Why we read?

Announcer: We promise we are not a bunch of stuffy old lawyers saying stuffy old things. You heard that right. This is the Insight to Injury podcast sponsored by Osterbind Law, PLLC, the podcast that reports to you central Virginia about what's going in the injury and disability world. We answer all the questions you don't even know to ask. Now here's your host, Brandon Osterbind. Let's get started.

Brandon Osterbind: Welcome back to Team Osterbind. Thanks for joining us again on the Insight to Injury podcast. This is exciting. We are on week four of our podcast, episode four. Thank you for coming back and listening. Today, I want to talk about something that is probably somewhat unique hearing from a lawyer website or lawyer podcast. Today, the topic that I want to talk about is why we read. If you follow us on Facebook which I hope you do and as an aside if you listen to this podcast, if you like this podcast, if you follow us in any way, shape or form please go follow us on Facebook, like our page and we'll be sure to send you excellent content throughout the week.

Brandon Osterbind: One of the things that we just announced on Monday of this week was that we are starting a book club. I explained in a short video about our book club and about this podcast by the way so you guys, my fans and listeners on the podcast you guys got a shout out on our Facebook page. Thank you so much for listening. Thanks for liking our page. Thanks for watching our videos, but one of the things I talked about on our Facebook page in that short video is that we are starting this book club and one of the things that we've been doing for a long time at Osterbind Law is that we have been finding good, solid books and we have been reading them together as a team. Our team at Osterbind Law, everyone who works there has been digging into these books and trying to learn new things about these books and about these topics to become better people.

Brandon Osterbind: Now we read anything from business books to productivity books to spiritual books to marketing books, so we'll read pretty much anything as long as there is some aspect of personal growth related to it. One of the things that I've found over the past year or two since we've been doing this is that people when I post a picture on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter or whatever and I have a stack of our most recent books, people love to ask us what book we're reading. People love to talk about it. I've been surprised about that quite frankly. One of the things that I was thinking about as we were picking our book for next month was you know what I'll bet I can get out in front of this question that people keep asking, "What book are you reading this month," or "What book is that? I can't read it in the picture?"

Brandon Osterbind: I thought what we would do is we would start in Osterbind Law book club. The idea is to help other people in our community better themselves at the same time as we at Team Osterbind are bettering ourselves. Essentially what I'm asking you to do is join our team, engage in the conversation that we're going to have around this particular book that we choose every single month and together we're going to read 12 books a year. Then after we're done reading this book in a month, we're going to get together in a Zoom meeting or something like that and maybe right now I envision it being small. I don't think there's going to be 500 people that wants to join us. If there is, hey that's awesome, but if we get that big or something like that then maybe we'll convert to a Facebook Live or something like that where it's a little bit more of an audience instead of an engaged conversation.

Brandon Osterbind: What I'm looking for is an engaged conversation about the book and pretty much what you would expect any book club to be. I'm super excited about launching this book club. We've already got some interest in the book club. We've got several people that I've already signed up to see what we're reading. I'm super excited about that. I'm inviting you, all of our podcast listeners, maybe you are an audible learner and you don't necessarily read books like I'm talking about, but now is a time I think to start reading, particularly because we're in the middle of quarantine and there's a little bit of extra time going around if we're all being honest which I hope we are. I'm not spending an hour commuting every morning via dropping my kids off at school, so that's an hour of time that I have that I can do other things. Every single hour of the day does not need to be consumed by work. Every single hour of the day does not need to be consumed by television or podcasts or even things that are of value.

Brandon Osterbind: I think that we can all agree that there are some benefits that one can experience in reading books. I in particular like to read physical books. I struggle with reading books electronically. Now don't get me wrong I am as big of a technology guy as you can imagine. I have sitting in front of me four screens right now. One screen I have recording this. Another screen is a blank background. Another screen is my finder so I can see all of my files and my notes. I'm a big believer in technology. I think technology can help us to achieve a lot more in a lot less time. I implement technology in our practice and I implement technology in my personal life. I use Evernote to be my digital brain dump whenever I need to save something, but I don't necessarily want to keep it on a hard drive or something like or if I want to be able to find it quickly later I always dump it in Evernote and put a tag on it.

Brandon Osterbind: Evernote and technology in general helps keep my life in order and that's a great thing and I super encourage it, but I've always had difficulty with reading books in an electronic format. I've never had a Kindle. Kelley has had a Kindle and she likes it, but I've never been able to get on the Kindle bandwagon. I've never been able to read books on my phone. I get distracted or even my iPad, a bigger screen like an iPad I've not been able to read books on my iPad and I've even tried out Audible which is a great service for listening to audiobooks and I've listened to a couple of audiobooks. The problem that I find with listening to audiobooks is I don't get as much as out of the information as I would if I actually read it in a physical book.

Brandon Osterbind: When I read a physical book, I like to have a highlighter or a pen in hand to underline or highlight the parts that I feel are important for two reasons. One, it helps me to retain the information as I'm reading it. Two, it helps me to find that information later on when I'm thinking about it and I want to refresh what the context of that statement was. A lot of times I'll be in a conversation and I'll think back oh I read about that in a book, but I can't necessarily remember and I'll want to go back the next day and look back up so I refresh that information in my mind. All of this is centered around I guess maybe a personality trait. It's certainly a leadership trait. It's certainly a trait that I want everyone at Team Osterbind to have and I want all of you to have because you are now joining us as a part of Team Osterbind.

Brandon Osterbind: What I want you to be able to say about yourself is that you are a forever learner. You are constantly learning, constantly engaging with new information, trying new things and doing new things and becoming a better person. I believe the more you read, the easier that will come to you. I feel like if you read less, then the harder that's going to be. I'm not saying that it's impossible. I'm not saying that I won't happen, but what I'm saying is it might make that process a little bit more difficult for you and maybe you're an audible learner, so maybe you need to engage with the content via Audible or some other book audio playing service.

Brandon Osterbind: I know that the local library here in central Virginia, Lynchburg, Bedford, Amherst, they all work together and they have an app called Hoopla. They give you so many audiobooks per month. Maybe you should be engaging in those audiobooks while you're exercising or while you're taking a shower or while you're commuting or whatever it might be so that you can get that content. However you engage with content, you need to be consistently putting new content in your brain. I thought I would just go over just a couple of reasons why we need to be readers and why we should be forever learners. The first thing is it's a challenge.

Brandon Osterbind: I genuinely believe that we as human beings need to be challenged. If we're not challenged, then we become stagnant. We don't grow. If you don't grow, then you must be going backwards. If you're not going forward, you're going backwards. I think that we all need to be challenged no matter what area of life that you're in. If you are in a position where you are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company that's awesome. All the more reason to challenge yourself personally. Because if you challenge yourself, your team, your people will challenge themselves. People get their cues from the leaders on top. Now contrast that to someone who maybe disabled and at home and unable to work and unable to engage in society the way that most people do and we deal with a lot of those people at Osterbind Law and they're excellent, amazing people. They are so inspiring that they make me want to do more because I do not suffer from a physical or a mental disability.

Brandon Osterbind: One of the things that I think you can do in that situation if you're unable to work, you have more time than the average CEO would have or the average person who's employed and working full time, so I think that you need to be challenged as well. You need to be mentally challenged. You need to be physically challenged. I think everyone should be in some type of an exercise regimen. I think that you should be exercising your brain as well even in places where you don't feel like it might be productive. I think that if you exercise your strongest muscle, your brain, then I think that at the end of the day you will see growth come out of that. Who knows as a result of that personal growth maybe that changes your status a bit and you can do something more productive with your days and you can see yourself out of that position of struggling and of disability and a feeling of hopelessness.

Brandon Osterbind: I hope that if you're listening to this you can take this as a word of encouragement. Maybe it takes you longer to read certain books than it would take someone else and that's okay. This is not a competition. It's not intended to be a competition. It's intended to be a challenge. Let it be a challenge for you at whatever pace you need to take it at. Don't feel bad when you fail because you will fail. One of the things that I have found in my endeavor to read more books is that I fail. Every day I intend to read more and every day I fail. I can tell myself I want to read two chapters today and I'll only get through one or I could tell myself I want to read two chapters today and I don't read a single thing because life gets too busy. Work gets too busy. The family gets too busy. Some days just end up being crazy. That's okay. We need to give ourselves a little bit of grace. Even though we want to challenge ourselves, we need to give ourselves some grace for those times that we fail.

Brandon Osterbind: One of the things that I learned from the book Atomic Habits by James Clear is that if you want to create a habit you've got to do something over and over again. The key to dealing with failure is one you have to accept that you're going to fail, but two commit that you won't fail twice in a row. If your goal is to read something every day and you didn't read something today, make sure that you don't repeat that failure two days in a row. If you don't repeat the failure two days in a row, then one of the things that you can count on is you will be developing that habit muscle and you will be stronger as a result of it. Eventually even though it may take some time to get there, you will create this new habit.

Brandon Osterbind: The second reason why we read is to learn new things. There are so many good books out there that are ready, willing and able to communicate new ideas to you about our government, about our society, about your life, about spiritual things. There is a really strong lesson here that I think everyone needs to pay attention if you're going to be a forever learner. How do you learn new things without consuming new content? If you're going to be a forever learner, you have to be putting that new information in your brain at all times every day so that you can learn new things. Things that you may not have thought of before, things that you may think you disagree with, but you've never fully considered the issue. There are a lot of things out there that I consider myself an outsider with the mainstream groups that I associate with.

Brandon Osterbind: While I may have tendencies towards one political party or another, there are certain things that because I have read certain books and certain authors I now completely and utterly disagree with that main political party and I think that they've gotten it completely wrong. This is not a political show. It's not intended to be a political show, so I'm not going to get into what those specifics are, but I can tell you there are things that I think that each political party has completely wrong. There are things that each political party might have right. The only way that you get there is by reading contrary ideas and learning new things. I certainly encourage that. You need to be able to think for yourself. In order to do that, you need to learn how to think.

Brandon Osterbind: In preparing for this podcast, I read an article where one person said one of the reasons he reads is because it forces him to think with the writer. Really that's true if you are reading the words of another person, then you are essentially thinking their words in your head which is pretty amazing. You get the opportunity to get into someone else's head and learn new things, new perspective. That is the second reason why we read to learn new things. The first reason of course as a recap is it's certainly a challenge.

Brandon Osterbind: The third reason why we read is to get new practical advice from people who have been there and done that. A lot of books that I like to read are from people who have lived the life I want to live. I want to be that person, but how do you become that person? Well you need to learn about that person and get advice from the people who have been in the trenches. One of the big things that I think everyone should do is to find those people that you want to emulate and read about them, learn about them and get practical advice from those people so that you can be like them and be the person you want to be. There is nothing stopping you from being the person you want to be, but you.

Brandon Osterbind: The fourth reason that we read is it's integral to personal growth. Michael Hyatt who I follow and I have followed probably for the better part of the last decade says that all leaders are readers, but not all readers are leaders. If we want to be leaders in our community, if we want to be leaders in our business, if we want to be leaders in the legal world, then we have to be readers, and not just readers of statutes and case law because I read those all day long, but that's not the same as what we're talking about. We need to be reading things that are outside of our comfort zone. They're outside of our specializations. They're outside of our daily routine and that will help us to grow as an individual.

Brandon Osterbind: One of the things I think that we need to focus on when we're reading is the personal aspect of personal growth. A lot of times and I certainly fall prey to this a lot, a lot of times when I read things I'm reading for what concept can I get out of this so I can apply it to my business or I can apply it to my cases or I can apply to my ministry or whatever it might be that I'm reading for, but one of the things that I neglect more often is the reading for personal growth and reading just to expand my horizons or reading to become a better rounded person. I think that it's important to do that so that we can get into the ... Like I said earlier, get into the mind of the author and we can experience what the author is talking about and what the author has gone through.

Brandon Osterbind: I think that ultimately leads to more personal growth for us because it gives us more experiences from which to draw when we are making decisions in our own lives. You've heard it said that we are the sum of our experiences, but if you are only worried about yourself and you never read and you never consume content from other people then the only experiences that you have to draw from when you're making those important life decisions are your own. What if you could essentially adopt experiences from other people? I feel like this a lot of times when I listen to Dave Ramsey or Chris Hogan. They tell such amazing stories and they're great story tellers.

Brandon Osterbind: I remember probably about three years ago being in Nashville at an event at Ramsey Solutions and listening to Chris Hogan talk about finances and personal financial coaching and one of the things that he's done for years. One of the stories that he told is still as vivid in my mind as it was three years ago. It made me tear up to be quite honest because of that experience he had. Then he said something that I thought was brilliant. He said, "You may not have these experiences yet. You may not be there from or have this story to tell when you're talking to your friends and your fellow church members and your neighbors and the people in your community about these things, but feel free to use my stories. The stories that I'm telling you now. Use my stories as examples when you're talking to people about finances," which Kelly and I do all the time.

Brandon Osterbind: He said, "Use my experiences until you have your own, until you have your own stories, you can start to tell your own stories, but when you first start off ..." At that point we were learning about financial coaching, one of our ministries at our church and when you first start you're not going to have any financial coaching stories. You're not going to be able to say, "Well I dealt with this situation when I dealt with it in this circumstance." He said very clearly, "Use my story until you have your own to use." What I got from that is it's okay to borrow other people's experiences to help become a better person or to help other people become better.

Brandon Osterbind: How can you borrow other people's experiences? How can you learn from other people's experiences if you're not reading or consuming content from other people. The key to your personal growth is consuming content from other people and learning and instilling those experiences into your being, so that you can make better decisions in the long run. The last and I think I guess the most fun for me reason for why we read is it makes you a more fun person to be around. I think for all the reasons that we've talked about have you ever been in a conversation with someone and you're just sitting there twiddling your thumbs, no one knows what to say. Well I think what you could do in those situations is just say, "Hey what have you been reading?" Start a conversation with someone and maybe that person isn't the reader and maybe they say, "Oh, nothing." Then that gives you an opportunity to help that person by giving them some of your experiences through reading.

Brandon Osterbind: You can start to share about what you've been reading and what you've been learning and how you've used that information to become a better person. I think it makes you a more fun person to be around. It makes you a better conversationalist. It helps you to learn how to tell better stories because you can see in books and writings and maybe in audible books how other people tell stories and you can start to emulate that which you read. Ultimately, it makes you a better person, but it helps you to become a better conversationalist. It helps you to tell better stories which I think makes you more fun to be around. Those are the top five reasons why I think it's important to read.

Brandon Osterbind: Just as a recap, number one, it's a challenge. Number two, you get to learn new things. Number three, you get practical advice from people who have been there and done that. Four, it's integral to your personal growth. Five, it makes you a more fun person to be around. At this point, I think that there is no question in my mind that reading will make you a better person. The question is are you going to do it? Are you going to go pick up a book today? Are you going to read a chapter, 20 pages, 20, 25 pages. Most chapters in a book will be somewhere between 15 to 25 pages. Sometimes you'll get a book with chapters that are 40, 50 pages long. Figure out a way to break them up into 20, 25 page increments. That seems to be much more easier to consume in a short period of time which makes it easier to read more consistently.

Brandon Osterbind: The question is are you going to do it? One of the things I think will help you do it is if you join our book club. In our book club, I will select a book each month that we are going to read as a team. I'm inviting you to join Team Osterbind as we better ourselves through reading by joining our email list for our book club. Now this email list is just for our book club. It's completely separate from our general email list. We're only going to send emails about the book club to our book club list members. We're not going to send you our general content that we typically send out for other purposes. If you just want to join our book club, just join our book club. If you want to join other things, shoot me an email and I'll add you to our email list and I'll make sure that you get certain updates about what's going on in the world, what's going on at Osterbind Law with Team Osterbind.

Brandon Osterbind: At this point, I'm solely focusing on you joining our book club because I think it will ultimately make you a better person. I've already selected our book for the month of May and I'm super excited about it. I've listened to this book. This is one of the books that I listened to on Audible and I really felt like I needed to dig into the actual hard copy of this book, so we're excited about starting with it. I will send you an email after you join with the book of this month. Usually maybe four or five days before the end of the month I'll send this email out, so it will give you enough time to get the book in and then we'll spend the first two or three weeks of the month reading the book and I'll even send you some helpful information throughout that time to make sure you're staying on track, to make sure that you're doing the reading, to make sure that you're keeping up with Team Osterbind and then to make sure that you ultimately completely the book.

Brandon Osterbind: One of my biggest struggles is actually finishing a book. I have a stack of about 10 books on my desk right now that I want to read and I've probably started four of them. The problem with that and I recognize this in myself, the problem with that is that you can start, be shallow in a bunch of things, but not deep in anything. That's a character flaw that I have acknowledged is an issue and it's something that you have to work on to get better. What I want to focus on and help you focus on is completing things that you set your mind to. It's important to finish the things that we start. I am going to help you work through this book every single month and make sure that you're keeping on track.

Brandon Osterbind: Then we'll end the month with a Zoom meeting or some type of Facebook Live or something like that. I'll make sure that you get the information about that in your email inbox. We'll talk about the book. We'll engage in a conversation about the key ideas that we can get from this book and how we can implement some of those ideas into our every day daily experience and into our daily lives which is super exciting for me. I'm very excited about applying new information and figuring out better ways to do it. I remember back in law school I had a professor who said take the rule of law and put it into your own words. I never did that because I felt like you know what if William Blackstone said this then he's a lot smarter than me. I'm just going to say it the same way he did.

Brandon Osterbind: If you don't know who William Blackstone is, that's okay. He's an old lawyer from England in the 18th century who wrote a ton of information down about the law and the treatises about the law and his commentaries on the law have been widely respected for hundreds of years and are still quoted today, but that's neither here nor there. The idea is there are so many smart people out there who have said smart things. It's about time we start engaging with that content and becoming better people as a result of it.

Brandon Osterbind: Go to our website www.osterbindlaw.com/book-club, that's book-club and you will see a sign up form on the right hand side of that page. Go in there, put in your information and that will automatically put you our book club email list and you can expect an email here within the next week or so with the book that we are going to read for the month of May. I look forward to engaging with you on that book and all the books that we will read in the coming months. Thank you so much for listening to our podcast. This has been an enjoyable experience so far. I'm super excited that you're hanging in with us. I know that this is a lot of information to consume. Hopefully, you can consume it on your commute to and from work or as you're getting ready in the morning or as you're tuning down for the day.

Brandon Osterbind: I hope that it's been valuable to you. I look forward to bringing more content to you next week. All right Team Osterbind, I'll be in touch. Be good. Until next week, I'll see you later.

Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Insight to Injury podcast by Osterbind Law, PLLC where we declare mortal combat against information and inequality about your injury or disability. We hope you enjoyed this show, but don't stop here. Don't stop here. Subscribe to this podcast on iTunes and give us a five star review. We need your help, so that we can help more people.