4 Killer Ways to Invest in Yourself (Without Breaking The Bank!)

“What’s the best investment out there?” asks the young kid with fire in his heart, trying to make it big in the world. Well, there’s a lot of talk about how investing in stocks at a young age is a good thing to do—and it is. But what’s actually more important, is to start investing in yourself from a young age.

Investing in yourself is without a doubt the best investment in existence. It will improve literally every aspect of your life, from your finances, to your sex life, to your happiness, to your body.

We can all start investing in ourselves, today, even if we have very little money. I often see people buying the latest pair of Nikes for $230, but when asked to shell out just $15 for a book that could completely change the way they view things, they say “Nah, man—I can’t afford it.”

Yes, you can afford it—it’s just a matter of spending your money wisely.

4 Ways to Invest in Yourself

The first thing that you have to do, before you even invest in yourself, is figure out your strengths and weaknesses. This will allow you to prioritize which ways you invest in yourself.

Are you already super jacked, but you’re one of those “gym loners,” who doesn’t have a social life? Believe me, I’ve been there. You need to start getting in touch with your emotional, social, creative right brain.

What if you’re very intelligent, and have a great social circle, but you’re morbidly obese? Chances are you should start investing in your body. For you, the best investment would be learning how to get shredded.

Generally speaking, there are four categories of self-investment:

• Mind
• Body
• Emotions
• Spirituality

Because your mind controls literally everything, it’s probably the best investment out there (in my opinion). There’s some people who say that your body is the best investment, however, because without it, your mind won’t even exist. There’s definitely some credence to that.

Others say that the best investment possible would be your emotions, because without being happy, there’s no point to life. As somebody who’s struggled with overcoming depression, I can definitely relate to this.

And then, you have spiritual gurus who say that the best investment is of a spiritual nature, for without this, you’re simply a “trousered ape,” in the words of C.S. Lewis. You’re just a monkey with no sense of humanity, ethics, or purpose.

All of these are valid points, however I’ll let you decide which to invest in:

The Best Investment: All 4 Spheres of Self

Personally, I think that the best investment would be to focus on all four areas of yourself: mind, body, emotions, and spirit. Neglect one, and everything typically goes to shit. They all exist in a delicate act of counterbalancing one another.

Your mind has to do with how well you process information—and this isn’t just logical information. It can be visual stimulus, auditory stimulus, or any type of information. As Dr. Robert Anton Wilson discussed in his 8-Circuit Theory of Consciousness, there are many different ways to interpret the same information.

Your body has to do with not only your muscular development, but your health. Do you have high cholesterol? Or maybe you don’t eat well, so your organs aren’t running efficiently. Maybe you’re scrawny, and want to start working out.

Your emotions have to do with how emotionally in touch you are with yourself, and with others. Your social circle is often a reflection of this—if you don’t have good relationships with others, chances are you need to develop them, or your emotional health will plummet.

Spirituality has to do with how fulfilled you are. Do you feel like you’re making a difference in the world? Do you feel like you’re becoming the best version of yourself, charging down your very own path?

Chances are that you need to improve at least one of these, if not all of them. In fact, I’m going to share a few tips that will help you improve multiple aspects of yourself at once…but let’s start with the basics first.

1. Invest in Your Mind!

Read (Best Investment Possible)

Reading life-changing books is, in my opinion, the best investment out there. There’s no way around it. Personally, I read a minimum of 30 minutes a day. Try reading before you go to bed as a way to wind down.

Reading allows you to gain knowledge from others’ experience. It lets you understand how people like Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, and Lao Tzu saw the world. Reading gives you a broader understanding of reality and is one of the most important habits that any man could have.

Listen to Podcasts and Audiobooks

Listening to educational podcasts and audiobooks is a great way to learn while you’re driving. I have at least 100 hours worth of downloaded YouTube videos and podcasts on my iPod – that way when I’m travelling or driving somewhere, I can learn valuable lessons from other peoples’ lives.

Here are some of my favorite podcasts:

• Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History
• The Joe Rogan Experience (probably my favorite!)
• Bulletproof

You can also download audiobooks from Audible, which is great. You can get a free trial, too if you have Amazon Prime and click on the link (it comes with two free eBooks).

Take Nootropics

Your brain needs certain chemicals and nutrients to work properly, and if it doesn’t have them, your cognition won’t be as good. You won’t remember things as clearly, you won’t process information as quickly, and consequently, your life won’t be as great as it could be. As far as supplements go, nootropics are the best investment out there.

Personally, I’ve tried dozens of nootropics (chemicals/nutrients that improve your brain’s performance). Here are a few that I’ve had good experience with:

• Modafinil (or brand name Provigil)
• Alpha Brain – there was actually a clinical, double-blind study done that showed Alpha Brain helps memory, processing speed, and focus. Plus, it’s one of my favorites (and it’s safe to take every day!)
• Red Coffee + L-Theanine – speaking of which, coffee is one of the oldest nootropics in the world. It’s no secret that coffee makes you focused and alert.

Again, in my opinion, nootropics are the best investment out there when it comes to pills and powders. Why? Because a better brain leads to a bigger bank account. A better brain means you can find solutions more easily.

2. Invest In Your Body

Work Out

This one is pretty obvious—you need to work out if you want to have a good body. And we’re not only talking about a body that looks good, we also want a body that feels good and that has limitless energy.

I recommend you do the regimen I discuss in Body of an Alpha, because you’ll get the best of both worlds (hypertrophy and strength training). It’s a very well-designed routine meant to build a great looking body, but also to make you feel good.

Working out is extremely important. Seriously, if you’re not doing this you’re fucking up big time. You don’t have to workout 2 hours a day, just 4-5 a week is enough.

Eat Healthy

Eating healthy foods is a staple of having a good body. You will not look lean and muscular if you’re eating junk food. Period.

Choosing to purchase healthy, high quality food is probably the best investment out there when it comes to your health. I recommend following the bulletproof diet if you’re trying to lose weight and the traditional bodybuilder’s diet if you’re trying to bulk up (aka high carbs).

Relax!

Half of having a healthy body is “yang,” or aggressive—but the other half is “yin,” or regenerative. The aggressive half is working out and tearing down your body. The regenerative half is where the growth happens.

Go in the hot tub or the sauna—sweat out those toxins! Relax your muscles. Get weekly massages (if you can afford them). Local colleges often have massage therapists in training, where you can get massages for super cheap (I get mine for $50/hour).

If that’s not an option, learn to do self-myofascial release. This is the scientific term for releasing knots in your muscles. To do myofascial release, you’ll need two things:

• A lacrosse ball
• A foam roller

Basically, all that you do, is lie down on the lacrosse ball or foam roller (depending on the body part) and push your sore muscle up against it. It’ll hurt like hell at first, but breathe through the pain, and your muscle will slowly relax. Push your muscle further into the lacrosse ball/foam roller until the pain subsides.

You can also take Epsom salt baths to alleviate muscular tightness.

3. Invest In Your Emotions

Learn Game (Get Better Relationships)

Most of the men in our generation (post baby-boomers) weren’t taught how to interact with women properly. Some lucky folks were, but most of us bumble around hoping to “get lucky.”

All of this changes when you learn game. Now you can actually tell when a woman is interested, what to do, what to say, and how to end up sleeping with her. It’s like you start to pull the curtain of reality up, and see the glorious truth that lies behind it.

In terms of your emotional health, learning game is the best investment of your time. Nothing does wonders for your confidence, empathy, and social life like learning game.

Cultivate Male Camaraderie

It’s just as important to have good relationships with men as it is to have them with women. In fact, I’d argue that having strong masculine relationships is even more important than having sexual relationships with women.

Your buddies will set you straight when you fuck something up (granted they’re good friends). They’ll tell it to you how it is, and bring you down a notch if your head gets too high up in the sky.

Don’t be afraid to spend money going out to bars with them, going bowling, traveling, fishing, hunting, or whatever it is that you guys enjoy doing. Developing a male camaraderie is priceless.

Develop True Confidence

“True confidence,” as opposed to just “confidence,” is backed up by years of conquering goals and self-improvement. Most men don’t have it. Most men have what I like to call pseudo-confidence. It’s fake. It’s phony. If you take them outside of their comfort zone, which is probably quite small, they’d be reduced to a crying little boy.

True confidence can’t be battered or broken down…because it’s backed by ample experience and years of hustling to get to a certain point. You can’t develop it overnight, but it’s well worth the effort when you do.

There are a few ways to develop true confidence:

• Conquer your goals
• Have firm boundaries
• Know what you stand for
• Be on your path in life
• Develop a healthy ego

All of these take time, and this won’t happen overnight—but it will be worth it, trust me.

4. Invest in Your Spirituality

This is one of those things that is very tricky to define. It’s something that’s quite abstract, but really, it comes down to one thing: do you feel like you’re making a difference?

If you don’t, chances are you’re not in touch with your spirituality. If you do, chances are that you are.

Spirituality is also, however, recognizing yourself in others – it’s seeing that you are the other person. It’s transcending artificial barriers and realizing that all is one, and one is all. Spirituality is understanding your place in the world. It’s understanding why you were put here, and what you’re meant to do.

If this all sounds retarded to you, chances are you need to invest in your spirituality. A great way to start is by simply reading some books on masculine spirituality.

Self-Improvement Hacks

There’s a few things that you can do that will actually improve not just one of the categories, but multiple at the same time. These are your highest leverage points, because they’ll get you the most benefit for your time spent.

In reality there’s a ton, but here’s a few examples:

1. Learn to Play the Guitar and Perform

Picking up the guitar will greatly improve your mind—it will develop a better hand/mind connection, improve your finger dexterity, and exercise the right side of your brain. Learning any new skill is a great way to improve your mind.

But, it will also improve your emotional side—not only will playing the guitar and singing songs serve as a functional outlet for repressed emotions, but it will also allow you to connect with others.

Playing the guitar is literally one of the best hobbies to get girls. Trust me, I play the guitar and sing—I can personally testify to its effectiveness at getting hot chicks into the bedroom.

I would recommend starting with an acoustic guitar, such as the Jasmine S35. Not only is it cheap (only $80), but it’s also a great sounding guitar for the price. My friend had one of these, and we used to play together when we were first starting out. In fact, it’s how he got his first serious girlfriend (we were both in high school at the time).

You don’t need to get that good to perform. Just learn some basic chords from YouTube, that’s how I got started. If you learn how to play G-D-Em-C and you’ll literally be able to play 75% of pop songs.

2. Join a Yoga Club

Joining a yoga club is actually one of the few things that can potentially improve all four aspects of yourself. First, it will improve your mind by relaxing you. A lot of yoga is very relaxing and incorporates different meditation breathing patterns.

Second, it will improve your body. You’ll not only get in a decent workout, but you’ll develop flexibility, functional strength, and mobility. Third, you’ll meet a ton of gorgeous women. So many sexy girls do yoga, so taking up a yoga class near you is a great way to meet some girls.

Fourth, you’ll get in touch with your spirituality. A lot of yoga classes incorporate different readings from spiritual teachers, or have some sort of washed down Hindu vibe.

The key is to find a good one, however—the good yoga clubs are never a part of a commercial gym, and some of the really good ones aren’t even publicized. You can only get in through being connected to someone in the group.

3. Meditation

Meditation is quite possibly one of the best habits that a man could have.

It teaches you to focus, it relaxes your body, it releases repressed emotions, and it helps you to develop a sense of calmness and serenity.

Beyond basic meditation you can use binaural beats, which are basically like meditation on steroids. How do they work, you ask?

Binaural beats work by putting different frequencies into each ear, which causes your brain to enter into a certain frequency more easily.

What this means, is that it’s easier for your brain to enter into, say, a “Delta-wave frequency,” which literally takes Buddhist monks a whole lifetime to accomplish.

Brain FM, which are the binaural beats that I use, will literally give you 30 years worth of meditation practice in just 1-2 years. It’s that powerful. I’ve been using them for a few months now, and I highly recommend it.

Summary: How to Invest in Yourself

In conclusion, investing in yourself is literally the best investment possible, for a number of reasons.

When you invest in yourself, you improve your intelligence, enhance your body, develop better social skills, and become a better human being. This will all, in turn, make your life way better, which will make it easier to invest even more into yourself.

In other words, once you start investing in yourself, you get into a positive self-amplifying feedback loop. One action leads to another, which leads to another, and so on and so forth. And because all of the actions are positive, they feed off one another improving you even more and more.

But the key is to start. If you don’t start improving yourself, you’ll never get to where you want to be. Invest in yourself—you’re worth it. Even if it’s only $15 a month on a new book, everybody has to start somewhere.

If you guys have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to let me know. And, as always, I’ll see you next time.