Share your knowledge—When you talk about your ideas and knowledge with others, you’re not only being helpful, you’re also enriching your own mind.
This leapt out at me as the fifth of six keys that Darius Foroux has identified for himself in developing his own mind, in his blog: “How to Develop a Rich Mind“.
As it says at the top of the Insights page on my site, the page where I host all of my nearly 2,000 posts:
I write to share learnings and to discover my thoughts.
I was also drawn recently to consider the transactional nature of much of what is written and shared online and particularly on social media (including Twitter, LinkedIn (in particular) and now Threads). My intention is always to be abundant in sharing, so I always turn down any and all offers to “monetise” my writing and my blog (and the more I write, the more often I receive them). My writing is given from that intention to share learnings.
Oh, and for me, my greatest gain from writing is that it enriches my own mind. I take an average of at least two to three hours every day reading, listening, learning, and then writing. As I wrote about in another earlier post, by writing I gain access to my own mind at deeper and deeper levels. In that post, I quoted the great Joan Didion:
Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.
As to the other five keys to enriching your own mind, as well as multiple other thoughts and ideas, do read Darius’ post, and I also encourage you to follow his writing.