Mark Twain said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the fellow who can’t read them.” Reading strengthens the mind, not simply by what you are learning, but by what you are doing. It creates patience with yourself and helps you concentrate or focus. Reading exercises your mind.
Reading opens your mind. It provides you with a fresh perspective and point of view. It helps your brain grasp opportunities and helps you see things you could not see before. If you don’t read, nothing happens. You remain the same as the world advances without you. Reading is one of the most important things you can do to exercise your mind and your discernment.
Reading allows you to see both sides of a conversation. It helps you have a stronger vocabulary. It helps you spell better. You will learn so many things and develop a healthy sense of well-being because you will find that you actually love to learn.
For me, what I have learned is that brilliance, creativity, and genius can be learned and grown by reading. Part of having brilliance and genius is to have a vast amount of perspectives. If you only have your perspective, you can become vain and irrelevant without knowing it. When you read, you discover how much you don’t know and how much more you want to know.
The one commonality that the most successful and smartest people have in common is that they read veraciously. Our world is now lined with every piece of information you could ever want to know. The online and offline shelves are lined with the wisdom of humanity. Any insight you want to learn is now at your fingertips at the most inexpensive price ever.
Reading is not limited to hard-cover or paperback books. It includes blogs, articles, and audio books. Research has shown that listening to a story lights up the sensory cortex in your brain because we are processing information.
Maybe you’ve made a goal this year to read more books. You will benefit most when you turn that goal into a life habit that you enjoy. Stanford University researchers have found that literary reading, in particular, gives your brain a workout in multiple complex cognitive functions, while pleasure reading increases blood flow to areas of the brain.
Just in case you are wondering, your brain adapts to eBooks in 7 days, no matter what age. You can adapt to any device in a week of reading and help your brain maintain its wellness. Finally, people who read are more empathetic. When we read, we allow ourselves to feel a new perspective. We let go of emotional and mental chatter that happens in our daily lives, we get quiet, and let the author lead us through a story where we can see and feel others’ perspectives. When reading becomes a habit, it makes us more empathetic to people in real life. Reading makes a more peaceful world.
Vickie Helm is a bestselling author, business and asset strategist, and the CEO of Smart Group Firm. She has improved the success of more than a thousand companies and the lives of thousands of individuals throughout her career. You can learn more about Vickie at https://smartstartstrategies.com or https://vickiehelm.com.