Invest in yourself

I find entrepreneurs inspiring.

They bring ideas to life. They don’t always know if their idea will be successful. They can plan and research to the death, but it can fall through for a number of reasons. Despite this great uncertainty, they still pursue their ambitions and are fearlessly optimistic about the future. Entrepreneurship is not for the fainthearted. There’s a lot of risk involved, but you don’t have to start up a business to be inspiring. All you have to do is back yourself. That’s the quality that I truly admire about entrepreneurs. They really believe in their ideas, and in themselves.

Think about where you see yourself being in a years time, what do you want to be doing? Who do you want to be? Then decide how you are going to get there. Don’t be afraid to invest in your future. This can take shape in attending skills building workshops, participating in a six week leadership programme, joining the gym, and so on. I started this blog with no idea if it would be successful, if anyone would even read or care about what I wrote. But I had a goal and I believed in myself, and so I invested in myself.

Photo by Jeremy Dorrough

I sought out a professional and snazzy web hosting service and I purchased my own domain. I could have easily created this project using free resources, but I wanted it to be more official. This project is essentially my job and the space I created needed to reflect that. If you are going to create something, or do something you need to do it well. There is no use half-assing your way to a goal you have set, because there will be a high probability it won’t work out how you intended and the reason would be because you didn’t give it your all. When you put your all into a venture, you can rest assured that you did everything you could possibly do to make it a success which can be a comfort, even in failure.

Take a chance on yourself, there is nothing wrong with a little risk, especially in our youth. I admire our generation’s ability to dive into a new project, try it out, put our all in and if it doesn’t work, we move on to something else. We should all take advantage of this period in our lives, when the only responsibility we have is to ourselves and to try new opportunities to see what works for us. To, dare I say, follow our passions and dreams. I’m not saying you have to drop everything or quit your job! Investing in yourself can be a side hustle. Whilst maintaining this blog, I’m attempting to write a book… all alongside my main gig of Au Pairing and learning Spanish.

When you make the decision to believe in yourself, and follow through by putting in the hours and the funds. You can create a ripple effect in other aspects of your life. It shows that you are committed to your development, you are willing to put in the hard work and effort, and take the necessary steps to turn an idea into a reality. All of which are important qualities to develop.

If you don’t back yourself, how do you expect others to?