IT IS MY BEST INVESTMENT
Read good books that you like best
My spare time is my precious time.
I set aside a certain period each day for self-improvement program. Not a single day will pass without me reading good books and listening to inspirational and educational recordings during this daily period. This daily period has proven to be and I was deeply convinced that this is my BEST INVESTMENT. For the inspirational recordings I regularly downloads mp3 files from www.jw.org. I minimized and almost completely eliminated time wasting pursuits that hinder improvement. Unclogging my mind of garbage materials from reading too much news and trivial happenings around the world is my top personal policy. Why not join me in my greatest discovery finding your best investment program.
My personal advice to my brothers and sisters
“ Why not decide today, this moment, on the particular course you want to pursue and begin at once to lay aside daily a certain portion of time to this end?
young man's future
Tell me how a young man uses his little ragged edges of time after his day’s work is done, what he is revolving in his mind at every opportunity, and I will tell you what that young man’s future will be. This is one of the ideas of Samuel Smiles, one of the great beacon of history, more than a century ago.
Well-informed man
It is the constant absorption of knowledge from every possible source that makes a man well-informed, and it is a great variety of knowledge that makes him broad and sympathetic where he would otherwise be narrow, hard.
Every little bit of time counts
Happy is the youth who has formed the fixed habit of self-improvement, who is always trying to make himself a little larger and a little better informed, a little better prepared for his opportunity when it comes. The habitual absorber of knowledge has the advantage of touching life at many points. His interests are wide, and, as a rule, he is an interesting man.
Utilize the wasted hours
There are multitudes of people today plodding along in mediocrity, handicapped by the lack of early education and sufficient training, who waste precious time in frivolous amusements, in loitering, in dawdling, in foolish, useless chatter. They could give themselves a superb fitting for life if they would only utilize these wasted hours in self-improvement, with a purpose, but they are not willing to pay the price. They are not willing to sacrifice the lower for the higher, not willing to forfeit the movie, the T. V., parties, even idle gossip, for that pearl of great price-self-improvement, which would completely alter their standing in life.
How determined are you?
The opportune time
It takes a great deal of guts and determination to use the hours and half-hours, otherwise devoted to pleasure, for rigorous self-improvement, but it pays in the end.
Why the need to strive?
Competition has become so terrific, and life so strenuous that we need to be armed with every weapon of mental growth and culture possible. The most profitable work we can do is to raise our personal value, for the requirements in every field are constantly growing broader and higher. And, as usual, with the demand has come the supply-means for self-improvement are daily multiplying
Wisdom will not open her doors to those who are not willing to pay the price of admission. She will not sell her jewels for money, but will give them to every poor boy or girl who yearns and works for her.
The moment a young man ceases to think of lack of opportunities, either for an education or a career, but resolutely looks conditions in the face and resolves to change them, he scores a victory and lays the cornerstone of a solid career. Even if he must go slow, he will go far.
Men and women who have utilized only a small percentage of their ability, who have not made it fully available by discipline and education, always work at great disadvantage. A man capable, by nature, of being an employer, is often compelled to be an ordinary employee, because his mind is untrained. We all know this side of the picture. But all too few of us remember the other side, or realize that now, today, we may begin to work on it, and, stoke by stroke, minute by minute, make ourselves fit for the larger position of responsibility and power.
It is because we don’t improve ourselves when we have an opportunity says a helpful writer, ‘ but, instead, let the shining hour pass over us unheeded, that Dame Opportunity so often knocks at our door at a time when are unfitted to make her welcome, or the rainy days come and find us unprepared for the downpour.
Build your personal home library
Self-education is potential GREEN POWER.’ Anything you do to make yourself a larger, completer man or woman today will pay-off handsomely tomorrow. Study the biographies of the many great beacon lights of history. Their life stories will stimulate your desire for greater achievement: They will prove to be an inspiration to you. Build a success library in your home. Include in it all the self-improvement, success and motivational books and records available. Include in your “success library” a good college dictionary and a set of encyclopedia books.
The development of mental power affords the best investment for a youth’s capital his time and energy. It pays to discipline one’s mind so as to discover what one can do best, and to form the mental habits which underlies success in life.
Time and Patience
An education is no phonograph,” said a former president of Harvard, “to repeat mechanically what is poured into it, but a dynamo for the generation of power, for the illumination, movement, and gracious-handed comfort of mankind.”
To make the most possible of one’s self-discovering, developing his own powers, learning to use them to promote his own ends and the good of mankind is the true purpose of man’s education. It is the unfolding of nature of all that nature has given to him. To learn to think, to love the objects that ought to be loved, to direct the will to right ends, to reason, to exercise sound judgement, to control self, and to influence others, requires time and patience.
The need for balance
Nature does not make a specialist, a mere memory land or money gland, but her aim is a fully developed, well rounded out person. If we develop the body exclusively, man deteriorates toward the brute. If we press all the vital energies of life into muscle-making we dwarf the soul and tear down manhood. It is an inexorable law of nature that what is exercised in one’s daily vocation or as a special discipline becomes stronger. It was nature’s intention that our faculties should be exercised in a healthy, well proportioned manner. Any other course creates one-sidedness and discord. Cultivate the higher faculties of the brain alone, and expend all life’s energies in expanding the power of the intellect, and what do we get? Not a complete, well-rounded philosophy,but a cold, unsympathetic, one-sided mentality, devoid of all the finer graces, the warmer sympathies, the more delicate sentiments. Develop the moral nature alone, or even the spiritual, without the mental and the physical, and we have a fanatic, a zealot, an unbalanced enthusiast.
The real purpose of education
"The object of a watch is to keep time as perfectly as possible." said a great author, Sydney Bremer. This time is not kept by the medium of any one tiny screw, or lever, or wheel, but is the result of the harmonious action of all, and depends upon the perfection of the smallest part of the watch. So the object of all education and culture is the well proportioned development of all the genuine faculties and functions.
“Perhaps the most valuable results of all education,” said Huxley, “is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson which ought to be learned, and, however early a man’s training begins, it is probably the last lesson he learns thoroughly.
“Conformity to order, courage, and decision of character, and formation of the habits of industry, regularity, persistence, patience, self-denial, intellegence in citizenship, and a wholesome self-respect, are the characteristics of mind-training for power.
When a life is worth living
The only real success worthy of the name is that which comes from a consciousness of growing wider, deeper, higher in mental and moral power as the years go on.
To feel the faculties expanding and unfolding, to feel truth throughout one’s whole being, is the only life worth living.
Such a life is neither drudgery nor a dream. It is rather the superb result of high qualities finely disciplined.
We must keep growing.
We must keep learning.
True education is a LIFELONG PROCESS.
Don’t ever stop growing mentally.
Set aside a certain period each day for your self-improvement program. Read good books and listen to inspirational and educational recordings during this daily period. This daily period will soon prove in no uncertain terms to be YOUR BEST INVESTMENT.
Some Quotations came from the following references:
1- Successful Achievement Program by Sydney Bremer
2-Self Help by Samuel Smiles
3-Quotations by Huxley
4-The Holy Bible from various versions.
5. Wikipedia.org