When discussing investment, the most frequent item of discussion is always about what hot stock is having a run right now or what latest trend is worth putting your money in. (Bitcoin, NFTs anyone?)
Most people ignore the best investment available at any given time. Themselves.
“Your best investment is yourself. There is nothing that compares to it.”
Warren Buffet
Investing in yourself compounds over long periods of time resulting in dizzying returns and provides more personal satisfaction than any single financial investment ever can.
So when we talk about investment, what exact types of investments are we talking about?
Growing yourself
If you are working in any domain, learn from the best on how to become better. Read books on the topic, take courses, spend every minute becoming better at what you do.
“If you are not growing, you are dying..“
Sometimes, in this day and age a lot of material is available for free on the internet, but buying a paid course or book is worth it for the comprehensive amount of high-quality information you get to imbibe in a short amount of time.
Instead of waiting for a library book to be available, go ahead and buy the book. The marginal cost of a book vs the returns is almost always worth it.
Saving time
Investing in yourself is not just about learning, it is also understanding what your zone of genius is and what is clearly not.
Remember you can always earn money, but time spent can never be ‘earned’ back.
Sometimes it is just better of your time to pay someone else to do the work. Spend the saved time wisely and that investment pays back amazing returns over the long run.
Feeding your mind
“You are what you read…“
In this hyper-consumption culture, everything cries out for attention making it difficult to know what is worth reading and what is not. Spend some time identifying good quality sources that enrich you and ignore the rest. If this means, you have to spend money on independent high-quality news sources or podcasts or material, it is definitely worth it.
Take care of your body
You only have one asset that absolutely own and there is no way to exchange it or get something better later on.
That is your body.
Take good care of it by investing the time for exercise and eating well and in moderation so it keeps you being productive and pursuing all that life has to offer.
Find time to ponder
“The unexamined life is not worth living..”
Socrates
Ultimately, the most rewarding things in life are found within. To find that, one has to of course get past the basics, health, shelter, food and then to love, family, connection and beyond that it only exists in your mind.
Understanding yourself and your wants and desires and being more and more self-aware allows you to truly work towards what is important.
Finding that self-awareness takes hard work but once you know your direction as long as you are making progress you are on the way to reap rich personal rewards that nothing else can really match.