A humor mentor of mine, John Kinde spoke a few words at my Toastmasters meeting last night.  He touched upon various things one could do to improve themselves.  Many involved stepping outside your personal comfort zone – whether it be from jazz dancing lessons, to joining the local Screen Actors Guild. (They give all day performance workshops for $20 – Could be a very inexpensive way to improve your communication skills and social network.)

One of the items he mentioned was superb, and is worth writing about.  ‘Set a Self Development budget.’

Let it set in…

People have budgets for their car, food, entertainment etc. – but not too many people focus on budgeting money to improve themselves. If you can, set aside a set amount of money every month to buy products to help improve yourself.  Buy a new book, audio session, movie, class or whatever.  If your budget is tight, pay yourself with time.  Take a few hours and check out new podcasts, read some new blogs, or go waste a few hours at a library.

• Self Improvement Budget Ideas (Besides the obvious.)
• Get a Certification.
• Learn a new Language.
• Start a new website / blog.
• Go back to school.
• Try a new food.
• Go to a different church.
• Enter an art show.
• Join Toastmasters.
• Try something that appears ‘out there.’

The Freebie

Here’s an idea that costs no money – go to your local library and just wander around.  Don’t worry about what section you are in, just walk around and look at the book spines.  Grab any that catch your attention, and read a few pages and get familiar with what the book is about.  If you like it, hover in that section a bit and see if you might have found a new topic to master.  Did you know that people read so few non-fiction books past their schooling years, that if you were to read 3 books about any given topic – you’d easily be classified as an expert in that topic?  Shocking!  All it cost you was a some of your time and a little initiative and/or RedBull.

The beauty of learning something new, is that you LEARNED SOMETHING NEW.  Congrats, you’re now more valuable to life and career options!  It doesn’t matter what you learned so long as you can put it in practice and utilize what you learned.  Imagine the ROI potential!

What would you purchase with your Self Development budget?

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