We’re living in a society where the new iPhone is more important than a course of therapies and a mindset where it’s more important to look good than to be genuinely healthy. Personal development, growth & mental health should be as important as exercise and drinking water. Only you can help yourself, and it’s time to nurture your mindset to prioritise YOU.

What it can help with:
• Self-esteem, self-love & self-worth
• Growth & more in-depth understanding of yourself
• An array of symptoms – PMDD & otherwise
• Mindset management
Examples of self-investment
• Treatments such as massage, reflexology, acupuncture etc
• Therapies such as hypnotherapy, CBT, counselling etc
• Supplements
• Good quality, organic ingredients
• Hobbies
• Education & learning
• A walk in the park
• Calling an old friend
• Putting yourself first and foremost

Why is this so important?
What would happen if you relinquished all responsibility for your life and left it in someone else’s hands? Medical workers, your partner, your kids, your parents, maybe even your friends. They’d probably do their very best with what they think you need, most will have the best intentions, but they would only ever get so far. You’d probably stay alive, but would you thrive?

Probably not.

We spend so much time prioritising work, home commitments, friends and the list could go on. But what about us? Why is it acceptable to spend willy nilly on shiny objects, yet a £20 bottle of a good quality supplement that will improve our health is too expensive? Why do we not book a massage immediately when we know it will ease our aches & stress levels, but it’s OK to get that take away, again? Why do we sit there watching toxic nonsense on TV when we could choose to do some personal development or have a bath relaxing instead?
It’s fine to buy the objects or watch your favourite guilty-pleasure show, but when it outweighs looking after your physical & mental health and harms your life, it is time to take a good look at how you treat yourself.

It is all about prioritising.

It’s about loving yourself enough to want to prioritise yourself.

Being interested enough in improving your health and your life and understanding, it takes work and commitment.

Enjoying growing, nurturing & healing
And guess what, when you do that, all the other things in your life also improve. You have space & energy to help more people around you, and suddenly the time you didn’t have for yourself just appears out of thin air!

During in-flight safety procedures, you’re advised to fit your oxygen mask before helping others. There is an excellent reason for that, and life is no different. Eventually, your energy will dwindle, and you’ll be no help to anyone at all.

Where are you at now?
Here is a very quick and simplified version of a coaching exercise to find out how well you treat yourself already, so you know where you need to improve.

1. Draw three columns (a pen and paper is fine)
2. In one column, list all the positive things you currently do for yourself regularly
3. In the next column, list things you have done in the past but stopped for whatever reason
4. In the final column, list things you know would benefit you, but you are not doing
Don’t dwell on the negatives if you can’t think of much. The purpose of this exercise is to enable you to move forward and improve your self-investment, you can’t do that with your head in the sand.

From here you can start to incrementally add things into your day that improve your physical and mental wellbeing and remember the more you do, the more you do.

BS excuses
We all do it, justify why we can’t do things for ourselves and why we prioritise some things over others. It’s not a criticism, and it all crosses over into taking responsibility, knowing yourself, self-worth & really loving yourself. But we make all sorts of BS excuses to ourselves all the time, and you have to pull yourself up on it.

They boil down to three things:
1. I don’t have the money.
2. I don’t have the time.
3. I don’t deserve it.

And in answer to that:
1. Check where you’re leaking money. Do you get coffee every morning or had that take away again? By doing a bit of tweaking to your spending and having a grip on your finances, you’ll usually find the money. Maybe you genuinely have no money at the moment, in that case, do free alternatives – there are plenty of personal investments that cost nothing.

2. There are 24 hours in a day, and everyone has the same amount of time to work with. How are you managing yours? Perhaps you need to turn the TV off, plan your week or speak to your boss about that extra cheeky 15 mins you do at the end of each day. Maybe at the moment you’re so overwhelmed and snowed under that you just can’t find the time for anything at all. Put a meditation recording on while you shower or put a personal development audiobook on while you multitask. If you are the latter though, it’s time to re-evaluate before you burn-out.

3. You absolutely do. And if this is you, personal-investment to heal yourself is precisely what you need, more than ever.
Nurture your mindset
I bang on about this all the time and for a good reason. Without a healthy, solid mindset, you just won’t do things to the best of your ability. You need to learn to nurture yourself, love yourself, know that you are worth it and deserve it. Managing your mindset is vital in this process.