Limitless Monday – Invest in yourself

Imagine you are sitting on an airplane. There is massive turbulence. The captain tells everyone to reach for their oxygen masks. Your wife is having trouble untangling her mask and is turning red. The dilemma. Should you help her before putting on your own mask or put on your mask and then assist her?

Here is another, possibly more contentious scenario. You have decided to use all your spare money to build a business so you and your family can be financially secure. As soon as you begin to accumulate some spare cash, your wife asks you to give it to her to buy little Johnny some new clothes and a few tennis lessons. Your dilemma. Do you ignore your wife’s request and the ensuing guilt and continue reinvesting the cash into your business, or do you buy little Johnny his tennis lessons?

It was Aesop who told us the fable about the goose that laid the golden egg. The moral of that story is the goose should not be taken for granted. Without the goose you have no eggs. Nurture the goose, and she will produce golden eggs indefinitely.

In both examples above the husband is the prized goose.

You would therefore be gravely mistaken to ignore yourself and help out your wife even if she was having trouble breathing. You would also be going down the wrong path if you acquiesce to your wife’s request to raid your savings and give all your spare money to her rather than invest it in your business. By way of clarity, my line of reasoning doesn’t apply only to the husband, it applies to anyone who is the subject of pressure which, if surrendered to, will result in your goals being placed on the back burner.

The wife operates from a short-term time horizon. Once the money is gone your goal is pushed further and further back. And guess what, she will ask again and you will no doubt reluctantly comply. Fast forward five years: your wife will be upset that you never achieved anything significant in life and complain she married a total loser, and of course you will blame her. The blame, however  rests firmly with you.

It was your responsibility to dish out the hard love. For it is a human fault, we all desire the quick rewards. We tend to avoid delayed gratification.

That brings me to the point of this article. Invest in yourself.

An investment in yourself is the best investment you can make. What onlookers fail to grasp is that the payback is not immediate. The fruits of your investment take time to show through. However, as long as there is a cohesive strategy behind the investment, and, most importantly, you have faith in the outcome, then positive payback is practically guaranteed. What you must not do is yield to distractions including the naysayers and the pressures on your time and money which are not conducive to your goals.

Another important point here is not to be afraid of failure. Setbacks should never be considered failure; it’s part of your ongoing education.

Today I would like you to consider how you can invest in yourself to help achieve your goals. Sometimes we are held back from making that investment. Figure out what impediment is holding you back, and take the necessary steps to rationalize and move past the obstacle. Perhaps it’s a fear of investing money into a website for a side gig, buying inventory, sitting down and starting that first chapter of your book, joining the gym, paying for the membership to join a jiu-jitsu class. Whatever it is, today is the day when you take that step. Tomorrow you get to reap the rewards from the courage you demonstrated today!

Happy Monday!

Banner Image: Investing in yourself. Image Credit – Mathieu Stern