What is one thing 20/80 secret to making your life amazing?
20% - effort 80% - the result, just one simple thing you could do to change your life for the better? What can be accessible, easy to do, and make you happier, smarter, and open new opportunities in your life?
I know one thing - reading.
Do you have this feeling that you probably SHOULD READ but something gets in the way or reading just is plain boring and tiring for you?
No worries, everyone feels that sometimes, even bookworms have a dry spell.
Yet if you can do something easily and cheaply to change your life completely it would not be getting rich, traveling, finding love, or having kids... you see these things might work out or might not and could be not the best thing happening to you. Books, however, will not fail you, they will improve your life, make you happy and smarter no matter what, it is easy to do, does not require a lot of money, and can be done by anyone.
When you start doing anything, the secret to succeed at it and not to lose passion in the process is to work on your motivation first, then focus on the rest. I never can keep doing anything if I have no idea why I’m doing that and what will I get from it?
I see that most people who don’t like reading just don’t know what is reading about, and don’t know the secret of how to make reading fun.
Starting from motivation, why should you read... why do I read?
Why I Love Reading
Here are my reasons why reading is my favorite thing to do:
- Reading is fun - really nothing can be so much more engaging than reading about someone else's life, new concepts, and ideas, the world is a fascinating mystery and I love to see it through other people’s eyes.
- Reading enriches my life - literally with every page read my world expands a little, my imagination has new topics to include in my daily imaginative wonderings, and that makes a whole universe in which I can get lost any time and never get bored.
- Reading trains my imagination - this one is repeating the previous one, but more on the point I often notice people struggling to imagine things I try to explain, because they have not experienced these ideas before and they lack information and imaginative muscle to follow me… As your muscles need training so does your brain, and there is nothing more powerful than reading, it makes you think and it makes you imagine things.
- Reading helps me understand complex concepts - this one is obvious, if you want to understand any side of the world, whether it’s social, scientific, or artistic, diving deep into new concepts helps me understand them, see them, experience them.
- Reading enriches my social experience - rather complicated formulation, here is a simple explanation, while I read I experience deep and meaningful human connection, which rarely happens in the real world, even on a basic intellectual level. In books, I find compassion and productive support to my needs for communication, acceptance, inspiration, and guidance, from how to manage sadness to whether the universe is conscious. It does not replace but enriches my social experience for sure, I would definitely feel more isolated and more misunderstood if I would have no books.
- Reading answers my questions - sometimes a question burns in my chest, and I cannot sleep thinking about it, many of these questions will probably never be answered, yet even if they are not easy to answer, understanding the question better can also feel like an answer, and books are deep wells for answers and questions.
- Reading helps me ask good questions - I believe that a good question is 50% of the success, and goes for everything, my happiness, development of my consciousness, professional or any direction I choose, a well-put question can take me deep to the root and hit the bull’s eye.
- Reading inspires me - literally, 80% if not more comes out of books, yes people do inspire me, but I rarely have these deep conversations that last few days with a person, but with a book easily... I like a deep dive into a topic. This kind of inspiration is more solid and long-lasting, there is nothing more powerful than looking into other people’s lives and seeing how they search for meaning.
- Reading makes me a fun person to talk to - I can be called anything but boring, I never have something to say to any topic and that helped me to connect to people better than anything.
- Reading helps me find meaning - finding meaning and fulfillment is a jackpot for anyone, but often we can choose a shiny meaning and it can have hidden traps for us to lose this fulfillment later on, yet reading about many other people finding, losing, or choose wrong meaning, teaching me a great deal and helping me understand who I am and what is important for me.
- Reading gives me the power and control - for me, control and power are in choice, I want to be able to make choices in life when it matters rather than being the victim of circumstances, but the choice comes with knowledge and understanding, more I understand life better choices I make, and this power is the most precious gift reading has given to me.
I believe these are enough reasons for you to be burning to start your journey, but how? What about the other part, why then reading often feels tiring, boring and sleepy?
How To Start Reading
I would say that reading War and Peace is like running an ultramarathon, if you do it without training you would die of effort and boredom.
The cool part about reading is that we can use little secrets to hack our brain to enjoy reading before we even have a chance to get tired.
Feed Your Curiosity
Most of the time when I hear complaints about reading my answer is “ No dear reading is not boring you just choose the wrong date ;))”
Every book contains the unknown that will ultimately shed light on the big mysteries and the questions posed in the book, and you need to know what kind of questions you are interested in, so you can be hooked into the journey of finding your answers.
Finding your perfect book:
- What kind of movies do you like? Each movie genre has a match in literature, I recommend starting with it.
- What topics are you interested in, in your daily life? Science, art, economy, politics, religion, philosophy, or you like to gossip? All these topics have a nearly infinite number of titles.
When you answer these questions you have a direction that you can look for, yes finding a good book can be time-consuming sometimes, but I’m sure if you just google the top 10 books in (topic name) you will have enough books to start with. Many websites are talking about books, so as soon as you know what you like you will be hit with enough content about what to read for two lifetimes. And hunting for a good title for me is like treasure hunting, I do it instead of Facebook, it's a kind of procrastination without guilt aftertaste ;).
I do recommend subscribing to book clubs and seeing what books others read, this also will serve as inspiration and motivation for you not to forget about your commitment to reading.
How To Get The Habit of Reading
Habits are hard and simple…
There is no secret, here you need to do it regularly every day. The hardest one is actually to convince yourself that you have plenty of time for reading.
Getting the Reading Habit:
- Read 15 minutes a day every day, add a reminder to your calendar, is important to get into the habit of doing it every day, when you get to do that you will notice that reading often is easier and more fun than opening Facebook or watching a movie, and you can do it any time if you have 5 minutes.
- Replace procrastination with reading - look at times when you procrastinate and plan to replace them with reading.
- Make the book accessible - put it where you relax, near the couch, beside your bed.
- Give it 15 min - read the book for a few pages, if it is not loved from first sight leave it for later, now stick only to books that are 100% entertaining, reading has to be FUN!
- Start with simple books - don’t try to read books that are hard to understand, if you catch yourself straining too hard to understand what it means, leave it for later, and move to another book.
- Listen to audiobooks - you don’t have to sit and read. You can start with audiobooks, for example, I listen to books when I clean, take care of my flowers, or when I cook and this is hours of reading I can get through one book a week only on chores time. I also listen to books when I draw )))
- Include your family in reading - reading with your significant other or your children (this is actually how my mom got me to come back to reading, not when I was 2, when I was older she would read for me too) this way I get to spend more time with my husband and we get to share the experience together and it is romantic for sure, and we spend days on discussing the book later. We have these Arabic nights on the balcony with masala tea, dried fruits, and reading, it’s magic…
- Read on all formats - paperback, kindle, smartphone, laptop… I have several books started depending on what is accessible for me at the moment I read when I can, for example, read or listen while I wait or commute on my phone.
Top Free Ebook Libraries!
Project Gutenberg
Free Ebooks - download and read, their library is the biggest library with over 60K titles (don’t forget to support them!)
Librivox
Free domain audiobooks - boasting over 15K recorded books thanks to worldwide community contributions (which you can become one too, also don’t forget to support them too).
Internet Archive
Books, audiobooks, and so much more!
Open Library
Google Books
Paid, Free, Digital, and Audiobooks.
Smashwords
567,538 books!
Many Books
Free and discounted books.
And the list goes on! Just google it…Happy reading!
