How I Fell In Love With Something I Thought I Hated
Have you ever avoided something that you feel like you should do just because you think you hate it? Maybe you never go to the gym because you have a preconceived notion that either you won’t be good at it, or it just isn’t for you. Or maybe you stick with the tried and true PB&J and ramen diet instead of busting out the frying pan and Googling a few new, healthy recipes because you think you hate cooking. For me, it was reading. I love reading now but for most of my life I hated it. It was like I had a mental block around it. When asked if I read books, I would proudly say, “I’m not a book guy.” I was comfortable not being a book guy because I had told myself for so long that I wasn’t, and eventually, I believed it. This might have all stemmed from the fact that any reading I had done in my life up until that point was for school. I guess reading was just negatively associated with school. I didn’t think I’d ever be a reader. So, Luke, how’d this all change? Great question. It took some time but I want to share three tips that helped me turn my distaste for books into a love for them.
But before we get into the tips, I want to talk about why I wanted to start reading. The desire to start came from hearing people talk about books they enjoyed and learned from. It seemed like everyone who was successful or smart had this shared love and appreciation for reading. I felt a little left out. So I started making a list of all the books I’d hear about on podcasts or when talking to other people and I actually began to get excited about the idea of tapping into this new world of enjoyable reading that was unfamiliar to me. I was excited and inspired by the potential that reading provided. Finance? There’s a book. Pirates? There’s a book. Playing guitar? There’s a book. Making friends and influencing people? You get it. It’s endless. Anyway, let’s hop into the tips.
The first tip is to read something you enjoy or that at least interests you. If you’re like me and your whole experience with reading was a bunch of required reading for school, you never chose what you were reading or picked a book based on what you wanted to read. When building any new habit, the goal is to make it as seamless and simple as possible so that it’s easy to continuously do the thing you’re doing. For example, if you’re trying to eat healthier but are used to a sugary, buttery diet of fast food, baked goods and soda, you probably won’t last long going cold turkey and only eating white rice and chicken breast every day. Makes sense. Instead, you try to find and cook healthy recipes that actually taste good so that you enjoy the healthy meals and actually want to keep eating that way. Same with reading. Reading isn’t as stimulating as scrolling social media but reading something you actually want to read will make that a much better trade-off.
The second tip is to make time for it. This was hard for me. I didn’t have a ton of free time and didn’t know when I’d be able to carve out enough time to actually start. I was a very slow reader when I started so I needed even more time than I thought to get through a chapter of any book. Since I didn’t have time sitting around waiting to be used, I had to make it. I started waking up early every day, making a pot of coffee, and sitting down with a book. It didn’t take long for me to really start looking forward to my mornings with a book. They were peaceful. But maybe mornings don’t work for you and the thought of a quiet morning of serenity with a hot coffee is only a dream. Tough. But the truth is that most people can find or make at least 30 minutes of time in their day to start sitting with a book. And once you get into it, you’ll probably find you have even more than 30 minutes. The only cost of reading is your time and I promise you it’s worth it.
The third and final tip is that you actually have to start. Seems simple, right? It is simple but that doesn’t make it easy. If you’re like me, you procrastinate and put things off until they can’t be put off any longer. But no one was going to come make me read a book. No one was giving me a deadline or a due date anymore. It was all on me. To be clear, when I started reading, I had been planning to start reading for probably three years. I had a stack of books that interested me and I was sure I’d enjoy. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was overthinking how to start and not just starting. So if you’re on the fence about cracking that book open and giving it a go, get off the fence. Just start.
In the end, you might find that you don’t actually hate reading. Or cooking. Or the gym. Maybe you love it and you just don’t know it yet.
