10 Reasons Why You Should Start Reading
From time to time people have wondered why reading is important when there’s so many other things to do with one’s time. For the most part it looks boring for a person to be staring into one book for hours. But reading can be more beneficial to your life than you think. Have a look at the list below then pick up a book and start treading for a better life.
1. To Develop Your Verbal Abilities
Although it doesn’t always make you a better communicator, those who read tend to have a more varied range of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases exponentially with the more volumes you consume, giving you a higher level of vocabulary to use in everyday life.
2. Improves Your Focus and Concentration
Unlike blog posts and news articles, sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text, which over time will strengthen your attention span.
3. It Improves Your Imagination
You are only limited by what you can imagine, and the worlds described in books, as well as other peoples views and opinions will help you expand your understanding of what is possible. By reading a written description of an even or a place, your mind is creates that image in your head, instead of having the image placed in front of you when you watch television.
4. Reading Makes You Smarter
Books offer an outstanding wealth of learning and at a much cheaper price than taking a course. Reading gives you a chance to consume huge amount of research in a relatively short amount of time. Heavy readers tend to display greater knowledge of how things work and who or what people were. Books at home have been strongly linked to academic achievement.
5. It Makes You Interesting And Attractive
This goes hand in hand with reading to become smarter. Having a library of information that you have picked up from non-fiction reading will come in handy in any academic or scholarly conversation. You will be able to hold your own and add to the conversation instead of having to make your excuses and leave. You will be able to engage a wider variety of people in conversation and in turn improve your knowledge and conversation skills.
7. It Reduces Stress
Studies show that reading reduces stress. You only needed to read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. In fact it got subjects to stress levels lower than before they started.
8. For Entertainment
All the benefits of reading mentioned so far are a bonus result of the most important benefit of reading; Its entertainment value. If it were not for the entertainment value, reading would be a chore but it needn’t be. Reading is not only fun, but it has all the added benefits that we have discussed so far. Much more enthralling than watching a movie or a TV show (although they have their many benefits as well), a good book can keep us amused while developing our life skills.
9. Better Sleep
Our eyes and brains weren’t designed to be bombarded with glowing pixels all day. These bright lights stimulate the brain and tell our bodies it’s time to wake up. In an age when many of us spend 8 to 10 hours in front of a screen each day, it can be hard for our bodies to calm down at bed time. Many sleep experts say that reading a paper book (e-books don’t count!) about an hour before bed can be a great way to signal to your body that it’s time to rest.
10. Increased Emotional Intelligence & Empathy
According to studies, people perform better on tests measuring empathy, social perception and emotional intelligence after reading literary fiction. These are skills that help us to read body language in others. They also found that one’s tendency to become absorbed in a story was positively correlated with empathy.
