15 Ways To Invest In Yourself
An investment in yourself pays the best dividends.
This is a clear list of ways to invest in yourself if you want
to really change your life for the better.
1. Read For Growth
Honestly, the most accessible thing to do for long-term growth
and investment in yourself is to learn how to read for growth.
People often don’t read books these days
because their teachers forced them to read boring books
and graded them on it, creating an association
between reading and homework.
Schools actually made people hate the most valuable self-investment
tool out there.
The best strategy to pick up a reading habit is to read
what you love until you love to read.
Reading is and always will be a superior form of personal growth;
you can watch a thousand short videos about a topic,
and it will never come close to reading a good book.
2. Talk To People
Find a mentor and talk to people from different
backgrounds and ideologies.
The more you expose yourself to different types of thinking,
the more you get to understand the world around you.
People often live in ideological bubbles,
surrounding themselves with others who are similar, live nearby,
consume the same content,
and think and vote the same way, creating an echo chamber.
Growth happens only when you expose yourself to new concepts
and when you assimilate newfound knowledge
or replace old knowledge with better information.
Never be arrogant enough to think you know everything.
In your quest to talk to interesting people,
some will become guiding lights; pick one of them to become your mentor.
3. Make Friends
Your friends and network are your personal
and professional safety net.
Your net worth is directly correlated to your network;
the higher the quality of your connections,
the wealthier you are in life.
Outside of professional and financial reasons to network,
going through life without sharing it with the people you care
about leaves a big piece of the puzzle missing.
Other people’s happiness becomes your happiness.
Invest in quality friendships.
Sometimes this will mean investing time,
and other times it will mean investing money or resources.
Keeping friendships alive requires work; if a friendship fades away,
it is because neither person made it a priority.
4. Travel Far
The farther you go, the more your understanding of the world changes
in the best possible way.
Traveling 10 hours away by plane changes the way people look at life,
introducing different types of education, customs, and traditions.
The further you travel, the less self-centered you become.
You realize there is an entire world out there that has been going
on forever without knowing or caring about your existence,
and that moment of realization is a big milestone.
Travel is one of those very few things that,
when you spend money on it, makes you richer.
Make it a priority to see hard-to-reach places.
Don’t be a tourist; be a traveler.
Embrace the culture and allow it to shape your identity.
5. Take Courses To Build Skills
The best investment you can make is to acquire new skills.
Skills are like upgrades to the quality of the potential outcomes
you can achieve; they are valuable tools you can put to work,
and nobody can take them away from you once you learn them.
While some skills are acquired naturally as you grow,
you might lack others, like how to set clear and practical objectives.
Your life is cheap if you think investing in yourself is expensive.
If you think spending $15 on a book or $250 on a course
is too much money, you don’t yet understand the return
on investment in yourself.
A single idea from a course or a book can make you thousands
of dollars and shift your entire perspective.
6. Understand How To Build Health
People often neglect health when they are young
because they don’t understand that health neglect
is an invoice coming their way in the future.
Most people take away from their future health to use it in the present.
The more you develop, the more you understand the return
on investment of good health and good sleep—the difference
between running at 95% brain capacity versus running on fumes.
Invest time and money into learning about nutrition and the body,
and then invest effort and money into making
sure you reap all the benefits of that knowledge.
7. Sell Something
Hands down, one of the best ways
to grow is by trying to sell something.
So many skills have to come together in this type of exercise
that your growth accelerates because of it.
When you set a goal to sell something, you have to figure out:
- What to sell
- Who to sell it to
- How to communicate with that potential buyer
- How to deliver and close that deal
All of these steps can be translated to other parts of your life,
making practicing selling one of the best investments you can make.
8. Optimize Your Environment
Optimizing your environment has two clear benefits:
- Time management: You no longer waste time figuring out where your stuff is or what you are supposed to do next.
- Increasing efficiency: Well-organized spaces allow you to get more done quickly.
Even if you don’t follow a minimalist approach,
organizing your space is crucial.
Some people live their entire lives in a constant
environment dominated by chaos.
Happiness, success, and the feeling of calm come as a result
of putting order into the chaos of the world.
Begin by optimizing your immediate environment
and expand outwards.
9. Teach Something
If you want to master something, teach it to others.
Teaching forces you to rationalize things in a way that
is easy to comprehend and follow.
Learning stops the moment you begin to memorize formulas
and paragraphs word for word; learning should be
about understanding.
When you teach someone anything,
it coerces you to make sure you have a good enough handle
on the topic to pass on that knowledge efficiently.
In the process, the information you are teaching gets cemented into
your own brain.
10. Build A Separate Income Stream
Invest your money so you don’t have to work for money.
You will never be rich as long as you are trading time for money.
The moment you are able to generate a second income stream
that is independent of you, your life changes.
It might not be a lot, but if done right, it is there to stay.
The most important thing is that it is not dependent on you
bringing in more income; otherwise,
you just got yourself another job.
11. Clean Up Your Image
Investing in yourself means giving yourself access to the
highest number of opportunities.
To get there, you need to sacrifice the embarrassing internet photos
and behaviors from your past.
We all judge people by their appearances,
and your social media profiles are a major part of that.
Clean up your professional profiles, do some press,
and opportunities will start coming your way.
Start taking better care of yourself by learning about fitness,
grooming, and personal hygiene.
12. Expose Yourself To Art And Creative Ideas
Most people don’t see how valuable art is, but creativity breeds value.
The only way to be creative is to exercise your creative muscles.
The more you expose yourself to the creativity of others,
the brighter your own shines.
It helps you connect dots differently
and learn about different approaches.
Art should inspire you, make you think, make you question things,
and tell you more about yourself.
Make a habit of coming face-to-face with creativity
whenever you have the opportunity.
13. Learn A New Language
Learning a new language has immediate marketplace value
that can get you better jobs or deals.
More importantly, your brain expands as you learn new cultures
and structures, yielding recurring results over time.
It also increases the value of your inner circle.
Ordering in a native language when traveling gives you the feeling
of being embraced by a culture,
and there is immense value in that connection.
14. Buy Better Equipment And Tools
Buy better tools that allow you to either increase the quality
of your work or do your work faster.
Early in your journey, a large percentage of your residual
income should be reinvested in equipment that is directly correlated
to bringing in more money.
These are things you only need to buy once,
and they will pay for themselves in the short to medium term.
Don’t be afraid to spend more on things that make you money;
you can’t afford to waste time fixing issues that could be solved
simply by upgrading your tools.
15. Practice Introspection And Stop Saying Yes To Things You Don’t Want To Do
Introspection is one of the most valuable skills you can develop.
We all carry baggage, and the goal of introspection is to solve
the issues of the past one by one until all you have to stress about
are the issues at hand in the present.
This is a fundamental step toward happiness.
The additional step is to stop bringing in new issues by saying yes
to things you know you don’t want to do.
When people take advantage of that, it leads to a miserable life.
Stop living for other people
and start thinking about what you want out of life yourself.
16. Bonus: Invest Time Before You Invest Money, Until You Can Buy Time
If you don’t have much money to invest,
put as much time as possible into things that have the potential
to get you to the point where you can buy time
with the money you make.
If you have to choose between investing money and investing time,
always invest the money.
You will probably run out of time before you run out of money.
You might find yourself overpaying in the eyes of others,
but they don’t know that you are actually buying time.
Nobody can make you rich, fit, or smart—you are the one generating
a positive return on your life.
