Your education doesn't stop when you leave school and why you should be a student of life
Words have the power to move you, to inspire you, to make you think and make you question, and depending on the author can bore you rigid and send you to sleep - but we're not talking about THOSE kinds, we're talking about the words that have made a difference to your life so far. The worlds wisdom condensed into easy to hold and handle formats. I prefer "books" to electronic versions, though I have both for convenience. But as we spend so much time in our electronic worlds it can be nice to curl up in a chair and enter someone else's world - just for a while.
I have had many books inspire me over the years. From classics to poetry, plays to haunting stories that I don't need to read again because the words have stayed with me (and sometimes for the wrong reasons). But there are a whole slew of books I have sitting on a shelf in front of my office desk - books that have inspired me in more ways than one to be a better person than I was yesterday, books that will challenge me every time I re-read them.
Yes I did say re-read. Every so often I start re-reading all the books on that shelf. It may take me a while and I am a fast reader, but I will go back through each one and find new information tucked away I hadn't seen the first time around. And that book shelf is constantly changing. I have books everywhere. As I was saying to a friend - I need to buy a different house so I can have a proper library this time instead of my painted one. And yes you can see where I love to work and spend time curled up in my chair reading, learning, absorbing, challenging myself and my business practices.
Do you re-read the books that have had a profound impact on your life already - don't you think they can do that again?
Are you serious about getting on - then you too need to become a student of life, and what better way than to find people who have already been there and given you a road map to show you the way.
I find those kinds of people in the contacts I have made - through facebook, twitter and LinkedIn and of course in person through the many different business dealings I have. And of those people I can't meet in person - either through geographical or historical reasons I find their printed words and read their stories, see what inspired them to be better,
Everyone you meet in person or read their words can be a teacher if you are willing to learn - are you? I know I am.