Why $5,000 for a Vacation Feels Easy, $5,000 for Growth Feels Hard

We celebrate the trips that recharge us but stall on the ones that transform us.

Saturday edition of CTRL by JP Bristol

Nobody blinks at dropping $4,768 on a vacation. Flights, hotels, dinners out, a little shopping: it all gets chalked up as part of living. You know you’ll come home with memories, stories, and a reset. The ROI is obvious, even if it’s not in dollars.

But when it comes to investing that same $4,768 in a seminar, coaching, or a mastermind, suddenly the calculator comes out. We hesitate. We second-guess. I’ve done it myself.

Vacations vs. Self-Investment

My wife and I have always made vacations a centerpiece of our life. They fuel us. They’re more than just downtime. Along the way, some trips have left me with lessons that changed how I think. In Rome, I walked through the Forum where modern traffic buzzes past ruins 2,000 years old. It hit me that short-term wins fade, but long-term vision endures. In Costa Rica, I saw how “Pura Vida” isn’t just a slogan. It’s a way of life that values simplicity, health, and connection. Both trips reshaped how I think about time, balance, and what really matters.

But here’s the thing: those insights were bonuses, not the reason we booked the flights. We went for rest, adventure, and connection. The education slipped in around the edges. Self-investment flips that equation. You show up specifically for transformation, and that difference changes everything about how we evaluate the cost.

With vacations, you know exactly what you’re buying: pleasure, connection, stories, and an immediate payoff. With self-investment, the return is delayed and uncertain.

And there’s another layer, one we rarely admit out loud: vacations feel like a treat we’ve earned. Self-investment can feel like admitting we aren’t enough yet. It’s an acknowledgment that we have gaps, blind spots, or limits we need help overcoming. That’s uncomfortable. A vacation celebrates who we are. A seminar confronts who we aren’t, at least not yet.

That psychological barrier is real, and it’s expensive. Because the discomfort of admitting we need to grow often costs us years of progress we could have had.

Lessons That Compound

I’ve attended four Zig Ziglar events, plus seminars by Brian Tracy, John Maxwell, and Jeffrey Gitomer. At the time, the tickets felt expensive. One set me back $1,197, another $2,350. I can still remember wondering if I was being foolish.

But those lessons paid for themselves many times over. Ziglar drilled discipline and belief. Tracy hammered goals. Maxwell reframed leadership. Gitomer sharpened my sales game. Decades later, I still draw on what I learned in those rooms.

The Shift

Vacations give you perspective. Self-investment gives you acceleration. Both matter, but self-investment has a way of multiplying in business and life that vacations rarely do.

The hesitation will never vanish. Delayed gratification is hard, even when you know the logic. The shift is to measure self-investment differently. Not in instant dollars, but in clarity gained, time saved, and mistakes avoided. Track those returns the same way you track the value of a trip in stories and perspective.

Here’s a lens worth applying: Next time you’re planning a $5,000 vacation, pause and ask yourself: what would a $5,000 investment in my skills, network, or mindset return over the next decade? Not instead of the vacation, but as its equal. Because vacations give you memories. Self-investment gives you chapters that keep unfolding long after the trip is over.

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CTRL by JP Bristol
Clarity. Tenacity. Reinvention. Legacy.