I was just getting caught up with my reading and looking through my list of feeds and wondered how many other folks out there also read feeds:

• where their opinions and thoughts are diametrically opposite of yours
• the blog was a guilty pleasure that you would never admit to reading
• the blog owner is an idiot but you keep reading just incase a gem appears one day

If you can answer no to all of the above I would strongly suggest you reconsider and have blogs like those in your feed and continue to add them as you come across them. I say this for one simple reason.

If you only read blogs that make you feel safe or make you feel better you are denying yourself; and your readers, a chance to grow and learn. By staying within the safe boundaries of always reading blogs you agree with then you become your own personal echo chamber and people get bored with that real quick.

As well how can you learn and grow yourself if you are only regurgitating the same old opinions and thoughts day after day. By adding blogs that match up with the list above you are giving yourself a chance to have fresh material every day with which you can provide new and interesting blog posts for your readers. I look at my feed list and I can see at least half a dozen blogs that irritate the hell out of me and a couple more on top of that where I think the blogger is an idiot.

In the end though I keep reading those blogs because they take me out of my comfort zone and make me look at things differently. Along with this I am always adding new ones where what they write opposes what I think but they write well and intelligently. By doing this I in turn force myself to be able to try and more intelligently defend my own opinions or in those times where I have been proven wrong to admit it.

So what have you read today that pissed you off or made you think hard about your own opinions - and did you add that blog to your reader? I hope you did as well I hope you blog about it so I can maybe learn something new.

Conversation Tags: blogging, opinions, ideas, concepts, learning new things