Photo Credit: Belle Odyssee
Man! I hated reading when I was younger. Never made sense why I needed to sit still and read a book and then have to break down every chapter and write a damn exam on it. Regretting that a bit now, even though I did learn a lot about being the underdog or the hero from the comics I was reading as a kid.
A lot has changed since then. Now I enjoy reading and we have daily opportunities to read, whether it’s on social media, a blog post, an online article, a newspaper, a magazine, or just picking up a book; the opportunities to read are endless.
Oprah Winfrey, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Jay Shetty, Gary Vaynerchuk, Robin Sharma, Tony Robbins, Miles Monroe, Les Brown, Will Smith and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson – these are a few names I’ve drawn from a hat. All successful people in their chosen fields and guess what they all have in common?
They read Daily
Here are my 6 Reasons to read a Book:
1. Reduces Stress
When you enjoy what you’re reading your body releases feel-good hormones like endorphins, which helps reduce stress. Reading allows for no distractions as you lose yourself in a good book and the tension just slips away and allows the body to relax.
2. Knowledge
Knowledge allows us to understand. Reading feeds my mind with different pieces of information allowing me to increase things like my abilities, familiarities, insights, intelligence, philosophies, proficiencies and wisdom. Know this, no matter what we lose in life – your job, your spouse, a car, a house, etc.; we can’t lose knowledge gained therefore we are always equipped for challenges we will face.
3. Mental Activity
Mental activity is anything that activates, stimulates, and/or enriches the mind. Reading is an important contributor towards my mental activity and like Buddha said
The mind is everything. What you think, you become
If you have control of your mind you can dictate the course of your life.
4. Vocabulary
To me, vocabulary is the words we need to know and understand to communicate effectively.
Dichotomy and duality, two words I didn’t even know existed until a few weeks ago. If anyone had used these words in a sentence a few weeks ago I would have called the wife person and asked her if the words existed and what the hell does it mean? True Story!
‘The more you read, the more words you gain exposure to, and they’ll inevitably make their way into your everyday communication. Speaking well will definitely boost your self-confidence but having a good vocabulary improves reading comprehension, language development, communicating Ideas, occupational success and expressing yourself in writing’
5. Better Writing Skills
Too become better at writing, which I really enjoy doing, I have latched onto other Writers.
As Nathalie Goldberg says in her book – Writing down the Bones ‘Writers are great lovers; they fall in love with other writers. That’s how they learn to write. They take on a Writer, read everything by him or her, read it over again until they understand how the Writer moves, pauses and sees. The parts of another’s writing that are natural to you will become you and you will use some of those moves when you write.’
We all read for various reasons but if you pick up any book I’ve finished reading you will find highlighted sentences and paragraphs, post-it notes on chapters I want to re-visit and hand written notes in the side-lines. Why? because I want to become a better Writer.
6. Improved Focus and Concentration
Focus and concentration are two things I would list as weakness in my life to a certain extent. As a multipod I find myself getting bored when not stimulated and move onto the next interest.
‘Concentration is focused attention, and it has many uses and benefits. It assists in studying, enables faster comprehension, improves the memory, helps in focusing on a task, job or goal, and enables you to ignore meaningless and irrelevant thoughts’
We have so many distractions pulling us in different directions every day. Taking the time to read for a few minutes allows us to focus our attention on one single task thereby improving our focus and concentration. This is why I make sure I read for at least 15-20 minutes a day to practise focussing and concentration to turn my so called weaknesses into a strengths.
I’m sure there are many more reasons to read but these are mine and if you are not reading then you are surely missing out. With so many topics to choose from we are spoilt for choice. Normally I’ll set myself a goal of reading 1 book a month but buying books makes us happy even if I don’t get to read them all it will become a library for our kids one day.
I said us because the wife person loves to read as well and she’s been doing it for longer than I have. The beautiful thing about us reading is our kids enjoy reading as well because –
Monkey See Monkey Do
We read around our kids and too our kids. They read around us and too us. Sometimes we find ourselves all huddled up on the bed reading together. Best memories being made!
‘Step away from your distractions, crack open a book, and restore your soul’
Let me know in the comments below what benefits you received from having a daily reading practise.
