Read the Right Books by Vic Johnson
“People are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” —As a Man Thinketh
We spend thousands of dollars a year for clothing, cosmetics 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 an hour a day brushing, flossing, bathing and shaving the outside, but find every reason in the world not to spend even a few minutes a day improving the inside.
How do you apply what you learn from As a Man Thinketh? 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.
I first read As a Man Thinketh because of Charlie “Tremendous” Jones. I had attended a seminar where he spoke and he had a table set up at the seminar where, among other things, he offered a huge discount on a big bundle of various personal-development and self-help books. I bought the big bundle because I’m a sucker for a “good deal.” As it turned out, it was one of the best deals of my life, because several years later, when I finally got around to reading the little book, As a Man Thinketh literally changed my life.
Here is what Charlie Jones wrote in the foreword to the book that I purchased: “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.”
Why not start a new habit today? Spend just fifteen minutes every day before going to bed or upon rising, and read from a personal-development book or biography of someone you admire. At the end of the year you will have read about 12 books—at the end of 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.”
And that’s worth thinking about.
—Vic Johnson
Vic Johnson is one of eight personal-achievement experts featured in the 12-book personal-development collection. Check out Denis Waitley, Jim Rohn, John C. Maxwell and five other celebrated personal-achievement experts in the 12 Classic Personal-Development Books Collection. Start creating your SUCCESS library today!
A very powerful and lovely lesson from Vic Johnson, which appeared in Denis Waitley’s Newsletter.
