The door to the most enriched life possible sometimes never opens for some people. For some of them, they never want to progress or achieve more in life. They simply want remain stagnate.

Others choose destructive paths which never materialize into anything beneficial.

But what about those people who sincerely want the best out of life and make every attempt to achieve it but still wind up failing or “not making it”?

This is a question I wanted to find the answer to a long time ago. While success means something different to each of us, I equate a big part of success to achieving financial freedom.

I’m not saying that money is everything. But it certainly is very important for me because it allows me to be more of who I really am. It also allows me to do the things that I really enjoy and am passionate about.

For me, time is what I find to be of the most value. The more time that I have to do whatever it is that I choose like playing with my children, traveling, listening to music, etc; the more enriched my life feels.

To be able to do these things, I need money. And when you aren’t born with a silver spoon in your mouth or “come from money” – as they say – you have 2 options to generate money; you can either work for someone else or you can borrow it from another party.

What you do with it after you receive it is a whole other story.

I have read tons of books, watched countless videos and listened to hundreds of recordings on building wealth and achieving financial freedom. Many of these resources contain the message “Do what you truly love and are passionate and everything else will fall into place.”

On a spiritual level, the message is that we were all put on the planet with some purpose and until we are serving that purpose, we will remain unfulfilled, spiritually, mentally and financially.

On a physical level, the message is that when we are partaking in things that we truly love to do, time disappears. Because we are involved in a labor of love, it’s not as if we are not actually working and this eliminates many of the variables that are involved in people giving up.

Therefore, instead of quitting when most people would, we go the distance and succeed.

Do you think Michael Jordan could have practiced the way he did if he didn’t truly love the game of basketball?

Here’s where things get tricky. You see, life doesn’t always unfold exactly the way we’ve planned and odds are that many people are just working to survive and pay the bills. To just wake up one day and decide to quit your job to go pursue your dream can be quite scary. I’ll come back to this in a minute.

Back to my research; since I wanted to learn more about how people build wealth, I purchased a book entitled “The Millionaire Mind” by Thomas J. Stanley which consisted of hundreds of interviews with millionaires (most self-made) to see what characteristics they shared in building their wealth.

One of the most common characteristics they shared wasn’t inherited wealth or persistence or even determination. It was nothing more than their ability to deal with people.

Their ability to effectively partner and build relationships with others is what played a crucial role in the wealth building process for these millionaires.

What I came to realize after years of research is that the same factor which prevents people from following their dreams is also the same factor which prevents people from building relationships with others.

That factor is nothing more than lack of confidence. It sounds rather cliché but it couldn’t be truer.

Confidence is the one thing that catapults you toward success or completely hinders your chances of achieving it. The reason being is because even with other great qualities like persistence, discipline, good work ethic, talent, intelligence, etc; at some point you will need the confidence to introduce these powers to others and take risks.

These same truths apply to your personal life. You could have all the qualities of a great partner but if you do not have the confidence to approach someone you are interested in, chances are you will remain lonely for a very long time.

And while money opens doors, relationships nurture the soul. With confidence, you will enable yourself to enjoy both.

Now the question becomes how does one develop confidence?

There are 3 things that I generally do when I need to develop confidence about a certain area of my life.

First, I educate myself. I research and learn as much about what it is I am getting involved in so that I can equip myself with the knowledge that I need to be successful.

In most cases, a person’s lack of confidence comes from their fear of failure. Failure is the result of not knowing or not doing and nothing more.

When you fail at something, it’s either because you didn’t take action in time or at all or you took the wrong action because you didn’t have enough information to make the right decision.

Therefore, you must know as much as possible about what you’re about to do so that your chances of failure will become lessened. Doing this efficiently and effectively will alone boost your confidence.

The second thing that I’ve always found it to be effective is to use past successes as a crutch for future ones. In other words, I think about a time when I wanted to achieve a goal and did so with no problem. I also think of those special moments where I was “in the zone” as they say.

We’ve all had these moments where we just can’t seem to do anything wrong. Everything we are doing is spot on and things seem as if they are just falling into place.

I mentally take myself back to that moment and think of how I felt and what was going through my mind and that really helps to build the confidence that I need to take the next risk or make the next move.

In Neuro Linguistic programming or NLP this is known as anchoring and it’s a very effective technique that I would recommend to anyone.

Lastly, I think about is the worst case scenario that could result from my action. In most cases, when you really take a close look at what’s at stake, you’ll quickly see how the worst case scenario, well….could be worse.

I always tell myself, as long as this decision will not inflict harm on me or anyone else, chances are the outcome (if undesired) could be remedied. Some may take longer than others but still the most negative outcomes can be fixed.