Artificial intelligence is key to the future of the American economy, and investments need to be made now to ensure that the workforce is prepared, said members of Congress during a panel at a Washington Post Live event on Thursday.
When asked if artificial intelligence would put people out of a job, Rep. Pete Olson, R-Texas, cofounder of the Congressional AI Caucus, responded that AI will lead to different, but better-paying jobs. He pointed to examples at companies like IBM and Amazon of retraining and reskilling existing employees to fill AI-related roles.
In retraining local workers in his district, Olson noted that “AI is a big part of that, because it makes that worker better, more viable, more efficient. It drives down costs, drives up productivity, which is just great.”
Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., shared Olson’s sentiments on needing more technology talent. She noted that in the rural, suburban, and urban areas of her district, the demand for skilled workers is a common theme.
Megan Smith, a former Federal CTO and CEO of digital experience agency Shift7, noted that AI could be used for more than economic benefit.
“Why would AI and data science not be for poverty and justice?” she asked. “I believe that the opportunity is about collective genius, and the surface area of participation, that…the more of us who can be included in the conversation, the more likely we are to succeed.”
However, all acknowledged the changes and potential hardships from the rise of AI.
Olson acknowledged that people are likely to experience job transitions and face changes, but he urged people to not be afraid of the change, and embrace it.
The Hungarian Investment Promotion Agency (HIPA) talks to the Budapest Business Journal about recent life sciences success stories in the country.
During the past few decades, life sciences have become one of the growth engines for economies worldwide. The aim of many countries is to move towards a knowledge-based economy, combining natural sciences with experiences in IT-related areas and digitalization. The life sciences sector is considered to be among the most technology-driven and solution orientated sectors of the industry.
One of Hungary’s most traditional economic sectors is life sciences, a field that has seen almost 100 years of innovation, highly specialized technical developments and notable exports to the global market. Academic institutions, Hungarian and global players, innovative small- and medium-sized companies strengthen the ties between science and industry to boost the outcome for the country.
The geographic location of the country, combined with highly skilled staff as well as an excellent technical and scientific background, have positioned Hungary as an ideal location to do business on the European life sciences map.
Based on the location and the business environment, Hungary can provide several advantages to life sciences companies. In Hungary, the life sciences industry is diversified and consists of two sub-segments: biotechnology and pharma on one hand, and medical devices on the other.
Pharma, medical devices and biotechnology produce an important and growing share of the Hungarian economy. Eight out of the global top ten pharma and biotech companies have manufacturing or R&D activities in Hungary. In 2017, more than 48,000 people were employed here by pharma and medical device companies.
Economic Flagship
The pharmaceutical industry has always been one of the flagships of the Hungarian national economy. Pharmaceutical companies contributed 6.8% of the total manufacturing value in 2017. The four largest manufacturing bases (Richter, Teva, Egis, and Sanofi-Aventis) performed 85-90% of the total production and export activities of the industry. Within total Hungarian industrial R&D activity, 40-45% comes from the pharmaceutical industry. In 2017, the total amount of R&D expenditures of the pharma industry reached HUF 67 billion.
The manufacturing of medical devices is another traditional sector of the Hungarian economy where there are some 150 strongly export-driven Hungarian SMEs: the export ratio exceeds 90%. These flagship companies have a special role and characteristics, e.g.: flexibility, innovation, and strong export capability.
Although biotechnology is a relatively young science, its related industries and research fields have longstanding traditions in Hungary, giving companies access to a deep knowledge-base.
The continuous development of life sciences is supported by a network of academic research expertise. Academic institutions provide the sector with well-trained people, representing a strong pillar of Hungary’s educational system. In 2017, the total number of life science students at universities amounted to more than 24,300 and 3,700 students graduated.
The Hungarian labor force is well qualified and cost effective, which increases the country’s international competitiveness. In addition to that, the large number of high quality research institutions is a testament to Hungary’s traditional strengths in science and technology. There are four main centers of R&D which are connected to universities famous for medical and health sciences: Budapest, Debrecen, Szeged and Pécs.
Hungary can offer an attractive environment for investment and R&D activities within the network of scientific centers, enabling cutting-edge technologies and continuously growing business opportunities. Highly educated professionals, a rich tradition in natural, technical and medical sciences, an advantageous geographic setting and a supportive business environment for investment have been the key drivers to make Hungary a favorable location for life science investments.
JERUSALEM (AP) — More than a decade before the Nazis seized power in Germany, Albert Einstein was on the run and already fearful for his country’s future, according to a newly revealed handwritten letter.
His longtime friend and fellow Jew, German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, had just been assassinated by right-wing extremists and police had warned the noted physicist that his life could be in danger too.
So Einstein fled Berlin and went into hiding in northern Germany. It was during this hiatus that he penned a handwritten letter to his beloved younger sister, Maja, warning of the dangers of growing nationalism and anti-Semitism years before the Nazis ultimately rose to power, forcing Einstein to flee his native Germany for good.
“Out here, nobody knows where I am, and I’m believed to be away on a trip,” he wrote in August 1922. “Here are brewing economically and politically dark times, so I’m happy to be able to get away from everything.”
The previously unknown letter, brought forward by an anonymous collector, is set to go on auction next week in Jerusalem with an opening asking price of $12,000.
As the most influential scientist of the 20th century, Einstein’s life and writings have been thoroughly researched. The Hebrew University in Jerusalem, of which Einstein was a founder, houses the world’s largest collection of Einstein material. Together with the California Institute of Technology it runs the Einstein Papers Project. Individual auctions of his personal letters have brought in substantial sums in recent years.
The 1922 letter shows he was concerned about Germany’s future a full year before the Nazis even attempted their first coup — the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch to seize power in Bavaria.
“This letter reveals to us the thoughts that were running through Einstein’s mind and heart at a very preliminary stage of Nazi terror,” said Meron Eren, co-owner of the Kedem Auction House in Jerusalem, which obtained the letter and offered The Associated Press a glimpse before the public sale. “The relationship between Albert and Maja was very special and close, which adds another dimension to Einstein the man and greater authenticity to his writings.”
The letter, which bears no return address, is presumed to have been written while he was staying in the port city of Kiel before embarking on a lengthy speaking tour across Asia.
“I’m doing pretty well, despite all the anti-Semites among the German colleagues. I’m very reclusive here, without noise and without unpleasant feelings, and am earning my money mainly independent of the state, so that I’m really a free man,” he wrote. “You see, I am about to become some kind of itinerant preacher. That is, firstly, pleasant and, secondly, necessary.”
Addressing his sister’s concerns, Einstein writes: “Don’t worry about me, I myself don’t worry either, even if it’s not quite kosher, people are very upset. In Italy, it seems to be at least as bad.”
Later in 1922, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics.
Ze’ev Rosenkranz, the assistant director of the Einstein Papers Project at Caltech, said the letter wasn’t the first time Einstein warned about German anti-Semitism, but it captured his state of mind at this important junction after Rathenau’s killing and the “internal exile” he imposed on himself shortly after it.
“Einstein’s initial reaction was one of panic and a desire to leave Germany for good. Within a week, he had changed his mind,” he said. “The letter reveals a mindset rather typical of Einstein in which he claims to be impervious to external pressures. One reason may be to assuage his sister’s concerns. Another is that he didn’t like to admit that he was stressed about external factors.”
When the Nazis came to power and began enacting legislation against Jews, they also aimed to purge Jewish scientists. The Nazis dismissed Einstein’s groundbreaking work, including his Law of Relativity, as “Jewish Physics.”
Einstein renounced his German citizenship in 1933 after Hitler became chancellor. The physicist settled in the United States, where he would remain until his death in 1955.
Einstein declined an invitation to serve as the first president of the newly established state of Israel but left behind his literary estate and personal papers to the Hebrew University.
Ever notice how images of robots almost always accompany AI propaganda? It’s certainly an effective tactic. Robots conjure up images of highly intelligent solutions poised to create far more efficient and profitable businesses. Yet there are rarely details available about how these AI technologies work. And as a result, many AI solutions are a ‘black box’ to users.
What’s in the box?
Software developers and marketers often lead customers to believe there’s a robot in the box, when in fact it may be just an artificially intelligent zombie dressed up in a robot costume.
A zombie is a little like a robot. It’s self-sufficient. It doesn’t need a lot of guidance or direction to do the things it does. But it’s not truly intelligent.
And a zombie AI system operates independently, with no human interaction. On one hand, a lack of interactivity is positive as it can mean ease of use; on the other, there’s no way to train a zombie to do something else, or to do its job better. Users are not only unable to apply changes but are shielded from the decisions and logic used in creating the system. With no awareness or understanding, there can be no accountability, nor hope for progress.
While most organizations employ talented developers and technicians capable of ‘teaching’ AI systems to overcome weaknesses, the absence of transparency precludes their ability to do so.
True AI
Among the throngs of zombie AI systems, though, exist a few quality AI systems. These systems are highly intelligent, and though they have some minor human dependencies, they produce incredibly reliable results. The developers of these systems want customers to have a good grasp of the ‘magic’ behind the intelligence – ‘magic’ that really amounts to specific settings, mechanics, controls, even known limitations.
True AI can be recognized by its interactivity and trainability. These systems combine intuitive interfaces with algorithms, instructions that tell the robotic brain what logic to use. And with a little coaching along the way, true AI gets smarter and learns to differentiate right from wrong.
Compared to zombie systems, true AI systems require more time investment initially but are typically more sustainable in the long run because the coaching continually improves them over time.
Robots will reign
Any investment in a zombie system is a waste of resources. Businesses that venture down that path will eventually want more control. They will want the ability to coach. When variables require adjusting or errors occur, they’ll want to be able to make fixes and modifications. At the very least, they’ll want a basic understanding of how the system works.
What they’ll really want is the robot they thought they were getting the first time.
Many business leaders who are disappointed in the outcome of their zombie are focused on the exorbitant amount of time they invested into making the system ‘fit.’ Often, they’ve gone so far as to change their business processes to accommodate the zombie brain. And sadly, they continue to sink money and resources into a solution that will never do what they expected.
Don’t make that mistake. Bury your zombie AI system before it’s too late. Look for true AI. Seek out the system in the ‘glass box,’ or at least one with an access panel into its robotic brain. It’s the AI frameworks that effectively balance transparency and trainability with performance and ease of use that will deliver the highest ROI – and separate the zombies from the robots.
When your child is diabetic, a few minutes can make a big difference, and it pays to have real-time access to their blood sugar numbers. But what if no one sells a product that can do that? You build one, like the open-source community that developed the wireless blood sugar monitor Nightscout did.
The product serves a public good—keeping diabetics safe—and the community offers the plans to build it for free online. But until now, such clear examples of innovation haven’t been counted as such under the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s definition. That changed on Oct. 24: The organization’s new edition of the Oslo Manual, the guidebook for collecting and using data on industrial innovation used by most nations, now includes a revised definition of an innovation, removing the requirement that one must first be commercialized to be counted.
MIT Sloan economist Eric von Hippel, in his book Free Innovation, argues that household or “free” innovations—those developed by people on their own time and dollar—aren’t receiving enough support. That’s because they aren’t being recognized for what they are by public policymakers, even though they’re responsible for a significant proportion of new ideas and innovation.
Under the previous OECD definition, an innovation only qualifies as an innovation if it has been introduced to the market. That definition of “onto the market” means that innovators in the household sector—representing tens of millions of people spending tens of billions of dollars on product development and modification per year—don’t get credit for innovations because 90 percent of them simply give their innovations away.
In mountain biking, for example, participants in the sport—who are now the consumers of the mountain bike industry—designed and built the first mountain bikes, but didn’t receive any credit in the statistics, von Hippel said.
“Basically, the end result is a distorted system where businesses get a lot of credit for a lot of innovations they didn’t do. This, in turn, biases public policy toward the needs of companies and their intellectual property rights,” von Hippel said. “Now, finally, with a better OECD definition and better data we’ll be in a position to allocate innovations to the people who actually develop them. That in turn will make household sector innovation visible to government policymakers, and induce people to make a more level playing field where both consumer innovators and producer innovators are acknowledged and supported.”
The new OECD definition reads:
An innovation is a new or improved product or process, or combination thereof, that differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been made available to potential users (product) or brought into use by the unit (process). (This general definition uses the generic term “unit” to describe the actor responsible for innovations. It refers to any institutional unit in any sector, including households and their individual members.)
Tinkering leads to tech breakthroughs
Research by von Hippel and colleagues into consumer innovation across 10 nations found that the phenomenon was both very general and very important—generating a research and development capital stock of about $250 billion in the U.S. alone. These consumer hacks addressed all product areas of interest to consumers from new medical devices to sports and software hacks.
“If there is nothing out there, consumers will build it for themselves,” he said. “Ninety percent of these people just give [innovations] away for free, and the other 10 percent is where a lot of entrepreneurship comes from. That means 90 percent of innovation occurring in the household sector hasn’t been counted.”
That means efforts to support household innovators, like building more maker spaces, aren’t being carried out, von Hippel said. “If the household sector is developing many generally valuable innovations, this increases social welfare just as producer innovation does, and society ought to level the playing field and support both household sector innovation and producer innovation,” he said.
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is betting on Bitcoin, saying that the cryptocurrency could become a better standard of financial value than gold or the U.S. dollar. Wozniak argued that Bitcoin is more stable and less prone to arbitrary supply changes.
BITCOIN IS TAMPER-PROOF
In an interview by CNBC’s Deirdre Bosa at the Money 20/20 event in Las Vegas last weekend, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said that he thinks Bitcoin is a better standard of value than both gold and the U.S. dollar. The difference, he explained, was in how Bitcoin comes in a finite supply, as only 21 million can ever be mined, supposedly. Unlike U.S. dollar, or any fiat currency for that matter, Bitcoin cannot be reprinted to the whims of influential bankers. On the other hand, no one knows just how much gold there is in the world, and it can be mined any time. Gold, Wozniak said, is “kinda phony” in this sense, and Bitcoin is more “genuine and real.”
This comes on the heels of several consecutive months of skyrocketing Bitcoin prices, soaring higher than $6,000 for the first time a few days ago. Currently prices have stabilized around the $5,500, give or take, but we can expect Bitcoin to continue demonstrating its true potential. This is why experts like Wozniak predict that this cryptocurrency could eventually replace gold as the standard of financial value — an idea that he finds quite appealing.
“There is a certain finite amount of bitcoin that can ever exist. Gold gets mined and mined and mined. Maybe there’s a finite amount of gold in the world, but cryptocurrency is even more mathematical and regulated and nobody can change mathematics,” Wozniak explained. In short, with Bitcoin as a standard, it’s difficult to tamper with global prices.
MORE STABLE THAN GOLD?
But is the number-one cryptocurrency truly more stable? Yes and no. Critics would say it’s very prone to fluctuations in value, rendering it rather volatile. However, such volatility can be expected ,and it isn’t unique to the cryptocurrency, as FundStrat Global Advisor co-founder Tom Lee previously told Business Insider. “[W]hen people talk about bitcoin’s volatility today, they’re forgetting that when we went off the dollar — the gold standard on the dollar, gold’s volatility for 4 years was about the same as bitcoin’s volatility today.”
Governments and regulators continue to “experiment” with the growing cryptocurrency market, in light of all the perceived volatility. Some have taken harsher measures by banning the cryptocurrency altogether. Still, Bitcoin persists, and experts predict its value would increase dramatically in the next few months.The point is, Wozniak commented, Bitcoin is easily more regulated than gold. He went on to compare Bitcoin’s stability to owning a house. “Your house has value. And if it is a house today, 40 years from now, it still is a house in value even if the price goes up and the government draws more taxes out of it,” said the former Apple top engineer, whose interest with cryptocurrency began just for fun.
Bitcoin, which is unarguably the world’s most prominent digital currency, just broke through one of the most important milestones ever, vaulting to over $6000 and over $100 billion in value.
Welcome to a new kind of currency, or rather, welcome to a new kind of financial system. Today, for the first time ever, Bitcoin surpassed the $6000 barrier, proving that cryptocurrency is, in all likeliness, here to stay.
Bitfinex, which has the highest volume BTC/USD exchange, broke the $6,000 barrier initially. Now, the same can be said for all of the other major exchanges. It has only been a little over a week since the price of bitcoin soared passed $5,300, and then it quickly surpassed $5,800. Now, it has surpassed another barrier.
Ultimately, this surged caused its market capitalization to exceed $100 billion for the first time.
The digital currency is expected to continue rising in price, with cryptocurrency mogul Mike Novogratz predicting that it could hit $10,000 sometime next year and other industry experts saying it will top $25,000 within the next 5 years.
Considering how quickly Bitcoin has risen recently, such predictions may not be impossible…or even unlikely.
That said, Bitcoin isn’t infallible and could eventually collapse. Earlier this month, Harvard professor of economics Kenneth Rogoff claimed that it is only a matter of time before the currency takes a turn for the worse:
“It is one thing for governments to allow small anonymous transactions with virtual currencies; indeed, this would be desirable,” he said in an article that he wrote for MarketWatch. “But it is an entirely different matter for governments to allow large-scale anonymous payments, which would make it extremely difficult to collect taxes or counter criminal activity.”
This year alone, Bitcoin has been impacted by bans and restrictions that were set in countries like China, Russia, and South Korea. It seems, however, that these developments were only minor stumbling blocks for the currency, as Bitcoin has risen by more than 500 percent in value this year alone, and Vladimir Putin subsequently stated that Russia would issue its own cryptocurrency.
Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.
After reaching a record high $5,300 price at the end of Thursday, Bitcoin surged even higher earlier this morning. Bitcoin’s renewed price vigor seems to indicate that the market has now gotten over the fears caused by recent policy concerns.
Bitcoin prices surged past the $5,300 mark on Thursday, closing at $5,363 — only to reach a new all-time high value at $5,856.10 some time early Friday morning, after markets had opened at a $5,439.
The increase in value comes after Russia banned Bitcoin and expressed interest in rival Ethereum. The Russian ban followed previous moves against cryptocurrencies by South Korea and China, which included prohibiting initial coin offerings (ICOs). The market, it would seem, finally got over the fears incited by these moves.
Image credit: Coindesk
At the time of writing, revitalized Bitcoin is now at $5,714.95 marking a more than 13 percent increase in value in less than one day, and an over 30 percent increase in just one week. It isn’t the only cryptocurrency benefitting from the price surge, as the overall cryptocurrency market cap peaked at $171.94 billion early Friday morning — almost reaching a high comparable to that of September 1, when it reached $172.5 billion. Bitcoin, which makes up more than 55 percent of the whole crypto market, capped at $95.5 billion today (Friday, Oct 13).
Cryptocurrencies are no stranger to fluctuations in prices, which critics are always quick to note. Experts say crypto is destined to be more than a fad however, and that Bitcoin’s popularity will herald a bigger blockchain revolution. Whatever the case may be, experts expect Bitcoin to go as high as $6,000 by the end of the year, and over $10,000 by the first half of 2018.
Disclosure: Several members of the Futurism team, including the editors of this piece, are personal investors in a number of cryptocurrency markets. Their personal investment perspectives have no impact on editorial content.
From animatronics to digital animation, the Walt Disney Company has long been a pioneer in emerging technology. And blockchain technology is no exception.
In 2014, Disney’s tech-focused Seattle office started building what’s now known as Dragonchain, a blockchain protocol designed to allow for more data privacy than is possible on other enterprise-oriented blockchains like Ethereum. The idea was to develop a secure asset management system to be used internally.
However, Disney dropped the project in 2016 and decided to make it open source. Soon after, a group of former Disney employees founded the Dragonchain Foundation, a non-profit which manages upkeep of the protocol.
Now, they’re looking to build a commercial business — called Dragonchain Inc. — on top of the platform to help other companies quickly and easily start using blockchain.
But first they need to raise money to do so.
Gap in the Market
It’s commonly believed in blockchain circles that the technology could some day make up an entirely new infrastructural layer of the internet, replacing traditional contracts and payment systems used in industries like law and real estate, because the design of the technology makes it difficult to commit fraud.
Dragonchain Inc. chief business officer George Sarhanis (left) and CEO Joe Roets. Image Source: Dragonchain
This promise has drawn in research and development funds from industry powerhouses including IBM and Cisco, which have joined various unifying organizations such as Hyperledger and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance to better understand how this new technology can be leveraged commercially.
But many large corporations, such as Disney, have been hesitant to put their own data on public blockchains because the design would leave much of their proprietary and sensitive data open to prying eyes. The hope for Dragonchain is that other companies feel the same way.
Joe Roets, now CEO of Dragonchain Inc., was one of the engineers behind the original project at Disney.
“Disney was very forward thinking and wanted to know how people use different tech,” Roets said. “We started building things. It took two years to build out the platform, give or take.”
Roets described Dragonchain Inc’s platform as a “turn key” product, which makes it easier for companies to build what they want on top of the Dragonchain blockchain protocol, without investing in expensive and hard-to-find technological expertise.
Roets said that while it is possible to build security and encryption on top of a public blockchain, it’s a costly and time-consuming project. With Dragonchain, the encryption and obfuscation is built in.
“We realized some of the real world problems are that companies have access to traditional engineers, but they don’t necessarily have a crypto background,” Roets said . “If you go even further into blockchain, you need an economist or a game theory expert.”
More Private Than Ethereum
Like the technology behind the cryptocurrencies bitcoin and ethereum, Dragonchain is a digital ledger that uses complex algorithms to document transactions in a way that cannot be easily modified. Every blockchain contains a complete history of everything that has happened on it, which makes it harder for fraud to occur in financial transactions. Unlike the public bitcoin and ethereum protocols, however, Dragonchain is a hybrid. This means some information is private, and some is public.
“The main difference would be that with ethereum or any public blockchains, your data is out there,” Roets said. “You can do certain things to obfuscate your data. You could encrypt it. But it won’t matter in 10 years or 20 years.”
While Disney originally built the project as a private blockchain, this method doesn’t have the same authenticity benefits as a public or hybrid protocol. Having some of the data public is vital to making the technology effective in protecting fraud. That’s because the ability to spread data across a decentralized network is a key component of authenticating the validity of transactions. The blockchain usually requires consensus from multiple companies and computers in order to make a change to the blockchain’s history. Theoretically, this makes it difficult for solo actors to delete receipts for their own benefit.
Initial Coin Offering
Whether or not Dragonchain Inc. is able to move forward with its commercial ambitions depends a lot on how things go over the next month.
From October 2 to November 2, Dragonchain Inc. will hold an initial coin offering (ICO), also known as a token sale, to raise money for the company. Around 238 million tokens, which the team calls “dragons,” will be available for sale to the public.
Artwork, such as Mimmo Rotella’s “Palinsesto,” is for sale by auction on Look Lateral’s website. The company is working with Dragonchain to build a secure way to authenticate and pay for art. Image Source: Look Lateral
“Disney has no involvement in Dragonchain’s initial coin offering,” a Disney spokesperson said.
ICOs are an increasing common fundraising technique in the blockchain world. Companies like Dragonchain Inc. offer up a select number of tokens that can be purchased with cryptocurrencies like bitcoin and ethereum. The tokens can be exchanged for goods and services within the blockchain platform. On its website, Dragonchain describes dragons as “tokenized micro-license for interaction with Dragonchain commercial platform services.”
While tokens are not currencies, they can be traded on token exchanges for higher or lower cash value than they were purchased for. Not every investor necessarily wants to use services within Dragonchain. Some may see it as an investment that could generate gains in the longterm.
Those that do want to use the service will have access to three different commercial products. The first is a developer-friendly platform for building new projects on top of Dragonchain. There’s also a marketplace that has a library of pre-built smart contracts and features to make the building process faster. The company will also fund an incubator for teams that want to develop projects on top of the protocol.
Several companies are already working on Dragonchain to develop new tools and businesses.
Look Lateral is an Italian fine art site which is using Dragonchain to create proof of authenticity for the art that it sells on its platform. Some pieces of art on the site cost over $100,000, so the blockchain will function as a way of paying for art, as well as a record of ownership. In the art world, this is referred to as “provenance.”
Another company called LifeID is working to build a secure identity platform on the blockchain. This would allow users to verify that they are who they say they are in digital and physical spaces, without relying on state-issued IDs, or corporately-owned social media, like Facebook profiles.
Investing in yourself is one of the best return on investments you can have. Whether it’s investing in learning a new skill, developing yourself personally or professionally, tapping into your creativity or hiring a coach, you need to give to yourself first before you can give to others. It is our responsibility to take the time to develop our gifts and talents, so we can best serve others. Investing in yourself is an example of self-love, you must love yourself before you can expect others to love you.
Why is investing in yourself so powerful?
Investing in yourself, sends a powerful message to yourself and the world. The message is:
The value and potential that I possess, is important enough to me that I’m going to give it the energy, space and time to grow and create results.
When you’re willing to say yes, and take that leap of faith and invest in yourself, the universe will provide you with amazing rewards.
I would like to share some incredible ways that you can invest in yourself – the great news is they don’t all require money.
Top 10 Ways to Invest in Yourself
1. Set goals. Learn how to set personal and business goals for yourself. If you’re not taking the time to set goals it’s like driving in the dark with the headlights turned off. You will not know where you’re going and you will waste precious time. Be sure to also set some time frames in which to meet them. Your goals should be SMART goals -Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely.
2. Honor your intuition. You can show yourself love by trusting your gut and honoring the message that it’s sending. Listening to your intuition, will allow you to make better decisions. Valuing your intuition, by not allowing the thoughts, feelings or statements of others to take away from what you know to be true is very empowering. By paying attention to how you feel, it will help you to make better, smarter and quicker decisions. I know for me personally, if I choose to ignore my gut or intuition when I feel a strong feeling about something, it almost always is a decision or action that I end up regretting. I have learned to always trust my intuition and that is what leads me in my life and business.
3. Invest time in your creativity. Our creativity doesn’t have to diminish as we get older. In fact, it is believed that the peak of creativity in most people is around 30-40 years old. (Lindaur, 1998, Marisiske &Willis, 1998) Creativity can be the catalyst in the manifestation of continual learning and lifelong activity. It allows us to be inspired, have fun and appreciate the beauty in the world.
4. Invest in building your confidence. People who know their value, have something to say and others will listen. You can invest in yourself by developing an understanding of the value that you possess and offer others. Learn to have the courage to speak your truth. The more you love yourself and own the value that you offer, the more confident you will become in sharing it with others.
5. Read educational books. Books or audio books are an awesome resource to build your knowledge and expertise in any area.
6. Attend seminars and workshops to expand your knowledge and skills in your business and/or personal life. This will also give you the opportunity to meet and interact with individuals who are like-minded.
7. Take care of your health. Eat right each day, fueling your body with nutrients. When you focus on eating organic and healthier choices, you will feel better and have more energy. I know that the unhealthy burger or cupcake gives us instant gratification, but if you’re like me, you regret it later, because you feel lousy afterwards. Exercise daily. Do something every day to get moving and get your heart rate up, even, if it’s just walking the dog. Exercise gives you the energy to take on the day with confidence because of how it makes you look and feel. I have dedicated a whole chapter in my book on health (Chapter 11) because of just how important it is to your success!
8. Choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice. Happy people choose to focus on the positive aspects of life, rather than the negative. They are not held hostage by their circumstances. They look at all the reasons to be grateful. “Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”- Abraham Lincoln
9. Work on your bucket list. If you don’t have a bucket list, then it’s time to start one. Your bucket list is meant to be a list of everything you want to achieve, do, see, feel and experience in your life. Your list may be ongoing, but you can start by writing 100 things down. Then each month or so, make sure you’re knocking out at least, one of the items on your list.
10. Invest in a coach. A coach can assist you in putting all of these strategies into action. A coach is your partner in success. It is their job to assist you in creating and implementing your success plan, so you can become the best that you can be.
I can promise this: When you invest in yourself, a world of opportunities will open up for you. And, if you have a business where you sell your services, you must know that no one will invest in you until you invest in yourself first.
Investing in yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially, will allow you to become the best version of yourself. When you are the best version of yourself, you will be an attraction magnet to others!
