This article is going to explore what I believe to be two of the most fundamental principles of building long term abundant financial wealth:
- Becoming aware of your biggest asset
- Investing time and energy into growing your biggest asset
These principles might seem like common sense to most people, however after reading this article you might be surprised as to just how little of this common sense people actually follow in their daily lives.
Becoming aware of your biggest asset
What is your biggest asset today? Do you know?
Is it your house? Your car? Your stock portfolio? Is it your computer? Is it your comic book collection?
Most people who have ever applied for a loan or credit card in their lives have answered this question by stating their biggest asset as the house they own, the mutual fund or stock portfolio they’ve been building, or perhaps the car they own. After all, when a banker asks you what your assets are – real estate, investments and cash is what you show them.
One of the most important wealth building lessons I learned a long time ago was that the biggest asset we have is not our house, our car, our mutual funds or stock portfolio. Your biggest asset is you.
Let’s suppose that your average earnings per year over the span of your average working career are $40,000/year and you work for 45 years (age 20 – 65 for example). That means that the person you look at in the mirror each morning is a money producing machine that will generate on average $40,000/year x 45 years = $1,800,000 over the span of your working career.
That’s one point eight MILLION dollars. The person you look at in the mirror is a MILLION dollar producing machine. Not bad eh? YOU, quantified as an asset to yourself, are actually worth infinitely more than that, but these are just a few silly examples that hopefully illustrate to you that YOU are your biggest asset, not your house, car or comic book collection.
How does becoming aware of my biggest asset make a difference in my life?
Becoming aware of the fact that YOU are your biggest asset should flip a mental switch in your mind and lead to a small, but very profound change in your life philosophy. I believe this switch must be flipped if you desire to build long term wealth in your life.
Imagine this. Imagine you own a home that you have decided to put on the market for sale. You meet with a realtor and he informs you that if you cleaned up the mess in the back-yard, invested a few thousand dollars to get the fence fixed, and a few thousand more on a fresh coat of paint you would be able to raise the asking price of the house by $20-25,000.
Unless you were in a rush to sell the house for some reason, it would be a no-brainer for you to take the time and to put in the investment of some time and perhaps $3,000-$5,000 in order to raise the value of your real estate asset by let’s say $25,000.
In this exact same way would invest time and energy into increasing the value of your real estate asset, you must start to invest time and energy into increasing the value of your biggest asset – YOU.
Investing Time and Energy into growing your Biggest Asset
Today, there are countless opportunities available for you to grow and increase the value of your biggest asset (yourself). Opportunities such as self-development hobbies, books, audio programs, courses, mentoring programs, video’s, seminars and conferences, websites, Internet Blogs, just to name a few.
Regardless which of these areas you choose to invest your time and energy into growing first, I would like to share with you two very important distinctions that helped me in my life:
- Patience. Give yourself a minimum of a 5 to 10 year time frame to significantly increase the value of your biggest asset. We are used to fast solutions and interactions but the true success will not happen overnight. You need to prepare to invest in yourself long term. Although you will begin to see the results of your commitment almost immediately, the biggest results will begin presenting themselves typically after 5 to 10 years. Once you start to see the rewards of your new philosophy you will never stop growing the value of your biggest asset. It will simply become a way of life.
- Use Self Development sources as the starting point to growing your biggest asset. Other opportunities will present themselves as you begin to build momentum, but books are still one of the absolute best resources available to us in our journey to grow our biggest asset.
