Had an interview with a guy on Music Business Radio a couple of days ago... He's a songwriter and was talking about how important it is to protect copyright, since it's his "family farm" that he wants to leave to his family when he dies.
Good point.
In the "normal" world, when a lot of people talk about "investing," they mean the stock market, a retirement plan, a savings account, or something similar. And while that may work ok for most, I feel that, as entrepreneurs, it's much more effective to invest in ourselves.
Most people refuse to invest in anything good for themselves other than food (Americans tend to consume pizzas by the truckload and that is investing in ourselves the wrong way). What we need to do is to really invest in ourselves such as educating ourselves and growing in wisdom. Your education doesn’t stop when you leave college.
One thing that schools and colleges don’t teach you is SUCCESS 101. It is something the academic schools won’t teach you, rather it is developed internally. Developing the fundamental attitudes and desires to succeed takes character, not a spur of the moment decision or because it sounds like a good idea.
The moment someone stops learning, they stop growing. There is no such thing as staying where you are. Because the world is constantly advancing forward, anything that doesn’t follow their direction will be left behind. Unfortunately this is what happens to people who leave college or university. They stop growing, therefore, they start degrading. Their minds atrophied and they lose the desire to learn.
Investing in ourselves also means that we learn new ways to acquire wealth. As your wealth grows, you will have more options to grow. Learning to develop your wealth requires a certain attitude that most people have when they were young but lose their dream when people tell them to stop. They settle for mediocre lives and abandon the pursuit for success the moment they stop investing them themselves.
How does one develop the proper mindset and attitude? Does it require a lot of changes?
Yes and no. Change is required, but not impossible
The first thing you need to do is to be open to new teachings. It is just like a tea cup. When a cup is full of water, you can’t pour in anything. It won’t go in and it will overflow. So what do we do if we need to get new water? First, simply empty the cup by pouring the muddy water out of it, only then you will have the capacity to learn new things.
The next thing you need to do is to learn from a mentor or from a successful person. We need a guide and a direction. Someone we can look up to and follow. Don’t learn from negative people. Your beer buddies may be your life long friends, but they won’t take you places. Taking advice from them is suicidal. If you fall sick, you would rather see a doctor and not a car mechanic. In fact, you would want to see the best doctor there is! Not some crack doctor without any credibility.
The last attitude you must develop is to develop an action habit. You can learn from all the gurus, read all the books and attend all the seminars, but if you do not take action, massive action, you will be even worse off when you just started – full of motivation, but no direction (leading to lots of frustration). Although that is the hardest part, it actually gets easier when you actually get started.
Don’t think twice, invest in yourself today!
