The Deep, Down and Dirty on why Women Struggle to Invest in Themselves
This past week, I happened to catch the following meme on Facebook-”You have 30 minutes to spend $5000 in one store-what store are you going to?” As cute (and harmless) as it was meant to be, there are some serious implications to this meme, that show up as a massive epidemic I see in female leaders today.
All jokes set aside for a moment, how often do we really use shopping (and loads of other mechanisms-alcohol, mindless scrolling, food, relationships) to endlessly search for our worth in something outside of ourselves.
The truth is that a ferrari is fun for about a week. And then….. The truth…??? A ferrari turns out to be just a car.
We find ways to spend on what we think we need, stocks, handbags, hair products, real estate, vacations, and designer clothes-and yet the very thing that actually will help us shift, change and grow is the thing that we hesitate and hedge on. And that is the investment of YOU!
A high-quality life BEGINS with a high-quality YOU.
The investment of YOU is where it all starts.
The handbag won’t fix an expired marriage.
The Louboutins won’t help a soul-sucking job and once you’re home from vacation and everything settles, you find yourself starting out the window, once again feeling the same feelings that are all too familiar. Feelings of disappointment, boredom, frustration, worry, doubt, envy, and sadness.
Spending on ourselves is not typically the issue. However-investing in ourselves is where we fall short.
There is a vast difference between SPENDING and INVESTING so let’s start there.
Spending is short term gain. Think of the dress you bought, the shoes you ‘needed’ to have or the handbag that you dreamt about for 2 years. There is no real satiation or joy that comes from a handbag. The first two weeks it’s great-but honestly, the oxytocin hit after the original purchase simply wears off and disappears with your happiness.
Spending will give you short term happiness. But spending will never create lasting joy. Spending will never give you lasting impact on your life or leadership.
Investing in yourself is where the magic lies my friends. When you invest on what lasts, you receive a long term result. An investment in yourself, your growth, your leadership causes a SHIFT in how you show up in life.
Investing changes the way you see yourself, the world and those around you.
For years, I had no idea what it meant to really invest in myself. I spent frivolously on whatever I thought would make me feel good at the moment-fancy handbags, expensive sunglasses, boutique style clothing and whatever else I thought would fill my cup. I thought if i just had the right fit of jeans, or the right handbag that it would make me feel a certain way-and it did. For a week. And then the fun was over. So I had to up the ante-and I had to spend more. I didn’t realize I was caught in a cycle of trying to prove my worth and trying to reach for something outside of myself to show that I was valuable.
When I first dipped my toe in the water of personal development is when I started to slowly begin to understand the power of investing in myself. I remember what a huge investment it felt like at the time. To be exact it was $4,000 and trust me- i want you to hear me say that i did not have an extra $4,000 laying around.
But there was something in me pulling me toward it. I thought about it for 24 hours and knew if I didn’t take action, it would be one of the greatest mistakes I had ever made. My arm pits were sweating, my hands were clamy and I can still remember the huge size lump in my throat as I read each number of my credit card over the phone. I had no proof that this would work, I had no idea how this would pan out-but I knew, like I knew, like I knew, that i HAD TO TRY. I was tired of searching outside of myself for answers. I was tired of feeling empty. I was tired of a closet full of clothes that represented a much deeper issue-trying to find myself I something external.
That one investment sent me down the road to the greatest life I could have ever imagined. Greater relationships with my partner, my kids, improved health, leadership, career, money and leadership. Literally, every component of my life started to take off and feel amazing.
Slowly I began to wake up every day excited, full of joy and overwhelmed with compassion, confidence, clarity and conviction for my life and my leadership.
WHY? Because a high quality life begins with a high quality YOU.
And that high quality YOU starts with investing in yourself.
So why do women struggle so much to invest in themselves? I’ve narrowed it down to 4 reasons.
1). They need to check with someone else.
Women are conditioned from early on to disconnect from themselves. And the price to be paid for that disconnection is massive. Slowly women learn to not trust themselves. They learn to seek people’s approval and permission outside of themselves. It’s as if they need someone else to say “Yes-it’s okay, i give you my full permission.” Many times this person can be a partner, a parent, a friend, a sibling or even a mentor. Many of us were raised by a generation that scrounged and pinched every penny. We didn’t watch powerful women stand firm in their conviction and take ownership of their choices.
At some point, we bought into the belief that we too have to ask permission to invest. You are your own permission slip. You know what you need and deserve so it’s high time you start acting like it. It doesn’t mean you shouldn't have a conversation around it with those you trust-but it’s about taking ownership and coming from a place of worthiness and conviction versus coming from a place of a child and believing that you have to ask permission.
2). I don’t have the money to SPEND on myself.
Here is where it’s necessary to detach from your beliefs around spending versus investing. I don’t always have the money to spend on myself (and here’s something fun-when you do this internal work, the desire for all the spending on external things diminishes by a long shot-you no longer need the external to “prove” your worth).
You get one shot to go around this earth. You can’t afford NOT to invest in you.
It’s true that you might feel as though all your funds are eaten up by kids’ shoes, mortgage, gas, groceries and college funds. But i promise you, funds could be allocated somewhere to put something toward your growth. You may have to get creative, you may have to use your voice to say NO to something, you may have to set a boundary in order to make it happen-and that’s where many women get lost. They just aren’t willing. They will sit and tolerate for the rest of their lives.
Here’s the bottom line: Where do you want to be one year from now? Do you want to be having the SAME CONVERSATION because nothing has changed? What is at stake if you do not invest in yourself and your growth?
Recently I had a conversation with someone who excitedly shared that they had just been to the plastic surgeon to receive their dose of botox. In the same conversation, about 3 sentences later, the same woman also shared with me how she desperately wanted to make changes in her life but didn’t have the money “to spend.” Do you see the discrepancy? It’s priorities. Period. Full Stop. Hey- if botox is that important to you, keep on keeping on-I make absolutely no judgments about that.
But please don’t tell me that you don’t have the funds. It is a matter of your priorities, hands down.
Give me your calendar and your checkbook and I will tell you in two seconds flat where your priorities are.
3). You don’t value yourself enough
So as I mentioned above, money is a big one. But the cold hard truth is 98% of the time, money is a cover-up.
The core of the real issue is that you don’t actually value yourself enough. If you did-YOU would be a top priority.
Your level of self-love and self-compassion are not where they need to be which is the whole root of the problem. We have all had situations and traumas in our life that cause us to question who we are. They cause us to look in the mirror at times and question what is actually good about ourselves.
We marry less than stellar partners because we think that’s all we’re worthy of.
We take soul-sucking jobs because we think we’re not smart enough to do anything different. We abuse our bodies with excessive amounts of food and alcohol because we’re looking to numb or escape from our unhappy feeling states, and we never ask for more because we actually believe that we just plain aren’t worth it.
But here is the irony-investing in yourself is actually THE WAY to change all that. It is the way that you start to trust yourself, fall in love with yourself and build a healthy relationship with YOU. Everything flows from YOU-so building a relationship with YOU better be at the top of the list.
What's interesting is that once you make that decision to invest in you, the universe right then and there will say-Well FINALLY! We’ve been waiting for her to claim her place and stake her ground-now we can get to work!
The bottom line is that you will never outperform your own self-image. Period.
4). You don’t believe we’ve got what it takes.
This is one that I see in my coaching practice all the time. Women come to me with weight loss goals, leadership goals, sales goals and dreams of the perfect Mercedes sitting in their garage.
However-after some back and forth conversation, I always learn real quick that deep down they are afraid if they put this investment on the line they just won’t be able to change.
I love the quote by James Allen “Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.”
Change requires that you actually DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. Growth requires that you lean into risk. It’s not necessarily comfortable. But no one said growth is supposed to be. As my mentor John Maxwell says, “You cannot change your life until you change something you do every day.”
What are you willing to change? The best place to start is by embracing the fact that you can change. That you are worth the investment and that your dreams DO matter.
Investing in yourself is really about understanding that you have a call on your life. You have a purpose given to you by God and that your growth and your leadership matters.
I take that pretty seriously. And I invite you to do the same.
You don’t have the luxury of allowing life to pass you by because you don’t think you’ve got what it takes. Borrow my belief in you. You DO have what it takes and we need all hands on deck when it comes to really creating a world that is a better place. Your voice matters.
Your light matters.
Your message matter.
Your prayers matter.
Your impact matters.
Your thoughts matter.
Your leadership matter.
Your vision matters.
YOU MATTER!!!!!
Here’s the deal-change happens when it’s too uncomfortable to stay the same.
Well great you might be thinking- how do I start to make these changes? First of all, hear me say that you absolutely without a doubt, have the ability to live a life of radical compassion, joy, self love and acceptance. NOW. RIGHT NOW. You are capable already. Hear me say, there is nothing wrong with you and you are not broken. AND….you deserve to feel alive, to engage with this beautiful world in a way that lights your soul on fire!!!
You deserve much more than mediocre.
Join me in my new 4-month program, Fawn to Fierce. Doors are open now!
Regardless if one-on-one work is in the cards for us at the moment or not, I hope you know you are wildly WORTHY. Of aliveness. Of anything and everything your heart desires.
You Matter,
Krista