I am presenting ‘Invest in yourself” in a three-part series; ‘What does investing in yourself mean?’, ‘What you must do to be able to invest in yourself?’and ‘What are the pitfalls you should avoid to successfully invest in yourself? I am keen to have your feedback on this series as we move along. So here’s part 1 of the series.

What does “Invest in yourself” mean?

Every other day I am confronted with the question, “What is the best investment now?” I always try and give the second best possible answer because the best answer is seldom understood. The best answer is, and always will be, “Invest in yourself”. That is right. You are your greatest asset and you are responsible for everything you do. Think about it. You are responsible for all matters in your life; be it your career, future, wedding, self confidence, self esteem, investments, prosperity, charity or personal growth.

I am referring to “Invest in yourself” as a method by which you learn to trust your own conviction for the decisions you take.

Learning to manage money

First things first; no matter how much people talk and what they say about their life and achievements, the fact is most people always feel they do not have enough. Secondly, most people think and believe they can, and should, manage their money themselves. If we were to put these two statements together, the conclusion is that people do not know how to manage money. Earning money is far more simpler than managing it. But despite that most people want to do manage their wealth themselves. So, it is a good idea to know what it takes to manage money on your own.

The basis of managing money is being able to take financial decisions and stand by them. Hence, once a decision is taken you must believe in yourself, trust your conviction that the decision is correct and therefore you will stick to your decision with the expectation that you will reap profits in time.

There are three fundamental advantages of my theory.

Understanding the concept of risk : Most people do not understand “risk” and the inherent wealth creation within a calculated risk, hence they let their money stay in what the world calls ‘risk fee’. Learning about what to do would help you to be able to take calculated “risk”.

Be confident of your decisions : The ones who understand the real concept of “risk” start on the right track but often do not succeed because they simply lack the conviction in themselves and their own decisions. Often their decisions are borrowed decisions or recommendations that someone gave free of cost. Once you understand things and get conviction in your thoughts you will be able to generate perpetual profits.

Overcome your fears : Most people have a fear of failure i.e. to say that people are not risk averse but loss averse. People do not mind taking risk but do not like losses. Ironical? But this is a fact. To explain further if one could have a certainty of returns from a so called risky investment one would have no problems to deploy money in that investment. Once your conviction is in control of things you will be able to differentiate and act more rationally keeping your fears and concerns at bay.

Above everything else wealth is not just magically created and people often feel incapacitated due to lack of knowledge and this lack of knowledge can be fixed by investing in yourself. That’s as simple as it is. For this we need to learn about a few things such as correct concept of risk, markets, market situation and human behaviour. We shall talk about this in the next part.

The parting thought I want to leave with you is that if you have to do something right, you got to have the learning and skills to do it right, else like they say do not play with fire and the kind that you do not really understand.