There’s an investment with a guaranteed return. No, I’m not trying to sell you a miracle product or a get-rich quick scheme. No course to buy and no seminar to take. There really is one investment with a guaranteed return, and it’s not what you might think.
What is an Investment?
Before we go too much further, we have to define what an investment is. The word investment is usually linked to money. In money terms, an investment is putting time or money into an asset with the expectation that it will rise in value or produce income.
Types of Financial Investments
There are many different types of financial investments. To name a few:
- Stocks
- Bonds
- Real Estate
- ETF’s
This is only a short list to give you an idea. There are endless investment opportunities ranging from the simple to more sophisticated investments that accredited investors often participate in.
The Greatest Investment in the World and the Only Investment With a Guaranteed Return: Your Mind
There’s one investment with a guaranteed return: your mind. When you invest in your mind, you can get through any time. Not just get through, but prosper. Bull markets, bear markets, post-college years, middle age, recessions, relationships, careers, pandemics, economic booms–your mind is your greatest asset that will guide you through any cycle or time period in your life.
Think of your mind like an umbrella. Under the umbrella is all the areas of your life: health, wellness, relationships, financial, career, and everything in between. Develop your mind and you can improve any aspect of your life.
Things not going well in your relationships? You can learn to communicate better. Not going well financially? There are thousands of books and blogs specifically about how to improve your personal finances, including my book Cash Uncomplicated and some of my personal favorites listed below. Health and fitness not going as well as middle age is approaching? You can learn how to improve this area as well.
Favorite personal finance books:
Why the Mind?
Life changes, trends change, and investments change. Just because an investment type has been successful over the years is not a guarantee it will be successful in the future. There’s the frequently used disclaimer that past performance does not necessarily guarantee future results. In other words, there are no guarantees that investment trends will continue.
As a caveat, I follow the probabilities to give myself the best chance of an investment working out. While I understand that past performance doesn’t guarantee future results–if a certain investment type has a large track record of success, I like my chances. That comes with the understanding though that it’s not a guarantee.
Ok, back to the investment with a guaranteed return–the mind. The mind is the one thing that can learn, evolve, and adjust to any new challenge. As technology and human behavior changes, the mind has the ability to adjust and grow. A well-trained mind can adjust to anything.
How to Invest in Your Mind
The beauty of your mind is that it grows as you feed it. And everyone has control over what they feed their mind. Feed your mind information about health, wellness, positive relationships, and financial health–and your mind will grow stronger in these areas.
On the other end, feed your mind gossip, celebrity “news”, and tabloid rumors–and your mind will grow stronger in those areas. Your brain is a high performance machine that only requires the proper nutrition and information you feed it. You can actually get smarter–even past your formative schooling years.
Here’s a few ways to invest in your mind:
- Read quality books (audiobooks count) about topics you want to improve in
- Listen to podcasts
- Join a mastermind
- Listen to wise people
- Read quality blogs and articles
This is just a list to get you started, there are myriad ways to invest in your mind. Even something as simple as learning from successful people with the right mindset on Instagram or YouTube counts.
Who You Spend Time with Matters
It’s natural for humans to become like the people we hang out with. To quote Jim Rohn, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Hang out with a group of health conscious people and you will probably become a health conscious person. Spend time with career-minded individuals and you’ll likely spend more time developing your career.
Here’s a quick example. Imagine you are going out to dinner with four friends. Your first friend orders the chicken salad, the second person orders tofu, the next person orders a vegetarian plate, and your friend after that orders something healthy. If you’re the last person to order, you probably aren’t going to order a double cheeseburger with fries and a beer.
Not that we can’t splurge once in a while, but it’s just unlikely you are going to be the only one to order something unhealthy while everyone else is ordering lean plates. Some of you reading this might be shouting that you’d still order the cheeseburger (and add extra bacon)! But the reality is most of us wouldn’t actually do that.
How it Relates to Personal Finance
This same concept applies to personal finance. If you spend a lot of time with a group of four or five friends who are financially responsible and successful, you likely are going to adopt many of their money habits. You’re going to:
- Observe their financial behavior
- Adopt some of their ideas around money
- Follow the same money principles they follow
- Absorb ideas from money conversations
- Ask questions
- Read the books they recommend
Spending time around successful people is one of the best ways to develop your mind. It’s an investment with a guaranteed return.
The Result: A New Mindset
The reward for investing in your mind? A new mindset. You’ll start to see the world differently, find new opportunities, meet new people, and live an overall healthier and more productive life.
I told this story in my book so I’ll give the condensed version here. I used to have a very poor mindset. As a result, I struggled each month living paycheck to paycheck. I didn’t understand the negative impact of my mindset at the time, so I struggled for many years.
As I took the necessary actions to change my mindset, I realized the error of my ways. To help others facing similar challenges, I decided to write a book and start a blog with a special focus on mindset.
Where I used to see challenge and failure, I now see opportunity and prosperity. I can honestly say that investing in my mind has changed my life. It has been the investment with the guaranteed and greatest return.
Have to Take Action
Here’s the most important part of this post though–nothing else you’ve read matters if you don’t follow this step. You have to take action. All the knowledge in the world doesn’t matter if you don’t take action.
You may know all the latest and greatest investment strategies but if you don’t take action, it means nothing. Or you might develop an innovative strategy to save and invest over 50 percent of your income. But if you don’t take action and follow the strategy, the idea goes to waste. The mind is the investment with the greatest return, but only if you listen to what it tells you what to do and take the necessary actions.
Final Thoughts
There’s a certain comfort in knowing our greatest asset is our minds. We can plan and prepare as much as possible, but there are certain unexpected and unlikely events that can have major negative impacts on our investments.
For example, someone who carefully and diligently invested before the Great Depression almost 100 years ago probably lost a lot of money. They didn’t do anything wrong, there was a just a domestic and global event out of their control.
No matter what happens–whether it’s a large scale global event, a domestic event, or something local–the investment with the greatest and guaranteed return is our mind. The mind has unlimited upside and potential, can adapt to anything, and can’t be erased by world events outside of our control.
Do you agree that the mind is the only investment with a guaranteed return? Why or why not?
