For the best return on your money, pour your purse into your head. ~ Benjamin Franklin
The topic being discussed today is very close to me, it has various aspects to it. In developed countries individuals along with multinationals have started focusing on personal development.
Indeed improving yourself, enhancing your skill set and training yourself to become a better person physically and intellectually is a great investment which has big rewards in long run.
The reason is really simple.
Improving yourself proactively, working on your awareness, improving your skills and knowledge about how you can get to the edge of your potential, all of that is an investment into the greatest asset you’ll always have: Yourself.
We have numerous examples to second this claim, take for example the fact that almost every financially successful person started out with a transformation to become the person who is then able to achieve that kind of success.
I’m an advocate of the lesson that personal development comes first, financial success follows.
Well-known Billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that the very best investment you can make is one that “you can’t beat, can’t be taxed and one that not even inflation can take away from you.” Buffett advocates that “ultimately, there’s one investment that supersedes all others: Invest in yourself. Nobody can take away what you’ve got in yourself, and everybody has potential they haven’t used yet.”
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Today, the need of the hour is to change the mindset, the need to consider the money spent on personal developing or simply a book as an investment rather than expense. Parents in Pakistan need to stop differentiating amongst their own kids on gender basis, provide equal development opportunities for both the genders. Secondly, instead of saving millions for children marriages and house, parents need to spend money to develop their kids to the level that they can pay for their own marriages, house and well being.
As individual money earners we should spend money on things that can increase or enhance our future potential to earn – not only monetarily. Self improvement brings an overall gain in personality and acceptance from the outside world, including your own family.
I believe even small steps like going to Mosque and engaging in a meaningful discussion about religion every once a week is one of them. Similarly paying for a gym membership, paying to learn a new sport or getting membership at a library will help in enhancing your physical ability and skills.
Similarly organizations need to understand that to grow the company, attention should also be paid to developing people within the company. Investing in technical or soft skills to enhance the people within the company makes a company a stronger competitor. From enhancing the ability to sell, negotiate, use software or equipment to implementing a quality initiative for coping with stress or with working together, training is deemed an ongoing operational investment by companies that see their people as critical to the company’s staying power and growing power. This also positively affects the staying power of people within the company.
To conclude, in my experience, investing in yourself almost always pays back (though it might take time), whether in increased self-confidence, more friends, or a job where that newly-learned skill sets you apart from your coworkers. I believe whatever you focus on primarily in life, is what you will bring into your life. Hence, choose to focus on your goals, your true desires, and actions that will take you there.