If you have struggled with your relationship with money, you may be having difficulty with the concept of feeling worthy of achieving financial independence and financial success. Here are 7 tips to get you thinking, and acting, like the winner that you are.

• Watch your language. Make sure that what follows "I" or "I am" is what you want to manifest. If you say "I am poor," the Universe will answer you with its only response: yes!

• Be 100% truthful with yourself about your relationship with money. No shame, no blame, no guilt, no judgment, instead, observation and awareness. Financial integrity forms the foundation for lasting financial independence. Increasing your financial integrity requires unflinching self-honesty about you and your money.

• Focus on what you desire, not on what you don't desire. That to which you give your attention expands. If you give your attention to scarcity, scarcity expands; if you give your attention to abundance, abundance expands.

• Making peace with the past. This is Step One from Your Money or Your Life. How much have you earned in your life up until this point? What have you got to show for it? Ask the questions, review the results, then let it go and move on.

• Use your imagination and visualization skills and picture in your mind as vividly as possible what you imagine and desire your life to look like when you reach financial independence. Hold on to this vision and play it again and again and again. Know that your positive thoughts are like magnets attracting your desires.

• Become aware and conscious of your money shadow - those money demons that may still be haunting you. These are old and outdated messages that attempt to convince you that you’re not worthy of achieving financial independence. Bring your shadow into the light and change this pattern.  As Bob Marley wrote in his songs of liberation: Emancipate yourself from mental slavery, only we can free our minds!

• Read the classic and all time best-selling book: Think and Grow Rich, by Napoleon Hill. Reading this book will teach you how powerful a role your thoughts play with accumulating wealth. It is by far one of the best books ever written on the link between the power of positive thinking and the desire to reach financial independence.

Photo by Melanie Hughes