4 Ways to invest in yourself in order to attain a purposeful life

What is investing and why should you invest in yourself?

Featured Photo from: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-a-person-wearing-wristwatch-140928/

Most of you have probably heard the term investing as something that is related with finance but its not just that.

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

In this ever changing world you never know which Industries can be taken over by Artificial Intelligence. We won’t know which jobs will exist for us tomorrow and in the face of uncertainty it’s always better to be prepared and thats why we should invest in ourselves.

During the First Ever Social Media Academy Grand Meetup one of the topics that popped up was how Artificial intelligence is starting to gain traction and how it has replaced a lot of jobs. In that blog post I’ve mentioned how I am a firm believer that humans will never run out of things to do in order to live in this world. Humans will always have a purpose in making the world a place where everyone can receive happiness although it sounds like an impossible ideal and a utopia, I am actually hoping for a future like this and not one where artificial intelligence and robots and Skynet will run amok and destroy this world. (Hope you got my Terminator reference( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) )

Where there is evolution in technology, then there can be growth and evolution in humanity as well.

So how do you invest in yourself?

1.) Take time to reflect on what you want to achieve in the future. Try to imagine and visualize what kind of future you want for yourself and be as specific as possible then evaluate yourself how your current status is and how you want to improve it for the future you want.

During my quarter life crisis I thought about what I can do, what I want to do and how it will affect the world. I saw how I wanted my life to look like during my retirement age and then slowly I tried to think about how I can attain it.

I concluded that I just wanted a simple life for myself, I don’t need anything extravagant but I wanted time I can spend with my family and possibly a small and self sustaining garden where we can rely for food.

I also realized I wanted to leave a legacy, not in a material form but in the form of people remembering me as an inspiration and someone who is able to educate through speaking and living my life.

I evaluated the things I wanted to do and how I can earn money from it. I reflected and found out that as a kid I already loved reading and it’s one of the things which made my mom really proud of me because I read billboards copies out loud. Then from my love of reading stemmed my love to tell and write stories.

Eventually my love for stories stemmed to visual media in the form of illustrated books, comics, anime, manga and movies.

It’s quite a chain of events but I eventually understood and believed that this path of listening, reading stories then creating, telling and sharing them anew with my insights and my own twist is what I really enjoy doing.

Thankfully the course I took in college is related to these which is Multimedia Arts.

Everything is a small puzzle piece which will hopefully become a full picture in the future when I succeed.

2.) Keep yourself informed Read, watch videos, join online groups and forums in whatever interest you want to keep updated on.

After you’ve realize what you really want to do and what skills you have that are related to that, think about how that can change the world and how you can get paid for it. Your Ikagai for short (as illustrated and explained in my “surviving quarter life crisis post” . Expand on the skills you currently have and try to learn a new skill based on it.

Anything under the sun is possible. Let’s be extreme and make sleeping an example.

Example you love to sleep and sleeping is your skill, so how can you earn money from it and how can it change the world?

Today there are studies of using body heat to mine crypto currencies like Bitcoins so it’s definitely possible to earn money while you literally sleep. Bitcoin have also become something bigger than a trend and its changing the digital space through e-commerce and digital trading and currency. By generating energy for bitcoin while you sleep you are already contributing something.

Then for something closer to home for those unfamiliar with crypto currency, you can use your love for sleeping and your sleeping skills for science literally. In 2017 NASA also paid people $18,000 to lay in bed for 60 days.

In my case I’ve mentioned in a Facebook post that I’ve joined a lot of groups so I can keep updated on Multimedia Arts and Marketing.

Once you’ve done your research and done a lot of social listening to update yourself dive further by reflecting which ones of the many things you’ve heard and learned about would you want to focus on then…

3.) Take an online course.

There are free online courses and then there are paid ones.

So far the only paid online course I endorse is Social Media Academy. I’ve contributed videos to this course and as I was given access to the course myself I can say that this is a very useful course for aspiring Social Media Managers.

As for FREE online courses there are many out there. I personally endorse Hubspot’s FREE Inbound Marketing course. That is where I started my marketing career (well aside from the introduction to business class which I took back in college).

The great Google also offers a lot of FREE courses like the  Google’s Digital Garage – Learn New Skills for the Digital AgeGoogle’s Online Marketing ChallengeGoogle Developers TrainingGoogle’s Analytics Academy,Google’s Academy for Ads, Google’s Ai Academy.

Sometimes people want to contribute to the cause, so if you also want to share your course online for free with google you can check out full details here.

Sometimes Udemy also offers promotional free courses or courses with great discounts.

4.)Give back, Share what you know and tell your story

Give back by sharing what you know and what you’ve learned in the groups you’ve joined whether it’s online or offline. Share your story. You can blog like this, or post a status in your Facebook or in social media.

You can create your own course, whether free or paid.

By giving back and sharing what you know to a person or to a group of people you are investing in continuity of your legacy. Whether it’s a big or a small thing it feels great to know that we will be able to leave something good and positive on this earth.

Do you agree?

Let’s discuss, drop me a message here in my contact form (click here).


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About the featured image: The background is a stock photo from Pexels. I think watch symbolize the limited time we have to live so we should use it wisely and for a great purpose which is to make ourself grow and eventually multiply that growth by sharing with others as symbolized by the plants and the flower.

I hope you found this blog post helpful! Don’t hesitate to contact me, let me know what you think !