Are YOU Reading and Writing Enough?

I remember as a little girl going into the dark, musty (not really but I felt that way because I watched scary movies) basement of our house. Growing up on the east coast we all had basements. They were such fun places and usually off limits because the parents said so.

Each time I’d go down there by myself I’d check for black crickets because they freaked me out. I knew they wouldn’t bite or do anything bad but I didn’t want them jumping on me.

Once I checked and knew that everything was ‘a-ok’, I’d stand in front of this wall of books. It was a huge wall of all the books that my dad had recently read. There were hundreds of them. All types of stories of fiction and non fiction and it seemed like hallowed ground.

Funny thing is I never touched them and went to the library to get my own. I recall sitting in my closet on the little step that was made and reading for hours on end.

What has this got to do with you?

Books are a gateway. If you aren’t reading more as your path meanders along into more life and success, then you’re losing out on thinking in new ways. A book helps you synthesize the ideas and lessons that you’ve been pondering, but someone else could express in a unique way.

Successful People Do This

They read a lot of books.

It is said that successful people read the majority of the books written. Not that I mean they read them all, but there are many more people who don’t read than who do.

Some of the benefits of reading are:

• more creativity

• be more informed

• reflection is a key to higher performance

• able to relax

• better memory

I Never Thought

It’s fascinating, but I don’t believe it ever occurred to me when I was a child to write a book. When I was in junior high I was told that I was a terrible writer, even though I got straight A’s.

Turns out that my life plan was to write, but it came about in two sneaky ways.

One of those ways was when I first moved to California and worked for a start-up (that got me hooked on the idea that start-ups were my future, but that’s another story that you can find in my videos and bio) and they had me write all the technical manuals and the fun copy for their catalogs.

Boy I made a lot of mistakes, but kept at it. The other way writing snuck into my life was when a friend asked me to help them edit their screenplay. I had never even seen a screenplay before, but they thought I was the one to help. We spent hours on this thing and most of it was me while he slept on the sofa and I just was so into the process.

I learned so much from those two experiences and during that editing of the screenplay (which we actually pitched to producers) I was inspired to write an article to the Los Angeles Times.

Something was eating at me and I felt that all of Los Angeles needed this one piece of information. I wrote it and sent it off.  I didn’t think about it again…until I got a phone call from the editor and they wanted a photo of me so they could publish the article.

Wow

..suddenly I was a writer…

All of this is to share that reading and writing are gateways to a better you and it’s led me to write seven books. One of those has sold over 10,000 copies, which I self published and never did marketing for it… so that’s pretty good. You can find my books here or on Amazon.

What are you reading today?