There's a piece of financial advice that gets repeated so often that it may as well have lost its meaning: diversify your portfolio. In other words, don't put all your eggs in one basket. And yet, there is one investment the majority of people never think to make, even those in the financial world, one that compounds more reliably than almost anything else available to them. The investment in themselves.
Who Believes in You?
Here is something most motivational content skips over, because it's not particularly comfortable to say. There will be stretches of your life, sometimes long ones, when nobody is lining up to invest in you. No mentor is seeking you out. No employer is fast-tracking your development. No institution is handing you a scholarship. No investor is backing your idea. No one is pulling you aside to say, "I see something in you."
The people that are there for you now, may not always be there. Opportunities pass. People change. Things happen.
One Friday afternoon in either late 2018 or early 2019 I was sitting at my desk, finishing up a few things, looking forward to the weekend. It was a bright day. I recall the sun shining through the window, a warming feeling even though the weather would have been cold for that time of year. My phone rang. The first line that came out of the small speaker by my ear, the reply to my greeting, caused my stomach to drop. Across the other side of the world, my manager and mentor had been let go. I got on incredibly well with him. He was knowledgeable, patient and invested in his staff. Was there for us. With that one sentence, that was now gone. I don’t know if he knew that it was coming or not but he had gone to work that morning, likely looking to round out the week. I’d hope they let him collect his things but maybe he never even made it past the front door. In the grand scheme of things, maybe not a biggie. Nobody died. Life went on. He found success elsewhere in time. But it goes to show, things change and not always how you would expect.
You might say that this is simply the nature of the world. Attention and resources follow existing signals of success, accumulating around people who are already compounding, people who have already made an investment in themselves.
If you are at the beginning, or starting over, operating without a network or coming from a background that didn't hand you connections and credentials, you need to be your own first investor. You may be your only investor for a while. Even more worryingly, if you’ve been written off by your peers, perhaps made a mistake that they are not willing to forget you’ll be travelling a redemption arc while being that solo investor. Grim, isn’t it?
However! However, this tragedy is actually an opportunity in disguise. One that most people miss because they're too busy waiting for someone else to go first. For someone to hand something to them. For Lady Luck to shine on them. Luck is not arbitrary. You have to place yourself in a position to be able to receive it.
What It Means to Invest in Yourself
This phrase can be used too loosely at times, so it's worth being specific.
Creating an investment in yourself means deliberately directing your resources back towards yourself in order to advance your own growth. Resources isn’t just money, even though it might take some. You also have time, energy, and attention to spend. Particularly if you don’t have money you may be incredibly rich in time. The energy and attention may require significant effort in that case. There’s the problem. In a bad situation you might be tempted to spend those resources purely on immediate comforts. Investing in yourself means being kinder to yourself than treats. In the long run that’s not kindness at all, it’s a false economy. You need to imagine yourself as an asset worth developing, rather than someone that either has what it takes or doesn't. If it helps you can think about someone you know that you feel has potential. Someone where an investment of your resources would help them turn into something more than they currently are. Then look in the mirror. Look at your reflection. That person staring back at you, that’s the person that’s worth the investment. Who can become something more. That has the potential to grow and excel.
When the investment looks like spending money. Buying the course, the book, the coaching session, the tool that makes you better at your craft, you may need to fight against your instincts. Shelling out money, particularly when you don’t have a lot, can feel indulgent. Especially if you were raised to be careful with money. Spending is a transaction with limited return. You buy a thing and use it. Investing your money can still be done carefully but with the expectation that you might not get an immediate return. You’re putting your money into something that will repay you in the future. You may need to take some risk to get that reward. That said, you can still be careful in considering the investments you make. If it looks too good to be true, it is.
Ok, but you said I have other resources to spend, what about those?
Spending time well starts with one truth: motivation is a result of doing, not the other way around. Don’t wait to feel ready or in a special mood. Start. Spend some time reading instead of aimlessly watching. Practising instead of consuming. Sitting with a hard problem instead of scrolling past it. Showing up consistently, long before there's any external reward for doing so. A simple way to “just start” is to choose to take 5 minutes to tackle the hard problem. If you’re not feeling it, switch to something a little easier. Don’t be surprised if the 5 minutes turns into much longer and you make progress.
Your energy is a limited resource. Protect it. Work on getting enough sleep. Move your body. Choose which relationships and environments you allow to shape you. If you are totally depleted you cannot develop. Full stop. If the answer to the question “What are you working on right now?” is “I’m working on my sleep.” that should be enough for anyone.
Lastly, investing in yourself can look like just taking yourself seriously. Make the decision that your growth matters even if nobody around you acts like it does. You don’t need to tell anyone, unless you have someone that will hold you accountable. Just make the decision for yourself, make a promise to yourself, and keep it.
It Compounds. All Of It.
Everyone talks about compounding. Investors in financial markets probably understand it better than most. The returns that get reinvested generates their own bigger returns. Even small gains over time produce results that do not seem real.
Personal development compounds the same way. There’s no change to the calculation. It’s just as powerful. The skills you build this year make next year's learning faster. The book you read today connects with an idea in the book you read six months from now. The combination of those two ideas produces something neither could alone. (As an aside, that’s a definition of innovation that I love. Putting two existing ideas together and coming up with something new.)
The habits you establish now shape your capacity a decade from now. If you invest a little in yourself every day for ten years you’re guaranteed to be almost unrecognisable to the person who coasted through the same decade.
For personal development and growth, we are explicitly talking about small gains. This isn’t The Matrix or a William Gibson novel. You can’t plug a USB into a port in your head and suddenly know kung-fu. Small daily investments will feel insignificant in the moment. Annual returns may also feel modest. The decade-long results are extraordinary though.
Most people won't notice the effect until it has either worked spectacularly or failed to materialise at all.
This is why the people who start early, or who start again after setbacks, are rarely sorry they did. You will banish regret by your actions.
When Nobody Else Will
This is my real message to you. "Especially if nobody else will." This is when it is difficult, maybe even the hardest. It's easy to invest in yourself when you have backing. You can conquer the world when you’ve got more than just your own resources behind you. When your employer is paying for your training. When your education is funded. When your peers encouraging your ambitions. When the environment around you is saying, clearly and consistently, that you are worth developing.
What about when the opposite is true, and the feedback you're getting, implicitly or directly, is that your growth isn't a priority? Or you’re ignored and passed over for others? Where your potential isn't obvious to others? That the resources and support available to the people around you somehow aren't available to you?
This is where investing in yourself should become your default strategy.
Waiting for external validation before doing hands control of your development to people who may not have your best interests at heart. Your growth is then conditional on other people's perceptions. Where perception does not always match reality, that approach is a wager that a lot of people lose.
The alternative is to decide, quietly and without drama, that you are worth the investment regardless. It’s not arrogance to do this. It’s not a delusion about where you currently stand. You are very simply making a clear commitment to where you want to go.
Nobody builds a life they're proud of by accident. It is always the result of accumulated choices, practised skills, sustained effort, and a belief, even when it was not widely shared, that the work was worth doing. You don't need a champion. You don't need a sponsor. You don't need someone to see your potential before you start developing it.
Invest in yourself. Especially when nobody else will.
No comments:
Post a Comment