Support UsInvesting in Yourself – The Most Important Investment You Will Ever Make

Do you have a personal goal you want to obtain this year? What steps will it take to be successful in your life and your work? The first, and most important step to meeting your goals is investing in yourself. If you don’t, there is no way to grow and change, which is the core of personal growth.  What do you need to be successful?  Achieving your dreams begins with investing in your personal development.  You can’t reach your goals if you aren't increasing your skills and knowledge and taking care of yourself. 

​Investing in Yourself is Personal Development

Investing in Yourself is Personal Development

According to definitions.net, “personal development” includes the following activities: 

​• improving self-awareness 
• improving self-knowledge 
• building or renewing identity/self-esteem 
• developing strengths or talents 
• improving wealth 
• spiritual development 
• identifying or improving potential
• building employability or human capital is the process of defining your goals and how to     achieve them.”

Increasing Your Skills and Expanding Your Horizons

​Investing in yourself includes figuring out the following:
• What are you passionate about?
• Figure out your strengths and weaknesses.
• Outline the goals you want to accomplish.
• Develop the skillsets that you decide needs work.
 
Each person will have a different way of investing in themselves; nobody will have the same goals.  While one individual may go after a certification, another person may focus on developing mindfulness skills. Each goal is different, yet both are considered investing in oneself.   
Even with different goals, self-investment requires planning and dedication. Whether working on a New Year’s Resolution or a long-term career goal, the process of self-investment is similar.

Remember: don’t get discouraged. With a plan and motivation, you can accomplish any goal by investing in yourself and your future, in any way you see fit.

​What Are You Passionate About?

You must know your interests and passions before you set goals for yourself, or you will be less likely to achieve what you set out to do. What are your core values? Decide what knowledge you want to gain or skills you want to learn. It could be anything from a hobby to a professional certification.
Investing in yourself doesn’t have to happen all at the same time, nor is it going to. Personal development always happens in small steps. As with investing money, your personal investment will work for you, and give you a higher return of investment than money will. You will be happier, healthier, and more at peace with an investment in yourself. And, you may even make more money, if a course or your professional development is what you aim for. You can’t change everything at once, though. Small, outlined steps are always the key to success.

​Your Strengths

​The next step in personal improvement is to determine what your strengths are and how you can use them to achieve your goals.  By looking at what’s important to you and setting goals, you can match your strengths to your plan for achievement.  You may already have many of the skills and abilities you need to reach your goals without realizing it.  This step helps to improve your self-esteem and self-confidence by reminding you that you can carry out your plan and move forward.

What You Need to Improve or Develop

​Once you’ve found your strengths, you will also know what you can and need to improve.  You may have the skills to complete an intricate protect but need to develop the patience and time management skills to follow through to the end. 
 
Even if you want to eat healthier, you may need to educate yourself on which foods are the best for you.  Knowing about what you need to improve or develop gives you guidelines for what to focus on in your personal development with year.

Taking these steps to personal improvement will help you grow.  It also helps to categorize your goals into areas for improvement based on what is most important to you and more easily come up with a time-line for your goals.

​Professional Goals

​​If focusing on your professional success, your investment in yourself may include several goals. Think about which of these goals will help you obtain success and decide which goals are priorities. Then, improve or develop the skills needed to achieve them.
• Build your network and engage with peers.
• Improve your time management.
• Showcase talents by finding new challenges.
• Develop your growth mindset.
• Update your professional skills through taking classes and attending workshops.
• Learn the ability to motivate others. 

​With these things in place, you will be unstoppable. Job growth becomes within your grasp and opportunities expand exponentially.

​Lifestyle Goals

​If your goals are more focused on your happiness and personal life, a lifestyle change is in order. This change may be to develop or improve upon the life-skills necessary to change, accessing true transformation within your life.

You May Want To:

​Take an Academic or Personal Improvement class. There are also some extraordinary self-help and informational groups to learn more about whatever your passions are. Some personal goals are to:
​
• Become heathier.
• Improve your relationships with friends and family.
• Be patient with yourself and others.
• Take a class that relates to one of your hobbies or skills.
• Become a better listener.

Don’t Get Discouraged, You’ll Get It

​When you invest in your personal development, you achieve greater success meeting your goals. You become a happier person. Once you figure out your passions and what your values are, you can focus on what you want to accomplish in life.  Determining the strengths, you have, and your deficiencies can only help your efforts. “By summer, I’ll have a website” is not going to be helpful. A goal should be obtainable, concrete, and measurable. 

​Now is where setting mini goals becomes effective. Mini goals are basically steps. They are easier to measure, be specific with, and to set deadlines for. 

​For instance: “I want a website this summer” may be possible, it is neither measurable, nor specific. This makes it sound overwhelming and gives you no guidance for how you will accomplish building the site. Now that you’ve decided what’s important to you, it’s time to set the steps to achieve your goals.  To be effective, goals must be specific, measurable, and obtainable.  “By the end of the year, I want to earn more money” isn’t very specific or measurable.

“By August I will have my content ready for my site” and “October is the website launches” are specific, measurable and concrete. These goals give more guidance than having “a website this summer.” “My business will increase by 20% before the end of the year” is better than “I want to earn more money.”

No matter the goal, if you break it up into stages and steps, it will be more manageable and less intimidating. But, all forms of investing in yourself are a form of self-care, something we all desperately need right now. 

DON’T FORGET TO TAKE OF YOU!
#SelfCareFridays