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The following podcast is a Dear Media production.
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That s drinkag1.com slash skinny.
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That s drinkag1.com slash skinny.
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Check it out.
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She s a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire.
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Fantastic.
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And he s a serial entrepreneur.
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A very smart cookie.
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And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostick are bringing you along for the ride.
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Get ready for some major realness.
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Welcome to the Skinny Confidential, him and her.
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Hello, everybody.
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Welcome back to The Him and Her Show.
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Today, I guess it s just The Him Show, another Friday episode, quick episode coming in hot.
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Today, I want to talk to you about something that if you do this, your life will drastically improve.
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I can guarantee you this.
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You have to do it though.
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It s not one of those things where you can kind of do once in a while.
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It s something that you have to do consistently, often, all the time.
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And if you do it, I promise you, your life will improve.
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You re going to feel better.
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You re going to think better.
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You re just going to be better in general.
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And that is read more.
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Some of you may be tuning out already.
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Oh, I don t want to read.
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I don t like to read.
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Some of you may be really leaning in.
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I would say all of the success or most of the success that I have exhibited in my life has come from being an avid reader.
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When I think back on all of the difficult moments in my life that I ve struggled with or had to get through, reading is what has saved me.
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Anxious, if I m depressed, if I m angry, if I m going through a relationship issue, if I m going through something with a family, anytime I can read,
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I always find that it takes me out of the dark place that I m in and puts me in a better space.
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Here s one of the main reasons.
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When you read, it s one of the rare times you get out of your own head and you get into the head of someone else.
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Think about it.
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You re reading someone else s words that they thought that they put down on paper.
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So it automatically takes you out of the way that you process and the way that you think and puts you in somebody else s perspective.
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Lauren s grandmother, the Nans, rest in peace, would always tell us, when you re upset or when you re sad or when something s going on, you have to get outside yourself.
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I thought about that a lot after she passed.
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Really, the way that I take that is, you have to stop being so focused on yourself.
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And what reading does is it helps you start to think from a different perspective.
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So that s reason number one.
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Reason number two, all of the mistakes that people have made throughout the history of the world are in books.
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So instead of going through life and making those same mistakes yourself, reading is actually going to teach you how to not make those mistakes or maybe avoid them or avoid the pitfalls of some, a way that maybe somebody thinks in a non-positive way.
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So again, reading is just so important.
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But what I want to do here is talk to you tactically about how you can read more.
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Because if you re not a reader, or you re just getting into it, or you re wondering, how do you have the time to do this?
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I think it can be overwhelming.
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And I want to make it digestible for everyone.
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For me, specifically, I read a ton.
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I talk about it all the time.
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Lauren talks about it.
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That s no secret.
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But I ve always read, and I ve created practices in my life that enable me to do so.
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I believe that even if you start reading just a few pages a day, it can drastically change your life.
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The first thing that s most important is to get into reading, you have to start reading stuff you actually care about.
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You have to find stuff you re interested in.
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For whatever reason, there s this bias on reading specific kinds of books.
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You ve got to read this nonfiction or this biography.
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If you like fantasy, if you like fiction, if you like young adult novels, whatever it may be, just whatever you are going to read and find interesting, start there.
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And the way that I do it is I create a practice where maybe part of my morning routine is I earmark 10 minutes in the morning to read.
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at night, maybe before bed, instead of watching that show or scrolling my phone, I m earmarked 30 minutes before bed.
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Side note, you re going to sleep better if you read instead of watch a screen before bed.
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So there s that.
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And what I would do is I would start in the beginning, picking something that you find fascinating or that you like, that s easy, not too overwhelming, and start there.
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As your interests evolve, dive into deeper subjects.
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Maybe you want to go into that biography.
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Maybe you re starting a business and want to read that popular business book.
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Read stuff that you know you re going to stick with that impacts your life.
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What it s going to do for you is it s going to crowd out a lot of the poor behaviors in your life.
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If you can stop scrolling on this, and I m holding my phone up right now.
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For those listening, stop right now and look at your screen time.
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If you can even take 10% of that time to read, it s going to drastically improve your life.
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Your processing speed is going to get better.
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Your vocabulary is going to get better.
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Your ideas are going to get better.
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You re going to become more interesting at dinner parties because you re going to be able to speak on a greater number of subjects, which is going to attract more impressive people into your lives.
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Again, there s no downside to reading.
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If you re somebody that has taken those first steps and you re saying, OK, now I m a reader.
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I like to read.
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I ve created daily practices.
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Side note, another thing what I do is
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I download the Kindle app on my iPad, my computer, my phone, whenever I have downtime in a waiting room, or if I m sitting, you know, say, for example, at the car wash or wherever I am, I pull up the Kindle app instead of just scrolling.
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And then I could just carry my books wherever I go.
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But once you get more into reading and you start reading broader and wider subjects,
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What I do in my life in order to read more and stay interested, especially if I m reading on a dense subject, is I do something called the three-book rule.
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If you re an OG Skinny Confidential reader, you could probably go on the blog and Google Michael s three-book rule where I describe this in detail.
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Essentially what I do at any given time, every week, every month, is I pick three books to read at the same time.
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No, I don t pick up and go one to the other.
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The way I do this is I pick one fiction book.
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that I find entertaining, that I find compelling, that is going to kind of take me out of business mode, that s going to take me out of mindset mode, something that I m going to learn about.
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I personally really love historical fiction, so I m reading a lot about that.
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Right now, I m just reading a book called Demon Copperhead.
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I can t remember the author.
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She s really Barbara Kingslover.
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I think that s her name.
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Sorry if that is not the name.
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But anyway, the book s called Demon Copperhead.
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I m reading that.
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I will pair that then with maybe a dense biography that s harder to get through.
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Some of these biographies that I like to read are challenging, they take a really long time, and I ve found that when I just sit and only read that one biography for long periods of time, sometimes I can zone out or get bored or want to go take a break for a minute.
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So in those moments, instead of just stopping and setting the book down, which I m sure many of us do, I will pick up that fiction book.
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So right now I m reading
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a book right now about Winston Churchill and it s really dense and really long.
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And when it becomes too much or too much for my brain to process and I get exhausted, I ll jump back to the fiction.
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In addition to the biography, I will pick a business or mindset book.
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Right now I m reading The Road Less Stupid by Keith Cunningham.
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And that is a great business kind of mindset book that I can jump into.
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So when I feel really focused and I don t want to disconnect, maybe when I m doing some thinking time,
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Maybe my morning read when I want to get ready for work or at night when I m working through a problem.
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I ll pick up a book like that.
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That s either a mindset or nonfiction business book and I ll read that.
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Anyways, the exercise is you pick these three different genres that are all completely different.
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It s kind of like if you re on Netflix.
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One day you re watching a documentary.
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One day you re watching a fiction.
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The other day you re watching sports.
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That s what keeps you interested and entertained.
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I do the same thing with books.
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What I ve found is it keeps me reading as opposed to sometimes when you re reading a really dense, intense, long book, you put it down and all of a sudden you realize you haven t read in four or five days.
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That s not what you want.
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You want to keep the mind going and keep reading.
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By doing the three book rule, kind of picking three different things, you re going to challenge your brain.
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You re going to go far and wide with the type of stuff you re reading.
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And when you start to hit those moments where maybe in a dense, hard book, you start to feel like giving up, you can just take a break and go back to maybe the easier fiction book or whatever it may be.
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So I do that all the time.
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I put it on my Kindle.
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I carry hard books.
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I always have a book with me, whether it s on the Kindle, on the phone, or a physical copy.
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And I found that by doing that, my life s drastically improved.
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There s a quote that I just posted the other day by Mark Twain.
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It says, the man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.
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Sub-in woman, if you d like.
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If you don t read, you are missing
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wonderful parts of life, you re also potentially putting yourself at risk to go through life the hard way.
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Like I said earlier, there are so many life lessons that people have already experienced and lived and so many tragedies that could be avoided if people just picked up a book and got the information before they made the mistake.
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In addition to that, getting outside of your head and getting the perspective of maybe the way somebody else thinks about something is always a good idea.
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Also, it s going to create a sense of independence.
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And like I said earlier, you are just going to become a more interesting person.
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I pride myself on being able to sit at a dinner table or a lunch or breakfast anytime and being able to talk about all sorts of different random facts or subjects or histories.
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Personally and professionally, I have found that it has benefited me immensely
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Sometimes you relate to someone that may not think you relate to them just by saying, hey, I read this thing that maybe applies to your life, or maybe it s helpful, or maybe you re interested in.
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And I just can t stress enough how important it is to use this practice.
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You can listen to all the things on audiobook.
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You can listen to the podcast, watch all the YouTube videos.
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There is something about
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physically doing the reading work yourself, sitting quietly in your own head, that is just different.
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It s a bit meditative.
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So like I said, there has not been school, there has not been a business partner, there has not been a funding partner, there has not been a tip, there has not been a YouTube, there s been nothing in my life
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or anything I ve ever done and all the accomplishments that I ve exhibited in my life that I could attribute more success to than the fact that reading has helped me get to most of these places.
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Even if I have to just sit and get through a difficult problem, whether it s in my relationship or in the company or parenting, I can attribute all of the good decisions mostly to reading.
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And I think everybody that is listening to this, while I love that you listen,
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I would be even happier if I knew that people will listen to this and then start reading because I think the world becomes a better place when people have more information and a better mindset and are just more interesting, to be honest.
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So if you want to read more, try that three book rule.
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You can even maybe read about it on the blog.
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I wrote it a long time ago.
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I think I m saying the exact same thing.
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It s a similar practice.
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Pick up a book, download the Kindle app.
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For people that are saying, Hey, books are expensive.
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If you have the Kindle app, there s a bunch of Kindle books that you can read for free.
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Just read anything.
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Like I said, and just make it part of a daily practice.
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Literally make it part of your routine, put it in your calendar, put it as part of your morning routine, start five, 10 minutes.
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Some people want to start with pages.
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My, my goal every year is to read 40.
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to 50 books depending on the types of books I m reading.
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And what I ve done is said, okay, most books are 400 pages, 500 pages.
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How many pages do I need to do per day, per 365?
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You know, you can get as crazy or as not as you want.
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Set a realistic goal.
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Maybe that s a book per month.
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I think that s realistic for everybody.
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And look at it as the same way that you would look at your fitness routine or your business goal or anything else.
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But if you start doing this, I can guarantee you everything in your life will improve.
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So start reading.