As A Man Thinketh #2 You Are Today Due to the Books that You (or Don't) Read

“People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound”
(James Allen, As A Man Thinketh)

We spend hundreds of ringgit a year for clothing, cosmetics, body products and other items to change or improve our outward appearance but very little money or time to change our inward condition. Many people easily spend hours a day online, going to gym, playing games, watching series and movies but find every reason in the world not to spend even a few minutes a day to improving their minds.

Since it is our thoughts that determine the life we will have, you must focus on doing those things that will change your thoughts, and nothing is more effective at changing your thoughts than reading the right books. Charlie ‘Tremendous’ Jones writes, “You are today the same you’ll be in five years from now, except for two things: the people you meet and the books you read. The people you meet can’t always be with you, but what you read in books can remain with you a lifetime. How often we hear of individuals who began a new era in their lives from the reading of a single book.”

Are you a book reader? Why not start a new habit today? Spend just 15 minutes every day in the morning or before going to bed or whenever you’re most concentrate and focus. Read from a personal development book or biography of someone you admire (ask me if you want my book suggestions on both topics). At the end of a year you will have read about 12 books – at the end of a five years about 60 books! Through your changed thoughts you will have become much more like the “vision you enthrone in your heart.”

As English writer Aldous Huxley observed, “Every person who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant, and interesting.”

Think about it!

Lord, Give Us Today Our Daily Idea(s)

References:

1.      As A Man Thinketh (1903) by James Allen

2.      Day by Day with James Allen (2003) by Vic Johnson