Here’s a key insight I discovered after nearly two decades of personal development reading: it comes packaged best in the classic literature section of the bookstore.
The major difference is this: self-help books give the essential, actionable, key takeaways needed for… well… personal development. It’s the stripped down version of an insight that we attempt to push into memory from the outside-in.
Classic literature, however, tells a story. And oftentimes, a story that takes hundreds and hundreds of pages to unpack and fully digest. During which time, you’re living another life… seeing reality through another’s eyes… feeling their emotions and living out the consequences of their actions in real time—as if they are your own… and you’re nurturing an understanding that grows from the inside-out.
This difference in how we retain insight and how it affects us cannot be understated.
The insight being pushed down often gets rejected by what’s already deeply rooted and has been growing for decades within. It’s like trying to blow a tree over with your best exhale.
The insight that’s planted and is given hundreds and hundreds of pages worth of space and time to grow is able to entrench its roots and become a powerful tree in its own right. Eventually overtaking the resources from the “old-ways trees” and seesaws power into the new.
So the next time you’re at the bookstore or contemplating what you’d like to dive into next—with the intention of developing yourself personally—consider the classic literature section over the self-help isle.
The classics are called classics and have stood the test of time for good reason.