By investing one morning a month, I created a support network of strong women who now, a decade later, are among my closest friends. Over time, they came to know when I needed their support and when I needed them to push, drive and challenge me.
No one expects an athlete without superior coaching to win a professional event, and beating out the competition in business is no different. To stay competitive, leaders should start finding ways to invest in themselves. Here’s why.
It Generates Confidence
Leaders need confidence, so invest in believing in yourself. Start with small, private investments, gradually increasing your efforts until it becomes natural to challenge yourself more. Think about when you first entered the labor market. It might have taken a few weeks to feel confident in a new task and routine, but once you had it down, you most likely learned a lot and were able to improve your performance. Eventually, you probably took on more responsibilities and earned greater pay. In the same way, when you develop your confidence in taking on more challenging work, you discover more opportunities.
Leaders get to where they are because they know how to challenge themselves to outperform others, but having what it takes requires experience and analytical thinking. Start building confidence by analyzing the ways you experience and appreciate each moment. Set aside 10 minutes at the end of the day to reflect on what you learned and what made you feel grateful. Picture how you want tomorrow to go and how your actions can help drive it in that direction. Each small, intentional move you make to do better quickly accumulates into a habit.
It Stimulates Growth
Just like professional athletes who want to remain competitive over the years, leaders should continue to seek ways they can enhance their skills and improve. This could include joining a professional group, earning a higher degree or hiring a personal trainer. When you want your investments in yourself to start yielding some higher level of achievement, you need to put yourself out there. Just like investing $1,000 into the stock market, the whole idea of investing in yourself is growth, but that only happens with input from others.
The push-pull of group dynamics stretch our physical and mental muscles further than we could ever achieve on our own. A coach once told me, “Don’t work in your business. Work on your business.” In the same way, we do the obvious job of working within ourselves on our own, but working on ourselves so we can grow as people requires a challenge from the outside.
It Helps You Keep Up
The world is growing, changing and evolving every day, and leaders need to keep pace to stay on top. Be aware of current options and alternatives, and make the investments that allow your business to operate at its best. If you hesitate, you leave the door open for your competition to come in and do the job better. Especially considering the rate at which technology and innovation are changing our daily lives, it’s important to look to the future and grow along with it — for yourself and your business.
As a leader, stagnating doesn’t just result in negative personal performances — it brings down the performance of your whole company. A mind stuck in the weeds will miss seeing the bear as it comes charging out of the woods. When you invest in yourself, however, you develop skills and experience, fortify your mental and emotional strength, and expand your analytical and critical thinking. With a broader range of thought comes a broader range of ideas that can help you overcome more obstacles and make you a more resilient leader.
Investing in yourself is a lifelong process that yields constant benefits, but for leaders, it can be hard to recognize that we need it. You want the people who work for you to trust in your strength, and exposing areas for improvement may feel like admitting weakness. But even after decades of experience, there are always areas where we can learn more and do better. By being vulnerable to improvement, we recognize our limitless potential for growth. Rather than a weakness, this is the first step toward becoming our best selves.
