Invest in yourself
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All right, friends, it is time to start investing. Not money, not your tax return, but investing in yourself. Going to give you in 15 awesome minutes or less today in this episode a few ways that you can start investing in yourself. Let's do this.

Welcome to Chasing the Awesome Life, your weekly guide to making life a little bit more awesome. Because we all have goals and dreams, but yet the struggle is oh so real. So take a little time to equip yourself with the tools and the inspiration to be just a little bit more awesome in every aspect of your life.

There's no topic I won't cover in this podcast. From kids to college to the joys and the struggles, it's all awesome if you choose to chase it. So get ready to take some notes and take a little more awesome action. This is Chasing the Awesome Life.

So let's talk about how you can add pennies to your life to make yourself infinitely more richer. You know, there are, if you go out on Pinterest or look at Instagram or many other places, there's this image that I have seen that shows if you add

invest $1 a day starting now, you'll be at insert some large sum of money for the year. And the truth is, if you do add $1 to it every day, right, if I invest $1 and then $2 and then $3, that by the end of the month, I will have drastically made a large difference. But

I think that's really difficult to do because that requires you increasingly do more and more and more. What if you just did a dollar every day and at the end of the year you had $366 saved that you didn't have before? Wouldn't you rather do that than do nothing?

The same thing happens when you talk about investing in yourself. Why do you think I'm doing these podcasts that are 15 minutes or less and only doing them a couple times a week? I'm not asking you to sit down and consume an hour worth of shit. Like, one, I don't have time to record an hour worth of content. That's why I do keynote talks and workshops and speak for longer periods of time only a couple times a month, if that.

I'm not trying to change your life by having you consume an hour worth of content every day. I want you to be able to regularly invest small efforts and small amounts of time and energy into making yourself better. Because, you know, we often think, oh my gosh, I need to work out for an hour every day, seven days a week. No, if you just got off the couch and were willing to walk regularly,

For 20 minutes or 15 minutes a couple times a week, you'd be better off. And you did that for an entire year consistently. You would be in a better place a year later than when you started. That's just the reality. I'm not asking you to change everything. I'm asking you to make one small change.

That's how you chase the awesome life. It's not a, I arrived at the awesome life by spending all of my time and energy. I mean, sure, great. Spend as much time and energy as you have. But

If you don't have all the time and everyone tells me they're busy, y'all, I hear this at work. I hear this when I do workshops. I hear this in my family. I hear this when I call people up and they say, whether it's my family or friends, and they say, I'll call you right back. And you know what right back means? It's like two weeks later. We don't make a priority for the things that are important and that matter. And

A lot of times when I say that, people are thinking about making others a priority. And we all struggle with that for sure. But even more so, we struggle with investing in ourselves and taking time for yourself. For me, honestly, recording this podcast has been me investing in myself. I take 15 to 20 minutes. I'm not taking all the time in the world.

15 to 20 minutes a couple times a week to sit down in a closet, under a blanket, wherever I can find the space that I'm going to get it done. And I talk. And I, for me, externally process. I get out the things that are in my head, my content, my information, the things that I hope that I can share that will help you to be the best version of yourself. And that makes me feel better. It makes me feel valuable. It makes me feel like

I'm making a difference. And that's ultimately part of why I'm doing what I do with my business. So the question is, how are you going to invest in yourself? Is it listening to this podcast? Is it going for a walk? Is it going to the gym? Is it spending five minutes in meditation?

You know, meditation has been proven going all the way back to the Buddhists, right? And the Buddha himself. Meditation is one of the greatest ways that you can be more present, that you can learn to control your emotions and you can learn to live fully. But it is so difficult to do in the world we live in. So maybe it's meditate for five minutes a day. Don't tell me you don't have time for that.

Even if you tell me you don't have time, can you make the areas of your life where you are already mindlessly doing things? Maybe it's scrolling Facebook or scrolling Instagram or...

utilizing some other social media platform, whatever it might be, or even television, right? Maybe you're binge watching something on Netflix. Can you make one of those areas a way that you invest in yourself? And I know that sounds strange, but hear me out. Listen to me for just a second. Don't turn this off, okay? The question is, what are you consuming

And is it making you a better version of yourself? Are you watching Love is Blind on Netflix, which I know is very popular right now. And yes, I just recently watched it. I am 32 years old, so I probably would have been perfect for Messica. If you don't get the reference, go watch Love is Blind. It is absolute garbage, trash TV. And it does not make you a better version of yourself. But nevertheless...

There are shows, there are documentaries, there are things on Netflix that you can watch that are going to teach you something, that are going to challenge you to think, that are going to then allow you to engage in conversation with other people.

I think that's one of the really cool things about the world that we live in today is that there's so much out there to consume, but it's even better when you can consume it and then you're able to actually use it and have conversation and build relationships with others. So maybe that's one thing you do in terms of watching TV. But in your social media, what are you consuming? Are the channels that you follow people that...

challenge you to be the best version of yourself? Are they social media influencers that just make you compare yourself and question, do I have the right thing? Am I doing the right thing? When we're talking about investing in ourselves, again, it doesn't have to be complicated. Maybe it's one TED Talk a week that you sit down and you watch.

I'm giving you as many ideas as I can think of and that I have used personally or suggested to coaching clients and people who I've worked with and coached through different areas of their life because there's a lot of things you can do to invest in yourself, but we always tell ourselves we don't have time.

We recently created at Coastal where I work full time, we created these sessions called In and Out Learners. And they are 30 minute sessions. They are sessions based on specific topics where people can come to us and they can learn about a topic. They can learn some practical tips and tools that they can take away in 30 minutes or less. And we put them out there thinking, you know, people say they're busy. Let's see how they do. Almost every single one of them is completely full within two days of them being posted on our website.

I think it shows that we just live in this busy world. People are constantly clamoring for and asking for and searching for what's the next tip? What's the next secret? What's the magic way, the magic pill, if you will? And really there isn't one. It's consistently day after day doing something to invest in yourself.

That's what this is all about, y'all. You have it within you. You have the capability and the power within you to make the change. Again, if we go back to some of my previous episodes, you've got to believe in yourself. You've got to find that fuel. You have to consistently do the action even when you might not want to. So I'll challenge you. Find a way to invest in yourself.

Don't invest hundreds of dollars. Just simple, small changes. That's how you can keep chasing the awesome life. I'll see you all on the next episode. Keep it real and be awesome.