Ishan Shivanand contrasts external investment (gadgets, clothing, appearance) with internal investment (mindset, beliefs, thought patterns). Smartphones have weakened our memory and made us dependent on devices for basic information. Shifting resources from superficial upgrades to mental development actually improves quality of life.
There are two types of investment, you see. One is the internal investment, which makes me grow as a human being. The other is an external investment, which makes me look beautiful as a human being. External investment is our investment on gadgets, our investment on clothes, our investment on makeup. Our investment on how we are. And you will find today, the more we do an external investment on external gadgets, the more it impacts who we are internally. Our phones may be getting smarter, but people who have smarter phones are getting dumber. 10 years ago, we knew so many phone numbers, we had so much of information. In our heads. But today we are dependent so much on the phone that even if, I don't know, 10 years from now if our phone gets lost, we won't even know our way back home. Or maybe it's happening right now that you don't even know your wife's phone number. You have to open your phone to check what is the number of my wife. We are so dependent on all these things. And the beauty is that it is in our nature to invest. When a peacock is courting a peahen, he will invest a lot of time and effort. Even when a pigeon is going after a female pigeon, he will dance, he will want to invest something. A beaver will invest to make a dam in a city or in a lake, you know, he'll make a beaver city Yeah, he'll stop the river, make a dam, and he'll be happy in it. So too, a human being has to, has to invest. It's in our nature that if we want something, our body, our cells will itself guide us that we must invest. Now the question is, on what will we invest? If we focus upon external investment, then yes, our clothes will become better, our phones will become better. For a time being, our face can also become better. But one thing that won't change is the thing that changes our quality of life itself, and that is our mind, our thoughts, and our belief systems. So a young child must learn to change his investments. We must start to move from external investments to internal investments. Internal investment means anything that changes our thought pattern, anything that changes our belief systems. Internal investment means taking your time, your money, your resources. The resources of our time, the resources of our money, and the resources of our actions need to be utilized in a more proper and beneficial manner.
