f you’d like to sleep better, improve your emotional IQ, and improve your ability to communicate and interpret feelings, thoughts and desires (this reducing petty and grievous misunderstandings between you and others), dust off the last book you were reading before the smart phone invasion and read!

Children who read 20 minutes a day are exposed to 1.8 million more words than people without this habit. Adults are impacted in a similar way. If you read 20 minutes a day, ( books, not snippets btw- as a ghost writer, I write some of the snippets, articles and long form blog posts that you read and I am scored on “ readability”- encouraged to write down to a 5th to 8th grade level at most) you will be exposed to at least 50% more rare ( or new) words than a non reader. While this may seem trivial, imagine the impact of a constant influx of new vocabulary on your mind and your life. You can more accurately describe experiences and convey emotions. In addition literary fiction in particular helps you understand internal motives, slowing down your quick judgement or condemnation of others. Communication can literally change everything, so instead of hauling those books off to the resale shop, grab one that looks interesting and re-start a reading practice. (It takes time to adjust but after about a week of 20 minutes a day, I find that old feeling of not being able to put a good book down-it's wild how at first if I am out of practice, I read in snippets and reach for a mouse!)

when I say “rare”, I mean words like these, that are rather ordinary in the life of a reader, but unusual, believe it or not, in the life of the average googler: display
dominance
dominant
exposure
equate
equation
gravity
hormone
infinite
invariably
literal
legitimate
luxury
maneuver
participation
portray
provoke
relinquish
reluctantly)

READ! 

Ok,I am climbing down from my soapbox and going to work. Carry on. 

Thank you for reading and I love you

Mary