A few years back I wrote a book called The Daring Female’s Guide to Ecstatic Living. (No, the purpose of this post is not shameless self promotion. Ok, a little, you got me.) The reason I mention the book is because the entire point of it was to get women to dare themselves to do something new, scary, risky, interesting, exciting, never-thought-I-could-do-this with their lives. I felt that I’ve done a few of those things myself–and this was before Work It, Mom!, which has taught me a whole new meaning of terms like scary and exciting and risky–and wanted to encourage others to give it a shot.

One of my favorite things about writing the book is that the process forced me to look for ways to make my own life more interesting and more along the lines of what I wanted to get out of it. By investing the time in thinking about and writing the book I found that I was investing in myself and my own life. And I liked the results.

And I’ve decided to explore this idea of investing in yourself here on the Work It, Mom! Blog. As working moms we know that the first thing that often goes out the window and off the to-do list is ourselves–our hobbies, interests, big goals, even basic things like say, sleep. But this is a bad idea in the long run. You can’t ignore yourself and just take care of other people and responsibilities in your life; after a while, you’ll be a very tired and bitter person, trust me, I’ve tried this and learned my lesson.

So as we’re now full steam ahead into the holiday season that brings with it too much stress, running around, and ignoring yourself, I’d like to offer an antidote here on the Work It, Mom! Blog by writing a series of Invest In Yourself posts until I run out of ideas (which hopefully won’t happen if you offer your own suggestions) or you tell me to quit this nonsense. Every week I’ll try to come up with an activity that will focus your energy on yourself and your goals, to-dos, ideas, and yes, dare I say dreams? I’ll try to make it small and manageable because I how how little time we all have.

OK, I’m getting a bit too Oprah-like now, so I’ll stop with the self-helpish intro and get on with the first Invest In Yourself idea:

Make a list of three things you want to learn more about. Cross off two and spend 30 minutes this week on the one that’s left.

Here’s my list:

• Wine
• Doris Lessing
• SEO (yes, you’re certainly welcome to include things that relate to your business - but this has to be something you WANT to learn about, not just HAVE to learn about)

Feel free to post your list in the comments — sharing is good! (And can give you some great ideas.)

I also invite you to share your own suggestions for Invest In Yourself activities. I’ll pick some and feature them here, which will make this blog a lot more interesting.