# Reading a Book Is Having a Conversation With the Author

An episode of [The Daily Mastery Podcast by Robin Sharma](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1521068608), 21 Sep 2026, 6:22.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1182776/episodes/19838097-reading-a-book-is-having-a-conversation-with-the-author.mp3

Often, a writer has distilled 20 or 30 years of their wisdom and expertise and experiences in a single volume (that you can read in a few good evenings or a series of early mornings). Associating with someone who is living the life you want or someone who has skills you wish for or someone who has the interior qualities you hope to embody leaves you richer than when you picked up the book. Sometimes, a single conversation with the right person alters the unfolding of your life. Same for the right book. I'm truly super excited over the upcoming release of my new book The Robot and the Gardener: Being Fully Human in an Artificial Age (Penguin Random House). It's a parable and it's different (by far!) from any book I've ever written. You can join the list here if you'd like to be among the first to receive any updates. FOLLOW ROBIN SHARMA: Instagram Facebook YouTube

## Transcript

One of the ways that I keep on improving my own mindset is through reading. Every
single morning I spend some time reading. Reading a book or listening to an audiobook is
nothing more than having a conversation with the author. And we know from the
excellent research of Nicholas Christakis over at Harvard University, you become your
conversations. I mean, the people you associate with affect your mindset. They affect the
way that you feel. We know there is a certain type of brain cell that is being discovered,
called the mirror neuron. And the mirror neurons simply causes us to subconsciously
behave like the people we spend most of our time with. And as I've done my research, I
realized the mirror neuron was an absolute survival advantage. Thousands of years ago, if
someone discovered how to make fire automatically, we would learn to make fire. If
someone learned a new tool that would help us eat better automatically, we would start
making that new tool. If someone else to start discovered a way to deal with the
temperature extremes that we used to have to deal with of years ago automatically, thanks to this survival advantage, this evolutionary adaptation of a mirror neuron, we would survive while other people would perish. Well, here it is. Now we're in the modern world and we forget we still have these mirror neurons. And the point really is, if you are
around people who are operating at less than world class, you will be behaving like the
people you are around. And so reading a book by someone whose life you want to be
living, being around people who are healthy and productive and creative and prosperous
and full of life will dramatically affect your mindset. So really, the first tactic is reading
and learning. Listen to audiobooks from the great ones. Read the meditations of Marcus
Aurelius. Read great autobiographies of people like a Elon Musk or a or a Steve Jobs or a
was Niac or the founders of the great Companies read books on positive psychology. I
call this the 2X3X mindset. Please write that down so you'll lock it in the 2X3X mindset.
and the 2X3X mindset is simply this the double your income and your impact. Triple
your investment in two core areas your personal mastery and your professional capability
to double your income and your impact. Triple your investment in your personal mastery,
which is really what your interior empires are all about. And also within your
professional capability. You want to know more about what you do than anyone who
does what you do. There's a lot of people that are worried about the global economy right
now. They talk about commoditization. They say there's so much competition. Well, I
want and you're going to learn how to do this as we go through this process in this
program. But I want you to be so good at what you do that there is no one else on the
planet who can do what you do. I want you to be so amazing at what you do that you
literally create your own personal economy born of virtuosity, because the marketplace
always pays for what's best. So anyway, first tactic is to learn. First tactic to really dial in
your mindset is to read for at least 60 minutes every day. And I call this the 60 minute
student. And the larger point is because you become who you hang around with. And so
if you hang out with Elon Musk, and if you hang out with Thomas Edison, and if you
hang out with Mother Teresa, and if you hang out with the great business builders, and if
you hang out with the best psychologist, even if you don't know them through their
books, through their works, they're thinking will leave what I call residual wisdom on
your choices as you go through your day. Key point if in the lonely, quiet hours of early
in the morning, you're reading the great books, the great wisdom, the great philosophy of
a great entrepreneurs about the great creative people Picasso, Jean-Michel Basquiat,
Chopin, Beethoven, Shakespeare that they're thinking. They're sharing their influences,
their ways of doing their daily rituals will leave residual wisdom on your mindset and on
your behavior in every remaining hour. As you go through your day, you cannot help but
be better just by that connection to that, to those great thinkers.

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