Image via Pexels
Out of all the different hobbies that have the ability to change your life for the better, simply taking the time to become an avid reader must be one of the all-time bests. And unlike many other hobbies and strategies for overall well-being and relaxation, reading can be done anywhere. You can sit curled up in front of the fireplace with a good book, or in the garden, or on the bus. With new fangled e-reader technology, you can even take your entire library with you on your travels courtesy of products such as the kindle or nook.
Here are several reasons why you should read more books:
It relieves stress Life has a way of being pretty stressful, with plenty to keep us concerned and occupied day-to-day. Worries about the future, an upcoming work commitment, the need for using a secured loan for debt consolidation, and a dozen other things are likely to be occupying our attention day-and-night.
To make matters worse, many of our most popular forms of entertainment, ranging from films and TV series’ to nights on the town, just add extra fuel to the fire.
They may not make us stressed, but they do present us with a lot of extra sensory stimuli to process, and ensure that our minds keep churning away well into the night when we should be benefiting from restful slumber.
Reading is an antidote to all of this. By settling into the flow of a book, you naturally block out the outside world, and all other thoughts with it. Your world shrinks down to the size and scope of the book in your hands.
It can help to see reading as a kind of meditation — a way of quieting and focusing the mind, and relieving stress in the process.
It gives you a much deeper insight into various topics Most of the information we consume in our daily existences is in bite-sized format for the hyperactive needs of the modern internet audience. But the thing is, no matter how good an article may be, it will always have a limited scope for actually teaching you about a subject in-depth.
Reading a good, factual book on a subject will give you a lot more insight into a topic, even if you disagree with the author’s ideas.
Even reading fiction has this effect. A series of novels will not only give you a deeper sense of the characters and their lives, it will allow you to get more deeply involved in the themes being explored.
It stimulates your imagination It could easily be argued that imagination is in short supply these days, as most of our entertainment and much of our lives in general are set out for us by someone else. We watch TV shows with elaborate sets, which don’t require us to imagine how things would look, and we also have resources on hand to tell us exactly how we should deal with any problems we might be having.
Reading stimulates the imagination. It reawakens it. It gets us used to creating our own internal worlds, and this can have untold benefits in every element of life.
