Investing In Yourself

September 08, 2008

A couple of months ago in a guest post for Cash Money Life I spoke about investing in yourself as your best asset (in agreement to Patrick). If you have not realized yet that you are your greatest asset and are still hunting for the big money in forex, maybe you’ll prefer to skip reading further.

A Tortoise Cartoon
Photo by Melody Campbell at Flickr

If you are still here, you may want to dig further what investing in yourself is all about. While seen in general it all comes to personal development, let’s distinguish a few main directions.

Investing In Your Formal Education

Some people understand investing in yourself only as investing in formal education. Depending on the route you choose in your life, it may be very important or has no importance at all. In any case I think seeing formal education as your only internal asset is remarkably stupid. But what could you expect from people who spend all their life chasing for diplomas and papers which to prove their personal value?

Neglecting formal education totally is not a good idea either especially if you prefer to earn your income as an employee or some kind of licensed service provider. In this case the relationship between getting a better degree and receiving higher income is almost proportional. So if you wonder what to spend few thousands bucks on and you are happy as an employee, probably the best idea is to do it on some additional degree or license.

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In some professions getting a PhD may be one of the best investments to make – for example if you work in some research and development department PhD can help you obtain much better perceived value.

The key is to know if getting a formal degree is going to help you or not. Most people don’t make the difference and put too much emphasize on it. But how useful the degree is for most entrepreneurs?

Investing In Your Informal Education

Most entrepreneurs and almost all other people as well can benefit a lot more by getting informal education. It’s not the papers that make you successful and professional – it’s what you really know and can do. Even if you are just an employee, knowing more about your job helps you become much better in it. This gives you the chance to get a raise or move to a company that pays better.

The real world skills are the most valuable asset of the self-employed professionals and independent consultants too (ok, maybe after their reputation). If you are getting paid per project or service, the quality you deliver is directly tied to your income.

Some entrepreneurs may not work directly on their business (if they really own a business and the business doesn’t own them), but they still can benefit a lot by educating themselves about the business specifics.

Besides the professional skills that you want to acquire, there are some universal ones which help almost everyone to raise the value of their informal education. Such skills are communication (speaking, negotiating etc.), writing, basic math, business skills etc. So if you wonder if it’s a good idea to attend a business education, most probably it is – provided that the education is good of course.

Investing In Your Personal Development

While formal and informal education are also part of your personal development, you may want to pay special attention to learning and training skills that are not directly related to work, business and money. They are more about developing your inner self as a person and more conscious human being and exactly they are the main skills that make some people live fulfilling (and often wealthy) life.

  • Self discipline. Do you imagine a soldier and military order when you read this? If yes, you are on the wrong way. Self discipline doesn’t mean to put your life on rails and have no fun. It simply means to have the power to follow the route you have chosen regardless the obstacles. For example if you want to adopt a new habit, you’ll have to fight the resistance in yourself and the people around you and still walk your way. Imagine you decide going to the gym every day – you’ll come across the resistance of your own body (laziness, tiredness) and maybe of many of your friends who will invite you to drink beer instead of going to the gym. Self discipline is to be able to say no and follow the path you have choosen.
  • Courage. The lack of courage is what keeps so many people poor and unhappy. And yet they prefer to keep their current level of poverty and unhappiness than to take the risk and try to improve their life and financial situation. You probably have seen and maybe experienced this yourself – people go to job they hate and receive a salary that is not enough for their needs just because of the fear to try something better. (Of course you can fail while trying, but very often failure is the first and most important step of the success). Courage means to be able to take reasonable risks instead of just talking about them. You’ll barely meet any wealthy people without courage (except those who inherited their wealth or won the lottery).
  • Health. Do you neglect your health just because it’s not a skill and not so obvious connected to your financial prosperity? Do you prefer working long hours for external resources (money) while putting your health at serious risks? The odds are not in your favor. Being in good health is not only important to be happy, it’s also directly connected to earning money. So taking care for your physical and mental health turns out to be one of the best long term investments in yourself that you can do.

Now think how much time and efforts do you spend in building external resources and don’t you sacrifice some internal resources because of that – like health or intelligence that you lose by doing a boring well paid job. Maybe you need to reconsider your priorities?

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Jose L. Aguilar- SharkInvestor.com Author

Being able to Invest & Trade on your own is the most amazing road to financial independence & optional retirement. I was very fortunate to have amazing mentors and read many amazing authors, I hope you enjoy my articles & books suggestions which are made with the intent to share my experiences as simple as possible.

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By Jose L. Aguilar

Being able to Invest & Trade on your own is the most amazing road to financial independence & optional retirement. I was very fortunate to have amazing mentors and read many amazing authors, I hope you enjoy my articles & books suggestions which are made with the intent to share my experiences as simple as possible.

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5 Comments

  1. Melody Campbell, The Small Business Guru

    Thanks for using one of my images to add some interesting eye candy to your post! It’s always cool when I see one of these images out on someone’s blog.

    I just interviewed Denise Michaels on my Get More Business Show and she made a statement that I think fits this post well. This is not a verbatim quote but it was something like “Your business will never grow beyond your own personal development.” A person’s lack of confidence and self discipline will hold them back from what they dream of but never expect to acheive.

    Very thoughtful post. Made me think.

    Reply
  2. admin

    First time an image author comments on a post here. Thanks Melody 🙂

    Reply
  3. Greki

    I’ve been following your blog almost since the beginning of this semester, if not at the end of the last one, and I have to truly thank you because I’ve been learning some things from you that, while in some sense I’ve been told about them before, or seen them, I have not realized them until now that I read your articles. They have been helping me in my overall management, but especially in my studies.

    I especially took to heart one article on which you covered the difference between being rich, and being wealthy. Again, I have to thank you for writing these wonderful articles.

    Now, I’d just like to make a question of sorts on Self Discipline.
    You see, I truly value self discipline because without it I wouldn’t have managed to be as good as I am in the things I’m most proud of myself. I certainly understand the importance of it, however, I became curious on that example that you mentioned about going out with your friends.

    I’m the type of person who doesn’t usually go out with her friends. I barely go out at all, instead concentrating on other things. So, such opportunities are rare for me to come by, and many times I’m asked when I’m in the middle of developing a habit, or in general, occupied with more important things. And while I’m conscious that going out with my friends might not exactly help with my developing-of-good-habits consistency, I still go out with them because it is fun and hard to come-by.

    You said so yourself, self discipline doesn’t mean that you have no fun.
    But that’s not the point in question, the point is: If you have to choose between your career and your friends, which should you point out as a top priority?

    Reply
  4. admin

    Thanks for the kind words, Greki. On your question:
    It depends what is your top priority – is it your social life or your career? And do you really need to choose between both? If it comes down to going out with your friends today, are you going to lose them if you say no? And on the other hand, if you go out, is it really going to have a big impact over your goals? The key in self discipline is to know what you want and how you are going to achieve it. If we use my example with the gym, breaking your everyday habit once because of having fun with friends is not a big deal. The real problem becomes when you quit your new habit because of going out too often.

    Reply
  5. Francois Viljoen

    Very good article.

    I did the calculations concerning formal education a long time ago, and my conclusions were that the general perception of a formal degree is that it is far better than it actually is.

    Informal education – and investing in personal development – is often more valuable, and costs a lot less to obtain.

    Reply

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