Your Personal Growth Secret Weapon

The new year was off to a great start.

I got up early, let the dogs out, took a walk, and made coffee for my wife. I glanced at our dining room library and thought about what to read.

But then I picked up my iPad.

Ugh. So much for forswearing digital distractions in the new year.

I mindlessly scrolled through emails, and landed on the latest newsletter from my favorite minimalist, Joshua Becker. The title of his newsletter was “12 More or Less Resolutions You Can Start Today to Improve Your Life Forever.”

The newsletter contained a lot of practical advice, but one sentence (with an innocuous link) piqued my curiosity. Joshua recommended reading more books, and he included this sentence:

There is benefit in both fiction and nonfiction.

I clicked on the fiction link and it took me to a Harvard Business Review article by Christine Seifert titled, “The Case for Reading Fiction.”The more I read Seifert’s article, the more I found myself nodding affirmatively.

Then my mind wandered to a memory my mother shared with me. It was about the company my father once worked for, and the literary enrichment program they offered employees.

How many can get through to you

Before he became an attorney and administrative law judge, my father was a labor relations manager for a large company in Northern California.

The company sent Dad and several of their managers to a philosophy and literary seminar conducted by the late philosopher Mortimer J. Adler.

In the case of good books, the point is not how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you. — Mortimer Adler

The seminar included required readings which were then discussed. At one point (per my mother’s recollection) my father was called upon to interpret various Shakespeare readings about romance.

My father offered his earnest opinions and feedback, to which Adler smiled and said, “It appears, Mr. Weiss, that you know nothing about love.”

I remember this well because my mother laughed so hard re-telling the story that she spit out part of a cupcake she was eating.

My father was a life-long reader, partial to history books. He had a huge library in our living room, filled with mostly history and non-fiction books. But there were also the complete Harvard Classics and some fiction novels.

My Dad had a living room library. My wife and I have a dining room library (above).

Later in life, Dad turned to fiction more and more. “Good stories can take us many places, and sometimes teach us more than history books,” he once told me.

Like my father, my sister was an avid reader from an early age. It took me longer to embrace books because I was more interested in drawing and playing outside.

Eventually, at University, I awakened to the pleasures and benefits of reading. I’d read an occasional novel, but mostly focused on non-fiction.

I felt like non-fiction held more educational value than made-up stories in novels.

I was wrong.

People like cognitive closure

It turns out reading fiction holds far greater value than one would think. Christine Seifert’s article “The Case for Reading Fiction” contains the following summary:

When it comes to reading, we may be assuming that reading for knowledge is the best reason to pick up a book. Research, however, suggests that reading fiction may provide far more important benefits than nonfiction. For example, reading fiction predicts increased social acuity and a sharper ability to comprehend other people’s motivations. Reading nonfiction might certainly be valuable for collecting knowledge, it does little to develop EQ, a far more elusive goal.

Seifert explains that reading literary fiction helps people develop empathy, theory of mind, and critical thinking.

People like cognitive closure. They want tidy solutions free of complications and contradictions.

The problem is that life is not tidy. It’s full of competing perspectives, challenging viewpoints, varied narratives, and inconvenient facts that challenge assumptions.

Readers of good fiction learn to confront the reality of our untidy world. They learn that sometimes there are no simple, three-step answers to life’s many challenges.

In her Harvard Business Review article, Seifert writes:

University of Toronto researchers discovered that individuals in their study who read short stories (as opposed to essays) demonstrated a lower need for cognitive closure. That result is not surprising given that reading literature requires us to slow down, take in volumes of information, and then change our minds as we read. There’s no easy answer in literature; instead, there’s only perspective-taking.

Over the past year, I increased my fiction reading and noticed the profound effect that good novels and stories have on my creativity, tolerance for different views, and empathy for others.

Opening the mind

MaryAnne Wolf, author of “Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World,”argues “the quality of our reading” stands as “an index to the quality of our thought.”

In this day and age of infinite distractions and voluminous information, it’s getting harder and harder for people to develop deep concentration and focus.

The instant gratification of a Youtube cat video requires little to no concentration. But it also offers little to no edification.

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Reading forces us to slow down and concentrate, but the rewards are significant. Particularly when we choose quality novels.

Research from the University of Toronto found the following benefits from reading fiction literature:

• People who had just read a short story were able to think less rigidly and were more comfortable with disorder and uncertainty
• People who are regular readers also appeared to be more creative thinkers and less prone to snap judgments
• The study suggested reading literary fiction is a way to become more open-minded

The research goes on to note:

…while reading, the reader can simulate the thinking styles even of people he or she might personally dislike. One can think along and even feel along with Humbert Humbert in Lolita, no matter how offensive one finds this character. This double release — of thinking through events without concerns for urgency and permanence, and thinking in ways that are different than one’s own — may produce effects of opening the mind.

I’ve noticed this in my own fiction reading. Through novels, I get to know characters I would not likely associate with in real life, thus exposing me to their unique perspectives, motivations, and humanity.

The reason is very simple

If you want to improve your concentration and depth of thinking this year, pick up some good novels. Use the time normally spent on mindless social media scrolling, and immerse yourself in some great fiction.

Whether you find yourself battling a shark in Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, or following Elizabeth Bennet’s turbulent relationship with the rich aristocratic landowner Fitzwilliam Darcy in Jan Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, you’ll gain a deeper understanding of life and how people navigate it.

Reading quality novels will open you up to different perspectives, people, and the times they lived in. You’ll discover that you’re not alone in your struggles, worries, hopes, and dreams.

People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are. — G. K. Chesterton

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Reading quality fiction can become your personal growth secret weapon for the new year.

If you haven’t read novels in a while, take your time and don’t be frustrated by poor concentration. That’s just a reflection of all those mindless Youtube videos that degraded your focus.

The more you read good novels, the more you’ll wonder why you settled for shallow TV programs and superficial social media piffle. You’ll start thinking more deeply, become more intellectually curious, develop greater empathy for others, and nurture a more creative mind.

Just imagine what you’ll accomplish with your improved concentration and depth of thinking.

Before you go

I’m John P. Weiss. I write elegant stories and essays about life, which I often illustrate with my whimsical cartoons, fine art, and photography. Check out my popular Saturday Newsletter here.

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This post was previously published on Medium.

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Artworks by John P. Weiss