Investment means to make use of for future benefits or advantages. People make investment in many things. Investment tends to fall in two categories: self-investment and external investment, the latter being in something other than self which usually is stuff or material things. While, some material things are necessary, to make that the major concern at the exclusion of investing in the self is unhealthy.

Self-investment are of two kinds, (1) investment in activities for comfort, adventure and the pursuit of pleasure and (2) investment for self-discovery, self-develpment and consciousness expansion. In this kind of self-investment one's health, physical, mental, emotional and spiritual, is lived purpose.

External investment that neglects internal or  self-investment often causes human malfunctioning, debilitation and premature death. Some people embracing this way of being may rely on their physicians to keep them well or restore their health when they become ill or debilitated. They may have the false assurance or illusion that having good health insurance is health sufficiency. Very often people realize too late that they refused to do what was necessary to be healthy. They may owe their chronic condition or premature death to the fact that they had good health insurance. Abusing their bodies by the excessive use of drugs, smoking cigarettes, over-eating and indulging in other unhealthy practices may have weakened their immune systems, making it impossible for medical treatment to affect healing. Also having a lifestyle that consists of being in the rat-race, having strained relationships, because things are more important than people, they become physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually bankrurpted creating the inner condition that makes them susceptible to heart attacks, arthritis and other physical and emotional maladies. It may be, although not known at  this time, that cancer and alzheimer are caused by or linked to its victims having neglected investing in themselves. Jesus asks this pertinent question:
         For what shall it profit a man,
         if he shall gain the whole world,
         and lose his own soul? (Mark 8:36)
One may emphasize, "and lose his health."

Because many people are misguided at a young age to believe that the external is primary and of the major value that it is better to invest in the external than to invest in self-discovery and self-development, they have to grow-up after they are grown if they are to live potentially. Overcoming past conditioning may require that a person have therapy or some other kind of psychological assistance. Overcoming conditioning, beliefs and habits can be difficult and hightly unlikely for a person to achieve without help that will enable him to assume growing responsiblity for himself, including his happiness. There are other ways to gain knowledge that can increase self-awareness and raise consciousness. Meditation, nature and having a spriritual guide may also enable a person to become fully functioning.

Self-investment is optimum investment. It yields the highest dividends possible. Do not let your life be committed only to the external, primarily, to accumulating stuff and making money, things that contribute to harnessing you with deficiencies in the future. You can do better. You can invest in your self and embrace a health-consciousness by investing in yourself. If you do that, you will be a man my son or a woman my daughter. Know that "health is better than wealth."

In closing I say to you what Apostle John said to the people he loved:
          Dear friend, I pray that you may
         enjoy good health... . (3 Jn. 2)

Copyright 2014 by Uriah J. Fields