Are You Investing in Yourself — Or Just Spending?

This morning I said something out loud that stopped me mid-sentence.

I was talking to my boyfriend, Nick, and I heard myself say: "I just invested thousands in my health — a new high-level health coach, bloodwork, supplements, feedback and support that goes deeper than anything I have done before. I invested in my business with Leanne. I invested in my mindset with Stefanos."

And then I paused.

Because the question that followed was not one I expected.

But what am I actually doing with these? Am I showing up for them the way someone who believes they are worth the investment shows up? Or am I making the investments and then quietly hoping they do something to me — instead of committing to become someone through them?

Here is what I also want you to know about Leanne and Stefanos specifically. These are not people I found in an ad or hired on a whim. These are people I have followed for years. I have saved hundreds of their posts. I have consumed their content, taken notes in the margins of my mind, and watched them from a distance the way you watch someone who is saying the thing you needed to hear but could not quite articulate yourself. And now they are not just people I admire. They are on my team.

That shift — from follower to client, from inspired to invested — is its own kind of statement about self-value. It is the moment you stop watching someone else build the thing you want and decide you are worth the real version of it.

There is a difference between spending on yourself and investing in yourself. Spending is transactional. You hand over the money, you receive the thing, you move on. Investing requires something from you on the other side. It requires you to believe — at a cellular level — that what you are putting in will compound. That you are worth the return.

And that belief? That is the part most people skip.

I did not always value myself this way. I want to be honest about that.

There was a season of my life, living solo in Tulum, where my time meant almost nothing to me. Not because I was depressed or lost, but because I genuinely did not see it as something worth protecting. I worked late on Friday nights. I took client Zooms on Saturdays. I gave full Sundays to my business without a second thought. I worked out and I worked. That was the whole equation.

And I was not miserable. I want to be clear about that too. I was building something. I was driven. I believed in what I was doing.

But I was not investing in myself. I was pouring everything into the work and leaving nothing for the person doing it.