Reading 1,000 Books Changed My Life

What’s your favourite thing to do?

Me? I love to read. I have other hobbies of course, but reading is probably one of the longest, deepest and most fulfilling hobbies I’ve had.

I was watching a video about 1,000 books changing someone’s brain, and as I have a passion for neuropsychology, it piqued my interest. But then I thought, reading didn’t just change my brain, it changed my life too.

In my life to date, one of the most important things that I’ve done, that has changed not just the way I think, but the way I feel, and my life in general, is reading.

I started reading when I was four-years-old. My mother taught me how to read, not because she wanted me advance educationally, but because by giving me books, she could keep me occupied, and out of her hair. It worked. I’d sit in a corner all day with a book.

The thing is, she did us both a favour.

My mother had a lot of psychological issues, so growing up with her was very tenuous. She could go from nice to manic in seconds. It meant that my childhood was a little shaky and not an experience my peers could relate to.

Reading for me was an escape. I can almost remember the moment when I thought to myself, I can be in this other world. I can have all these friends. I can be transported. Reading became not just an escape from my life, but an addiction. By the age of seven, I’d read the Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Narnia and the Lord of the Flies. I was in love with the written word.

And to me, I wasn’t seeing words or sentences on a page. I was seeing mountains, and castles, lions that could talk, children stranded on island. I could see it all like I was peering into a secret world that only I had the key to.

I used to devour books. I was like Matilda when she discovered the power of a library card. Oh, that was one of the best days of my little life. I could read all of those books.

I’d read so much that by the age of eleven, I’d read every book on the school curriculum, and they had to find me more books to read, or risk me having a school year without any reading material.

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”

George R R Martin

One Thousand Books

I titled this, 1,000 books, but in truth, I’ve probably read so much more than that. I read all the time as a child. Every spare moment, I had my nose in a book. I could easily get through two to three books per week with no issue. Even now, I devour audio books. According to my Audible statistics, I’ve already clocked up almost 700 hours in listening time so far this year, and that isn’t including the books I’ve read physically.

How could that many books not change a life?

Just think of the voices I’ve had to influence me.

Books Give Me Friends

We readers joke that fictional characters feel like friends, but I think there is some truth to it. If you wanted to look more neurologically, when characters go through things, the corresponding parts of our brains light up as if we are experiencing the same thing as them. If a character is afraid, the parts of our brain associated with fear activates. I think it’s why so many of us read. We can become who we’re reading about; we can feel what they feel, live the life they lead. But more than that, the characters in the pages are friends, and they feel like friends.

I’m not talking about the friends we call up to meet for coffee or the ones we message a funny meme to on social media. I mean friends as in someone we have a connection with.

In 2017, singer Chester Bennington took his own life. I was heartbroken, and I couldn’t work out why. I mean, we’d never met. He didn’t know me. If he walked past me in the street, he’d not have a clue, so why was I so upset?

I figured out that it was because he was one of these friends, through his music. He’d been there for me. In the dark days when depression was kicking my backside, when I wanted to curl up in a corner and die, he’d been there himself. I could relate to him. What he sang about, the stories in them, I could feel that. He made me feel not alone.

And that’s what it is with books and with stories. You can find someone, living or dead, in their words, be it fiction, non-fiction, an essay. It doesn’t matter. If you click, you click, and it’s like finding a friend.

I struggle to make friends in the real world. I haven’t always, but the older I’ve got, the less I find I have in common with other people. There is nothing more thrilling than reading a book by an author who shares the same views on life as I do. I get this intense rush of validation, and I connect with them, even if only in my head.

Books Give Me an Escape

Sure, you’ve heard this one before. Reading is an escape, but do you understand what that actually means?

Back in 2016, my father died after a long battle with cancer. In the two years leading up to that, he was very sick. He had a seizure and was bed bound for a while. Reading was my guilty peasure. I’d go and sit in his room in the place where he was receiving palliative care, and just read.

For the hour or so my body was sitting in a room with a man I was waiting death to claim, but in my head, I was in another world. At the time, I was reading Michael Grant’s, Gone Series. And I’d be transported to their world. They might have had their own trials and tribulations, but living it vicariously through the characters meant it didn’t feel the same as if I was living it myself. In those moments when I was lost in the pages, I felt a sense of comfort, like I was connected to something bigger than me. Reading let me escape, not just the reality of the world I was living, but an escape from my grief, from the helpless position I was in watching my father die.

Escaping through a book isn’t just about distraction, but it is the way our brains react to books, and to what we read. They add layers to our reality. If you get lost in a really good book, you can bring it to mind later, like a fond memory.

Reading Gives Me A New Lens

We are influenced by what we consume, and I don’t mean food. Consuming in this sense is external things such as Netflix, social media, Youtube, and in this case, reading.

When we read and get so into the world where our characters reside, and hear the author’s narration in our heads, there is an after effect where we see the would — our world through the lens of the author and the characters.

I recently read the Harry Potter series in its entirity. It took me around three months, and in that time, my old version of the world paled in existence and instead, I could see the world through Harry Potter’s eyes, and in many ways, through the lens J K Rowling had created.

I love this feeling. It’s almost like being drugged by the author to see the world in a new light.

Reading Allows Me To Learn About Myself

When we pick up a book, we go to that book with our own backgrounds, our own personalities and our own experiences. Two people will not read a book in entirely the same way because of this.

Maybe this applies more to non-fiction than fiction. I can pick two books that have made me think of myself in a different light.

1. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. Until I picked up this book and opened it, I had considered myself an atheist. If anyone asked my religion, that was my answer. I shunned their idea of God, and what they thought about religion. never to their faces, of course. But to me, they were wrong, and I was right.

I got part way through the book and realised, hardly anything of the book resonated with me. I didn’t think the same way he did; I didn’t like what he was saying, and although I tried to make myself carry on, reading that book created an awful dullness inside that something wasn’t right. It’s through reading this that I discovered my beliefs were more grounded in agnosticism.

2. The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It was sheer desperation that made me pick up that book. My mental health was shot to hell. I was dealing with my father’s illness, and I needed something.

The Miracle Morning focused on a morning routine. Until then, I’d considered myself a night owl. It turns out, I was wrong. As you can imagine with a book of that title, it talked about getting up and getting things done. I did the exercises Hal laid out, and it wasn’t them that changed my life; it was the ability to get up and get on with things. Through this book, I learnt I was so much better as a morning person. Getting up at 6 or 7 am made me feel great, compared to my usual 11 am wake up time. In fact, since reading that book, I now get up anywhere between 5 and 6 am, and it feels amazing to do so.

Reading Had So Many Benefits

There are so many reasons to pick up a book an read. Not just for the entertainment, but for the hidden benefits it gives you.

Reading improves our vocabulary. How could it not when you come across words you don’t know?

It helps stave of memory problems, and some studies have shown it reduces the risk of dementia. This is due to the fact that reading is shown to keep our brains sharper an active. Brains are like any tool, if we stop using them, they start to wither. When you read, your brain is active.

Reading helps you to sleep. It relaxes us. Put the phone down and pick up a good book. It isn’t that the book bores you to sleep, but rather that reaing itself id a good stress reliever, and helps to relax you, thus putting you in a better state to get a good night’s sleep.

Reading

• Improves Focus
• Stronger analytical skills
• Improves memory
• Increases empathy
• Improves writing
• Inner tranquility
• Reduces Stress
• Relaxes
• Entertains
• Aids good mental health

There are so many reasons to pick up a good book, maybe one, maybe two, or maybe one thousand.

What’s your favourite?