Can a Book Change My Life?

Can a book change my life? Clearly it can’t do it on its own. First I have to read it.

Before I go any further, I need to make a confession. I am a book-a-holic. I love browsing in bookshops. So many interesting books grab my attention that I sometimes wish I could buy them all. Far too often I succumb to temptation and leave the shop with a brand new book, the pages all crisp and clean, with not a crease to be seen.

If it’s not bookshops, I’m at the library, borrowing as many books as they will allow me. Some of those books are new too. Others are literally falling apart because so many people have lovingly caressed their pages as their eyes devoured the magical words printed on their worn out paper. All have an interesting tale to tell. I long to know their secrets.

But then I get home and I’m met by all kinds of technology, each with a lure of its own. Television programs that I can’t bear to miss, news on my Facebook timeline that must be read, a new batch of photos that need editing. It goes on and on. By the time I succeed in dragging myself to bed it’s often too late to read my new treasures and they get added to the mounting piles of books that I might never find time to read.

I bought a book today. It’s called “The Power of Habit: why we do what we do and how to change it”. I’d never heard of this book before, nor had I heard of its author Charles Duhigg, who just happens to be an award-winning New York Times journalist. The book came looking for me, begging for the opportunity to change this and a host of other bad habits that are playing havoc with my life.

I’ve bought self-help books before. Sometimes I even find time to start reading them. Occasionally I will even read through to the end, but more often I find something that looks more useful and will put the old book aside in favor of the new one.

But can Charles Duhigg’s book change my life? Only if I can change one bad habit for long enough to find time to read it.