Are Book Readers Becoming Extinct?

Reading for enjoyment

Many of us, in everyday life, spend a hefty proportion of our time reading. The reasons for this reading will vary from person to person. Mostly, though, it will either be for the purposes of keeping up with the news, or for work purposes. This is a perfectly good reason for reading, of course. There is, however, some sense of injustice in the fact that merely living is taking the element of fun out of something that we used to do almost entirely for pleasure. Reading a book just because we want to do so, as a simple pleasure, is something that disappointingly few of us are doing. There are numerous reasons for this, and they say a lot about how the meaner side of human nature has taken hold among many of us.

There is a sense among a sadly growing number of people that reading is simply something for the college kids and the wannabe intellectuals. Who reads for pleasure these days, people will seriously ask, when we have DVDs, cinemas and the TV for our entertainment? There is even an element of distrust shown towards those of us who like to read. It is a massive shame, but it seems that there is a tendency to dumb things down and to actually wear ignorance as a badge of honour. Just to clarify things, there is nothing shameful about cracking a book every once in a while and reading for fun. Don’t be concerned about people looking at you in a slightly dimmer way just because you enjoy the written word. It is something that gives life a bit of flavour. A good book can take you outside the confines of the everyday and turn free time into dream time.

Now, this is not an order to go out and read the classics. If you don’t like Shakespeare you don’t have to read him. If Dickens doesn’t do anything for you, don’t buy his books. It really isn’t about who you read, or even what you read. It’s about why. And the fact is that sometimes reading for pleasure can make a real difference. It relaxes you physically while at the same time exercising your mind. Even a fairly simple and pedestrian novel that won’t win any awards will keep your brain functioning at a higher level, exercise that it needs in order to keep operating at the level you are used to.

So, if you have a favourite childhood book that always used to make you laugh or smile, why not pick that up once more? If a friend is reading something that they deem excellent, ask if you can borrow it when they’ve finished with it. Reading just for the sake of pleasure is something that makes us richer as a people, and something that should survive the prospect of being sneered at. It really is good fun, and we should see it as such. Find a new favourite author and read as many books as you can find, and before too long you’ll be reading a couple of books a week!

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on June 14, 2009.

Why You Are So Tired?

Are You Getting Enough Sleep?

Most of us will, at least once a day if not more often, feel a little bit short of energy and experience a desire to stop whatever we are doing and go chill out for a spell. Excessive tiredness is a surprisingly common complaint, and it affects people in all manner of jobs from the highly physical to the mainly sedentary. How often will you hear someone say “I really don’t know why I am so tired – I’ve not even done much today!”?

The reason that people find themselves wondering just that is that they have, as often as not, got too little sleep. In today’s society, the work-life balance tends to be weighted firmly in favour of work – and that leaves many of us fighting to get through the week. “That Friday Feeling” may be about partying for some people, but for many of us it is more about feeling blessed relief that we can crawl under the duvet for a spell.

For many of us, work commitments mean getting out of bed at any time from 5am onwards. To get the eight hours of sleep that the average human being needs, this would necessitate going to bed at some time prior to 9pm. If you have got back from the office at any point after five or six o’clock, that leaves you with a very short window in which to get something to eat, chat with family or friends, and get ready for bed. Although that sounds monstrous, it doesn’t always happen that way, as we often rebel against our body clock and stay up a few more hours to watch TV or whatever else we like to do.

The problem with doing that is that we are simply saving up a “sleep debt” for ourselves, which our body will be looking to cash in at some point. For those of us who have weekends off, this means that as often as not we will spend the mornings of Saturday and Sunday catching up on missed sleep. So much for any plans we had to get things done around the home.

The solution to the sleep debt problem is not immediately evident. Many of us just accept that we will have to deal with the effects of sleep deprivation during the week, get ourselves back on a relatively even keel at the weekend, and then begin the process anew on Monday. If we could all find jobs that allowed us eight hours of work, eight hours of free time (minus travel and preparation times) and eight hours of sleep, we’d probably all be a lot happier. As this is not an achievable situation, we have to look at the options we do have.

It is vital, however, that we all realize that burning the candle at both ends is not a sustainable way of doing things, long term. If you can find a way to increase your window of opportunity for sleeping, then it is a good idea to do so. You will feel a great deal more recharged as a result.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on June 7, 2009.

How To Motivate Yourself In Difficult Times

Take Inspiration and Motivate Yourself

There are times when it can be difficult to motivate yourself to do pretty much anything. These times can spring from anything from tiredness to fear, and there are certainly cases where the reluctance to act can be caused by a medical condition, but what it boils down to is that a reluctance to act, which can be extensively damaging, is often the product of a combination of matters and can be hard to overcome. In these situations you need to look at the problem head-on and say “I’m not going to be broken down by this – I’m going to break it down”. Although this is generally easier said than done, managing it brings many rewards.

The ability to stick at things even when it seems difficult or pointless is something prized highly by bosses. It wouldn’t be fair to say that apathy is endemic in society, but it is troubling to see talented people laid low by a lack of confidence, especially when that lack is brought on by what amounts to an arbitrary failure. Say, for example, that a person has competed in a talent contest or an open training session for a sports team. In such cases, talent is very much in the eye of the beholder. Coaches and record execs have often made the decision to plump for one of two people based on a very subjective selection criteria. The people who have been passed over may have gone on to assume that they would never succeed, but that is not always the case.

Witness the NFL. Every year teams draft players to feature in the playing squads that will take them through a season, and they have their selection criteria set ahead of time. It is universally accepted that guys selected in the first round of seven are expected to succeed, those selected in the second and third rounds are hopefuls, and below that you may have a 50/50 chance of making it if you put everything into the game. In 2000, Tom Brady was selected in the sixth round by the New England Patriots. Nine years later he has won three Superbowls, being voted Most Valuable Player in two of them. 2000 was widely viewed pre-Draft as a thin year for quarterbacks, and five were selected before Brady. The truth is that sometimes people don’t realize what they have passed up.

There are stories like this in all categories, and every time it is the story of the individual who was passed over for an arguably less talented person because it’s just this simple – opinions differ. If you let one person’s evaluation of you be the one that sticks, and it’s a negative opinion, then you don’t give anyone else the encouragement that might be the difference between choosing you and passing you over. Keep in mind that sometimes people need to keep trying in order to succeed – take inspiration from one of the many who may not have got there first, but have stayed there longer than those who did.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on August 8, 2009.

The Internet and Personal Development

The Internet Can Aid Personal Growth Immensely

There are an awful lot of stereotypes directed at the Internet and its users, although to some extent these stereotypes are becoming less prominent. Regardless of the changing opinions of individuals, however, there is still a hard-wired impression that those of us who choose to spend a fair portion of our life online must be socially inadequate, and in some way not equipped to live a “normal life”. It should not be ignored that the people who express this impression most vocally are rarely much of a role model for anyone – and their unfounded prejudices may well suggest that they are quite the opposite. The Internet can, in fact, work excellently as a tool for personal development.

Think about it this way. If you are growing up in a relatively small town with very clearly defined values and preferences, and happen to grow up with a mindset that is at odds with those values and preferences, life can be pretty lonely. Geography in this sense is incredibly limiting. With the advent of the Internet, however, it has become possible for like minded individuals from locations poles apart to form strong bonds of friendship. There are caveats to this process, of course – taking people at face value is inadvisable – but these caveats are no more pronounced than those which arise when interacting with someone who is physically in the same room as you. It is always important to keep an eye out for people who are keen to dissemble and distract.

Online forums are one way of getting to know people who have similar interests. There are so many forums and message boards on the Internet, devoted to such a wide range of interests, that it would be quicker to name the subjects that are not catered to than those that are. Sports, music, politics, whatever interests you there is likely to be a community or two (or a few thousand) devoted to it. On here, you may get the kind of conversation that you simply cannot have with a geographical neighbour. In addition, it is an excellent way to get a bit of debating practice – by speaking to people whose opinions on your subject of interest differ from yours, you can build a greater understanding of matters, something which aids personal growth immensely.

Social networking sites are often viewed very dimly by media commentators and everyday skeptics. There is a certain selective interpretation of the medium in this – for one thing, the media commentators are a little concerned that they will cease to be as relevant, and secondly the most scathing attitudes to social networking are based on a hugely skewed sample. Yes, there are some complete and utter fools on these sites, and when their pronouncements are frozen for posterity online it is hard not to cringe. But some real deep thinkers also use these sites simply because they have so much difficulty finding like-minded people nearby. By using the Internet wisely, you can find people who are really worth talking to. Like anything else, it is a matter of knowing how to separate the good from the bad.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on May 19, 2009.

Friends Can Help Overcome Stress

Honesty Is The Best Policy

Picture the scene: you have been worrying yourself into a blue funk over the course of a week with one subject dominating the horizon and no idea how you are going to deal with it. This worry arises time and again, often at inopportune moments, before sinking out of sight for long enough to give you a shot at cheering up – before the worry appears again and pulls the rag from underneath your feet. As you sit there consumed by the feeling that nothing is ever going to be enjoyable again, it is a level certainty that someone will ask you: “What’s up?”. It is also a fair possibility that you will pause for a moment and then say “Oh? No, nothing, I’m fine.”

Does that sound familiar? If so, don’t worry – you’re one of a great many people who have lived that exact scenario out maybe weekly, maybe even more often than that. We have a tendency to internalize our worries, and when someone asks us what’s going on it is somehow easier to pretend that all’s well rather than burdening them with some of what is bothering us. Never mind the fact that they may be able to help, we do not want to be thought of as wasting their valuable time. It is a little bit like a dance in a lot of ways – the initial approach, the intricate steps of offer and response, the big finish (where they walk away, perhaps a tad confused).

For politeness’ sake, we are almost hard-wired to decline any offers of help even when we would really benefit from having someone else’s advice. But if they didn’t want to help, they wouldn’t have asked. Whatever the situation you are trying to deal with, there might be something they can do. Maybe they can help materially. Maybe they’ve been there themselves and can offer advice that will fix things. Maybe they know someone who can help, even if they cannot themselves. Either way, it is counter-productive to turn down an offer of help simply because you don’t want to be impolite. If nothing else the act of telling someone, and having them listen to you, can make the problem seem a bit less insurmountable.

The act of “bottling things up” is one that we are all prone to every once in a while, but it is not a good habit to get into. Stress is a major contributor to many illnesses, both physical and mental, and allowing problems to snowball to the point where you cannot see a way out is only going to hurt you in the short and long term. A good friend will want to help you. Solving a problem is a lot easier when you have a second mind working on it. Don’t think that they are only asking in order to be polite, and that by telling them anything you will be ruining their day. They want to know. They want to help. Give them that opportunity, and it will make things a whole lot more straightforward for all concerned.

To streamline and minimize blog maintenance, I will be discontinuing maintaining the Simplepersonaldevelopment.com website (however, I will still hold the domain). I will gradually move all articles from this site to Ahmed Dawn Dot Com site. This article originally published on the above website on May 30, 2009.