Episode Details

Right now you're listening to this podcast, or reading the blog article. Why?

You're curious, and have a thirst for knowledge. You want to learn new things. You want to improve yourself.

We usually think of investment as being a financial thing. But investing in yourself - your skills, knowledge, and health, can be just as important and impactful. And just like a financial investment, diversification pays.

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In past Financial Autonomy episodes we've looked at investing in the share market, buying or starting a business, getting debt under control, and various other topics that tend to have dollars and cents as a core element.

And whilst the money side of things is unquestionably important in you attaining Financial Autonomy, there are other essential ingredients required for you to achieve success. Motivation, health, happiness, self-awareness, creativity.

There is a lot on the net about self-improvement and investing in yourself – I've spent hours reading it to research for this article. So what I'm going to share with you today is the 5 ideas I've been able to identify that will have the greatest impact in you reaching your Financial Autonomy goals.

1. The starting point must be your health. It's no good achieving Financial Autonomy at age 50 say, only to drop dead 6 months later. There's 2 elements to investing in your health – activity and food. On the activity front, the important thing is to start. If you're currently doing very little physical activity, start by taking regular walks. Build up the distance over time. Perhaps you could extend that to jogging. There are podcasts available based on the couch to 5k approach that I know people have found useful. If you already have some level of fitness, think about setting yourself a new challenge. Last summer I set myself the challenge of completing a triathlon. Swimming has never been my thing, so I had to put quite a bit of time into training for that component of the event. The funny thing was, when the tri season ended and I focused back on running, I found my running had improved, even though I hadn't given it much focus over the summer. When thinking about the activity component of health, just remember the "R" in the SMART goals acronym – realistic. The surest way to side-step success in this area is to set some crazy high goal, that you quickly become discouraged by, and you defeat yourself before you make any progress. Start small. The second component to investing in your health is food. As important as activity and exercise is, if you head down to KFC for a post work-out feast, you're probably not going to maximise the health benefits of your exercise. I'm not a nutritionist, so I can't give you any particular guidance on what you should and shouldn't be eating, but just reflect on your eating habits and consider whether this is an area worthy of investing some of your time to research and improve.

2. Get your creative juices flowing! For many of us, creativity seems to die when we leave primary school. But it doesn't have to. Indeed as technology like self-driving vehicles and AI eliminate many of the traditional jobs in our economy, the ability to think creatively takes on far more value and importance. Pick up some blank paper and a grey lead pencil and have a go at drawing that tree in your back yard. Is there a musical instrument floating around the house that you could teach yourself to play. If there isn't a YouTube video showing you how, I'll eat my shoe. How about expanding your cooking repertoire? There's no shortage of cooking shows to give you ideas. Many years ago my wife and I made a new year's pledge to cook something we'd never cooked before, once a week. We subscribed to one of the monthly cooking magazines, and so that was the main source of inspiration each week. There were 2 or 3 weeks du