The Importance of Reading, Professionally and Personally — Steven Maurice Clark
Lifelong learning is essential for achieving success, fostering personal growth, and broadening perspectives. Reading, in particular, plays a crucial role in this journey by expanding mental horizons, introducing diverse viewpoints, and nurturing empathy and creativity. It offers a gateway to countless narratives, each contributing to a deeper understanding of the world and its myriad experiences.
Dr. Steven Maurice Clark brings over two decades of experience and a passion for continuous learning. He shares his insights on the transformative power of reading, emphasizing its importance in personal and professional development. Through his unique perspective, Dr. Clark illustrates how being an avid reader can shape one’s ability to think critically, understand diverse viewpoints, and cultivate a lifelong love for learning.
Here is what Steven had to say —
In order to reach high levels of success in life, you must be a lifelong learner — being a reader is the best way to accomplish this. Reading expands your mental horizons, introduces you to little-known perspectives, and exposes you to remote worlds, whether you’re reading fantasy, history, or anything in between.
Books are an unlimited universe of narratives, full of so many different experiences, and it expands your empathy and creativity by giving you a vision of how others live or lived. Sharing unique ideas, critically thinking, and understanding diverse points of view are important in any field — reading helps people develop their capabilities to do so. Reading any genre is valuable to your personal and professional development, and it helps you grow into being a creative, lifelong learner.
I’m part of a 30-person book club that has been a great source of learning, reflection, and deep discussions. In this fellowship, we’ve also had the opportunity to meet and discuss with many incredible authors, learning about the meanings within their work through their unique perspective. Personally, I like reading social science commentary and history, but the story I would recommend everyone to read is Dr. Seuss’s The Sneetches. You might laugh at my choice being a children’s book, but it really has a timeless message of tolerance, about how irrelevant apparent differences really are.
Thank you for your insight, Steven.
Connect with Steven on LinkedIn.
