Through many years I have been wandering what things I did to be at the level of success I am right now, which is not big yet but far bigger than many other people from my country, having the kind of problems that I had when I was ten to fifteen years younger. I have also asked myself the same question about others, what things others did and still do in order to be successful in life, and, from the many answers that have came to my head, like the influence of our parents, our friends, our values, etc, there is one which is very common to those who failed once or more, who where in a deep failure, whose life was ruined and managed to make a better life, sometimes becoming greater than most of the successful people around the world, and this answer, is books.
Between ten to fifteen years ago, when I was fourteen to nineteen years old, I was a lonely and very depressed boy, somebody extremely shy, living a life that is not the proper life for a young men, rejecting myself badly, living my life completely separated from my family (emotionally not physically), not sharing with them my problems, thoughts or anything that happened to me, far away from people from my school, my neighborhood, having only a couple of special friends, that now I am very glad I have had by my side all these years, spending hours and hours isolated in my room, far away from any social interaction common to any people from that age, spending my time playing video games, thinking, thinking, thinking and dreaming about another possible life where I could be happier, encouraging all those bad thoughts I had about me, that I wasn’t a good men, not good enough to be loved, to have friends, etc, thinking that maybe was better to commit suicide than kept living a life that the one I had, dying inside…But apart from that, there was something else that I did during those years, I started to read books.
I still remember that it was a Saturday afternoon, when I was alone in my house, when I took the decision to start reading books, I wanted to read any book I could find in our personal library; that’s how I started to read every day, any book I could find. Some of them were novels, some of them were poetry and some of them were about motivation, self-improvement and success. I still have in mind a poem from a very important writer, Rubén Darío, the father of Modernism in literature, and that I made my personal pray, a poem that described who I was and how I though just before I started in the way of self improvement; the poem is called “the fatal”, and the first part goes something like these (I traduced it from Spanish):
Fortunate the tree, which is just sensitive,
And more the hard rock because does not feel anymore,
Because there is no bigger pain than the pain of being alive,
And no bigger sorrow than the conscious life.
After started reading I came in touch with many books about personal development and self motivation, and these books started to change my points of view, about life, people and most important myself, some of the books I remembered I read are the biggest salesman in the world (Og Mandino), your erroneous zones (Wayne Dier) and my favorite a book, that I am not sure it falls into the category of success or self improvement books, but which is more like a spiritual guide to me, the manual of the warrior of light, by Paulo Coelho. Among all this books, I started to change my complete vision of my life, what it was and how it could be, and this books today I would say had a great influence in my way to become who I am now, someone that ten years ago I could not imagine I could be. My motivation to be here came in part from all those books that I read ten years ago, I left the reading of those books along ago and now I am realizing how important they was for me and how important they are and they are going to be for my future, I restarted to read books a few months ago and again, I’m gaining a lot from them, I am growing up at an incredible rhythm, Im getting to know myself better, every single day, and starting to pursuit my biggest dreams in life. I owned all these to all the wisdom that every single book about self improvement and success deliver to me.
Og Mandino, in his description of the secrets of success, mentioned that a very important secret to success is to read books about self improvement. I shared my story here with you thinking of another way to show what Og Mandino used to teach about the principles of success and how important was for him to read all the books about self improvement, motivation and success that he could find in all the libraries across United States, which he attributed had a great influence in his way to became one of the greatest men the world have ever seen after failed in life. Although I found so much motivation reading the books I read during my youth, I stopped reading them a long ago and just a few months ago I started to realize how important they were for my life, for that young boy to become who I am nowadays.
So, my message for you today is that a great tool that you posses, and is very cheap and easy to find, in order to pursuit your dreams, is the wisdom that comes from all the great books that has been written about success and self improvement, do not underestimated the power that these books posses, because is greater than anything you can imagine!
