This is a guest article by The Shark Investor , who writes about investing, entrepreneurship, and alternative income. If you like what you read, you can subscribe to his RSS feed.

Do you work a lot? Why? Most people want badly to earn enough to support their family, to buy the things they like, or to invest so they can earn more money in the future. It all makes sense.

Sometimes, however, we get off track.

You Probably Work Too Hard For External Resources

The money you earn and invest and the assets you buy or grow are your resources for building further wealth. It’s great to invest as this can eventually help you on your way to financial freedom.

The problem is that external assets often lose their value and the ability to bring income over time. Stocks and currency investments are well known for their volatility. But a property, business or info products are not less risky. There are many people who invest in assets during their entire life - and at the end everything they own loses value. You don’t want to be one of them.

Most of us work too hard for obtaining insecure assets. You must switch the focus to something better - like your greatest asset, the ability to generate income. Your internal resources - knowledge, professional skills, intuition, courage, enterprising nature, tenacity, and patience - are not dependent on the global market crisis, inflation, or government intervention. No one can steal what you have in yourself.

Even if you lose all your money, savings, investments, and property, your internal resources still remain and can help you stand up from the worst situation. The more you invest in yourself, the stronger you become an the less you depend on the economical crisis.

How To Invest In Yourself

The most popular way of investing in yourself is education. You know that getting a good degree increases your chances to get a high paying job. So should you plan getting a second degree? Maybe, but I don’t think this is the best you can do. A second degree is giving you better career chances, but its not the only thing that matters. Besides, getting a job is not the best way to create income.

Here are few ideas how to invest in yourself in a more efficient way:

Attend public speaking courses and events. If your knees start shaking when they have to speak in public, this is exactly for you. Facing this fear will help you feel a lot more confident not only when speaking to large audience (if ever you have to do it), but also when negotiating small business deals, a raise, or a new job. Even if your specialty does not involve speaking, the skills in rhetoric will help you get the most from the other side of every deal.

Learn sales and marketing. Similar to public speaking, your sales/marketing knowledge can yield much better returns than your investment portfolio. Many people hate the thought of selling and as a result, rarely get paid well enough for the goods and services they provide. If you are one of these people, you should try to fight this fear and learn to sell yourself and your services. Knowing how to sell will help you in all areas of life, even those that are not related to your finances.

Learn new language. Knowing a second or third language opens you the door for more specific jobs that many other can’t attend - it limits the competition. But the advantages go far beyond getting a job. Knowing another language can give you access to online resources that are not translated in English, better chances to conduct international business, or possibly find freelance translation work if ever you need to earn alternative income. Unlike technology specific knowledge, knowing human languages doesn’t lose its value in short time.

Train your courage. We lose too much time worrying about our little material acquisition that we often miss the big picture. Many people never lead a fulfilling and wealthy life because they are afraid to start action, to take little risks, and to change their life in the way they really want it.

Train your financial courage by taking small life changing actions every day. Investing in your own ability to act and take reasonable risks can change the way you look at your finances forever.

Increase your financial intelligence. One thing they don’t teach us in school is financial intelligence - and what an important thing it is. If kids were taught more about money we probably would see less people badly entangled in debt. Fortunately you can learn at older age too. Reading personal finance blogs is a great start, but then invest in some books, or consider receiving an education in practical finance. The results will usually pay for themselves over time.

Said in short, invest in your personal development. This is far more efficient than most financial instruments and sometimes can be done with little to no money at all.

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