“The time I spend improving myself now always pays bigger dividends later“.
Self-improvement is an investment of time and energy instead of an investment of money, but both pay excellent returns. It can improve your health, your emotions, your career, and your financial state. Here are four big areas anyone can work on in their spare time – and notes on exactly how to make it happen.
Improve your health - Just walking thirty minutes a day for twelve years adds, on average, 1.3 healthy years to your life. That’s 49 days of walking in exchange for 1.3 years of additional life – a brilliant trade. Doing more intensive exercise can add even more – 3.7 years of life on average.
Lets break this down, on average, a thirty minute walk will add almost five hours to your life. Go on a thirty minute walk each night after work and a single week’s worth, on average, will add a day to your life. That’s a profound argument for improving your health, even by taking simple steps.
Just because you are starting to get into exercise doesn’t mean that you have to neglect your usual hobbies. You can do sit-ups whilst watching Coronation Street and can listen to your favourite music on your ipod whilst you’re on the treadmill.
Improve your knowledge - “Knowledge is the base upon which creativity is built“. Exposure to new ideas and new angles in a mix with the unique set of ideas and life experiences you already have make it more and more likely that you’ll be able to produce unique ideas – and those unique ideas can be incredibly valuable.
One powerful way to do this is to read (you‘re obviously good at that as you‘re reading our blog :D). Take on a book that challenges you and pushes the way you think. This could be a sci-fi book, or it could be an autobiography that really inspires you and makes you want to achieve your goal.
Another effective way to get there is through conversation with a person willing to engage ideas. Share your thoughts, listen to what they share, and debate their relative merits. Accept that criticism of an idea that you presented is not criticism of you, but of the idea itself. This doesn’t have to be in person, the internet is huge, full of forums on every issue you could imagine. From Lindsay Lohan’s latest hair doo, to complex religious and scientific issues, if you want to discuss something then it’s very likely there will be someone out there that will put up a different point of view.
Improve your personal nature - Knowing who you are – your strengths, your weaknesses, your joys, your sorrows – makes it a lot easier to navigate the minefield of life. It’s well worth your time to figure out who you are and what you truly value.
Spend some time being introspective. Ask yourself how you honestly feel about the elements in your life. Are these things bringing you joy or sadness? Why? What elements, you ask? Look at everything: your health, your relationships, your activities, your possessions, and so on.
This type of introspection can be very difficult. Often, we want to feel certain ways about certain things and, on some level, we convince ourselves that we do. Digging through that, figuring out our true feelings, and acting on them results in nothing but life improvement.
Improve your relationships - Most relationships need some amount of care and feeding, but in the busy nature of modern life, it’s easy to overlook the care and feeding that some of our most important relationships require.
Take some time and simply talk to your spouse about how life is going. Give your mother a long phone call. Get in touch with your siblings. Look up some of your close friends that you’ve drifted away from over time. Listen to what they’re saying – appreciate their contribution to your life. Letting work take over your life only ends up in failure and depression. Remember you work hard for a happy and prosperous future, do you really want to spend that alone?
Contact Reeves Independent on 0871 271 270 to speak to one of our financial advisors who will be more than happy to have a chat with you about retirement planning or pensions.
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