How to Invest In Yourself As a Woman in 2021

As a woman in 2021, you are faced with a lot of decisions. Now, more than ever, women need to invest in themselves and their own personal development if they are going to thrive in the next few decades.

Women should be investing both personally and professionally so that they can continue to grow as individuals and leaders in society.

You may be wondering how to invest in yourself as a woman or what that even means. Investing in yourself is not just about the money you spend – it’s also about investing time and attention.

In this post, we will discuss why investing in yourself as a woman is important as some simple ways that you can do it.

Though this post is more geared towards women, anyone can use these tips for investing in yourself.

What are the Benefits of Investing in Yourself?

Investing in yourself is important because it can benefit your life in so many ways. Investing in yourself can make you happier, healthier, a better friend, more productive, and so much more.

You deserve the best of everything and anything that will help improve your quality of living, should be at least taken into consideration for you to try out.

There are many ways to invest in yourself like getting a good night’s sleep, spending time with people that you love, and being active in causes that are important to you – these investments make all the difference when you are trying to create a life that you love.

*This post may contain affiliate and/or referral links. It doesn’t cost you anything extra to use the provided links to purchase any of the below products or services. Please check out my disclosure policy.*

14 Easy Ways to Invest In Yourself

Many of the ways to invest in yourself below are absolutely free, but some may require you to figure out the best way to invest in yourself financially.

Learn a New Skill

Learning new skills is probably my favorite way to invest in myself.

As a self-proclaimed “life-long student”, I’m always looking for something new to learn. In the past couple of years, the majority of the skills that I have been learning about have all been around building a blog and running a business.

It is mind-blowing how much there is to learn about just one aspect of blogging, like SEO (search engine optimization), and I literally learn something new every day.

BUT what you decide to learn doesn’t have to have anything to do with running a business, your career, or even anything super practical. You can learn a new language, how to plate a charcuterie board, or anything in between.

Read For 30 Minutes A Day

I love reading book and try my best to read 30 minutes a day.

I highly recommend reading both fiction and non-fiction books. As much as I’ve learned from non-fiction books, I’ve learned even more and made so many emotional connections to fiction books.

Here are a couple of my favorite books in no particular order:

• Your Money or Your Life (personal finance)
• A Woman’s Worth (self-worth for women)
• Please Ignore Vera Dietz (YA novel about a teen dealing with the death of her best friend)

If you don’t have Amazon Kindle Unlimited or Audible, I recommend those too. With Amazon Kindle Unlimited you get access to millions of ebooks and audiobooks. With Audible you can get two free audiobooks per month. Either is a great option if you’re looking to up your reading game this year.

And don’t forget you can also use your good old local library!

Practice Mindful Eating

Mindful eating is a way to become more aware of the food you are eating and how it is affecting your body. Being mindful about what we eat can help us make better decisions about how we eat in the future.

Mindful eating is not about being on a diet or not eating the foods that you like. It IS about taking the time to understand what foods make you feel your best – physically and emotionally.

For example, I’m very much aware that eating spicy food is not something that I’m able to do as much as I did when I was younger. As much as I love spicy food (and I still do eat it), I’m much more mindful about how much I eat and when I eat it.

Mindful eating is also about being aware of all bodily sensations relating to hunger, fullness, and thirst so that you know when it’s time for another meal or drink.

The next time you have a meal or snack, think about all of the sensations that it makes you feel. Does it make you happy? Does it make you feel queasy?

By practicing mindful eating, I’ve eliminated particular restaurants (goodbye Five Guys!) because every time eat there it doesn’t make me feel good. I still love burgers though and eat them from other restaurants though!

Speak To One New Person Everyday

This is one that I struggle with. Speaking to a new person every day can be daunting.

If you want to invest in yourself, think about what is holding you back from speaking with more people on a daily basis. It may be that they are strangers and making small talk feels awkward or the thought of it makes me anxious. It’s totally fine to feel that way!

And guess what, they probably feel that way too! We’ll all human and sometimes finding the courage to talk to someone new is overwhelming.

To make this easier on myself, I count leaving a Facebook comment in various groups I’m in as talking to someone new. I’ve meet quite a few friends and found new opportunities this way.

You can also strike up a conversation with someone while you’re at the grocery store or ask someone for a tip when you’re working out at the gym.

The possibilities are really endless!

Start a Morning Routine

I think having a morning routine is so important that I wrote a post about it! Having a morning routine is one of the easiest ways to invest in yourself.

Start your day off with something you enjoy, and make it a regular part of your routine.

It can be as simple as spending an extra few minutes to stretch before getting out of bed, or not checking your email as soon as you wake up. Whatever it is, just make sure that you are being mindful of your time and space so that you start the day off on a good note.

I love starting my morning by listening to a “pump up” song to get me feeling energized. My current “pump up” song is Industry Baby by Lil Nas X.

Start a Night Routine

Just like having a morning routine, a night routine can be helpful for you to invest in yourself. Take some time before bed for something that relaxes and recharges you.

It can be as simple as reading a book, taking a bath, or meditating for ten minutes. Whatever it is, just make sure that your night routine leaves you feeling more relaxed than when the day started!

If you want more ideas about how to start a night routine, check out this post.

Find a Therapist

I’ve talked about my experience with therapy multiple times on this blog, including my experiences with both TalkSpace and BetterHelp.

I want to therapy to work through issues with anxiety and relationships, BUT you don’t have to have anything “wrong” with you to go to therapy.

Therapy can provide a safe place to express your feelings, challenge negative thoughts, or help you with finding clarity on anything that is going on in your life.

If you’d like to find a therapist this year, this is the post for you. It has over 25 directories to help you find a therapist that will make you feel the most comfortable.

If you’d like to try BetterHelp (I prefer texting over face to face/video), you can use this link to get a 7-day free trial.

Start a Body Movement Routine

This is one thing that I need to get better at doing, especially as someone who has chronic pain. There are so many things that you can do to start moving your body. Personally, I like to do body movements that don’t make me sweat, like yoga or light walking, but you do what you love!

One of the things that I like to recommend to people when they’re thinking about starting a body movement routine is to think about what they liked to play as a child.

Were you a jump roper? I was!

Did you play basketball? Not me!

How about hoola hooping? Yes!

Attend a Conference

I love attending conferences whether they are virtual or in-person. Conferences provide a great opportunity to learn and connect with others. As a mental health professional, most of the conferences I attend are about mental health, but every profession has conferences.

There are even conferences for personal development. I recently went to an online conference about mindfulness that was really inspiring.

My favorite way to find out about conferences is Facebook, believe it or not. Join relevant Facebook groups about anything that you’re interested in and I promise someone will mention something about a conference coming up.

Practice Gratitude

My favorite way to practice gratitude is through gratitude journaling, but there are many different ways that you can practice gratitude.

There are also a ton of gratitude apps that you can you such as Gratitude, 365 Gratitude Journal, and Reflectly.

No matter how you practice gratitude, the results that you get from it are incredible!

Create (and Stick To!) a Budget

Creating and sticking to a budget is one of the ways that I’m trying to invest in myself, especially this year.

Financial self-care is extremely important!

Your finances can affect every aspect of your life, so it is important to understand how to make your money work for you.

Spend Quality Time with Loved Ones

Spending time with loved ones is one way to invest in yourself as a woman that you don’t need to spend any money on.

Relationships are so important for your mental health, and this is especially true for women.

Women grow up with the expectation that they will balance their professional lives with family life and if you don’t invest in yourself by spending time nurturing relationships- whether it’s a partner or friends – then some other area of your life might suffer.

My family and I make it a point to spend dedicated family time together at least twice a month. One night we have a game night and one night is a movie night.

We each get our turns at picking a movie and the person who picks the movie also gets to pick what we have for dinner that night. We’ve been doing it for nearly a year now and it’s been super fun.

Unfollow Harmful Social Media Accounts

This is something that I’m a huge advocate for. Social media can be a wonderful way to connect with people. I’ve met many friends because of social media. However, it can also be really toxic and harm people’s self-esteem.

In my day job, I’ve heard countless stories about self-esteem issues rising to the surface because of social media.

Like, I said before, social media can be a wonderful place as long as you are investing your time in following the right people. Take some time to scroll through your social media accounts and unfollow anyone who makes you feel badly about who you are. If they’re a friend or family member that you don’t want to unfriend or unfollow, you can also mute them (I do this all the time too).

Don’t forget to add people that make you feel happy or inspired. Give me a follow if you’d like!

Find a Mentor or Coach

Mentors and coaches have been some of the people that helped me grow the most both professionally and personally.

If you’re looking for a mentor or coach, think about what areas specifically you’d like to grow in. If you’re looking for support in your career, try to find someone whose career that you admire and who is currently in a position that you want to grow into. You can also see if your company or organization can connect you with a mentor as part of your professional development.

If you’re looking for support with your personal life, try finding a coach who specializes in what you need support with. There are coaches for everything like navigating motherhood, self-love, and chronic illness.

These are some of the best ways that you can invest in yourself but they’re definitely not the only ways. What are some ways that you invest in yourself as a woman? Let me know in the comments!