Fiction, a tool for personal growth

Since I was a child most of my free time was spent reading fiction. At least until 2 years ago when I found what I wanted to do and noticed that I wouldn’t have enough time to accomplish it unless I cut on fiction

I stopped reading and watching as much and dedicated my time to work. This went pretty well at least for the first year, but at some point, I needed something to get my mind to rest.

I started to read and watch again. And it was there that I noticed that reading fiction can give you way more than I ever thought.

Reading as a means to Introspection

During the year I stopped reading fiction most of my time went into self-development and psychology. By delving into those topics I started to understand more about myself and human nature

You start to understand why you do certain things and why people react in the ways they do. But as with any other thing you need practice to actually understand what is happening.

You can get better by practicing on your daily life. And the lessons you get this way stay with you longer, but they can also affect you in unexpected ways. But the biggest problems is that you will most likely lose perspective due to the feelings involved

Being in a situation yourself usually means that you aren’t able to see all the details. It usually means that your judgment is clouded, because you are in the middle of it, because emotion is part of it and doesn’t let you think. And you make mistakes which end up hurting you and require time to recover

But these problems can be solved when you read. When you read about what other people did, you put yourself in that situation and feel what they are going through.

When you read you can get a situation that is many times close to what you are living, but this time you are an observer. You can look at it more objectively.

I am sure there are many times when you found yourself giving advice to the characters in a movie. This is because many times we see ourselves reflected in them

We see in the actions they take mistakes that we ourselves make. But because we aren’t as emotionally attached to them, we can think about what should be done.

In the same way as speaking with friends can get you great advice because they aren’t the ones living it, reading can give you the same results.

By getting rid of the layers of personal emotions that trap us and using an external proxy, we can find the answers that we otherwise would miss.

Because in the end we are fallible, when we are involved we try not to see the mistakes we make. We don’t want to admit that we might have been wrong

Which is why reading stories that are similar to your situation can serve as a way to understand yourself and the world around you.

Reading gives you the opportunity to be an observer, as well as the chance to see how someone else actually faces the same situation as you.

Shift your mindset and developing a desire to learn. Apply what you learn to your own life the stories that at first seemed unrelated to you become reflections of human nature. In the end we are all human and share worries and feelings.

So why not use the world, be it a fictional one or the ‘’real’’ one as a ‘’tool’’ to understand yourself by understanding others?