Invest in Yourself and Improve Your Life: A Lazy Guy’s Guide

How to Start Investing in Yourself

The first step to personal success is to understand what you want. The second step is to set the right goals for yourself and then work hard to achieve them.

What are your interests? What are your strengths? What do you like doing the most? What are you passionate about?

Where do you want to be in life, 5 years from now, 10 years from now?

What would make you happy in life?

There may be more than one answer for these questions. The key is not only understanding what makes you happy but also making sure that your future goals line up with this.

Reading Books

At the young age of 35 I decided it was time for me to read books. Growing up, I hated books. They were merely a display item or decoration but when technology advanced and Audiobooks (thanks Amazon) became a ‘thing’, I quickly consumed over a 100 books in a few years. This left me with a desire to look for more answers about life, family, investing, spirituality, and many other areas of random musings. So, whether you read or listen to books this is a sure-fire way to improve your vocabulary, processing skills, and gain absolutely vital knowledge on subjects you thought were boring. This will certainly help you by not feeling left out of conversations when you talk with the smart people at the watercooler.

Studying Online

In this day and age, if you are not actively pursuing any kind of self development, you are greatly limiting yourself and making sure you’ll be the one left out of all party invitations. It’s so easy to sign up for a variety of FREEEEEEE online courses from Coursera, Futurelearn, and many many websites. Seriously, just Google it.

I took a course on Business Writing once (for FREEEEE) and I can say with all honesty that it gave me quite a practical approach not only to writing, but also verbal communication. Get to the point and stop going in circles! This is true to the bone. Online courses are your tool to a great resume and a great interview with a potential employer.

As a business owner myself, I think it is more important that people who are hired to work for me have taken the time to improve themselves. Hiring people who come from top-tier universities but don't know themselves often leads to them not being able to work efficiently. People who put time into themselves show that they are willing and able to step outside the box and look at the bigger picture. In football (soccer) a valued midfielder is one who does not put his head down. The best midfielders are always looking up and around for the future opportunity. I feel online courses will help you with this. Seriously. Stop reading this and sign up!

Learning a Skill / Hacking a Skill

I’ve always wanted to learn coding because that’s the ‘word on the street’ for a good job, but that’s not going to happen because that’s not my passion, yet. However, I first picked up a Ukulele a few years ago and thought it was way too silly for a big grown man to play. After being humbled by some local Hawaiian players on Youtube, I realized my new hobby was to try and play an instrument. I wanted to hack this stuff. I’m not interested in music theory so I just wanted to learn a few chords and strumming patterns. Again, Youtube to the rescue. In a matter of minutes I learned the 4 basic chords to play a gazillion songs. C, G, Am, and F. With these FOUR chords. Yes, 4 chords, you can play 100’s of songs. Not going to lie, it’s a mixture of strumming patterns and chord progressions and that’s…it.. If you learn a few more chords then your range will open up. It’s that simple people!

Learning a Second Language

There are many benefits to learning a second language that we don't focus on. I’ll focus on just two.

Learning a second language is one of the most rewarding things you can do. It boosts your intelligence, gives you more career opportunities and helps with mental health. But what about learning a third, fourth or even fifth language? Okay, I’ll stop. Just a second language is fine.

Learning a second language has helped me learn my first language better. Yes, you read correctly. I’m currently learning Korean and through this process I’ve learned how RIDICULOUSLY difficult English is for non-English speakers. Korean can express things much more clearly and it works while allowing you to misplace the sentence order. You can say “Yesterday, at lunch, rice, ate.” (no subject necessary) or “at lunch, rice, ate, yesterday” and they’ll both make sense to the listener.

Learning a language can also help with job applications. Remember, improving yourself with hobbies can translate into a sweet-ass job in another part of the world. Who wouldn’t want this? Employers are constantly looking for bilingual speakers, especially in the major business languages of the world. Government agencies are constantly looking for Arabic and Persian language speakers for roles of translators in certain parts of the world. You can learn a language by attending your nearest language school or by just going over to DuoLingo or Italki for some language practice.

How to Start Investing in ETFs and the benefits of ETFs.

ETFs, or exchange-traded funds, are a type of investment that can give you exposure to a diverse range of assets such as stocks, bonds, and commodities. An ETF is a fund that owns the underlying securities in the stock market and divides ownership among investors. ETFs are often passively managed funds which means they primarily track an index and don't engage in significant security picking.

ETFs help you diversify your portfolio because they target different sectors in the stock market. The lower investment risk because one bad investment doesn't drag down your entire portfolio like it would with individual stocks. ETFs also provide liquidity because they're traded on exchanges just like individual stocks which means you can buy them anytime during the trading day.

The advantage of investing in ETFs over mutual funds is that the FEES are significantly lower. The average Vanguard ETF fees are 0.06% (https://investor.vanguard.com/etf/fees) Go ahead and find me a Mutual Fund that charges that little.

Investing in Crypto

Without a doubt, crypto and NFTs is the place to be right now. The astronomical returns on your investment are too risky for many and fun for the rest. This will be another topic for another day. Go ahead and look at the growth of BTC from 2011 till today. You would have wished you had invested $100 back then because it would be worth about $5,000,000+ today. Go ahead and take that shot of whiskey and cry in the bathroom.

^Disclaimer^ I’m not a Financial Analyst - do not follow this advice, DO YOUR OWN GOD DAMN RESEARCH.

Conclusion

So where do you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years? Where were you 3, 5, 10 years ago? Are you in a better place financially, mentally, spiritually? If not, then wake the heck up and do what’s available FOR FREE out there. Our generation has all the information and resources at our fingertips and yet we waste our time on Tiktok, Youtube, Steemit (a-hem), Reddit….wait that’s my life. No, but cereal-talk now. Don’t waste a minute on silly things meant to distract us from fulfilling our potential. All these types of entertainment only line the pockets of the big corporations and their investors. Isn’t it better to throw money into the ocean then? OR invest your money in things you like wasting time on, like Netflix. That way you can grow rich and become a Lazy foo’ like myself.