The one thing to break you loose is …
Going to college is an example of this one thing. Taking a course that will give you the skills to do your job better is another. Developing your talent with a tutor is yet another. Getting yourself a mentor is yet another. Joining a program that will give you access to resources and a great support community is yet another. Hiring a coach is yet another.
Have you guessed it yet?
This one thing, one crucial and most overlooked thing that will open doors of sweet opportunity for you, expand your horizons, and unblock you in ways you have never imagined possible so you can reach those dreams you talk about, this one thing is called investing in yourself.
Let’s talk about this foreign concept today because nobody drills this into you as they most certainly should like brushing your teeth and saying please and thank you. No wonder it’s not half as obvious to most of us who are struggling day after day and year after year with the same problems, wondering why we can’t “catch a break” or rise above these awful nasty limits that hold us down so we can show the world what we are made of.
As if that’s not enough, investing in yourself gets all muddled up with spending money on yourself and being frivolous with your finances and heavens forbid, being selfish and self-centered, and nothing could be further from the truth.
Just why invest in yourself?
You can’t see the picture when you are in the frame. ~Les Brown
When you are the one going through hell, you cannot see the windows of heaven opening up to you.
It takes someone or something from the outside to show you and to open your eyes to all that lies before you. That’s your investment. It can be in the form of a savvy friend or a helpful mentor or an expensive coach. It can be a few words of wisdom from who’s been through it or an entire course or program that takes you step by step from hell to heaven.
But invest in yourself, you must if you mean to get out of hell!
If you are not investing in yourself, you can stop expecting miracles in your life right now. Miracles happen to those who take their success journey seriously. They are not a select chosen few and they do not carry a magic wand around. You can be one of them starting right now if that’s what you want. They just do one thing differently.
They invest in themselves.
Seriously. Regularly. With cold hard cash if they have it or with payment plans if they don’t or with any other means available to them because investing in themselves is as critical as eating and sleeping and having shelter. They get it.
Why?
Because they mean to rise above an ordinary life. They mean to leave behind the daily struggling and move on to making a difference, serving their world, recognizing their gifts and making stuff happen! They mean to create massive wealth and success for themselves and for others. They mean to see their dreams come to life, not just live in their heads.
And they do!
When I realized this, I started investing in myself through coaching programs, getting mentors, joining mastermind groups and networks, buying books and resources, and so much more. It wasn’t cheap but that’s not the point. It Pays Off!
Return on investment or ROI is not fancy finance lingo.
What do you think when you hear ROI? Do you see stock charts and spreadsheets with lots of numbers in your head?
Return on investment is what you get back after you put your money up. The idea is to get back your money and then some. So if you invest $1000 in a program, and want to get back twice the investment, you make $2000 as a result of what you learned in the program. And you are ahead already.
The way you measure the value of an investment is not how much it costs but what you get back. If you are investing $3000 in a career coach, you may get a raise and promotion that is going to pay back 10x over the life of the raise, and that came as a result of you investing. Again, you are ahead.
Because you would not have had the raise without the investment in all likelihood.
When you pass up on opportunities to invest, you pass up on all the sweet returns on your investment and you choose to continue to live with the problem or solve it on your own.
Positive thinking and affirmations alone are not enough.
All the positive thinking and power affirmations in this world alone won’t make you smarter, richer or help you advance in career or business. You must take action and invest in your growth and development regularly – not once but many, many times in the course of your life.
You need to have the right mindset for success, no doubt about it. I learned this the hard way and drive it home hard in my Smart Exit Blueprint course and coaching program before we get to the fun stuff. That’s where the positive thinking and power affirmations are key.
But you are not quite yet done, my dear. With the clarity that you gain from positive thinking and affirmations, you then need to come to terms with the actual limitations that are holding you back and take steps to fix it.
That’s the start of investing in yourself.
“But I don’t have the money to invest in myself!!”
The first argument against investing in yourself is that you don’t have any money and therein lies the irony.
You are in this situation because you haven’t invested in yourself over time, and neglected your growth and development. When you do this with one problem, it snowballs and life’s problems accumulate on top of another until they become unbearable.
Every successful wealthy person has faced this excuse and dropped it. You can too.
If you don’t have a lot of disposable income, then start small but start now.
You don’t have to take a $2000 training right off the bat but you can invest in a $300 program that will give you access to the right support community and the right structure to get you through your current struggle.
You can look at areas of your life where you may be squandering your money without even realizing it and close those leaks. You can start a “Invest in Me” fund and start saving your cash today. You can look for scholarships or sponsorships. You can negotiate your skills and talents where it applies.
You can do a lot to take steps into helping yourself and investing in yourself. Drop your excuses – they are fooling you into staying stuck – because investing in yourself can change the course of your future.
You invested in yourself but “It didn’t work!”
So you invested in a course, a coach or a program and you say “it didn’t work!”. You have lost faith in investing in yourself.
Alright. Let’s take a closer look before we blame the coach or the course or the program.
Did you do the work? All of it? With your very best effort and intentions?
Investing in yourself comes with doing work and taking action.
If you take a course, do the exercises. If you get a coach, do what they say. If you go to school, finish your homework. If you are training for a marathon, show up for practice.
When you receive the expert advice that you have dearly paid for, take action on it until you get results. Then and only then will investing in yourself work.
Yes one day it will be too late but today is not that day, is it?
It’s not easy for me to give you tough love but it’s been on my mind lately and I’ve seen too many people give up on their amazing bright potential because they continue to stay stuck!
Not investing in yourself is holding you back and I hate to see you wake up one day and realize that you could have lived a different life, and broken through those awful barriers, and created that successful business and the financial freedom that you dream about.
Because one day will be too late.
One day all the opportunities that are before you today won’t be there. Your time is finite and your window of opportunity will close someday.
And if you are so busy trying to figure out everything on your own, you won’t even see the window of opportunity staring you in the face and then coming to a close someday.
Don’t Let That Happen to You!
Don’t rob yourself of your own power, your own potential and your own brilliant future. Stop squandering your precious time! Invest in yourself today!
I am Farnoosh, the founder of Prolific Living. So glad you are here. My mission is to empower you to unblock your creative genius to live your dream life.