Investing in Yourself

A good friend recently gave me a gratitude journal to commemorate the completion of my yoga teacher training.  While journaling I came across a passage that described how through the practice of gratitude we are investing in our own life.  What an interesting concept.  Investing in the exercise of gratitude = an investment in myself.  So when I practice gratitude the return on my investment of gratitude is the optimism, joy and love I feel about my life.  Seems so easy but then why is it so hard?  We get swept up in the day to day hustle and bustle of life and gratitude gets swept under the rug.  But we are making other investments every day aren’t we?  We invest our time, our energy, our emotions into all sorts of things without ever really evaluating the return on those investments and whether or not we’re achieving an acceptable rate of return.  We invest in relationships.  We invest in our work.  We invest in our retirement savings or college funds for the kids.  Maybe since these later two involve money, we can actually see the tangible rate of return for our investments and therefore when we see something that’s not quite right what do we do? We re-evaulate the portfolio, maybe we diversify, maybe we sell the assets that aren’t performing and invest in some that are doing better.  We do everything we can to ensure that we achieve the expected rate of return.  How often do we make the same portfolio evaluation of the time we mindlessly invest in other things?  Are you investing time and effort into relationships with people that are toxic and one-sided or are your relationships mutually beneficial?  Are you investing your time and effort into a job that’s not a good fit or that doesn’t fully utilize your talents, skills and abilities or is your job fulfilling and worthwhile?  Balancing the portfolio of the investments we make in ourself and deciding which ones are paying off and which ones aren’t is a good exercise in self care.  And letting go of the investments that don’t provide an acceptable return is ok.  Investing in gratitude is a surefire way to increase your happiness so be sure it’s a part of your portfolio!