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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio.
Good morning. This is Laura.
Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's tip is to use literature to expand your horizons, especially if you are in a phase of life where your opportunities for bigger adventures are limited, books can be a portal to other experiences and can make life feel fuller, no matter what else is going on.
Today's tip comes from Shigehiro Oishi.
He's a psychology professor at the University of Chicago who studies well -being, and he's the author of the book, Life in Three Dimensions, How curiosity, exploration, and experience make a fuller, better life.
Recently on the Happiness Lab podcast, Oishi described a bookseller who said that he had read 4 ,000 books, so he had led 4 ,000 lives.
I love that. When we step inside a book, or for that matter, watch a really good movie or a play, we can be transported to another person's experiences, thoughts, and feelings.
For a while, we live where they live.
What happens to them happens to us.
We step inside their experiences and share their emotions.
Whatever the specifics of your daily life, you can add what Oishi calls psychological richness by reading.
As he puts it, this lets you broaden your life by proxy.
Your life is not only as big as the experiences you yourself have. Your life expands to encompass the experiences you read about, too.
I find this a comforting thought, particularly as I ponder how much of the world and how many experiences most of us will never have. I will never be a professional ballerina, or opera singer, or basketball player.
But I can read the memoirs of people who have had these careers and see what their lives are like.
Perhaps I'll live abroad someday, but if I lived in, say, Paris for a year, that means I probably wouldn't be living in Tuscany for a year as well, or Norway for a year, or near Yellowstone National Park for a year.
But I can read novels set in these places, or read the biographies of people who have had those experiences.
I know for sure I will never live among the aristocracy in 19th century Russia, but I can read Tolstoy and see what that life is like.
Even the longest books tend not to take more than a few hours to read.
Okay, War and Peace might be more like 30 hours, but even that would be doable in an hour a day over a month.
The six hours it takes to read a novel set in Paris is less time than it would even take to fly to Paris from the east coast of the U .S. to say nothing of the cost. Now, of course, I want people to travel to lots of places, but during many phases of life, that might be less possible.
Money might be tight.
Maybe you have lots of little kids.
Maybe you are caring for a family member with complex medical needs.
Sometimes these situations can even prevent you from meeting lots of different people with different points of view and experiences.
But that doesn't mean life has to be completely limited.
After all, 4 ,000 books can give you a glimpse at 4 ,000 lives.
That's a lot of adventure, even if other sorts of adventures aren't possible.
In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at laura at lauravandercam .com.
Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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