This is a guest post from my friend Neamat Keriakos whose writing talents and sweetness I recognized in her almost instantly.
Having been so busy lately with so much stuff going on, her guest post comes at the right time for me and for my blog. So, here I leave it to Neamat…
To Invest In Yourself means to improve yourself. If you exchange your time and effort for increased skills and knowledge, relationships, and better health, you will definitely see results later on in the future.
You should make use of any spare time for self-investment instead of wasting it on things that truly do not matter.
When I talk about investing here, I don’t mean only the financial kind of investment. But to Invest in Yourself is just as important as the financial investments and savings are to your future. You are the true greatest asset: YOURSELF.
Do You Know That You Are an Asset?
You are an asset. Think about that for a minute. If you work for someone else, you are an asset to that company. If you’re married, you are an asset to your spouse. And it goes without saying, if you are a father/mother, you are an incredible asset to your children. You’re an asset to the community you live in, and to those you interact with on a daily basis.
To Invest In Yourself and become a valuable asset is important on both the professional and personal level. If you want to be an asset in your business and become the “go to” person in your Niche, you have to become a student of your Niche and gain the value that will get you ahead of your competitors.
This is very important in your business but it is equally important on a personal level as well. Both your personal and professional life are interconnected. Investing in your professional aspect of life will affect the personal aspect of your life and vice versa. The first and most important investment always needs to be in YOU.
Here are some ways you should continuously consider To Invest In Yourself
Invest In Yourself: 1. Your Health
Before you can make improvements in other areas of your life you must first take care of some of your most basic needs. Forget about money for a moment. Money is important, but without your health, it’s worthless. Your health, first and foremost, determines how effective you are. How you treat your body determines your mood, your ability to focus, and how you treat others.
In short, how you feel determines how you behave – and the best way to feel great is to live a healthy lifestyle. Here are some simple ways to invest in your health:
Eat well: This doesn’t mean you should go on a drastic diet, but just a few little changes such as, maximizing your green vegetable and fruit intake while minimizing processed foods in your diet, can go a long way.
Sleep well: Figure out how much sleep you need to function at your best, and make it your mission to get that much sleep every night. Your body does need sleep. Give it the rest it deserves. Think about all of the time you waste when you aren’t completely focused or working inefficiently because you’re fighting the urge to sleep.
Instead, use the time and get some extra sleep. You’ll wake up feeling better, your body will be rested, and you can make better use of your waking hours, not to mention improve your overall health.
Exercise Often: Exercising creates energy through a healthier body while releasing brain chemicals to improve your mood and mental alertness. Engaging in exercise makes you feel good and stay mobile.
Getting the fundamentals of living healthily is essential to being effective, focused, and feeling good each and every day.
Getting the fundamentals of living healthily is essential to being effective, focused, and feeling good each and every day.
Invest In Yourself: 2. Expand Yourself
Knowledge and Skills:
Your knowledge and skills are the places where you can actually see your improvement. Even if you are highly educated, learning will never be over. You should still be looking for ways to expand what you know through lifelong learning opportunities. Read all what you can get your hands on when a topic interests you.
Reading books, trading ideas, and learning how to do new things will make you smarter and will also help with your thinking and creativity, you’ll be able to combine knowledge from various sources in order to solve problems.
Pay attention to develop your marketing skill set that will help you grow your business, or give you the experience necessary to help your team. Knowledge is power, and is one of the best investments you can make in yourself for both the present and the future.
Being more skilled will make you more essential in every area of your life. To invest in your skills, push your limits to become better. Period. By doing so, you’re adding another tool to your skills that will come in handy later in life.
Investing in your knowledge and skills allows you to be a more versatile, competent, and interesting person.
Invest In Yourself: 3. Networking and Relationships
Your networks and relationships are also great things to invest in. As humans, we’re social beings. It’s not who you know, but what you know, right? Just as important as having the knowledge and skills to do a particular job, you need to have connections.
These connections will open up opportunities that can be used to leverage your skills and find the best path to reach your goals. With each and every relationship you make (or try to make), you’re presenting yourself with another opportunity to enrich your life and others’ as well. Great relationships are like nothing else in life, and we should treasure them all.
Keep in mind that this also applies to your family. Taking time out of your day to spend time with your children, for example, can be seen as “investing”, since you’re planting the seeds for a deeply fulfilling relationship.
Invest In Yourself: 4. Build Your Brand
You are your own brand. The way you represent yourself and how others see you is your own personal brand. Whether you like it or not, your actions and words speak volumes about who you are. This reputation can follow you for the rest of your life, so it’s obviously important to build a positive brand as opposed to a negative one.
Brand yourself as someone you’d like to be seen. Display what you stand for and leave a good impression with people. Make an effort to determine what your personal brand says about you and invest some time in creating a personal brand you’re proud of and you can leave as a legacy for your children in the future.
Invest In Yourself: 5. Remove the Limitations on Your Abilities
Probably the best investment you can make in yourself is to remove any limitations you have placed on your abilities. Many people
Invest In Yourself: 6. Be Open For Good Changes
Be open to change and embrace it for the positivity associated with it. This investment in yourself can give you a whole new outlook on life. It is easy to overlook how slight changes to your belief system and in how you care for yourself can go a long way to improving your quality of life.
Investing in yourself truly makes a difference in your life, your well-being, and your ability to thrive and perform to the best of your ability. The extent to which you Invest In Yourself will shape the way you interact with the outside world. Your future is determined by your willingness and ability to Invest In Yourself now.
If you enjoyed this article and got some value from it, please leave a comment below and share this with your friends and followers.
Guest Post by Neamat Keriakos
Hi Neamat, and welcome to Sylviane’s blog – nice to see you here 🙂
Investing in ourselves is an important thing, which most of us forget to do as we tend to get caught up with our daily affairs. If we don’t do that – it starts showing its affects on our performance levels, professionally and personally too.
I liked that you placed health right on top, and that’s how it should be too. If health is lost – all is lost, and I’ve often seen people get carried away in their work and neglect their sleep or go on unhealthy diets, which shows it’s results later. What best I liked was also being open to change and building relationships, two things I strongly believe are worth investing in.
I think everything in moderation is good, and more than investing financially in anything – we need to invest in ourselves to improve and get better.
Thanks for sharing these ways with us. Have a nice week ahead, both of you 🙂
Harleena Singh invites you to read..5 Ways of Helping Children Cope With Change In Life
Hi Harleena,
Thanks for the welcome.
Indeed, investment in ourselves is very important. When the word “Investment” is mentioned, many people think only from the financial aspect but the true fact is that we need to invest a whole lot in ourselves other than money to improve ourselves. There is always room for improvement in all aspects of our lives.
Yes, investing in our health is the most important investment and it should be the first because as you said: if health is lost, all is lost. That’s true. All the other investments without the health is not going to take us that far.
We always need to look for ways to improve ourselves and our skills and be open to try new things and gain experience from it and try building and nurturing new relationships as we move forward in life.
Thanks Harleena for dropping by Sylviane’s blog and taking the time to read and share with your wonderful comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Thank you for coming Harleena,
Neamat really wrote a great post and like you I believe that health comes first. Without health, nothing matters, really. Health is first and foremost in our life and then we can concentrate on other things.
Have a great rest of the week 🙂
Hello Neamat and Sylviane
Welcome to Sylviane’s blog.
I really enjoyed this post. So many of us forget the word invest until it comes to money. But like Harleena, the number one investment is “health”. Health is priceless and when we are healthy by consuming the proper foods and excercise and Intentional Living, we then have the strength and vibrancy to work on the rest of the Investments. I love love this article and I will bookmark it for reference purpose.
Thank you again
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Hi Gladys,
Thanks for the welcome.
Yes, I don’t know why so many people always link the word “Invest” with money only although it is related to so many things other than money. I guess that’s how they are programmed to believe.
Indeed, the number one investment is in health. With good health you can do so much but with poor health you can do little to nothing.
I am so happy Gladys that you found this article helpful and thanks for taking the time to read and comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi Gladys,
Yes, it seems that we are all in agreement here. Without health we can’t concentrate in anything else, because we have to concentrate on our health.
Thank you for coming, Gladys, I really appreciate that 🙂
Hey Neamat, great to see you here at Sylviane’s blog and what a lovely post!
Now you know that all of us can relate to what you’ve shared here. I definitely know that I can and I can see a lot of me in here too. From our health to our minds to our business to our relationships, everything is an ongoing process in my opinion and should continue to be nurtured as time goes by.
If we don’t invest in ourselves then we’ll always be stuck in the same place and I’m not sure that’s such a great place to be. We all continue to learn and grow as time goes by and we all know that nothing remains the same.
Great share here Neamat and loved your post. Wonderful choice Sylviane in guest bloggers so thank you both ladies and you have a wonderful week.
~Adrienne
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Hi Adrienne,
It’s good also to see you here Adrienne. My pleasure.
Yes Adrienne, now I learned and I know that all of us can relate to this topic. I couldn’t have said it any better than how you said it. From our health to our minds to our businesses to our relationships, it is an on going process and we should continue to work on these areas as we move forward.
Investing in ourselves is a must if we don’t want to get stuck and it also means that we have to be open to changes that might push us out of our limits and adventure into new zones which can be uncomfortable sometimes but in my opinion much better than remaining stagnant.
Thanks Adrienne for stopping by Sylviane’s blog and sharing with your great and encouraging comment as always and you too have a wonderful week.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi Adrienne,
Yes, I knew that Neamat could write a great post, and she did.
Investing in ourselves is very important, indeed, it should be a requirement, as a matter of face. Because if we don’t life tend to decide on its own, so to speak, and that’s usually not a good thing.
I’m glad you could relate to this post, and thank you for coming, Adrienne.
Hi there Neamat
This is a great post, You point out very important thing that we need to do to invest in your self and others. You give me good info to apply Thanks.
Regards
Theuns
Hi Theuns,
I am glad you found these points important and helpful. Indeed, we need to invest in ourselves to grow and become valuable assets in our professional and personal lives. And there is always room for improvement.
Thanks Theuns for stopping by and sharing with your comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi Theuns and welcome here.
I’m glad you enjoyed Neamat’s post and hope to see you again soon.
How good it is to see you Neamat on Sylviane’s blog!
What a good topic – Invest in ourselves. If we are our business, we need to invest the time to take car of ourselves in so many ways.
I like the way you pointed out to take care of our health first. Without that, where ever can we go.
I just love #5 when you said “Learn to re-wire your belief system and consciously remove any mental barriers you have for what you can accomplish.”
I think that is the core of what we need to do because we see ourselves one way and the world sees us another. We cannot limit ourselves and need to work on that one. If we cannot do it alone, grab a friend or get a coach to bounce off ideas.
Great points as usual Neamat!
Donna
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Hi Donna,
I was so glad to have Neamat here today. She save the day for me.
Like others above I see you agree that health is a biggy. What can we do without health? Health is very precious and vital for any advancement in life.
Then comes those nasty limited beliefs that we all have, and that we must remove as much as possible in order to be truly successful in life.
Thanks for coming Donna
Hi Donna,
Oh Thanks Donna, it’s great to see you here too!
Absolutely, taking care of ourselves and our health should be first although I have to confess that sometimes as mothers and wives we put ourselves last which is not right. After all we are the main pillar for our family and business and we are not doing neither of them good if we don’t take care of ourselves.
Indeed, re-wiring our belief system is crucial if we are to accept change and try new things. I know for myself that I had and still going through lots of re-wiring in my belief system. We tend to grow and carry lots of false beliefs through the years that are not going to help us at all but instead are barriers in the way of our success and paralyzing us in so many ways.
You just pointed out a great point here Donna “If we cannot do it alone, grab a friend or get a coach to bounce off ideas”. Yes, it’s ok to ask for help when you need it.
Thanks Donna for stopping by Sylviane’s blog and sharing with your great comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi Neamat and Sylviane! Sylviane, you must really be busy, and I hope it’s all in a good way! Nice to meet you here, Neamat. You made a lot of great points about how we need to be taking care of ourselves. If we’re tired, unhealthy, overwhelmed and stuck, we can’t be very much good to anyone, can we? I bet we all know deep down that we should be paying attention to ourselves but somehow we always put ourselves last.
If we learn to say NO to other people, we will have more time to put ourselves first. And if we commit to taking care of ourselves then we will! We can certainly not leave it to chance. It’s only when we’re at our best that we can give our best to others. I hope this will inspire everyone to put themselves at the top of their own list!
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Hi Carol,
Well, it’s kind of good busy, I’m preparing to move to a nicer place, in the same town I live in, but it’s still a move and I’ve got other stuff work related. Results so little time left.
I really enjoyed having just to read the post on my blog this time and Neamat did a great job. I’m sure she’ll be replying to your comment as well.
Taking care of oneself is not selfish it’s a great investment in ourselves. A lot of people don’t understand that, but it’s just true.
Thanks for coming, Carol
Hi Carol,
It’s nice to meet you too Carol.
Absolutely, taking care of ourselves and our health should be the first investment and you are right; deep inside we know this is true but we tend to give priority to other things which is sadly not right. I believe that we are the main pillar for our families and our businesses and we are definitely not doing any of them good by not investing in our health and well being. Because if we lack something we can’t give it and that holds true when it comes to taking care of ourselves. And as you said it’s only when we’re at our best that we can give our best to others.
I am in total agreement here that we should learn to say “NO” to other people and other things that are taking priority in our list and commit to taking care of ourselves and not just leave it to chance as you pointed out.
Thanks Carol for coming and for sharing with your great comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi Sylviane and Neamat
This is such an important message as way too many people do not invest in themselves. We see it in the corporate world but then when many of us start working from home we tend to work even more hours and often at the expense of looking after ourselves.
All of the areas you name Neamat are so important. For me I tend to be really good at some and not so good at others. For example I pretty much always look after my health but I am not so good at number 5 on a consistent basis.
Great message thank you.
Sue
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Hi Sue,
Yes, we need to invest in ourselves and the better we invest the better will be our return on the investment. Be it on our health, our skills, our brand and our mindset. It will definitely be worth it.
I think No. 5 is some kind of a struggle for so many, me included, because we carry a baggage of negative beliefs of so many years. We need to work on this a little bit more to re-wire our belief system and shift our mindset positively.
Thanks Sue for stopping by and sharing with your great comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
I Sue,
Like you I’m pretty good at watching out for my health. This is a very easy one for me. But like you sometimes I tend to put limitations on myself.
Thank you for coming and read Neamat’s guest post.
Neamat,
I definitely see myself in your post. I really think if we are to invest in ourselves it has to be in every aspect of our lives.
I see so many people who invest in their health and personal part of their life but when it comes to their business they are promoting and branding someone else. We have to invest in our business life as well. We need to brand and promote ourselves. This is something that took me a while to learn but I think I have it now. Not that I do a great job of it. I really need to continue learning more about investing this way in myself.
Great post.
Dee Ann
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Hi DeeAnn,
I am glad that you can resonate with this post DeeAnn. Yes, we need to invest in ourselves in all aspects of our lives if we are to improve the quality of our lives.
Yes, many people need to develop the right mindset by treating their business as a business and not as a hobby and any business needs investment for it to grow. They should know that they have to invest money in order to make money (ROI) and not consider it as expenses only. Great point DeeAnn.
Thanks DeeAnn for coming and sharing with your input.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Hi DeeAnn,
I remember when I first started trying to make money online I had no idea about promoting myself and it was a new concept to me. When we want to promote our business, promoting ourselves is the most important thing, indeed.
Thanks for coming by, DeeAnn.
Great post Neamet, It is important for us to invest in ourselves. I’ve been taking classes to learn more and it really helps. Now I just need to do that with other areas of my life like with my health. I belong to a gym but haven’t been in over a month. Thanks for the reminder of the other areas of our lives which we must also invest ourselves in. Our health is very important because without it you can not do any of the others.
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Hi Lisa,
I think that investing in our health is more important than anything else as there is no substitute to health. If we’re not healthy, pretty much anything else will just go out the window, wouldn’t it?
I work out regularly and I watch what I eat. That’s all I do for my health, but that all one needs to do. It works like a charm. So far so good, my health has been my friend all throughout my life, but I don’t take it for granted. I do my best to maintain it 🙂
Thanks for your input.
Hi Lisa,
Yes, it is absolutely important to invest in ourselves and taking care of ourselves and our health should be the first investment. With good health we can do so much but with poor health we can do little to nothing as there is no substitute to health.
Thanks Lisa for visiting and sharing with your comment.
Be Blessed,
Neamat
Neamat Tawadrous invites you to read..7 Tips On How To Embrace Change In Your Life
Investing in one’s self is like giving enough value and importance to it. And this is very essential to make us feel good and valuable. Very inspiring tips Sylviane.
Whenever there is talk about discovering yourself, I guess belief and gratitude are the only things which build up a real own-self. Thanks a ton for sharing these insights for me.
Regards
Charmie