Blame Pluto in Aquarius, but lately I’ve been on fire when it comes to the myths going around online. One of them is “investing in yourself” in order to attract the life you want.
If you are familiar with my podcast, you’ll know that I am big on Manifestation. After all, I have a whole season dedicated to it to get us all ready for the Lion’s Gate Portal. However, it pisses me off (BIG TIME) when I hear so many of the coaches in this space use manipulative language around “investing in yourself” which really is shorthand for “buy my product or you don’t really want the things you say you want and you’ll never uplevel”.
Manifesting the life of your vision
I wholeheartedly believe that you have to invest in yourself, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who could afford things in practice but let themselves be held back by their own mindset. And fair enough, that may be the kind of people who they are talking to. But I’m a witch, and I know that words have power.
If you think that’s too woo, you may want to look into Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP).
Word have power. Full stop. That’s just how it is. And as people with audiences, many equivalent to popstars and actors, that comes with a responsibility to use ours wisely.
I believe wholeheartedly that manifestation is about acting like what you want is already here. But that’s not about getting into debt for a program, even if mentorship gets your from A to B faster.
So today I wanted to address what it means to invest in yourself. Please subscribe to the podcast for the deep dive into manifestation.
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Investing in Yourself
The most precious resource you have is time. If you ever spend any of it with High Net Worth individuals, they will all tell you the same thing. Wealthy people don’t trade hours for money, and make their money work for them instead. That’s why the wealthy build generational wealth through investing, even if plenty enjoy working and run businesses. There’s a different energy to working from a place of wanting to rather than needing to. Even when you work just as hard as you would in any other situation.
So, when your most precious resource is time, you don’t need to spend money to invest in yourself. No matter what people say. It can true that paying money makes us more committed, but I have bought plenty of things I never used. Likewise, I have put a lot of effort into things I signed up for for free instead. It takes some honesty to know what moves the needle for you.
Pick things you really need and commit to them
It’s all about energetics. One of my favourite films growing up was Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The image of Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly in front of the Tiffany’s windows with a takeout breakfast, sunglasses, and an evening gown complete with jewellery. I used to own a bag with a print of the cinema poster.
To me, that scene encapsulates everything that is Tauran. She doesn’t need to own the blings, or even walk into the store to enjoy the beauty that it provides. I’m lucky to live in London, where museums are (at least for now) free to visit. I have also spent a lot of time in Italy and France growing up. There you can find art dotted around their streets and the inside of their churches.
In the age of the Internet, you don’t even need to leave your home to surround yourself with beautiful things. That’s one thing that uplifts your spirit and connects you with the energy of prosperity and wealth. You just need to find what works for you, with what you have available right now. You need to enjoy life already, and not in a future that may not come.
Investing wisely
Thankfully, the whole dress for the job you want idea is dying out, and not many people are telling others that they should get into debt over material things (although this post was prompted by its new iteration). However, it can be easy to be lured into thinking you need something you don’t because we believe it will change the perception of who we are in the eyes of others.
Once, I took a job with my ex’s camera because he had better gear. I wanted to be taken seriously. After all, he was getting some traction, so people must have thought he was the real deal. The job itself turned out to be somewhat of a disaster, and a major learning lesson. My skills were worth a lot more than the gear. The people on the other side don’t really know how to tell any of it apart.
It’s true that you may encounter people who have myths in their heads from the media. As I’ve been connecting with other photographers, however, it’s obvious that what they look for is their skills. Sue Bryce has grown a business with the same camera lens for over a decade. Nicole Hill still has a crop sensor camera for backup. She has shown examples of the differences in a masterclass once, and it would have been hard to tell if I didn’t know what to look for. I’d trust a mentor over someone outside the industry.
I could have not started my business because I believed I needed investing in expensive gear to be taken seriously, while my clients had no idea what camera or lens I was holding in their face.
Beware of research procrastination
It’s also easy to be stuck in a pattern of needing to study, and researching, and taking courses over courses and never actually implementing what you have learnt. It’s an attempt to fill a void that is often less to do with our skills than it is with our confidence. You need to be really honest with yourself about whether you need more learning, or you need the accountability of putting it into practice. It’s also often the case that you can’t tell what more you need to be learning until you test yourself in practice. I’m guilty of this myself.
If you are sure you need to gain extra knowledge, then you really need to commit to it fully, whether you are getting books out of the library or paying for a 4-figures course. Your time, energy, and work are the real investing in yourself, not the money it costs you. It can be powerful for a mindset shift to allow yourself to spend money on yourself if that is something you never do, but even then you don’t have to spend more than you can afford at the time or spend it with someone specifically.
Investing in your wellness
For the longest time, I did not really understand what embodying your next level self truly meant. I was living completely disconnected from my body, in a trauma response. My therapist was asking me about how something felt, and where it was in my body that I felt it, and I had no idea I was even tense. While I’m a big fan of glamour magic, this is not so much about what you wear and how you move in the world (although that’s a part of it). It’s about how safe you feel taking action based on what you want next rather than what you have behind you.
A yoga class, or therapy, can be a more powerful investment towards your next level than manifestation or even business courses. Coaching is a worthy investment if the person you choose to mentor you is the right fit for you. Depending on your upbringing and life so far, you may not need someone that specialise in trauma awareness as much as people with bigger traumas or complex PTSD, and if you don’t have mental health issues you don’t need someone versed in a specific modality.
The key thing is that you invest in yourself you do so from a place of creating deep, long-lasting, positive change in your nervous system rather than piling up certifications or knowledge you feel too stuck to put into practice. You may be interested in re-wilding to connect with your intuition and trust yourself more.
To recap
Investing in yourself is an important part of life, especially for business owners, but it doesn’t mean you need to invest a lot of money in online programs to level up. Allowing yourself to spend time and energy focusing on learning the skills and knowledge you truly need, as well as working on your nervous system regulation and enjoying yourself are all ways to invest in yourself that don’t have to cost a lot of money.
