I’ve been finding myself reading a lot lately not just at work, bus and metro but at home as well. Usually, I would come home and watch my shows and surf the net. Sometimes, I would even play video games but lately I’ve become more motivated. I read literally ALL DAY. As a young child in elementary school I was a fond reader of books. My grandfather would constantly purchase me books to read in which I would finish within a day or two. For my birthday and Christmas I would get books as Christmas presents and it thrilled me upon receiving them.
Somewhere along the way as I entered high school I began to stop reading. I don’t know what happened exactly but I completely stopped. It could have been the fact that I was in my phase of video games or acquiring an interest in other past times such as website creation. Regardless, I stopped reading. Throughout high school, college and university I began to hate reading just because I was forced to read textbooks and boring novels for English class. My reading began to slow down. What would have habitually taken me a day or two to finish a book, took me weeks to close to a month to finish simply due to the fact that I had no interest and kept falling asleep every time I tried to read. It also didn’t help that I stayed up late and got only 4-5 hours of sleep every night. Often times it would be less. This was partly due to me entering my “Party Phase” as they call it. Clubs, bars and partying took over most of college and half of my university years.
After I stopped reading, my brain began to process the information slower. I kept having to read and re-read sentences over again because I would either not understand them or my mind would phase out but my eyes would keep rolling over the words. And before I knew it, I would stop, look back and realize I didn’t actually read it. This was the main reason why it took me so long to finish a book or textbook. Another thing that didn’t help was the fact that I didn’t like to miss out on anything. I didn’t want to miss a single word. It goes the same for me today. I prefer when there are subtitles in a movie or show because then I could understand every single thing the person was saying. Even when I miss on just one part of the speech, I rewind a bit and replay the scene over again. I am weird I know. I don’t know the cause of it or how this began to happen.
Today, it’s a little better though in terms of reading. Instead of taking 3-4 weeks to finish a book I could finish a book within a week and half or two weeks. It is a lot better. Reading comes with practice really. You can train yourself to read faster just give yourself time. I find myself reading all the time nowadays. I read a bunch of articles especially now that I am subscribed to a bunch of email newsletters it forces me to read. Even on my own time at work, all I do is read articles. I think I would say that I seem to have an addictive personality or “phases” meaning, I get interested in certain things very quickly. Once I enter one of my “phases” for a specific interest, I would literally spend all of my free time learning about it until I know it or I’ve exhausted all of the information I can find about it.
For example, sometime during this year I decided to learn more about the retirement products that my company offers. Since I had an RPP already, I wanted to know what it consisted of and how it worked. I got my co-worker into it as well. Even though it’s been two years that I’ve been working for the company, no one has really taught me anything about the products. Therefore, I had to learn it on my own. For about 2-3 weeks, I read up everything I could about it on my free time. I asked questions to HR and the people managing the products. I watched videos about it and researched all that I possibly could. I even took notes. Once I had all the information I wanted I completely shut down the interest and moved onto something else. All the phases I’ve had so far this year were on retirement, history, investments, health and fitness.
Currently, I am in my “phase” of self-improvement and investments. This is the longest time I have ever been in a phase. It’s been probably about a month now since I started really getting into it. I had a phase at the beginning of the year of self-improvement but in fitness and health. I still kind of have that phase except now it is more focused on investments and how to become successful. Thus, literally all of my free time I read, read and read some more. I have developed my love for reading again. I get excited when I start a new book. I download tons of books into my Ebook and listen to podcasts all day at work. I try to make it a goal to learn something new every day and record it down. I blog about it, I discuss it with my co-worker, my love and with a tiny percentage of my friends (like 2 friends…or even 1).
I am just so hyped and want to get more people into it. I want to inspire others as Robert Kiyosaki has. I want to make a difference and I want people to be more financially educated. I’ve been literally recommending his book for everyone to read. The book conveys such a powerful message. I know I’ve been hyping a lot about him a lot and mentioned his name countless number of times in my blog posts but I really can’t thank him enough for inspiring me the way he has. I have never really had a role model before besides my mother. But I could proudly say that Robert Kiyosaki is my role model so forgive me if you are getting tired of hearing his name all the time.
Anyways, thanks for reading! I really enjoy whoever is reading my posts out there.
X.O.X.O.
-Fifster