Reading Is Foundational to A Higher Quality of Life

Read more to be more

Reading is a powerful exercise for well-being, often overlooked despite its foundational role in progress. It provides information for evaluating options and making better decisions, fosters independent thinking, and strengthens the mind. Research shows that reading can indeed change your mind.

MRI scans confirm that reading involves complex brain networks, which strengthen as reading ability develops. From 2004-2017, US reading time dropped from 23 to 17 minutes per day, a 26% decrease in valuable information. Those aged 15-44 read less than 10 minutes daily, while those 75 and older read for 44 minutes.

The cliché "reading is power" is supported by wealthy individuals, who spend an average of 47 minutes daily on reading, equating to about 2 books per month. 88% of financially successful people read at least 30 minutes each day. While your goal may not be wealth, financial success offers freedom and autonomy.

Entering a new world

Reading introduces you to new perspectives and ideas, expanding your horizons. Words form sentences that bring ideas to life, helping you understand how to turn them into reality. The more you read, the better you can communicate your thoughts and take effective action to achieve significant results.

The more you read, the greater your opportunity to bring those wonderful ideas to life. It's about merging the concept with execution to create something truly remarkable. This simply requires refining your thoughts so you can clearly express what's happening in your mind. This process can invigorate and empower you, motivating you to keep learning continuously.

Reading offers more than just financial benefits; it also serves as an excellent stress reliever, helping us cope with the numerous challenges we encounter that hinder our optimal performance. In fact, reading can decrease stress by 68% more effectively than listening to music or taking a walk.

When you can become immersed in what you are reading you escape the challenges for a short period of time to unwind, recharge and gain better perspective to help you overcome what you are up against. Reading can spark an idea that you may not have considered, or it can help you laugh through what you imagine that is happening.

Increased emotional intelligence

A significant advantage of reading is that it enhances emotional intelligence by allowing you to see things from the narrator's or character's viewpoint. It involves stepping outside your own perspective to understand others' viewpoints. This familiarizes you with how to support a friend experiencing something similar, and if this type of situation occurs, you're more equipped to offer comfort during their struggles.

This naturally is also going to help you out individually as well because you might be going through something similar about what you're reading. Where it gives you that chance to give yourself some distance from what you're going through and seeing it from a big picture point of view that helps you better handle it.

This further develops your ability to regulate your emotions to be able to process it and figure out how to best move forward. The greater your emotional intelligence is the greater overall success you'll experience in life. And remember success is all dependent on how you define it so really, it's overall better life experiences.

Emotional intelligence is a bigger factor in your overall ability to handle life better than just intelligence itself. Instead of fighting those painful emotions to avoid or suppress them you know how to interpret what's going on from an emotional standpoint to prepare you going forward instead of holding you back.

It’s simply not about using facts or logic to work your way out of situations but how composed you can be during difficult times to make good decisions. To be resilient and bounce back from the setbacks and failures that you’ve gone through. Intelligence by itself does not equal good decisions. There are many that are highly intelligent but make poor decisions and are unable to handle emotions well leads to poor outcomes.

Reading exposes you to a wide range of emotions, such as sadness, anger, and excitement, which you store in your memory. Books, especially autobiographies, offer insights into others' experiences and wisdom, allowing you to apply these lessons to your life. While smart people learn from their mistakes, wise people learn from others', and reading helps you do just that by revealing others' mistakes and how they could have been avoided.

Read things that you enjoy

Although reading might initially seem dull, this perception could be due to the material not capturing your interest. It's important to find something that truly engages you. School can be a drawback in this regard because it covers a wide range of subjects, and most students aren't interested in everything or even in a few topics being discussed.

If that's the situation, take the lead and find reading material that captivates you, whether it's about cars, fashion, cuisine, skiing, or mountain biking. Whatever sparks your curiosity, pursue it. As with anything new or something you wish to dive deeper into, it requires a bit of an adjustment period to overcome the initial resistance to exploring that path.

In today's world, it's simple to get distracted by numerous things that capture our attention, with videos being a particularly appealing method to receive information that is both entertaining and educational. However, reading has its own value, as it truly broadens the mind and helps slow down your thoughts for improved focus.

It enhances your imagination and encourages diverse thinking, unlike pictures and videos that can limit your perspective to what is visible. Read whatever interests you. It doesn't have to be just books; it can include various articles, magazines, blogs, or short stories. Anything that truly sparks your curiosity and desire to learn more.

Further developing yourself

Increasing your reading enhances learning, decision-making, productivity, and social interaction. In essence, it opens up more opportunities that result in better outcomes and an overall enhanced quality of life. It encourages you to be more proactive, enabling you to anticipate potential issues and devise solutions in advance. This foresight helps prevent certain problems by allowing you to recognize and address them before they escalate.

Great entrepreneurs identify problems and provide solutions by offering products or services. This self-education can lead to success. For example, Brian Chesky, co-founder of Airbnb, turned his rent-paying issue into an opportunity by renting out his room. Realizing others might want to do the same, he created a platform for short-term home rentals, addressing a common problem with a unique solution.

Always strive to learn, as it enriches life. It fosters a sense of wonder about the world, encouraging you to embrace the future. Challenges become opportunities that can significantly impact your quality of life. This focus on the future prevents complacency and dwelling on past errors. It keeps you agile and adaptable to whatever arises.

Adjusting your course boosts confidence, enabling exploration of new opportunities and calculated risks. It enhances versatility, helping you learn from the past, understand the present, and see the bigger picture of potential outcomes. This balanced perspective avoids deep pessimism and excessive optimism, strengthening self-trust and promoting independence.

Less reading, more limitations

But reading less as expected limits what can be done. Low literacy rates have a huge impact on the U.S. economy costing $230 billion in health care annually because of the inability to read well enough to understand health information. It costs $225 billion annually in non-productivity in the work force and loss of tax revenue due to unemployment. This leads to an estimation of $2.2 trillion annually that it is costing the economy because of lack of personal income, unemployment levels, health and overall economic growth.

These estimations give an idea of how much revenue that is being missing out on. Reading more increases literacy rates that opens a wide opportunity to improve your life. It's not so much that having more money is going to make you happier but it gives you a deeper understanding of what you want in life and what you want out of yourself. Then you can use money as a tool to help facilitate that. By being well informed it is a very empowering feeling to know that you can do many different things, even new things that might have once seemed scary.

A lot of things that we fear or tend to shy away from is because of a lack of understanding. But the more that you come to understand and inform yourself of what is unclear the more connection you make that makes life that much more meaningful. A big culprit that really riles us up is the news in general because what grabs our attention is negativity and that is what the news generally delivers.

Our natural instincts lead us to focus more on negative aspects to ensure our safety. This emotional response often causes us to make decisions driven by fear, prompting us to avoid certain things. The saying "curiosity killed the cat" tends to discourage exploring topics that appear frightening, threatening, or simply misunderstood.

However, reading counters this by helping you comprehend all the components of the story you might be receiving. When certain videos or images are presented, they can sometimes provide a misleading impression of the entire situation. They are snapshots that can be misinterpreted when taken out of context. By researching the background of what we first see or interpret, we gain a deeper understanding that there are multiple perspectives to consider.

Final thoughts

Make reading a habit where you're seeking things out and use it as a tool to further develop yourself. To unwind, to develop your imagination of whatever it might be. Some say that information is the new oil meaning that the more information you have and knowing how to use it properly it can set you up for a great life. This is evident in the business world where entrepreneurs can see a problem, provide a viable solution and know how to sell that to consumers.

Reading is directly correlated with the quality of life that you're setting yourself up for. Whether it's financial, health, personal growth, relationship, career opportunities, travel all these things are made possible by reading. We're all not born knowing so we must acquire knowledge, acquire skills and that takes initiative. Take the initiative and ask questions as it propels you to seek out information, whatever that can develop and advance you. Reading is foundational to your trajectory in life so invest in yourself by consistently reading and you’ll grow your overall value.