The book you don't read can't help you!

By best selling author and speaker Tim Connor

The book you don’t read can’t help you. The seminar you miss cannot contribute to your success. The CD's you don’t listen to cannot give you ideas that can improve your lifestyle or success. And even if you do read the books, attend the seminars and listen to the tapes if you fail to integrate what you learn into your career and life what is the point of wasting your time or money?

Increased knowledge is vital if we are to continue to succeed in a highly specialized and rapidly changing world. Each of us needs different types and amounts of knowledge to succeed and prosper. But more importantly we need to gain wisdom. The types of knowledge we need are:

Career knowledge or business skills, self-knowledge, world knowledge, people knowledge, and common sense. Let’s look at self-knowledge as an example.

Self-knowledge is the knowledge of who you really are – what you believe in and why, what you stand for and why, and what you passionately feel about and why. Many people live their lives waiting for someone else to tell them what to believe, what to feel and how to behave. These people are slaves in life rather than responsible travelers on spaceship earth.

Self-knowledge is only gained by paying attention in life, staying aware of your surroundings and reactions to them, and looking deep into the recesses of your mind and psyché for the answers to your behavior, feelings, attitudes and philosophy. People with higher degrees of accurate self-knowledge tend to have less stress, more fun, are more productive and achieve greater levels of success, regardless of how they define success.

To achieve this level of self awareness requires spending time alone in quiet introspection and thoughtfulness. Most people either will not take this necessary time, or, if they do, rush through the process expecting immediate answers.

Wouldn’t life appear to be easier if easy answers came to us for life’s challenges, issues and desires fast and exactly in the shape we wanted? Thankfully, most of the answers come only after serious deliberation, a quiet mind and hopeful spirit.

The question is how are you going to consistently turn self-knowledge into wisdom? And we didn't even get to career or relationship knowledge. Wisdom is nothing more than knowledge that is used in some way to better your life or the lives of others. Wisdom helps you make fewer life mistakes and if you do helps you learn more from them.

There are millions of intelligent idiots running around the world. They know a lot of stuff but their lives are in shambles in some way. Mark Twain said it best, "Common sense! It is a myth. If everyone had it it would be common. Since few people do we should call it uncommon sense." Not his exact words but close enough folks. I am amazed at the number of salespeople who are not reading something every day that can help their career. I am dumbfounded why some people just don't get the connection between learning new information and consistent success. DA! This is not rocket science folks.

My final thought: Spend more time gaining wisdom than knowledge and you will be amazed at how little knowledge you really need. There are too many books to read and things to learn and concepts to understand. In one life you can't even come close to a minute fraction of it all. So why worry. Just make sure that what you are learning you are using and applying and let what you can't or don't have time to learn take care of itself.

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TimConnor	The book you don't read can't help you! By best selling author and speaker Tim Connor The book you don’t read can’t help you. The seminar you miss cannot contribute to your success. The CD's you don’t listen to cannot give you ideas that can improve your lifestyle or success. And even if you do read the books, attend the seminars and listen to the tapes if you fail to integrate what you learn into your career and life what is the point of wasting your time or money? Increased knowledge is vital if we are to continue to succeed in a highly specialized and rapidly changing world. Each of us needs different types and amounts of knowledge to succeed and prosper. But more importantly we need to gain wisdom. The types of knowledge we need are: Career knowledge or business skills, self-knowledge, world knowledge, people knowledge, and common sense. Let’s look at self-knowledge as an example. Self-knowledge is the knowledge of who you really are – what you believe in and why, what you stand for and why, and what you passionately feel about and why. Many people live their lives waiting for someone else to tell them what to believe, what to feel and how to behave. These people are slaves in life rather than responsible travelers on spaceship earth. Self-knowledge is only gained by paying attention in life, staying aware of your surroundings and reactions to them, and looking deep into the recesses of your mind and psyché for the answers to your behavior, feelings, attitudes and philosophy. People with higher degrees of accurate self-knowledge tend to have less stress, more fun, are more productive and achieve greater levels of success, regardless of how they define success. To achieve this level of self awareness requires spending time alone in quiet introspection and thoughtfulness. Most people either will not take this necessary time, or, if they do, rush through the process expecting immediate answers. Wouldn’t life appear to be easier if easy answers came to us for life’s challenges, issues and desires fast and exactly in the shape we wanted? Thankfully, most of the answers come only after serious deliberation, a quiet mind and hopeful spirit. The question is how are you going to consistently turn self-knowledge into wisdom? And we didn't even get to career or relationship knowledge. Wisdom is nothing more than knowledge that is used in some way to better your life or the lives of others. Wisdom helps you make fewer life mistakes and if you do helps you learn more from them. There are millions of intelligent idiots running around the world. They know a lot of stuff but their lives are in shambles in some way. Mark Twain said it best, "Common sense! It is a myth. If everyone had it it would be common. Since few people do we should call it uncommon sense." Not his exact words but close enough folks. I am amazed at the number of salespeople who are not reading something every day that can help their career. I am dumbfounded why some people just don't get the connection between learning new information and consistent success. DA! This is not rocket science folks. My final thought: Spend more time gaining wisdom than knowledge and you will be amazed at how little knowledge you really need. There are too many books to read and things to learn and concepts to understand. In one life you can't even come close to a minute fraction of it all. So why worry. Just make sure that what you are learning you are using and applying and let what you can't or don't have time to learn take care of itself.

The book you don't read can't help you!

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