Investing in yourself

Reading that title, one might think a lot of things. Treating yourself to a day off work, buying something new that you’ve been eyeing. All cool, but not really what I’m talking about. The term investing means…

devote (one’s time, effort, or energy) to a particular undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.

Time, effort, or energy. All amazing words that have become a huge part of our daily vocabulary, and the epicenter of my personal ethos. But also words that don’t have much meaning unless you really embrace their value.

For some time now I’ve been on a mission (with my wonderful wife) to invest in self by taking a deeper look at what these things really mean to me/us. At first I was completely lost, had no idea what I was supposed to do, and thought that just going about my day-to-day and doing what I was doing was great. That good feeling was there, things didn’t suck, we weren’t struggling financially, and it was hard to rationalize any sort of necessary change. But I think that was because I wasn’t looking deep enough, I wasn’t digging at myself to really understand the things necessary to make me feel and be my most authentic self. Plus, change is hard in any facet of life, really hard.

So to take a step back we, Krista and I, started to actually invest energy into this stuff. We started with little one off exercises that helped us take a pause and think about topics we had never discussed openly before. Things like…

“what do you need everyday to feel like your best self?”

“what are you non-negotiables?”

The things you can’t live without daily. It was amazing how difficult it was to craft a sensible answer to any of the questions that we had on our papers. It made me realize that I was on auto pilot, and I was coasting through life’s circumstances, instead of crafting it how I needed it to be.

This exercise and many others worked its way out to a list of daily non-negotiable activities, behaviors, people, etc., that we now practice every day. My list is five strong…

• Physical activity (workout, sports, sweat)
• Act of creation (designing something, shooting photos, making food)
• Personal time & space (meditation, alone time, reflection)
• Dedicated Family Time
• Meaningful relationships (time with Krista, close friends, those who can connect deeper than the surface)
• Mental activity (meditation, reading, podcasts, research, ideas in = ideas out)

What this does for me is it gives me a radar, an accountability in myself that allows me to monitor my choices each and every day. I can be deliberate about what I choose to spend that time and energy on now with these core things in mind.

Beyond this, Krista and I spend a lot of time with our collective life vision. Each year, towards the end of the year, we sit down together to do what we call “Strategic Planning for Life”. This practice of setting our yearly vision is strongly coupled with our daily practices as you might assume. But the ideas are the same. Your time, your energy is the highest valued currency that we have.

Spend some time during the next few weeks peering into yourself while you have the space to do so. Challenge yourself to think about how you are spending your most valuable resources everyday. And if you need to rethink your days because what you knew has been uprooted, find the space to see the opportunity in engineering something new.

Talk soon!