Many of us are happy to invest in businesses, the stock market and real estate, but what about investing in ourselves? When we considering investing in ourselves, many of us balk. What value can we get from investing in ourselves?
1. You’ll Discover Your Purpose
Have you been feeling lost? Has your life become little more than waking up, heading to work and returning home? Maybe you feel like you have no room to complain — you make enough money to feel comfortable, you don’t hate your job, you have loved ones you feel close to and yet you feel dissatisfied. Empty.
How do you feel at the end of the day? Do you go to sleep with a smile on your face, knowing you’re proud of the day’s accomplishments and you’re eager for what tomorrow brings? Or do you lay in bed, tossing and turning, asking yourself at what point will you start to feel like your life has finally begun? When will you start living a life that makes you fulfilled?
When you invest in yourself, you’ll dedicate time to discovering what your talents and passions are. You’ll learn what it is you should truly be doing with your life, and maybe 2020 will be the year you start living a fulfilling life.
2. You’ll Learn Who You Are
When you invest in yourself in 2020, you’ll get to know yourself better. You’ll learn what your needs, desires and wants are. If you’re unsure about your wants and needs, you may end up wasting time, money and energy on pursuits or activities that aren’t actually that important to you.
When you learn more about yourself, you’ll learn why you need or want these things. If you have difficulty with delayed gratification or experience compulsive behavior, you may discover you actually have an addictive personality that’s interfering with your life.
3. You’ll Increase Your Worth
Improving personally and professionally requires taking action to make a change. Are you hoping to get promoted? Do you want your family and friends to believe you’ve grown and become a better person than the person you were 10 years ago?
If you want to see a change in your life, you have to make that change yourself. You won’t get promoted unless you become a more valuable employee. You won’t become a better person if you don’t take steps to become a better person.
By working on yourself, you’ll develop new skills, learn new technologies and come up with new ideas. You’ll advance and evolve in ways you never even anticipated, and you’ll increase your worth in your professional life and your personal life. You’ll become a better friend, a better partner and a better employee, which will not only increase your worth to the people around you but will also increase your worth to yourself.
4. You’ll Make the Most of Your Time
When we grow old and look back on the lives we’ve lived, many of us don’t regret the chances we took, but the ones we didn’t. All the life goals and dreams we didn’t even give ourselves a chance to pursue. Why do we hold ourselves back from doing what we really want?
Many of us hesitate to dedicate time to pursuing our dreams and passions because of fear. Fear of change, fear of the unknown, fear of rejection, fear of failure. What we forget to remind ourselves is that when we step out of our comfort zones and take a chance, we almost always feel proud and accomplished, even if those dreams or pursuits didn’t turn out exactly the way we envisioned.
If you start investing in yourself now, you’ll discover what goals you want to begin working toward today. You won’t look back on your life when you’re older and mourn for all the time wasted. Instead, by getting started now, you’ll reach your goals earlier than you would’ve otherwise.
In fact, many of us don’t reach our goals at all and live with regrets that lead to chronic low self-esteem. By starting this year, you’ll know you took advantage of the time you were given and worked toward making your dreams a reality.
5. You’ll Become More Confident
Many of us struggle with low confidence. Maybe we didn’t have many people who believed in us when we were younger, so we didn’t think we could believe in ourselves. Maybe we had other people placing high expectations on us that we could never seem to meet. Or maybe we constantly compared ourselves to others around us and felt like we could never be as successful as them.
You don’t have to look far for examples of successful people who were told by many people that they would never make it. Look up your favorite musicians, writers, actors and artists and you’re sure to find plenty of stories about people who were told they could never succeed, they were making a mistake, they should choose a different career path and yet they exceeded everyone’s expectations.
No one is stopping you from doing the same — except maybe yourself. Sometimes, we need to get out of our way to make our lives what we want them to be. Break down your big goals and dreams into smaller steps and celebrate each accomplishment along the way, no matter how seemingly small. As you become more skilled and experience, your confidence will grow.
Invest in yourself in 2020, and you’re sure to end the year as a better, happier person.
Jennifer Landis is a mom, wife, freelance writer, and the founder of Mindfulness Mama. She enjoys yoga, red wine, and drinking all of the tea she can find. Follow her on Twitter @ JenniferELandis.
