Instill your passion for reading – a book a day keeps the teacher away!
Knowledge is power. Yet how often do we attain knowledge to reap the fruits of success? One of the fundamental keys to knowledge is by cultivating a good reading habit and be on the way to acquiring unlimited success. But the real trick is to read a book a month for a year, and you are guaranteed to feel empowered for a lifetime. Almost a quarter of the global population have not read a single book in the past year, not to mention some two-thirds of whom have never read anything turns out to be actually illiterate (i.e. unable to read or write). This is quite a shocking or astounding fact to say the least. Since the overall reading frequency of the general population declines with age, it only seems logical that taking up reading as a hobby or pastime makes us “wealthier” or more prosperous than we were before. Reading actually calms the person, exercises the mind and sharpens our wit (mental clarity) as we age. Some scientific studies have even suggested that habitual reading can prevent the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease, which is a debilitating and mental-degenerative disease that affects almost half of all senior citizens or veterans worldwide. Apart from its obvious beneficial “side effects”, reading also provides entertainment and pleasure, as well as self-mastery or self-improvement, via personal development, career advancement, wealth creation and financial independence.
Nowadays, reading is a dying habit, especially among the youth or the Gen-Y’s. Instilling a good reading habit should start from a young age. Hypothetically speaking, if you are to read for an hour daily, you can quickly become a knowledgeable person if not an expert in your own right. If you are to read a book monthly, you can be in the top one percent bracket of income earners. And if you are to read a book weekly, you can be one of the most successful people in the world. Sounds simple enough right? But wait, there is always a catch! You will need to continue reading the equivalent of a year or fifty-two books in order to reap the benefits. Of course, it takes a great deal of effort to master the discipline to read books continuously and consistently. Therefore, procrastination is definitely your greatest enemy. Perhaps an even greater enemy to reading so many books in a single year is the constant distraction from daily activities such as watching television, surfing the internet, playing video games, chatting on the phone, window shopping or simply idling your time away day-dreaming, etc. These are just several examples whereby we can make a personal and conscientious effort to reduce time wastage – the savings in time could then be channeled to more productive activities instead, for instance reading. Try to allocate a fixed amount of time, exclusively for reading, about an hour of each and every day.
“If you read only one book per month, that will put you into the top 1% of income earners in our society. But if you read one book per week, 50 books per year, that will make you one of the best educated, smartest, most capable and highest paid people in your field. Regular reading will transform your life completely.” – Brian Tracy, renowned motivational expert and success guru.
Also, vary the genre of titles you are reading to stifle boredom and to curb one from being trapped in a constant cycle of reading similar-themed material over and over again. Repetitive reading and recycling your reading material can often lead to creative stagnation, as well as stall your drive or motivation to continue reading in the long term. Maintain a high level of interest by reading all genres if possible. After all, the best knowledge is always procured from different sources. Reading can take the form of a variety of media and need not necessarily represent books per se. If you are not the “book-worm” type, you could choose between magazines or newspapers. These days even regular mags and papers are fast losing mainstream popularity, with the respective electronic versions or formats fast gaining momentum and gradually overtaking their print counterparts. This comes as no surprise as digital reading material is much more compact and convenient when browsed through your smartphones as well as other mobile devices. Electronic gadgets represent a paradigm shift in the 21st century as we certainly cannot escape from the many scientific revolutions that have helped shaped our technological lifestyle as well as our futuristic life. Thomas Corley, a famed motivational speaker once put it, “Successful people are slaves to their good daily habits.” Be a slave to your reading habit and you too will become smarter, and success will eventually prevail thereafter. – HFM
