What is your most powerful tool for development, advancement, and gaining a competitive advantage? The answer is so simple and yet so profound – reading. It’s the secret that keeps on giving.
Development
Brain Power. If you want to develop yourself into the best that you can be, your first step is with your brain. Reading strengthens your brain power.
Writing Skills. Reading fosters better writing skills. Your vocabulary increases. You gain better comprehension. The world of good writing rubs off as you enjoy a great read. You can’t help but pick up better skills simply by exposure to them.
Life Knowledge. Reading, particularly good novels, puts you into different situations and conflicts with resolution. You find solutions that you can apply to your own life. Reading teaches life lessons. Novels are extraordinary tools that teach through the power of story.
Open-Mindedness and Inclusivity. Lately, we as a society have become very aware of how much we need these traits. Open-mindedness leads to compassion, which leads to tolerance, which leads to acceptance and inclusivity. Reading opens the mind to worlds we don’t know and puts us into the minds of people who are different from us.
Career Advancement
Enhanced Empathy. Whether you are in business for yourself, or building a fabulous career, empathy skills are necessary to advancing your goals. Business is all about the customer. The customer drives success, and empathizing with that customer is vital to achieving that goal. Reading can help strengthen the empathy you already possess.
Potent Communication Skills. As we saw in Writing Skills above, reading helps move our penned skills forward. It also helps us strengthen our verbal skills. As we bolster these two areas of communication, that connection becomes more effective. We learn to converse with each other in ways that bring true understanding.
Augmented Imagination. Reading compels growth in the skill of making connections between different ideas. As you pull pieces of information together in this way, they stretch the imagination to form a cohesive picture. Bringing forth new solutions to old problems.
Gaining a Competitive Edge
Focus and Concentration. For all its contribution to advancement, technology has one very dark side. We have become obsessed with the interaction and increased pace of life it brings. We are lazy, letting the technology do everything for us. Reading allows us to slow our world down. We can take the time we need to assimilate what we are learning. This process bolsters focus and concentration, two important elements of personal power lost in an addiction to technology.
Memory Enhancer. Novels contain many details that you must remember so that you understand the story. Memory is like a muscle. When you use it, you build it into a powerhouse. Working puzzles and other brain teasers bring a similar effect, but why not enjoy the delight of reading while increasing your memory skills at the same time?
Improves analytical skills. Analytical reading means to analyze the information you read critically in order to make appropriate decisions based on that information. As you analyze what you read, the result is better critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
If increasing your personal growth and power is high on your priority list, the easiest way to start is to include reading on a daily basis. With so many benefits, what have you got to lose?
Copyright 2022, Monica Nelson
