Success and Freedom

If You Invest In Yourself With These 4 Steps, You Can Achieve Much More In Life

There comes a time in life when we want to improve ourselves and invest in our self-development. Perhaps you’ve reached a crossroads in your career, looking for love or arrived at a point where you want to start making serious changes. You may have gone as far as to read numerous self-help books in the hope that a new perspective or approach will give you the magic formula for improving your life.

Sometimes you can get lost in the vast sea of information or the advice you seem to find just doesn’t resonate with you. Wouldn’t it be simple to just have a useable framework that can set your self-investment goals into motion and keep the momentum going? Here’s a four-step process that will do just that:

1. Create A List of 100 Things

Find a quiet spot and think about all the things you’d like to achieve in life no matter how big or small. These could include losing a certain amount of weight, writing a novel, attending a cooking class, or learning a language. Keep going until you have 100 things on your list, then categorise them into three parts: things I need skills for, things I can do straight away and things I need time for.

The point of this exercise is to get you thinking about what you would really love to do – take your time, walk away and come back to it, let your inspiration take over. Having this list will help you establish different ways to expand, grow and achieve self-development.

2. Be Honest About Your Skills And Create A Chart

This bit can be met with a bit of resistance, but being honest about the skills we have, and more importantly, the skills we don’t have can go a long way in achieving our long-term growth and self-investment.

You may need to acquire some new skills to achieve some of the items on your list in which case making a chart or spreadsheet can help identify these more easily. Make a list of what you need to learn and create columns for research, action and progress. What research do you need to do to gain these skills? Find courses you could sign up for or potential books you could buy. Next, in the action column write down every single step you’d need to take to reach the goal of gaining the skill. The progress column will mark how near you are to achieving each step.

3. Take Some Immediate Action

The point of this step is to create motivation. We all love the feeling of ticking off a to-do list and by acting on the things on your list that can be done today, tomorrow, this week or this month will start off the momentum of that achievement feeling.

By doing this, your list is going to look a whole lot less intimidating – book that cooking class, start jogging, swimming or any exercise regime for your weight loss goal. These small steps can gain big rewards for our mindset moving forward so start planning and researching ways to achieve them and give them deadlines.

4. Put Aside Time For The Long-Term Goals

We all know how easy it is to procrastinate and get distracted, but take some time to streamline your routines. Keep an eye on your procrastination habits throughout the day especially during morning and early evening. Carve out specific time when you can concentrate on your goals – create a timetable if needed. All this can help you keep on track, especially for your long-term goals.

Of course, your list of 100 things to achieve may change slightly over time, but if you only accomplish 4 things a year you will have worked through the entire list over 25 years and lived a life where you can say you achieved a huge amount of your goals and dreams.

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