5 Ways to Invest in Yourself in 2024

100 Things #017 - Invest in Yourself

Photo by averie woodard on Unsplash

Life is one big, complicated, and messy rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows, but it's your rollercoaster — how much fun you have and the quality of the memories you make along the way are yours to decide. 

We’re so often put in these situations where it feels like life has laid out this grand scheme of a plan for us, and each step we take and action we make in our day-to-day lives is simply another domino falling in the larger butterfly effect chain reaction that’s been predetermined ahead of time. 

It can be a bit of a drag. 

While I’m not here to debate the ins and outs of free will, because there are many, many people who are far more qualified to do that than I am, I do believe that, at the end of the day, whether we do or do not possess free will bears little actual consequence on the more practical aspects of our lives.

There are many choices that, as we make them, regardless of whether we even are making them or not, dictate the course of our lives one small decision at a time. 

The school you go to, the part of town you live in, the television shows you grow up watching…

They all carry some potential to impact the person you’ll end up becoming, and the paths that you end up pursuing throughout your life. Even beyond examples like these, there exists an even larger subset of ideas, choices, and paths to pursue that will not stop at potentially making an impact, but instead, could go as far as drastically altering the trajectory of your life.  

Photo by Lili Popper on Unsplash

All of these ideas and concepts have been mentioned before elsewhere, undoubtedly, but regardless, reminders of the weight that these decisions could carry bear repeating. 

Maybe that decision could be going to therapy. 

Therapy is for many people one of the single greatest decisions that a person can make in their time on this Earth. 

Finally being able to let go of that baggage from your childhood, processing the grief from something that’s been holding you back since college, or whatever it may be, find that judgement-free zone where you’re given explicit permission to drop the performance, remove your masks, and just be… 

It’s a rare opportunity, and not everyone has the privilege to take advantage of it, so it’s often worth just doing yourself a favour and signing up.  

It could be putting more energy into that side project

Between passion projects, side hustles, hobbies, recreational sports, and whatever else is under the sun that takes you away from the other responsibilities you’ve got going on, if you can find the time to invest in yourself by picking up that pastime you left behind or maybe just haven’t been giving the attention it deserves lately, finding a way to reignite the passion there can be key. 

Maybe it involves removing the expectations — not every pastime needs to be a cash cow.

Or maybe you need to change your company — some hobbies are better spent with a good friend, and some ask you for an hour of alone time. It’s up to you to catch the difference.

Being able to take the time to make a side project a priority can actually do more to restore your energy than it often would to drain it. 

Maybe we’re talking about starting a course, or eating better, or getting into fitness. 

At the end of the day, any number of these options will involve taking control back into your own hands and setting yourself down a new path.

From learning, to bettering oneself, to honing oneself physically, we often carry the potential to radically impact the trajectory we’re on, based solely on lines that we feed ourselves about the person we think we ought to become. 

I believe, though, that the sooner those expectations are dropped, the sooner we’re freed to begin choosing a different path from the one we initially believed we were set down on. 

At the end of the day, it’s up to you to make that choice, and take agency into your own hands.

I’ll leave you here with a few journaling prompts for those who want to do a bit of guided thinking around this topic:

• Think about a passion project or hobby that you've neglected. How could reigniting your passion for this activity benefit your overall well-being?

• Explore the concept of taking control of your life by making intentional choices. What steps can you take to align your actions with your values and goals?

• Consider the power of agency in shaping your future. What actions can you take today to assert control over your life and create the future you desire?

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If any of this resonated with you, I’d love to hear any thoughts or stories in the comments and replies.

For now, have a good week, and I’ll see you at 100.