What is the best way to improve life?

If I were to put it in a nutshell, it would be this:

The best way to improve life is to invest in yourself.

And I don’t necessarily mean in terms of $$$. It’s not all about buying that pair of Italian leather shoes, the stunning dress that shows all your curves, or the newest little tech gadget you’ve seen your best friend show off. That’s more like treating yourself to nice things, which you may well deserve.

By investing in yourself I mean pay more attention to what happens to you on the inside. The attitude you have about life in general. The mindset you’ve created over the years about what you believe you can or cannot do. Your education, from the formal kind to the education you customize to fit your specific needs. The things you pay attention to, whether positive or negative. Your goals and your reasons for keeping them (or excuses for not pursuing them). Your wonderful, amazing brain that you have at your disposal 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every month and year of your life.

Why is all this important? Because if you invest in continuously improving, leveling up your skills, getting better, challenging yourself, and pushing forward, you’ll understand that time will work for you and not against you.

It will all be a good investment, provided you know what to pay attention to.

So what does investing in yourself look like?

Here are 5 tips to think about, then put into practice.

Self-investment tip #1. Give your life more purpose by setting important goals.

Having a specific and important goal (at least one!) is one of the most critical factors that can help you invest in yourself and build a more meaningful future. When you have a goal you’re working towards, everything you do in your day to day life will start feeling like it has a greater sense of purpose. You won’t see your actions as inconsequential or isolated ones. Quite the opposite: everything you do will start to add up to something much bigger.

How do you do that?

• Identify specific goals. If your goals are not specific, you won’t know which ones to invest in. Non-specific goals can be anything of the following: I want to get a job, or move out of my parents’ house, or get fit, lose weight, or have a large salary. Make your goal as specific as possible. For example, if you’re starting a job search, write down that you want to get a job offer for a specific role or job title that pays an annual salary of [write an amount you believe is fair given your skills and experience] so that you can develop skills [write the skills you currently have and the ones you will be working on].
• Train your brain to focus on the immediate future. Who can be motivated to do anything if they don’t believe it can add up to something big and important? To make a connection between what you are doing each day with your future self, try this simple mind hack. Start each day with this question: What is the one thing I am committed to completing today? Asking it forces you to prioritize, helps your brain focus better, and streamlines the work you need to do so you don’t feel overwhelmed and can focus better on what’s most important to you.
• Hold yourself accountable. This means you start being responsible for your actions. A good way to improve self-responsibility is by building commitments to yourself. Commitments aren’t just promises you make to other people—you can make them to yourself. How? Define a very specific goal you want to achieve in a certain time frame. For example, I am committed to focusing on my university courses in the next month so I can pass all three of my exams with top marks. Or, I am committed to building my physical endurance by running 4 times a week for 3 months so that I can run a 5K race.

Self-investment tip #2. Work on developing your core skill set consistently.

You probably have a good idea of which skills you have already developed in the past 5, 10 or 20 years. Still, there are other skills you’ve identified as important, and maybe you wish you mastered them already or you’ve already started working on improving them, because you know that the better version of yourself needs to have those skills. Maybe even more than that: in your vision of the future, the better you is a master in a specific field of expertise! This is why it’s important to identify and develop that core skill set that will improve your life.

How do you do that?

• Identify the skills necessary for succeeding in your dream career, current job, or athletic discipline. You’ll need some time to come up with ideas, so don’t rush through this step. It will likely take a few hours to think it through. You might want to take a walk or hike, maybe get on your bike and use one day this weekend to devote to this activity. The first step is to just brainstorm: think of all the possible skills you will need. Then, when you have a good list in your mind, sit in a quiet place with a pen and paper, and write down a list of all the skills, then select the top three that you want to focus on.
• Create a skill-building plan. What’s the point of having ideas if there isn’t an action plan to make them come alive? Famous writers, artists, and scientists all had a plan in place to help them reach goals. Tolstoy didn’t write Anna Karenina in a day. Nikola Tesla didn’t work on developing the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system or wireless communication in a single month. It’s estimated that Picasso produced up to 50,000 works of art during his lifetime, which on average translates into creating more than one piece a day from the day he was born. As for you, where can you begin? Take those top three skills you’ve selected, then create a plan to devote a certain amount of time each day to them — maybe only 15 minutes in the beginning.
• Practice each skill consistently. It’s one thing to create a plan, and another to put that plan into action. Here’s where the action part comes in. Did you hear of the 10,000 hour rule? Maybe you agree with it, or maybe you don’t. Either way, what’s important is this: it’s not just the quantity of time you put into skill building, but also what you do during that time. Are you doing deep work—focusing without interruptions? Are you concentrating on repetition and improving? What are you learning from your mistakes? Keep these questions top of mind as you’re practicing your skills.

Self-investment tip #3. Simplify your new habits.

As you know by now from personal experience, if you make your habits super long and complicated, you might only work on them for a week or two. Did you notice what happens in January each year at your local gym? It’s packed with people who want to get fit as one of their New Year’s resolutions. But by the end of the month, most of those people have already given up, and by February the gym goes back to the regulars running on treadmills and lifting weights, perhaps with several new faces but not that many. What happened? Their goals were too lofty and the habits too complicated to keep up, given a long commute, other responsibilities, and not putting enough focus on how to make a new habit stick. You can approach this problem differently.

How do you do that?

• Make those first steps super small. Make it a goal to practice short activities that are not only doable but easy to fit into your day so much that you won’t be able to make excuses for why you can’t do them. For example, if you’re working on improving your writing skills, start by writing a paragraph or two each day. If you’re learning a new language, start by learning how to introduce yourself in a sentence or two. If you want to lose 10 pounds, start by going on a 30-minute walk after work to get you in the workout frame of mind.
• Make it next to impossible to say no to your new habit. If it takes a long time to start something new, chances are you’ll give up quickly, maybe even after a week of trying. That’s why it’s important to keep a new habit as simple to do as possible. For example, do a mini-workout at home for 10 minutes, instead of giving up on working out just because your gym is a 30-minute bus ride away.
• Prepare ahead of time. You’ll have a much better chance at success if you prep what you need in advance. If you feel overwhelmed and exhausted by studying, start going to bed 30 minutes earlier than usual to give yourself time to de-stress and relax with a good book or soothing music. If you are tired of making unhealthy choices for lunch every day, prep and pack your meal the night before so you don’t have to pick a fast food meal when you’re starving.

Self-investment tip #4. Get into the habit of saying “thank you” for everything you have in your life right now.

There are many benefits to practicing gratitude! And no, it doesn’t mean repeating phrases that you learn by heart that you do not understand. If done correctly, it can be a total game changer. Practicing gratitude trains your brain to focus on positive things and makes you think of what you already have in your life, as opposed to what you do not. Being grateful will also keep you grounded in your personal life so you are less focused or even obsessed with what others are doing with theirs—whether that pertains to friends, classmates, people you follow on Instagram, or even coworkers.

How do you do that?

• Dedicate a few minutes early in the day. It will only take a few minutes when you wake up and before you start getting ready for work or school. You might want to write your thoughts down in a journal, or you may prefer to think about them silently, or maybe you’ll prefer to say your thoughts out loud. It’s up to you.
• Start small. Focus only on 3 things you are grateful for today. It can be having a warm bed to sleep in; a roof over your head; a family member or friend who encourages you to become the best version of yourself; food in your fridge; the opportunity to focus on your education so that you can take charge of your life and become independent.
• Be as specific as possible. If it’s a specific person you’re grateful for having in your life, emphasize which of their qualities you are grateful for (they’re warm, generous, intelligent, or incredibly funny). If it’s having your own space, point out why this is important to you (you have your own room or apartment where you can prepare your own meals, relax at the end of the day, and do whatever you believe is important to your personal growth).

Self-investment tip #5. Start building a strong belief in yourself.

This one is easier said than done. If we’re lucky, it’s wonderful when we hear a family member or close friend tell us, I believe in you! But even if we don’t hear it from other people (or not as often), it’s not the end of the world. What’s much more important is for you to believe in yourself. Of course, this is tough to do because we humans tend to engage in negative self-talk, give in to self-doubt, and overall take on the role of our biggest critic. How can you change that way of thinking? By making a shift in your mindset, bit by bit, each day.

How do you do that?

• Develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset means you stretch yourself to learn something new every day, you challenge yourself to solve tough problems, and you work consistently until you improve. Instead of telling yourself what you “can” or “cannot” do, given your talents or gifts (all of which is a fixed mindset way of thinking), start expanding your horizons by saying, What if I tried getting better at this every day, in small steps?
• Strengthen your critical thinking muscle. As you observe the world around you, instead of taking what you see and hear for granted, it’s better if you learn how to think on your own. Start by asking questions—not just those that can be answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’—but rather open-ended questions that begin with why and how. Extract from the information you gather what is important to you (based on your own personal goals, values, and priorities). When offered advice, ask yourself, Does this align with my personal values? How would I benefit from following this advice, or is it not useful to me?
• Turn obstacles into opportunities. Typically, when we run into an obstacle, we tend to feel frustrated, angry, sad, even helpless. These emotions can translate into larger and serious consequences. Influenced by feelings of frustration from failure, we might give up on something that is really important to us and that could have yielded positive results in the long run. What can you do differently? Instead of getting emotional, work through the challenge so that you can get stronger mentally. Write down the problem and its source. Consider all alternatives. Weigh out the pros and cons of each one. Make a decision based on the information you know. Then act on it. When you’re proactive about your life, you’ll see yourself as stronger and more powerful. This is exactly what investing in yourself is all about!

*Photograph of Warren Buffet courtesy of our friend Google.