What's Your Personal Investment Strategy?

I am getting after July with a vengeance!

I will be the first to tell you that I struggle with staying on track - especially in the summer. . . with longer days, yard work and gardening, hot weather, parties, barbeques and holidays, I just love to socialize, soak in the sun, enjoy a Twisted Tea digging in the dirt, cheeseburgers on the grill, concerts in the park with chilled white wine, bread & cheese -- it's just way too easy to play at the pool all day and forget about your workout!

This particular year we took our entire family on a Disneyland vacation, and if any place on earth will derail your clean eating, it's The Happiest Place on Earth!  But I have worked hard since January on a lot of different projects and aspects of my life, so I gave myself most of June to mess around, relax, eat and drink to my heart's content and take a little breather.  Nine pounds later and now that I've got that out of my system, I am reinvigorated, refocused, and ready!

So what's my plan?  Well, I need to tighten things up in nutrition and fitness, and one of my big goals this year was to really hone in on FINANCES.  Now that vacation is over, it is really time to start tracking where our money is going, eliminate debt and get to saving with a very specific purpose in mind. . .

So how does one get going when they've lost a little momentum or maybe even done a little bit of backsliding?  Well, you don't go it alone, and you don't go it without a plan of action!  So here's what's on tap for my next week, 28 days, 6 weeks, and 90 days, books I'm reading and programs into which I have invested (in myself) to guarantee I meet and exceed my goals for the second half of the year.

I just finished The Compound Effect, am a few chapters into Make Money, Not Excuses and How To Bring Your Book to Life, I have Get Rich, Lucky Bitch teed up in my library and am referring always back to The Eat-Clean Diet Stripped and The Secret.  In addition to my "regular" personal development reading, I also work regularly on the Jim Rohn One Year Success plan, which conveniently just finished up a section on Health and is now focused on Finances.  To that end I have enrolled for the next 6 weeks in Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey and to tie it all together and stay on track I am "playing" PLD (Pacesetter Leadership Dynamics) for the next 90 days which is a team of high performers taking personal integrity and accountability to the next level through intensive weekend workshops, weekly team meetings and multiple weekly coach calls.  I have started participating in a business "mastermind" group called CEO Connection to develop and foster relationships with leaders in business.

On the fitness/nutrition side, I am starting another round of Body Beast to get my workouts up to speed, have joined a Coach-led Challenge Group on Facebook and to shore up accountability, have formed a small group of workout buddies locally with whom I will schedule regular workouts throughout the week.  And finally, I have a fitness conference at the end of the month where I will obtain another format certification and be engaged in more education and advancement of my fitness career goals.

No matter what your current level of earning or savings, if you ever want it to increase you must before all other things make investment of your time, resources, money and energy into yourself; your health, fitness, nutrition, mind, knowledge and business.  Even when I could least afford it, I took risks and invested in myself and the dividends were always multiple times the principal.  And the times when I thought I could least afford the expense of that investment were when it was most critical that it be made.

What investment will you make in your future this month?