Zen College Life

This week we will be focusing on investing in ourselves.  You always here people talking about investing in this stock or that company, investing time in your family life and friendships, investing in a new tv or xbox (if that can even count as an investment…), but rarely do we focus on investing in what matters most; ourselves. An investment in yourself is the difference between where you are now and the raise you hope to get.  It’s a difference between the person you are today and the person you could be tomorrow.  You are your single most valuable asset, and until you start putting it to work, you couldn’t hope to be any more succesful than you are now.

So what does it mean to invest in yourself.  To invest in yourself could be any number of things, ranging from taking a yoga or ballroom dancing class to going to a productivity seminar, or even going back to school.  To invest in yourself is to do anything that will make you better, more valuable to a family member, friend, your employer, etc.

Now let’s go over some easy ways to invest in yourself.  I’m going to talk about my favorite ways, although there are so many that it would be impossible to touch all bases.

My personal favorite way  to invest in myself is to listen to audiobooks.  The beauty of an audiobook is that you will learn something whether you are listening actively (sitting down in a quite place and focusing), or you are listening passively (driving, walking, doing other things while listening).  Plus you can listen to audiobooks almost anywhere at anytime.  A great source of audiobooks is Audible.com (I am not making any money by advising you to audible…) though there are a couple of others.

Everyone knows books are a great way to further your knowledge and thus investing in your most important asset.

I also love how-to and DIY (do it yourself) websites.  They are great for learning the basics of everything from doing a backflip to starting a small business (both of which i have read/listened to/watched).

A couple of my favorite how-tos and DIYs are Instructables.com (picture documented with text instructions), 5min.com (vidoes 5 minutes or less explaining how-to), eHow.com (how to just about everything), and Expert Village (”worlds largest how-to video site”).

For simple research or to find the answer to just about anything, I use wikipedia, google, and yahoo answers, and to get quick summaries of any type of literature or books I use Shvoong.com.

So there are my quick, easy, free (except audible) resources for investing in yourself.  What do you use to invest in yourself.  What are your methods.  Leave a comment and help us invest in ourselves, you’ll be one step closer to positive karma.