Healthy Living DIY

...read a book. Buy it if you want to highlight key ideas, refer to it regularly, or write in the margins. Otherwise, take a hike down to your local public library and check it out (you may have to use interlibrary loan, but they'll find it for you somewhere) for free (or nearly free; there may be a nominal fee for the interlibrary loan).

This may strike you as not a completely novel idea.

After all, you may say, "I already know what I should be doing. I just don't do it."

My answer is still the same. Read a book. Listen to the audio if it fits your lifestyle. Even if you already "know" the information it contains. Even if you've read or listened to it before.

Sure, you'll pick up some tips. It's hard to read a book -- even if you've read it before -- even if you wrote it -- without learning something new. But learning new facts is really not the most important reason to pick that book up off the shelf and read it.

What you really want, and the most important reason to put your nose (or ears) into that expert's material, is that you want to start thinking like they think. You want to get into the mind of the expert.

You want to start thinking like a person who...

• Is really into getting big, healthy, organic veggies from their garden. And who knows what to do with them after they're grown.
• Is a successful business person who further knows how to re-invest the profits strategically to create a rock-solid financial base.
• Is fit and trim.

You can get that way of thinking from a good book. It may happen on the first read. But for most of us, it doesn't. It may happen with the first book you encounter on the topic. But for most of us, it doesn't. What it takes to really get into the mind of an expert is reading about, re-reading about, absorbing, and preferably discussing that expert's way of engaging with life.

Then you pick up another book from another expert in the same field. And you do the same thing all over again. Because no single expert is ever going to be exactly like you.

To get into the mind of the expert, if you're really committed, you'll strive to become the expert. The expert at:

• Growing, preserving, and preparing fresh organic veggies from the garden.
• Taking a business from start to stable.
• Radiating health and well-being from the inside out.

How to do it step-by-step:

1. Identify your main goal. It might sound like this: "I'm becoming an expert at ____."
2. Find one book on the topic, written by someone who's already done what you want to accomplish.
3. Read it. (Doesn't do you a bit of good to stick it on the table, does it?)
4. Ask yourself some thought-provoking questions. How did they do that? Why did they do it?

Extra credit:

5. Find a group of people to share your experiences with as you go. Like one of the book discussions on our Healthy Living Community Forum (click on Idea Swap).

And the real bonus:

6. Do it again and again and even again if needed, until you become the expert yourself. Then you can write your own!