I know what you’re thinking, “This isn’t for me. I don’t have voices in my head. But I’m just going to sneak a peek to see what is being said to those who do.”

If you were thinking that, well there’s one of the voices in your head right there, and well done for listening.

The truth is that we all have voices in our head. Sometimes it would be easier to picture them as the tiny angel and the tiny demon wrestling for our attention. But they are real, and we do tend to listen to them. And they come in many shapes and forms:

Conscience, emotion, taste, ideology, spiritual inclination, and probably a hundred more.

What I want to look at today, is how to influence them.

WHO ARE YOU READING?

When it comes to the books we read, people tend to ask the question, “What book are you reading?” What I realised about three years ago, is that a more important question can be, “Who are you reading?”

If, for example, the majority of the authors I read tend to be middle-aged, American, Christian  men [as was  the case at my time of realising, with the exception of  the more British very-not-Christian Terry Pratchett] then the likelihood is that my thinking about life, religion, history and so on takes the shape of those middle-aged, American, Christian men. Which, although ranging across a fairly wide spectrum, does still contain a particular narrative that is very single dimension.

BOOKS OF THOSE WHO ARE NOT LIKE ME

Most people actually tend to read people who experience life a lot like them. We comfort ourselves with the ideas of people who think in a similar way to us and don’t cause our way of life and viewing the world to be too much challenged or threatened.

I want to invite you, as we head into 2016, to change that, and to help open up a world of exciting possibility, change and transformation.

The decision I made a few years ago was to diversify the people that I read.

I chose to seek our female authors who would give a very different perspective to that which I was used to. Suddenly Michelle Alexander, Sarah Bessey, Nadia Bolz-Weber,  and  Austin Channing were among those who were speaking to me about religion and the race and reconciliation conversations I was seeking.

I chose to read black authors, specifically as this coincided with a time when I was trying to understand the history of South Africa more. Immediately men like Steve Biko, Robert Sobukwe and Frank Chikane started recounting tales what it meant to be truly Afrikan in a way that felt helpful and challenging at the same time.

As I sought to understand a little more of the Israel/Palestine conflict it was authors such as Sandy Tolan [The Lemon Tree], Elias Chacour [Blood Brothers] and Naim Ateek [A Palestinian Christian Cry for Reconciliation] who painted a picture that helped me have a greater understanding of what was going on.

And so on.

DIVERSIFY THE VOICES 

If you are someone who reads books, then I encourage you to stretch yourself as you go into 2016. Commit to reading at least one book a month from someone who doesn’t look like you, think like you, or who is maybe a different gender, colour, religion or style than what you are normally used to.

I’m not saying you have to completely stop reading those things you already enjoy, but I can guarantee you that your learning curve will completely spike and probably your enjoyment and definitely your personal enrichment as you start diversifying the voices you invite to speak to you.

Signal the voices in your head that it is time to shake things up a bit for next year. Let the books you plan to read, take you on some of the most incredible paths you have travelled yet. You will not be sorry.