This article was last updated on December 29, 2015
Statistically speaking, 95% of the population of North America will retire at or below the poverty line at age 65. This is after they’ve spent 45 years generating that $1.8 Million Dollars in their life. If you expect to build wealth in your life, you will have to accept the fact that you MUST begin to do the things that 95% of the population is not willing and too lazy to do, such as reading about self development.
Unless your friends have already built long term wealth in their life, they are probably part of that 95%. If 95% of your friends don’t read books, this shouldn’t surprise you.
6 Reasons Why You Should Read Self Development Books
- Self development books are a low risk investment and carry a high reward to risk ratio.
Before the invention of the printing press, books were not readily available to the mass public. Because of this, only royalty and the already wealthy had access to books and most people learned things only if they were taught first hand by a mentor, or if they figured things out for themselves the long way, via trial and error.
Today, books are very readily available; however that is also why most people dismiss them so easily. Because books are so readily available at such a small investment price, people believe there can’t be too much value in them, otherwise why would they be so cheap? Nothing could be further from the truth.
- You can re-read books.
You are never going to be ready for all the information in any given book/audio program/seminar all at once. Some parts of books will just not resonate with you yet, while other parts may totally make sense. Books allow you to re-read them in parts or in their entirety in a convenient format that’s always available to you as you progress in life.
- Books can be personalized.
You can highlight certain sentences, concepts, or ideas. You can write little notes in the margins. You can make the book yours. Nobody said you have to keep the book clean. High school is over. You OWN this book, so get the most out of it. Don’t be afraid to mark it up.
- Books are convenient to read.
Live performances happen on the presenters schedule, not yours. However you can quite easily take a book everywhere with you. They don’t even need batteries or a plug in.
- Books are read in your own voice inside your head.
You will find that your ego will be much more accepting to the information you are reading, hearing it natively in your own voice inside your head (while you read), as opposed to listening to an audio CD, or live, where your ego might be biased against the author’s tone of voice, accent, pitch, style or gender.
Your ego is trained to be a lot more accepting of anything it hears in your voice, and a lot more skeptical of anything it hears in someone else’s voice. Take advantage of this to get your ego out of the way a bit more.
If you don’t agree with a concept written in a book, that’s perfectly fine, but if you’re listening to an audio recording of an author who’s teaching concepts that make sense to you but their voice irritates you, then you might miss some great wisdom just because the person’s voice reminds you of someone you didn’t like back in elementary school. Most people like the sound of their own voice in their head. It’s what’s already there talking all the time anyways.
- You will see a difference
Reading one self development book doesn’t guarantee success, just like cleaning the dog poop out of your back-yard or painting the bathroom doesn’t guarantee you will sell your house for $25,000 more, but imagine what would happen to your real estate value if you spent 4-6 hours every week for 5 years improving it? Painting the rooms, adding a Jacuzzi tub, cleaning the back yard, starting a garden, adding a patio deck, etc.
It’s the same thing with reading self development books. It’s hard to see the value you get out of one book, but it’s easy to see the value you get out of reading a book every month or every week for a year or two or ten. I promise you will see a difference.
Photo credit: CollegeDegrees360
