This summer I decided to invest my home. After a year and half of putting this off, it was time to take action. I live in an older home that needed some renovations to get it to a place of comfort. Although it had been on “the list” for a while, I kept putting if off because I didn’t want to make the required investment. It was too much, too daunting, and frankly I just didn’t want to do it.
My avoidance strategy worked for a while because I had higher priorities like saving money and planning a wedding. These things made it easy to ignore it, but once they passed I found the same problem staring me right in the face.
Every day I would come home and find all types of things that I wanted to do to my house. I would watch HGTV and pray that some design wizards would show up to my house and magically transform it (Property Brothers if you’re reading this call me). Not having my house in order was negatively affecting my overall mood and energy. The state of my home could not be put off any longer. I’d had enough. It was time to invest.
In order to make this a positive process, I had to get over my aversion for spending money (translation = I’m cheap). My focus had been on saving for so long, that it made even a positive investment difficult to stomach. So, I had to re frame this and view it as a short-term investment that would have long-term gains. I listed out all of the good things that would come from spending this money. I wasn’t just investing in my home. I was investing in long-term happiness, joy, stability, relaxation and peace of mind. My mother once told me, “Sometimes you have to pay more for peace of mind.” She was right.
We often undervalue the importance of peace of mind and emotional stability when making decisions, and the importance of fueling this part of ourselves. Often times this comes with some type of investment or trade off: money, time, sleep, etc.
For me, I needed to make a financial investment in my home in order to receive comfort, peace, and pride in the space I call home. What do you need to invest in?
Reflection
- Where in your life do you need to invest? (Health, Social Life, Family, Children, Work, Home, Relationship, Finances, Spirituality)
- What type of investment do you need to make? (Time, Money, Energy, Discipline, Creativity)
- What is the value of this investment? Long-term reward?
- What one thing will you do this week to take action on your investment?
- Write a commitment statement:
- Today I commit to investing _______________ in ____________ by doing ___________________. The benefit(s) from making this commitment is/are_________________________________________________.