Are you a reader? And no, this is not a reference to reading the nutritional information on your packet of noodles, those Facebook updates, tweets, or being psychic. When was the last time you actually read a book, a thought-provoking newspaper article, or even a long column in a magazine? No, they are not extinct yet.
But, despite having a dire need for people to keep the habit alive collectively, you may also be missing out on a lot of individual benefits which come with regular reading. At the risk of earning the title of bookworm, you may want to start reading more and gaining some of these little discussed benefits.
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1. Keeps Your Brain Working In Tiptop Condition
Studies have shown that reading helps keep your mind busy and fires up those lazy and dormant neurons, to keep you mentally stimulated. No different from other muscles in your body, your brain needs to be exercised, so you either use it or lose it. Besides puzzles and games like chess, reading is the best trick to slow down your brain’s aging effects, keep it from deteriorating, and possibly prevent Alzheimer’s and dementia.
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2. Relaxes Your Mind
Our lives are riddled with various forms of stress, be it work, relationships, traffic, bills, and more. But just curling up with a book is the ultimate stress buster and relaxant, as you venture into a story outside your own, get transported to worlds that are not your life, and give your mind and self the space it needs to get away, rejuvenate, and boost your mood. So you can come back to deal with your everyday troubles, with renewed energy and a fresher perspective.
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3. Becoming Your Own Encyclopedia
By keeping your mind active and engaged with some stimulating information, reading slowly fills your head up with useful information, crazy facts, and becomes more aware of what happens in the world or even in your own mind. By prepping your brain with a bank of knowledge, it can also prep you for unforeseen challenges, even impress any interviewer or your own boss. And always remember, you can waste or lose time, money, people, and even your health but knowledge is something that is always yours.
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4. Words At Your Fingertips
The more you read, the more new words you come across, and the more you expand your vocabulary, become a word wizard, and even learn a new language in the correct context. This enables you to express yourself better and more clearly, boost your self-confidence, open your mind up to possibilities, ideas, and implement current events, which is a bonus for almost any job and career.
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5. Memory Booster
When reading some books, you need to remember the names of a variety of characters, their stories, characteristics, and even the little details of the story so you can keep up with the plot developments. Considering how much you need to remember, you are literally shaping your brain to remember more with ease. Whenever you have a new memory, your brain creates new synapses, also called brain paths. These interwoven aspects of reading therefore also toughen existing synapses and makes your short-term memory recall much better than average people.
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6. Being A Sherlock Yourself
If you’re a mystery novel lover and have an uncanny habit of solving mysteries before they are revealed, then you probably have a proud set of analytical thinking skills. Those critical thinking skills include having a keen eye for detail and putting two-and-two together to figure out “whodunnit”. This makes your mind sharper, and helps you be more observant of people, things, and happenings in real life whether it is to spot errors, know if someone is lying, hiding their true feelings or intentions, and even knowing the right people to trust.
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7. Better Concentration And Focus
With the modern-day addiction to internet, and the number of tabs our minds multitask, we have probably forgotten how to focus on a single task without getting distracted or having the attention span of a toddler. Studies have shown that within just 5-minutes the average person divides that time and attention to working on their main task, checking their email, chatting with a few people on platforms like WhatsApp, constantly checking their phones, and have conversations with their peers. This results in increased stress levels and lower productivity. But when reading a book, it requires your full and undivided attention, so you can grab every little detail and not miss anything. It would greatly benefit you to read a book for about 15 to 20 minutes before you begin any task or on your way to work. You will start to notice how much you can concentrate without losing focus too quickly.
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8. Helps You Live Longer
New research suggests that those who spend around 30 minutes or more a day to read a good book may live longer. The researchers of Yale University conducted a survey on how reading habits affect the life expectancy of a person, by using the assessment attributes of gender, education, and cognitive capabilities of over 3635 people. Those who read books for around 4 hours per week or more, were 20% less likely to die within the decade. While those who read periodicals, showed a 11% lesser chances of dying, only if they read them for around 7 hours a week. However, the habits of watching too much TV increased the risk of an early death. Their theory was that books are so packed with themes, characters, depth, and more, that it keeps readers’ minds engaged more than newspapers and magazines, which are more of fleeting information, with its depth lasting only a few pages. The study also indicated that bookworms or regular readers were less likely to experience cognitive decline and would live around 23 months longer than non-book readers, irrespective of social or economic status, age, or gender. Although, the results did not include an assessment of those who read e-books, listened to audio-books, or considered the genres of non-fiction and fiction. But these areas hold promise for further exploration.
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9. Inspiring A Writer In Yourself
Being well-read also enables you to be an amazing writer yourself. You learn to stitch words together in your own personal way or in more than one style, with your own character becoming evident in your writing. This is similar to how musicians, painters, and artists influence each other’s work and pass it onto whoever is inspired by them.
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10. Mastering Patience And Feeling At Peace
As one way to relax, reading a good book also acts like a reward system and induces a sense of calm in people’s minds. It is said that those who read books with spiritual or self-help themes, experience lower blood pressure, instant tranquil, stable moods, and lesser effects of existing or possible mental illnesses.
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11. Free To Be Entertained
Books are your best bet to free and limitless entertainment, as your brain’s right-hemisphere is stimulated to be imaginative, creative, and form its own visuals based on what they read in their books. Each of those countless subjects of books out there, each provide a different form of cognitive entertainment. Much like the different channels of a TV in your own mind, you are free to form your own world as opposed to what the TV readily provides you.
So, time to switch off those gadgets, that TV, and grab any book of your interest. Just like the directory of your TV, there are tons of genres of books to choose from, whether you like poetry, biographies, romance, mystery, etc. to restore your mind’s true dormant powers and replenish that tech-drowned soul for around an hour a day.
