthy individual.

The most amazing part is that you can absolutely choose to experience abundance in all the different ways – be it at distinct and separate periods of your life or all at once.

Life is your creation.

Never forget.

Always create – consciously.