When you love a person, you make time for them. You speak kindly to them. You do nice things for them. You want them to feel worthy and know how much you love them. You do things for them to bring them happiness.
You deserve the same love and kindness you so easily give to others!
In this post, I’d like to focus on how we practice self-love by investing in ourselves.
We can invest in ourselves personally or professionally (or both!) The benefits we receive from loving ourselves through self-investment are universal regardless of how we specifically invest.
Why Is It Important to invest in yourself?
A mentor once advised me, “Jenna, no one cares about your career more than you do.”
He made this remark not in a mean-spirited or disrespectful manner, but simply as a statement of fact. He meant it as practical advice on how I must tend to my career choices, career moves, and my salary.
While others may give me guidance and assistance, and my network is invaluable, it is up to me to lead, invest in, and manage my work life.
I share this to say that we must take lead, invest in, and manage our lives.
If we don’t, who will?
While we may have others who love us and care for us, no one cares about us more than we care about ourselves. This is not a negative thing. This is self-love in action.
When we invest in ourselves, we grow our sense of self-worth. We demonstrate our conviction that we are important and worth the commitment of our time, effort, and money.
We also grow our self-confidence. Investment in ourselves gives us a positive boost from growing our value and feeling valued.
Self-investment brings internal and external benefits. We feel incredible – and it shows!
Others see our radiance, contentment, and confidence. And when they experience us full of this positivity, they see and feel our worth. They sense our confidence, and we inspire their confidence in us.
What Are Ways That I Can Invest In Myself?
There are countless ways that we can invest in ourselves.
With many facets to our lives including our physical being, our mental health, our occupation, our relationships, and our finances, we have a multitude of investment opportunities to explore across these aspects.
For our work life, we can have professional headshots taken for our website or LinkedIn profile. We can invest in our education by earning a higher-level certificate in our current field or by exploring a new field. We can update our resumé. We can hire a career coach.
For our physical wellness, we can hire a personal trainer. We can opt to spend more money than we are used to on healthier foods that boost our well-being. We can join the local barre or pilates studio.
For our mental well-being, we can hire a therapist or see a counselor or take part in a wellness retreat.
For our financial wellness, we can learn more about managing our finances. We can create a workable plan to build our emergency savings fund and our peace of mind. We can hire a financial planner to help us set and achieve long-term goals.
We can start a business. We can work with a life coach. We can read a personal development book. Update our wardrobe. Fix our smile if it makes us feel insecure.
When we choose to invest our money back into ourselves, we tell ourselves that we are worth it, that we love ourselves and care about our personal growth and developments. All of these can build our sense of self-value, our self-confidence, and our self-worth!
With So Many Options, How Do I Start Investing in Myself?
You can simply pick one that makes you happy and gives you a quick boost. Easy!
Or you can be very deliberate about your investment choice by identifying which investment option can help you solve a problem in your life.
In the latter case, here is a quick 3-step exercise you can do to identify your self-investment starting point. It should take 5 to 10 minutes to complete.
All you need is a way to capture your thoughts (on paper, on your phone, or computer).
- Write down this question, and answer it.
What one thing in my life is most holding me back from being my best self?
Think about the areas of your life that I mentioned above: Professional, Physical, Mental, and Financial. You might also consider the areas of Relationships and Spirituality.
In answering this question, your one thing may be a challenge at work, a difficulty in a relationship, a fear, or a limiting belief you have about yourself.
- Think of three actions you can take to tackle that one thing that is most holding you back.
You can list more, but I ask you to, at a minimum, think of and write down three actions you can take to overcome this issue that is keeping you from being your best self.
Let’s say that your one thing is a challenge at work – you feel undervalued by your boss. What are three actions you can take to overcome this challenge?
Some ideas could be setting time to talk to your boss about what things you do well and what you could improve, keeping your boss informed by providing periodic updates on your projects, talking with Human Resources to generate ideas on how you might improve the situation, reading articles on how to build your relationship with your boss, and updating your skills through an online course on a particular software or application to increase your value and productivity.
- Among these three actions identified, find an investment that you can make in yourself now that will enable you to address the issue most holding you back.
In our example, this could be reading a book this weekend on how to manage your boss, taking an online course at night to sharpen your skills, or hiring an executive coach to guide you through your challenge.
💛
Regardless of how you choose to invest in yourself, I ask you to make self-investment an integral part of your self-love practice. You are so worth it!
In my book, “I Love Me More: How to Find Happiness and Success Through Self-Love”, I share many personal lessons about building a self-love practice, including the importance of self-investment. In my focus to uplift others on their self-love journey, I speak of setting boundaries, and overcoming guilt, limiting beliefs, and other self-love saboteurs to help others become their best selves in all aspects of life.
