Investing in your greatest asset: Your life
Exploring the ways an investor's approach to decision-making can enhance the strategic planning of our daily lives.
Thinking about investment usually brings to mind the financial markets, where investing money wisely can lead to substantial gains. This is based on a clear principle: the smarter your decisions, the better your financial results. But this idea isn't just for money—it's also for life. Applying an investor's careful planning to our daily choices can guide us in shaping the life and career we aspire to have.
The Financial Investor: A Blueprint for Personal Growth
Let's pivot from finance to personal development, viewing 'time' and 'energy' as our most valuable assets—just as finite and significant as cash and assets. As investors in our own lives, we look to align our personal portfolio, which includes our biggest goals, values, and behaviors, to optimize the returns on our investments of time and energy.
The Life Investor: Maximizing Life’s Returns
Embracing life's decisions with an investor mindset looks like mirroring the diligence of a financial investor's approach to portfolio management. This perspective recognizes that every choice—how we utilize our hours, direct our energy, approach learning and challenges—has the potential to generate a potential return (or not). These intentional choices compound to create our life and our legacy.
This transcends mere productivity. It also requires a critical shift from an ego-orientation to a mastery-orientation. By consciously embracing a growth mindset, nurturing a supportive yet challenging network, and seeking out opportunities that push us beyond our comfort zone, we lay the groundwork to embrace ambiguity and uncertainty. In this way, a growth mindset isn’t just relevant; it's the cornerstone of a philosophy that values progression as the most significant return on investment.
Crafting an Aligned Portfolio
In the financial world, a well-aligned portfolio is diverse and balanced, tailored to the investor's goals and the market landscape. In our personal growth portfolio, alignment means ensuring that our investments of time and energy reflect our deepest values and play to our strengths. It's about pursuing activities that bring us joy and fulfillment and accepting challenges that foster our growth and resilience.
The Return on Investment
When we invest wisely and with intention in our personal development, the returns can be extraordinary. They come in the form of personal satisfaction, professional success, and a sense of fulfillment that transcends the material. Like the best financial portfolios, the return on investment in ourselves doesn't just add value—it multiplies it, affecting every aspect of our lives.
Over To You: How Will You Action This?
Every choice you make is an investment decision. By adopting the mindset of an investor—measuring the potential return on every expenditure of time and energy—you can ensure that your personal and professional lives are truly successful (however that is defined).
If this resonates and you want to action it, here are the simple but critical questions you need to answer:
What legacy do you hope to leave behind?
Are you fully utilizing your time and energy in ways that contribute to the legacy you aim to build?
To not only achieve success but also enjoy the journey, what actions should you start doing and which should you stop?
Send me your answers and I’ll share some of my favorite resources that can help you get there.
Keep going,
Steph
