I am a CONSTANT worry worm when it comes to money and what I should be spending it on. Don’t get me wrong I seem to be very good at spending it on food, drink and sports gear, but when it comes to actual investment in myself for some reason I run for the hills!
I spent a lot of time in lockdown re-evaluating where I am in my life, where I want to go in the future and how I see myself and my business going forward. I sat down with a massive sheet of paper and did a ‘ME’ plan and a ‘WORK’ plan to get all of the million different thoughts whizzing around my head onto paper. It made a huge difference! I soon saw that there was a lot of running themes between both what I wanted to do/achieve for myself and what I also wanted to achieve from a work perspective. It also helped me narrow down my search into CPD courses and other areas of teaching I have always wanted to get into. So, my first suggestion is that if anyone else is feeling a bit lost/all over the place in their own mind is to do this!
One thing that I found myself really focussing on was yoga. I have done yoga classes in the past but during lockdown took the time to do a lot online and invest more time in connecting with myself and the environment around me. Mindfulness & being in the present really helped me overcome a lot of anxiety in lockdown and my daily morning yoga routines made a big difference to setting my daily intentions. I therefore decided to look into a yoga teacher training course and found that there is a huge array of courses and prices for that matter! Now this isn’t so much about my yoga course specifically (I am sure I’ll do a full post on this) so I won’t go into the finer details, but basically, I kept sitting on the fence being totally indecisive on whether I should invest that much money in a course. When you think about it how mad is that…. Questioning if you are worth the investment of your own money into your own education and business?! Of course, I didn’t see it like this… all I saw was that I am trying to save as much money as physically possible at the moment and this just didn’t flow with that. It actually took a little nugget of wisdom from my boyfriend to realise I was being silly. His exact words were “you can never waste money on knowledge”. What a fantastic way of putting it right!
So as of this week I am now officially training to become a yoga instructor. It is a lengthy course which is going to take me a few months to complete but I am super excited for a new challenge and also to grow as a person. In hindsight if I had been a bit bolder sooner, I could have tackled it all during lockdown and got it done a lot quicker… but hind sight is always a cruel mistress.
When I reflect back on my career, I did the same with personal training. For years I thought about becoming a PT but I was too scared to take the risk of leaving my high paid job in the city and lose my independence moving back home. I kept letting that inner demon tell me it wasn’t a good idea and to not bother risking it. It felt like the biggest decision in the world at the time but now I look back I am totally kicking myself for not doing it sooner. I think my job is the best thing since slice bread and to think I was debating never doing it now seems mad to me! …. Another quote I love which relates to this is ‘you will only regret the chances you didn’t take’
A short but sweet post from me today to encourage you to really see the investment in yourself. Being about to learn and improve our knowledge is an incredible gift and one we should see in a positive and exciting light. I will continue to share with you my journey on this course but for now just to say … don’t be scared of spending a little more money on yourself if you can, see it as ‘adding another string to your bow’… and let’s be honest we all want the best bows
“An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest” – Benjamin Franklin
CK
Ciara Kiely 