V. THEY INVEST IN HUMAN CAPITAL
“The best investment you can make is in YOU”
Before we begin with this trait of highly successful people let us take a look at the meaning of the word invest. According to the Oxford Dictionary,
Meaning 1: Buy something whose usefulness will repay the cost.
Meaning 2: Devote time or energy to an undertaking with the expectation of a worthwhile result.
Meaning 3: Provide something with an added quality.
There is a great advice by Brian Tracy which says “Invest 3% of your income back into yourself (personal development), and your earning ability will continue to grow”
The concept is solid—if you want to grow, you need to invest in yourself. The 3 Percent Formula makes it easy to budget self- leadership, and it scales—so your investment grows alongside your tangible success. According to Brian, the most profitable 20% of companies in each field typically set aside 3% of their revenue for training and development—and the investment pays off.
Here are a few examples of what the 3 Percent Formula looks like, depending on where you’re at in your career:
Attend a local conference, subscribe to Audible, and read one new book every month.
Travel to attend a conference, subscribe to Audible, and read two new books every month.
Travel to multiple conferences, subscribe to Audible, read two books a month, and schedule a mid-year session with a personal business coach.
Now personally, this 3% rule is not valid for me. I invest about 10-15% of my income in personal development work.
All highly successful people invest in themselves. Human Capitalism is all about investing your time, money and energy in developing yourself and becoming your greatest version. The kind of person who is world-class in whatever he does and who is driven by passion and an urge to create an extraordinary life for him. You should spend more of your time, money and energy is improving your skills, experiences and knowledge. You need to develop new positive and useful habits that will contribute in making you a resourceful person and a valuable asset to others in the long run.
Applying the 3% rule in your life will guarantee you success in your long run. It is absolutely necessary trait in your life after the life purpose. As you starting investing in and developing yourself you become useful and deserving. Becoming useful and worthy is the greatest aim of humanity. Do you want to make more money? If yes, then INVEST IN YOURSELF. You can make more money or acquire more of whatever you want by investing in YOU than in any other investment. You will attract what you deserve. This is where the BIG SUCCESS is going to come.
Investing in yourself may be the most profitable investment you ever make. It yields not only future returns, but often a current pay-off as well. The surest way to achieve a better quality life, to be successful, productive, and satisfied is to place a priority on investing in both personal and professional growth. The effort you put into consistently investing in yourself plays a large role in determining the quality of your life now and in the future.
You are the most important place you can put your time and money, and yet you are probably the one thing that tends to get neglected in life. When other people’s priorities come up or it’s time to sacrifice something, you might be the first to bend. But investing in you is not a selfish act. In fact, by helping make your life better, you will by default make the lives better of everyone else around you. And investing in yourself is the best way to ensure that you are well-taken care in the future, too.
“Generally speaking, investing in yourself is the best thing you can do. Anything that improves your own talents; nobody can tax it or take it away from you. They can run up huge deficits and the dollar can become worth far less. You can have all kinds of things happen. But if you’ve got talent yourself, and you’ve maximized your talent, you’ve got a tremendous asset that can return ten-fold” –Warren Buffet
Spending and investing isn’t the same thing. Spending simply exchanges value, say, money for rent. Investing creates value in that after your initial cost is paid, you can keep getting value without new input. Getting a big promotion might give status and prestige, but it also eats away more time. In order to count as a great self-investment, your efforts need to pay you back with more time or energy, not less.
You are your greatest investment. The better the things you put into yourself the greater your returns are going to be. At least, that’s how I look at it. It’s typical to think of investment as just stocks, bonds and mutual funds. But that’s too narrow a definition of investment for me. I like to think of investment as something you can do for yourself right now that will cause you to get a much better life in the future.
If you stripped Bill Gates of his assets and dumped him on the street…he’d be back to living a comfortable life with plenty of income in about a week. Why?
Bill Gates has tons of human capital.
“The stock of competencies, knowledge, social and personality attributes, including creativity, embodied in the ability to perform labour so as to produce economic value.”
If Bill Gates suddenly became homeless he could walk into the headquarters of any major company on the planet, offer his services as a consultant and start making 6+ figures a year. Focusing on building your human capital is a lot more productive than worrying about “job security.”
Most of the time, I’m a reasonably happy and content person. I feel upbeat about my own life and I feel in touch with the world around me. Sure, I occasionally dive into melancholic moods, but compared to my mental state several years ago, things are going incredibly well for me.
It’s not easy, though. I spend time virtually every day keeping my mind in good shape and keeping my spiritual self – that sense of connecting with things I don’t fully understand – in shape, too. Without proper care and feeding – without a little regular time investment – it’s easy to watch these areas of your life wear down, leaving you feeling constantly exhausted, unhappy, and feeling rather empty on the inside.
So if the