Return to Reading

For several years I was working with a brilliant mentor. One of his simplest and most profound assignments was to read at least 15 minutes a night before going to bed from a book by a credible author. Idally, have four books going at once addressing business, relationships/people skills, spirituality, and personal growth. (Yes, Virginia, that adds up to over 15 minutes.)

The reasons are numerous: Reading lets you leverage other people's life experiences so you can get results with only a minimum of crashing around clueless. Reading before you sleep gives your mind all that lovely, distractionless time to chew on ideas and mingle them with your own life's happenings and synthesize solutions or mind-blowing breakthroughs. Reading gets your focus off of problems and onto solutions, and programs your brain's reticular activating system to draw resources and applications from world around you. (Not often I get to use "reticular activating system" in casual conversation!)

The challenge of course, is staying awake. The results speak for themselves.

Over the last few months, I let the discipline and intention slip. Too tired, no books catch my eye, just kinda forget about it, insert lame excuse here.

And the results speak for themselves.

So I kick in the habit again. While I'm waiting for some new gems to catch my eye, I'm rereading old classics--and gleaning fresh insight. Any of you have suggestions for my mental midnight snack?