At dinner with best friends in Manhattan this week she asked me what books to read.
She saw this article I wrote 11 years ago and wanted to know what books are most valuable for her to be reading.
I told her to be wary.
Is it worth your time?
You’ve gotta be careful reading.
Cut out
I read little.
About 15 years ago I cut out reading media and over recent years even cut out checking headlines.
You are what you eat and you’ve gotta be careful what you feed your brain.
It’s not just negative and often untrue, but it’s intended to consume you.
Ask yourself what is best for you to consume?
Books too
I’ve mostly cut out books too.
I read for specific training, such as certain books like hypnosis I read for nuance and mastery.
Over decades I read thousands of books on what I most care about living your best life, thinking and feeling your best and creating reality.
But I also saw many books with same concepts repeated over and over which is why my Do What You Want book is the one I wish someone handed me when I began this work.
Because it takes little knowledge.
Impotent
Knowledge is impotent.
It’s not what you know that makes your life better but what you do with it.
Also I saw nearly all reading is just information that never becomes knowledge because you’re never studying it like you did in school.
It takes little knowledge to achieve most things such as getting in shape or crushing your goals, just the hard part is actually doing it.
This is how knowledge acquisition is resistance.
Resistance
Much reading and podcasts and all this information out there you see is entertainment.
It’s all good lots of people are into lots of entertainment just you want to know exactly why you’re consuming.
I’m consuming information to turn to knowledge to work into systems to put to work every day perfecting what matters most to me.
Many things I’ve deeply studied over decades are refined into summaries and summaries of summaries and baked into systems and methods my clients and I are putting to work every day.
Living your best life is never about what you know butย how you’re using it.
Go for it
I’ve thought about deleting this article many times over years and instead we opted for putting a postscript at the top.
Here I’m saying I’d never read thousands of books again nor would I pour through a book a week thinking it will change your life.
I would find few of the best of the best of the best books that matter most to you and religiously study and master putting to work.
Legendary books like How To Win Friends and Influence People one can say, “Yep, I read that.”
As I said to best friends at dinner to me it’s not about reading but using books to go for it. ๐