Why Every High-Achieving Professional Should Read More Fiction: A Therapist in Frisco Explains
If you are a business owner, entrepreneur, executive, or high-achieving professional, your free time may be filled with podcasts, business books, emails, industry news, and professional development. But what if one of the most beneficial things you could do for your brain has nothing to do with becoming more productive?
Reading fiction may be one of those overlooked activities.
A recent Washington Post article highlighted emerging research suggesting that fiction can support social cognition—the mental processes we use to understand other people, interpret perspectives, and navigate relationships. For professionals who spend their days making decisions, leading teams, managing businesses, and solving problems, those skills matter far beyond the workplace.
As a Therapist in Frisco, I often work with people who are highly successful professionally but feel overwhelmed, disconnected, stressed, or stuck personally. Reading fiction will not solve anxiety or relationship challenges on its own, but it may offer something many high achievers desperately need: a reason to slow down, step outside their own perspective, and reconnect with the human side of life.
Fiction Gives Your Brain a Break From Constant Performance
High achievers are often accustomed to being “on.”
There is always another email to answer, decision to make, goal to reach, meeting to attend, or problem to solve. Even downtime can become another opportunity for productivity. You might listen to a business podcast while exercising, check email while watching television, or turn every spare moment into professional development.
Fiction offers something different.
Instead of asking you to learn another strategy or improve another skill, a novel invites you into a story. You follow characters, imagine their environments, experience their conflicts, and wonder what they will do next.
That shift can create psychological space.
The Washington Post article notes that reading fiction requires readers to construct the world and characters in their minds rather than simply having everything visually presented to them. That imaginative process is different from the constant stream of information many professionals consume throughout the day.
For someone whose brain is accustomed to solving problems, fiction can provide an opportunity to simply experience something.
And sometimes, that is exactly what an overwhelmed mind needs.
Reading Fiction Can Strengthen Perspective-Taking
One of the most interesting areas of research involves social cognition—our ability to understand other people's thoughts, feelings, intentions, and perspectives.
Fiction puts you inside the experiences of people who may think, feel, and live very differently from you. You may read about a character struggling with grief, navigating a complicated relationship, making a difficult decision, or seeing the world through an entirely different lens.
You are not necessarily agreeing with the character. You are practicing understanding them.
A 2018 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General examined 53 effect sizes from 14 studies and found that fiction reading had a small positive effect on social-cognitive performance compared with nonfiction reading or no reading.
More recent research continues to suggest a small positive relationship between fiction reading and cognitive outcomes, particularly empathy and mentalizing—the ability to think about another person's mental state. A 2024 preregistered meta-analysis included 70 experimental studies and found small cognitive benefits from fiction reading, with significant effects particularly for empathy and mentalizing.
The effects are not dramatic, and research does not mean that reading one novel will suddenly make someone more empathetic. Some studies have produced mixed findings, including replication research that did not find an immediate advantage for literary fiction on certain theory-of-mind measures.
Still, the broader research suggests that reading can be a meaningful way to engage the mental skills involved in understanding other people.
That has obvious relevance for leaders.
Why This Matters for Business Owners and Leaders
Being successful at work requires more than intelligence or technical expertise. Business owners and executives also have to navigate people.
Employees have different motivations. Partners may interpret situations differently. Children may experience family life differently. Friends may have expectations you do not share.
When stress is high, it becomes easier to see situations primarily through your own perspective.
You may think, “I am doing everything I can.”
Someone else may be thinking, “I don't feel seen.”
Both experiences can exist at the same time.
Fiction can provide repeated exposure to different perspectives without requiring you to solve anything. You get to observe motivations, misunderstandings, emotions, and consequences from a safe distance.
Research on fiction has described stories as simulations of social worlds because readers mentally engage with characters and their interactions. For a professional who spends most of the day focused on metrics, outcomes, and decisions, engaging with a story can be a surprisingly useful change of mental gears.
This does not mean reading fiction makes someone a better leader automatically. Rather, it can give you another opportunity to practice curiosity about how other people experience the world.
Reading Can Help You Step Outside Your Own Story
High achievement can sometimes come with a very specific internal narrative:
“I have to keep going.”
“I cannot let people down.”
“I should be able to handle this.”
“I don't have time to slow down.”
“I'll deal with it when things calm down.”
The problem is that things may never completely calm down.
Reading fiction creates an opportunity to temporarily step outside your own story and enter someone else's.
That can be surprisingly restorative.
The research also suggests that reading may expose people to different experiences and more complex perspectives. The Washington Post article discussed research connecting greater exposure to literary fiction with more nuanced and psychologically complex worldviews.
For a high-achieving professional, that kind of mental flexibility can be valuable.
Life is rarely as straightforward as a business plan.
Relationships contain ambiguity. People change. Priorities shift. Success does not automatically protect you from anxiety, grief, disappointment, loneliness, or conflict.
Sometimes personal growth begins when we become more comfortable with complexity rather than trying to immediately solve it.
Reading as a Small Form of Intentional Self-Care
If reading has disappeared from your life because you are “too busy,” you do not necessarily need to start with an hour a night.
Start with 10 or 15 minutes.
Read before bed instead of scrolling through your phone. Keep a novel on your nightstand. Listen to an audiobook during your commute. Join a book club. Choose something because you genuinely enjoy it—not because you think it will make you more productive.
The goal is not to turn reading into another performance metric.
You do not need to read 50 books this year.
You do not need to choose the most intellectually impressive book.
You do not need to extract a business lesson from every chapter.
Reading can simply be something you do because it feels good to slow down and become absorbed in something outside yourself.
That distinction matters for high achievers.
Self-care does not have to be another project to optimize.
How Therapy Can Help
Reading can be one small way to create more space in your life, but sometimes the deeper issue is not that you need another healthy habit. Sometimes you need a place to understand what is happening underneath the pressure.
Therapy can provide that space.
Working with a therapist can help you explore patterns that may be contributing to anxiety, stress, depression, relationship difficulties, or feeling stuck. For high-achieving professionals, therapy can also provide an opportunity to step away from the role of leader, provider, business owner, or problem-solver and simply focus on yourself.
Therapy for professionals does not have to mean something is fundamentally wrong.
It can mean you want to understand yourself better, create healthier patterns, improve your relationships, or build a life that feels as fulfilling personally as it looks successful externally.
If you are looking for anxiety therapy in Frisco or stress counseling in Frisco TX, finding a therapist who understands the demands of professional life can make the process feel more relevant to your everyday experience.
As a therapist for high achievers, I believe therapy can be a place where you do not have to perform, achieve, or have all the answers.
You can simply be honest about where you are.
Therapy in Frisco and Throughout Texas
I provide in-person therapy in Frisco, Texas, as well as virtual therapy throughout Texas. At Tarapy Therapy, I work with adults, including professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, and business owners navigating anxiety, stress, depression, relationship challenges, and unhealthy patterns.
If you have built a successful career or business but are finding that your personal life does not feel as fulfilling, peaceful, or connected as you would like, therapy may be an opportunity to pause and take an honest look at what you want next.
Whether you found this article while searching for a Frisco TX therapist or you are exploring therapy from somewhere else in Texas, you do not have to wait until everything feels unmanageable to ask for support.
Sometimes creating a life you love begins with giving yourself permission to slow down, become curious, and see your own story from a different perspective.
If you are ready to explore whether therapy could be helpful, I invite you to contact Tarapy Therapy for a free 15-minute consultation. We can talk about what you are experiencing and whether working together feels like the right fit.
Sources
Sima, R. (2026). Books are good for your brain. But fiction has a surprising added benefit. The Washington Post.
Dodell-Feder, D., & Tamir, D. I. (2018). Fiction reading has a small positive impact on social cognition: A meta-analysis. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(11), 1713–1727.
Dodell-Feder, D., & Tamir, D. I. (2024). Cognitive effects and correlates of reading fiction: Two preregistered multilevel meta-analyses.
Oatley, K. (2016). Fiction: Simulation of social worlds. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20(8), 618–628.
Kidd, D. C., & Castano, E. (2013). Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind. Science, 342(6156), 377–380.
Panero, M. E., et al. (2016). Does reading a single passage of literary fiction really improve theory of mind? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 111(5), e46–e54.