We should all strive for self improvement and personal growth every day of our lives.
If you’re reading this article, you may be asking yourself why exactly reading is so beneficial to your personal growth, or your life in general.
If you’re not asking yourself that, that’s fine. We’re going to tell you anyway — and we’re going to make you understand some facts about reading that will help you look at it in a different light.
And just because we’re that great, we’re going to give you a useful resource on making your non-fiction, goal-oriented reading at least twice as efficient at the end of this article.
Please note that throughout this article, we will be primarily discussing non-fiction reading for self improvement, as opposed to fiction reading for entertainment.
Now, let’s begin.
Why Should Reading Be A Part of Your Routine?
Frankly, if you’re concerned with your personal growth and self improvement, there are many things you can do.
You can:
- Write in a daily journal.
- Get in shape.
- Learn a martial art.
- Learn meditation.
- Learn a valuable subject such as world history or geography.
- Travel to a distant location.
- And probably thousands of other things.
All of these are worthwhile ways to spend your time and expand your personal development.
But if you’re concerned with your personal development — whether you want to build a business, travel the world, learn a new skill, or just enhance your knowledge for your own boredom or self-interest; reading must be a part of your routine!
Reading is a classic way of learning that will never go out of style. No matter what type of reading it is; books, ebooks, magazines, online articles, or anything else, reading materials are cheaper to mass produce than ever, and thus are the most economical way for someone to get inside the head of an expert on their respective subjective.
It seems these days that almost every renowned expert or even semi-famous celebrity has a book, whether they wrote it themselves or it was ghost-written with their guidance.
There’s a reason for this. Not only does it grant them perceived authority and credibility as an expert, but it’s a classic and easy medium for spreading their ideas. And, of course, they also make money.
If you’re a big fan of someone, you’ll probably read their book. Among many other reasons, this is often because reading their writing gives you a solid perspective of how their mind works.
For instance, if you want to know how a successful investor looks at the world, you’d probably want to read a book such as Rich Dad Poor Dad. By doing this, you’re delving outside of your world to see the world from the viewpoint of the rich, and thus, you’ll be taught crucial techniques on money management that you likely never thought of before you read the book.
Even if you read just an average of 30-60 minutes a day, if you read enough articles and books over a long course of time, you’ll get a ton of viewpoints on the world that will provide you a ton of knowledge you wouldn’t have obtained otherwise. This bodes handsomely for your personal growth and success, especially if you choose to use that knowledge to take yourself further in your life.
And look, despite the fact that people generally prefer to watch Youtube these days, the power of the written word has not changed. Authors know that they’re literally telling you what to think for the duration of your time reading their books. That’s power for the author; and for a reader who wants to hear the author’s message, that’s incredibly powerful as well.
So why else should you become an avid reader? We’ll give you five more reasons.
Five More Reasons Why Reading is Great for Self Improvement and Personal Growth
1. Reading is the cheapest and easiest way to get in-depth knowledge from an expert on their given subject.
While experts might sell seminars or charge you expensive hourly rates for their personal time, what they deliver in book form is exponentially cheaper than anything. Reading allows you to access an expert’s mind for dirt cheap.
2. Reading is an inexpensive, productive past time in general.
It is way cheaper to be an avid reader than an avid hunter, car collector, or anything else. Not that we have anything against vacations, but a “staycation” with a great book can be very relaxing and mind opening. For best results, take a staycation to somewhere local, peaceful, and beautiful, then bust out the reading!
3. Reading is among the highest ROI (Return on Investment) activities for personal growth.
Again, due to the inexpensiveness and insight you acquire from reading, reading is one of the best ROIs activities you can do. Just make sure you follow up reading with action (which we will discuss soon).
4. Most books are loaded with the information you need to get started on or dramatically improve your knowledge in a given subject
You really don’t need to go to an expensive class or seminar. If you want to start a business or a side gig, reading a book and then putting the principles into action is a lot cheaper and often more effective than going to school for it. It depends on the subject, of course, but you can read about the majority of subjects, then put the practices into action and become very well versed over a course of time.
5. Reading makes you a better communicator.
If you have any interest in enhancing your communication skills for any reason, whether it’s through writing or speaking, reading a lot will make your communication skills much better. Reading will teach you how to tell a story, how to persuade, how to educate, and a lot more.
We think these are all great reasons to read for personal growth. Have we convinced you yet?
How Reading is Changing
Now, let’s mention something interesting and important to note. Although reading will never go away, the way we’re reading is changing.
As we all know, e-books are becoming much more popular, even if they are not taking over entirely. At Publishing Pulse, we love Kindles because they are excellent at just giving you the book to read with no distractions. It’s totally different reading on a Kindle versus a cell phone or tablet because the latter options will distract you anytime a message comes up from a friend or just one of your 5000 installed apps. Distractions make you dramatically less productive!
But many people still have a hard time putting down their distractions. And because everything is constantly trying to grab our attention, it’s a lot harder to sit down and read an entire 200+ page book for most people than it used to be.
Fortunately, there’s a market for this. You can get an excellent introduction to a subject with a book that doesn’t take you more than an hour to read. If you truly like the subject, then you can dive in much deeper with another book.
For example, if you’re wanting a quick but still detailed dive in meditation, you would want to pick up a copy of Self Compassion and Mindfulness For Healing and Acceptance to learn some basic meditation theory, techniques, and to reduce your daily stress. The chances are very high that you’ll love the book, get a ton of value out of it, and want to learn even more about meditation. But if you realized you had no interest in it, you only spent $2.99 and an hour of your life, and still probably learned something useful anyway!
If you’re interested in a quick tutorial on eliminating your procrastination habits, you would want to pick up a copy of The Sexiest Book On Smashing Procrastination You’ll Ever Read (we know the title is funny).
Although detail can be very useful, you often don’t need to spend a ton of time researching certain subjects. Often times you just need a few great ideas, and you just need to act on them. Procrastination is one of those subjects, and thus it’s generally wiser to read an informative but shorter book to get to the important information quickly— otherwise, you might just procrastinate some more.
Anyway, perhaps we ranted a bit there. If you want to read longer books, there’s no shame in it whatsoever. We believe that longer books and shorter books both have their places. The point is that the industry is changing, and that means more options for you as a reader.
And of course, we’re a business — so we wanted to slyly plug some of our shorter self-development books that we are very confident will help you!
Let’s Not Pat Ourselves On the Back Too Soon….
Let’s make one final point that we were hitting at. If you want to accelerate your personal growth, you cannot just read.
As we love to say here at Publishing Pulse, if you are reading a nonfiction book for self improvement, you must apply the information that you are reading into your life as much as possible.
While we say it’s better to be a bookworm than someone who never takes any time to read or do any real activity towards self improvement and personal growth, it’s even better to be a doer than only a reader.
Remember, information comes first. Action comes second. If you’re reading for self improvement, you absolutely must act on what you’ve read to put it into use.
If you want to learn about how to get the most out of your reading, make sure you read How to Dramatically Improve Your Efficiency Reading Any Nonfiction Book (In Under 5 Minutes). There are some excellent tips in that article that will help you ensure that you’re getting the most out of your non-fiction reading for personal growth. As we said at the beginning of this article, this article will at least double the amount you’re getting out of your reading if you aren’t reading efficiently.
Conclusion
Read daily to accelerate your personal growth. Then act on that knowledge.
It’s a simple habit and it’s extremely powerful.
Whether you are an avid reader or just one who reads as a hobby, reading will make you a much more well rounded, more intelligent, more successful, more complete person.
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