Did you know that the human brain loves to read? There are countless reasons that you should read more, all of which are more or less linked to brain health. On that note, if you are like most people, there is a good chance that you might wish you had more time to read because you believe that you don’t have enough time to read.
Perhaps you feel like reading is a boring task that you don’t want to indulge your brain with. We are here to tell you how reading benefits you and why you should pick the hobby of reading books.
Make Time – Don’t Undervalue Books
Now, if you fall in the category of people who hide behind the excuse of having no time to read – you should know that you do have time. Think about the activities that you do to wrap up your day or to relax, such as painting, knitting, playing video games, etc.
The truth is that people do spend their downtime on hobbies or entertainment – whether it translates to scrolling for hours or watching a movie after a long day. We all need our downtime, which means that we have time to read books.
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Boost Your Attention Span
So, when it comes to the first benefit of reading books, you should know that reading enhances your attention span. If you are not a Gen Z, it can mean that online entertainment and social media haven’t been an essential part of your life forever. In this case, your childhood and school life must have been pretty relaxed and offline as compared to what you have today.
Now, if you compare how things were before and how things are today, you see that you are quickly irritated if a website takes a minute to upload. You are in a world where entertainment is incredibly flashy, and things constantly keep moving.
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Get Away From the Noise
We all are on social media – at least, the majority of the world is. What social media does is keep people busy and stimulated all the time by providing loads of visual things so that people spend more time online?
In today’s world, society focuses on doing things very quickly. People grab nuggets of information, such as a short podcast, instead of reading a novel. Now, listening to a podcast isn’t essentially bad – but – when you live in an environment that is constantly trying to get information to the audience – your attention span just keeps narrowing.
Experience All Your Senses Together
Scrolling social media is essentially mindless, which is where the importance of reading comes in. Reading not only expands your attention span but also enables you to sit still and hyper-focus on one thing, which is something that a lot of people really struggle with today.
Now, you don’t necessarily have to read a long novel to expand your attention span – but – a great idea would be to read poetry, such as poems about love, to develop your focus and to gain perspective while engaging all of your senses.
Boost Your Memory
Have you ever sat down to do a task and suddenly stared into the space around you, thinking about why you were there and what you were supposed to do? On that note, you should know that reading can actually boost your memory.
Studies have proven that reading consistently over a large period of time can help the brain by enhancing the attention span and enabling the reader to sit and focus on a task without having the urge to reach your phone and get distracted from the task.
It wouldn’t be wrong to state that reading allows you to have a solid sense of focus, which is then expanded through more linear tasks. Reading also allows you to have heightened connectivity. You become better at learning and have an easier time making sense of things.
Increase Emotional Regulation
Reading trains your brain in a way that it enables you to better associate things with each other. Now, everyone usually has the skill of connecting the dots and making sense of things, but reading essentially helps with improving this skill.
This essential skill gets exercised a lot by engaging your mind through reading. There have also been studies that show that reading books can help decrease the risk of dementia and increase emotional regulation as well as verbal memory.
A lot of these things are linked with short-term benefits – but once you establish the habit of reading, you will start to experience its benefits in very specific and life-applicable ways.
Books Are A Great Hobby
It is important to mention here that if you previously thought of reading as a waste of time, you should know that we all waste our time in one way or another. For instance, you might be wasting your time every day before falling asleep by scrolling mindlessly on your social media.
Nonetheless, nothing is a waste of time if you enjoy doing the things that you are doing during that time. The same goes for reading books. If you like a certain genre, such as fiction, and you indulge yourself in a mystery thriller at any time of the day – it is not a waste of time.
Just like any other hobby, reading books can help you relax and relieve the daily stress that we all carry within us.
Learn Different Perspectives
Reading allows you to form different perspectives. If you look at this benefit, you realize that through reading, you essentially form a flexible mindset, which is essential for success and progress. Speaking of success, if you study the lives of all successful people out there, you will find that all of them share one habit in common, which is the habit of reading.
On that note, life is short, and it can be incredibly boring if you live life on repeat every day. Reading books allows you to live so many lives as you get to experience the lives of the characters through their perspectives.
Reading from many different perspectives is not only interesting but also helps with developing emotional intelligence and empathy.
