Reading a Book Is Having a Conversation With the Author

Often, a writer has distilled 20 or 30 years of their wisdom and expertise and experiences in a single volume (that you can read in a few good evenings or a series of early mornings). Associating with someone who is living the life you want or someone who has skills you wish for or someone who has the interior qualities you hope to embody leaves you richer than when you picked up the book. Sometimes, a single conversation with the right person alters the unfolding of your life. Same for the r...

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma and welcome to Daily Mastery. This is my short form podcast where I'll walk you through the insights, methodologies, and tactics that I've shared with many of the world's most successful people as their mentor, including celebrity billionaires, NBA superstars, world-class artists, and global humanitarians. I hope you find great value in today's episode.

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  So, one of the ways that I keep on improving my own mindset is through reading. Every single morning, I spend some time reading. Reading a book or listening to an audiobook is nothing more than having a conversation with the author. And we know from the excellent research of Nicholas Christakis over at Harvard University, you become your conversations. I mean, the people you associate with affect your mindset. They affect the way that you feel. We know there is a certain type of brain cell that is being discovered called the mirror neuron. And the mirror neuron simply causes us to subconsciously behave like the people we spend most of our time with. And as I've done my research, I realized

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  the mirror neuron was an absolute survival advantage thousands of years ago. If someone discovered how to make fire, automatically, we would learn to make fire. If someone learned a new tool that would help us eat better, automatically, we would start making that new tool. If someone else discovered a way to deal with the temperature extremes that we used to have to deal with thousands of years ago, automatically, thanks to this survival advantage, this evolutionary adaptation of a mirror neuron, we would survive while other people would perish. Well, here it is now, we're in the modern world, and we

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  forget we still have these mirror neurons. And the point really is, if you are around people who are operating at less than world-class, you will be behaving like the people you are around. And so, reading a book by someone whose life you want to be living, being around people who are healthy and productive and creative and prosperous and full of life will dramatically affect your mindset. So, really, the first tactic is reading and learning. Listen to audiobooks from the great ones. Read the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

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  Read great autobiographies of people like Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs, or Wozniak, or the founders of the great companies. Read books on positive psychology. I call this the 2X3X mindset. Please write that down so you'll lock it in. The 2X3X mindset. And the 2X3X mindset is simply this: to double your income and your impact, triple your investment in two core areas: your personal mastery and your professional capability. To double your income and your impact, triple your investment in your personal mastery,

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  which is really what your interior empires are all about. And also, within your professional capability, you want to know more about what you do than anyone who does what you do. There's a lot of people that are worried about the global economy right now. They talk about commoditization. They say there's so much competition. Well, I want... And you're going to learn how to do this as we go through this process in this program. But I want you to be so good at what you do that there is no one else on the planet who can do what you do. I want you to be so amazing at what you do that you literally create your own personal economy born of virtuosity. Because the marketplace always

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  pays for what's best. So, anyway, first tactic is to learn. First tactic to really dial in your mindset is to read for at least 60 minutes every day. And I call this the 60-minute student. And the larger point is because you become who you hang around with. And so, if you hang out with Elon Musk, and if you hang out with Thomas Edison, and if you hang out with Mother Teresa, and if you hang out with the great business builders, and if you hang out with the best psychologists, even if you don't know them through their books, through their works, their thinking will leave what I call residual wisdom on

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  your choices as you go through your day. Key point: if in the lonely, quiet hours of early in the morning, you're reading the great books, the great wisdom, the great philosophy about great entrepreneurs, about the great creative people, Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Chopin, Beethoven, Shakespeare, that their thinking, their sharing, their influences, their ways of doing, their daily rituals will leave residual wisdom on your mindset and on your behavior in every remaining hour as you go through your day. You cannot help but be better just by that connection to those great thinkers.

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  Hi, it's Robin Sharma. I hope you've received strong value from today's episode. I encourage you to read my latest book, The Everyday Hero Manifesto, which is helping people from right across the world live soaring lives. If you'd like to go into further learning, you can head over to robinsharma.com, where you can download my free ebook, The World Changers Manifesto. And when you do that, you'll also get full access to the Everyday Hero Training Formula, which is a complete system to help you upgrade your productivity, positivity, impact, and the quality of your life. Have an outstanding day.