our alarm goes off every morning. After hitting snooze, you force yourself up and out of bed. As you get ready for your day, your mind begins to go through the list of things you have to do. You can feel yourself slowly getting tired again, despite having just been up for a few minutes.
Sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? Instead of permitting ourselves to look on the bright side of things, many of us tend to dwell on everything that we dread doing or forget one of the essential things in life that we should be doing altogether—making sure to take time and invest in ourselves. Now when most people think of the word ‘invest,’ a lot of their minds think of money and how to save it.
Although this is true when thinking about the word ‘invest,’ to ‘invest’ in yourself could also mean to do an activity where you take care of yourself. As you continue, you will learn more about what it means to invest in yourself and some of the different ways to do so.
What does it mean to invest in yourself?
It is crucial to take care of yourself.
Traditionally when we talk about taking time to invest, we are referring to money and how to best save up for the future. However, as you will learn, there is another way to define the term ‘invest’ when we are talking about ‘investing’ in ourselves.
When ‘investing’ in yourself, we are talking about taking time for yourself or, in other words, about the importance of self-care. As you continue reading on, you will gain a further understanding of the importance of self-care, as well as a few of the different ways one can invest in oneself.
However, it is crucial to keep in mind that one person's definition of investing in themselves may be different than others.
Why is it important to invest in yourself?
Your happiness and health are of overall importance.
Every day we wake up, go to work, come home, eat, sleep and repeat. After a while, our days become so routine that we can move through them like a robot programmed to work our lives away. Although this may be a cynical way to look at it, this is how things tend to be. The sad reality is that we begin to live like this at a very young age. It all tends to start when we are children in school. We get up and go to school, and the ring of bells declares our movements.
This is, unfortunately, just how society tends to be. Over time we become worn out and begin to forget what is important to us. This is why it is essential to be sure and take the time to invest in ourselves and focus on our overall well-being.
Now you may be wondering what the benefits of investing in yourself may be. Well, some of the benefits are as follows:
1) You get a confidence boost.
“But I don’t need a confidence boost; I’m already confident in myself.” Now, if this is you, consider yourself to be lucky. This is something not a lot of people can easily say about themselves. As confident as we may like to appear, we may not always internally be. It is easy to think that we are full of confidence, but it takes time.
To boost your confidence, you may need to change your lifestyle to better your health and take time to participate in an activity that makes you happy such as reading a book, going out for a walk, or even hanging out and talking to friends. According to this dentist in Denison, you can also enhance your appearance to get a confidence boost. For instance, if you don't like how your teeth look, seek a professional dentist so that you can get dental implants or braces to have them fixed. These are just a few of the many ways you can spend time both investing in yourself and working to boost your overall confidence.
2) New career opportunities may open up.
As you take time to invest in yourself, you end up making yourself that much more appealing to others around you, therefore, opening up no opportunities for yourself both in the social world and career world, leading into the next point of creating connections.
3) You can make new connections.
Building connections is another beneficial aspect when you invest in yourself. When you invest in yourself and become happier with who you are, more people get drawn toward you and your overall being. Along with this, you also have an opportunity to meet new people if you take the time to take care of yourself and go out to try new activities.
4) Investing in yourself = a healthier mind and mood.
By allowing yourself to invest in yourself, you can adapt to changes in your life easier and keep your mind healthier. These two things go hand in hand in the sense that as you begin adjusting to life, your mind becomes healthier and more equipped to deal with life as things continue to develop over time.
Different ways to invest in yourself.
There are so many things you can do; where should you begin?
Now that you have learned a bit about what it means to invest in yourself and why it is so important, let’s get into some of the different ways to practice investing in yourself.
1) Embrace your life and ability to learn new things.
Many people may think they are done learning after they get out of school. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. As you go through your life, you will continue to learn new lessons every day.
2) Take care of your health.
When saying this, you should consider both your physical and mental health. After all you only have one body, and it is your job to take care of it. If you begin to notice that your physical or mental health is beginning to deteriorate in any way, it may be a good idea to start doing things that will help. For physical health, it is a good idea to make sure that you eat healthily and move your body. And for your mental health, allow yourself to get fresh air, talk to friends, listen to music, and overall just do things that make you happy.
3) Make a list of goals.
By setting goals for yourself, you are not only investing in yourself but also creating habits that will help you get to where you want to be in life. For example, maybe you want to lose weight, so you make it a goal to go to the gym for a half hour every day, or perhaps you want to finish that book series that you started a long time ago and provide yourself a daily page number or time limit that you want to read. It could be a number of different things that you may decide to put on your list of potential goals. It is just a matter of whether you hit them or not and what time span you give yourself to achieve each particular goal.
4) Try to break a bad habit.
Now, none of us like to admit that we have bad habits, let alone share what they are. In a sense, this can go back to the idea of making goals, as previously talked about. When it comes to breaking a bad habit, you may struggle with it at first. Still, if you take the time and try to invest in yourself, then you are more likely to have the ability to at least try breaking a bad habit.
5) Focus on your mental health, too.
This can mean going the official route and finding a therapist for anxiety or depression, but you can also invest in yourself by finding ways to work through emotions and events on your own, if it's more your style.
Perhaps my favorite way to invest yourself is by taking the time to begin journaling. The best thing about journaling is that you can allow yourself to do and create just about anything you want. Journaling allows you to not only invest in yourself but invest in different aspects of your everyday life. The best thing about journaling is that the possibilities are endless, and you don’t need much to begin besides a pen, a piece of paper of some sort, and your mind.
As you can see, when you invest in yourself, you can do it in many different ways and achieve many other things. So leave a comment below if you practice any of the things mentioned in the article when it comes to investing in yourself, as well as what your favorite practice of investing in yourself is.
