Rediscover The Joy Of Reading: Revive Your Love For Reading Today.
You can listen to the Podcast of this article here
Let’s be honest. There are some times, many times in the year, when we lose the track of our goals, we feel lazy and exhausted and we stop many things that are beneficial for us. One of these is reading.
We have talked many times about taking up something new, like a language or walking or going to the gym but we have never talked about starting over again something we used to do like reading books in our native language.
Now you can say:
“I am not in the mood of reading books in my native language, I just want to learn Greek”.
I have to tell you that the one brings the other and the one habit helps the other. Learning a language is not just repeating words and braging about it, it is about building a new person. This person that speaks Greek.
So let me tell you how it started for me, months ago…
Months ago, I felt exchausted and overwhelmed by my work, emotional struggles, everyday life and things going around in my job and my country and I was completely out of energy to add any kind of reading. I spent months not being in the mood of taking a book in my hands.
Then I remembered how reading had helped me in my psychology back in the beginning of my journey, when I needed it.
In the past I didn’t read at all. As a kid I loved reading, I read many books but school afterwards made me say that when I will be done with all these school things, I will never get a book in my hands again.
That’s why in my whole 20s I never got a book into my hands. It was only for my studies and I used to do it in the same overwhelming way.
But this has nothing to do with the joy in life that real reading brings.
In my 30s luckily I found my way back to myself and trained myself on how to learn in a way that works for me and find not only the joy in the process but also the way out from this frustrating system of finding myself.
But months ago, when I got stuck back into this frustration , I realised that I needed to train back my mind into it, because this is a struggle and a goal that never ends. It has ups and downs and we must be aware of this, if we don’t want to lose our good shape and have to start again from zero in the future.
I had to go back and remember what I had done in the past.
Four years ago, back at the point I hadn’t invested to my personal time at all for more than 15 years and I ended up depressed in a dead end. My depression had started since I was a teenager and I only realised it some months before getting into my 30s.
This was a muddy place and I had to escape as soon as possible.
I am really thankful to myself that even though I had no clue about what I was doing, I had realised that my brain was a muscle.
When we think about taking up cycling or walking, we normally don’t start with 10km. Or at least, this is what we mustn’t do.
Because if we start with 10 Km, maybe we will regret it, we will definetely feel exchausted for the next days, and it will take a long time until we will do it again, if we ever do it again.
We always need to start from zero. This is how always life works and this is also the magic of life. We start from low and we rise.
In Greece we have the phrase “τρώγοντας έρχεται η όρεξη” which means by eating your appetite comes. We say it to a guest who says I am not hungry or to someone who says they are not in the mood to do something. We mean that if you see the food and you start tasting it you will want more.
So I got the book in my hands, and put a goal of reading one paragraph. Only one paragraph. Like I had done when I had first started. When I finished the paragraph I stopped myself. I should start again tomorrow.
Now with this small trick, I had again the habit of reading. It was just one paragraph. But I was reading again. The next day I would repeat this and after that I would put bigger goals like two pages or five.
If you can more, you can just allow yourself to read as much as you want. I am not a bookworm, I can never focus for so long. But this doesn’t mean I am not a reader.
In the meanwhile, the brain gets the positive information from the book,feels happy and it wants more.
Imagine how good this method was for me, that some years ago I forced myself read one paragraph of a book and now I have students all over the world and people I help in a way they can learn.
You can build a whole new character and a new fate with such a small step towards the correct direction.
We can make mistakes about many others things, but reading is always the correct direction.
Always remember to read books you like. If you are bored of literature don’t read literature. Bo open about the field of your reading, but don’t force yourself to read books you don’t like, always choose what is made for you.
So, this is what I reminded myself again last month and I started again from zero, with two pages of a book per day.
This way I enjoyed myself the whole month and I finished one book.
This was my story. You set the pace for yourself.
You made find my story funny, because you may think : “You couldn’t comprehend one paragraph per day?”
I will tell you yes. This is what depression does.
The key to overcoming it is to see yourself as a baby that starts over.
Also the key is, to do it today.
Reading is not just “an activity”. It is an everyday source of happiness. And we definetly need it.
Efi Asvesti,
Teacher & Copywriter @
MyGreekTeacher.com
You can read about reading posts in Instagram and Facebook in Greek here
