The Progress Pod - Ep 5 - Investing In Yourself is The Best Investment You Can Make

Investing in yourself is the best investment you can make. It doesn't have to be financial, but can be an investment of time and energy. By investing in yourself, you can grow rapidly, open doors to new opportunities, and reach your goals faster. Taking time for yourself allows you to show up as your best self for others. Those who invest in themselves achieve their goals faster. Consider setting goals and investing time each day to see growth. Hello and welcome to episode number five of the Progress Pod. So apologies if it's a wee bit echoey in this room. I'm at a different location, but I should be back to the normal room from next week. But in terms of today's podcast, it's going to be me, myself, delivering it, no guest, this week. And I'm going to be chatting through how investing in yourself is the best investment you can make. The reason I wanted to do this topic is because it's something that I've learned first hand over the last few years and it's had a really powerful and positive impact in all aspects of my life really. And probably just going back to maybe ten years ago where I wasn't in a bad place, I didn't have a bad job or anything like that, but I probably wasn't growing very much. Like, from the last say ten years ago up until maybe three years ago, it was a case of Monday to Friday, doing your work, Friday, Saturday out, feeling pretty rotten on a Sunday, back to it on a Monday, waiting for the weekend. And then I still was training, I was still keeping an eye on my nutrition, so Monday to Friday. But, if I look back, in that time frame, I probably didn't grow very much in terms of, personally, like the progress that I should have made in that period, in the gym for instance, should have been a lot more than it was. And maybe three years ago or so, I started taking a wee bit more time and a bit more focus. It probably stemmed from the birth of my first child, Rosie, and the kind of health issues that she had when she was first born, as I mentioned in the first podcast. And it was a kind of point where I was like, I can definitely do more, I can definitely get better. And at that point I started saying, right, I'm going to start taking things more seriously. At that point I actually invested in a fitness coach, I wanted to really take my fitness to the next level, and started doing a lot more in terms of reading, listening to podcasts, and just really trying to develop myself and invest in myself. And when I say invest in yourself, it doesn't need to be a financial investment, but it can be anything, an investment of time, an investment of energy. But if you're investing in yourself, it's going to allow you to really grow and really make some crazy progress over a short space of time. And I said over the last few years, I've invested quite heavily in myself in terms of both at a personal level, with regards to fitness and training, at a business level, a business mentor, kind of just as well in time and focusing daily to spend a wee bit of time on myself. And what I mean here is I'm not saying go and meditate for five hours and tell your family that you're not available because you're sitting meditating or doing affirmations or something. I'm not meaning that, but 15 minutes to yourself in the morning, maybe planning your day, reading a wee bit, listening to a podcast, going on a quick 10 minute walk. Like, a bit of energy on making sure that you're feeling optimal, and this is going to be different for everyone. And it might sound selfish, but I've noticed, especially since having kids, if I don't invest that little bit of time in myself each day, I'm not showing up the way I want to show up. And I don't think that's selfish at all. If I just jump out of bed and not, like, spend no time with myself, not had any spare minute, like, it impacts my mood and energy levels for the rest of the day, and that's not what I want. And as I said, when I'm advising you here to invest in yourself and make yourself a priority, I'm not saying everything else goes away and you've got to spend hours on yourself, but focusing on making sure that you're showing up is going to allow you, then, to be the best version of yourself for everyone else. So, what I'm going to just kind of run through is four key points for me on why investing in yourself is the best investment you can make. And as I said, it can come in various different forms, coaching, training, reading, personal development, whatever the case may be, just your wellbeing, everything. Taking some time to invest in yourself is going to make a massive, massive improvement to your life. And firstly, for me, is if you're not looking after yourself, then you're going to be useless to others, or maybe not useless, but you're not going to be who you want to be. Like, I know myself that if I've maybe let things slip, I've not been following my normal routines, maybe I've had a heavier weekend than normal, I'm just not feeling great, like, I can sense myself, like, the energy levels and how I'm showing up and all the other aspects of my life just isn't where I want to be. So, in order to be selfless, you need to be a wee bit selfish and make sure that you are investing in yourself, whether that's making sure you get some exercise in, making sure you've got your meals prepped to make sure you're getting good nutrition, getting to bed earlier to make sure you're getting a good sleep, checking in with your coach, if you've got one, to make sure you have good plans for the week and you know what you're doing, what your next move is. And then number two, it really allows you to grow at a rapid rate. Like, as I said, over the past three years since I've started investing in myself, I've probably grown more in all areas of my life during that three years than I did in the last seven years combined. So it really allows you to grow in consistent challenge in yourself and focusing on things that are moving you forward and actually giving yourself that wee bit of time to invest in you, it really, the growth that you'll see is so much faster than if you're not bothering, if you're maybe just mosey along, ticking off day by day, not being proactive and actually doing things that's going to improve your life. So that's the second point. Third point for me is that it really opens the doors to new opportunities as you grow and as you develop. Like, you'll start to see opportunities in all areas if you put that time and investment in yourself, your energy's going to improve, your mood's going to improve, your performance at work's going to improve, everything's going to improve and, like, if you just take your performance at work, for example, you're then potentially going to get offered new roles, new positions, maybe route down to a different career opportunity comes up. All these opportunities can happen. And for me personally, I've always been into fitness, I've always had ambitions to get into the fitness industry, as I mentioned in podcast one, but at that point I didn't really know how I was ever going to do it. But when I did focus and say, right, let's start taking things a bit more seriously and let's start putting a wee bit of time into yourself because we've been kind of floating along for a period of time, started really focusing on my own health and fitness, had a coach, got into amazing shape, did my first photo shoot. I believe at that point that gave me the opportunity to get into the fitness industry. It was a brand new opportunity that I'd created by investing in myself and putting myself out there and getting out of my comfort zone and really focusing some time and energy into me and it allowed me to get to where I am today. Essentially, also, Raymond, who's head coach in the Progress Project, he's going to let things slip over the last couple of years, maybe kind of summertime last year into the autumn. He was probably the heaviest he's ever been. He's always been into his fitness, but just kind of falling away with things. But he then turned the screw, invested in himself, came up with a programme, signed up for a photo shoot, and over the last six months he's completely transformed his life and now he's got that opportunity, a new opportunity open for him to get into the fitness industry. He's now working on the Progress Project and he's absolutely flying. So it's just an example that new doors open when you start investing in yourself and trying to move the needle forward. And then finally, one of the main points for me is it's going to get you to where you want to be faster. Especially if you are investing in a coach, for example, whether that's a mentor for what you do professionally, whether that's a fitness coach, whatever the case may be, if you're investing some money, time and knowledge in somebody who's where you want to be, you're going to absolutely fast track your results. You're going to get to those goals a lot faster than you will. Again, I'll go back to the fitness side of things. Before hiring a coach, I reckon I made more progress in six months than I did the previous three to four years. Because I invested and because I took that jump, got inside my comfort zone and went for it. So you're going to get to your goals a lot faster and that applies to everything as well, not just fitness, your career, your business, if you're running a business, whatever that may be. If you invest in it, invest in yourself, your time, your money, your energy, you're going to get to your goals faster rather than willy-nilly saying, yeah, I really want to achieve that at some point, but you're not really taking the actions to do that. If you really invest in yourself and take action, you're going to get to your goals faster. So as you can see, there's a lot of key points there. For me, I really think that investing in yourself and looking after yourself is so key in order to show up for others, which has become one of my main things. And again, as I said, it's not selfish, it's allowing you to show up as the best version of yourself. This is exactly what I chatted to, we did a private podcast on this with the guys within the Progress Project. They're trying to do the exact same thing. All the guys in there have invested in their health and fitness. They're all achieving their goals so much faster than they would otherwise. So there's lots to think about there, but if you're someone that's maybe not investing the time, energy, finances in yourself as much as you would like, then have a think about it. Think about a goal, think about what you can then do to invest in yourself. Short period of time each day to really keep driving that needle forward and seeing that growth. So hopefully guys, you enjoyed that podcast. Shorter one this week, no guests, but just wanted to run through just a couple of points there as it's something that I've seen the power of over recent years. So if you do listen to this, drop me a message, give me a wee bit of feedback on it, let me know if you enjoyed it, screenshot it, put it in your stories and tag someone else who you think might want to hear it. But yeah, invest in yourself, the best investment you can make without a doubt. And yeah, I'll speak to you guys on the next one.