7 amazing benefits of daily reading
If you haven’t picked up a book in a while, here are seven reasons why you should.
1. It reduces stress – There’s nothing like a good novel to distract yourself from whatever worries you have in your life. Reading allows you to exit your own conscious stream and enter the mind of the narrator – because doesn’t want a break from their own head once in a while?
2. It stimulates your mind – You know the old saying, “If you don’t use it, you lose it” and this also applies to our minds. Reading keeps the brain engaged, which in turn can help to deter the onset of Alzheimer’s and dementia. As you read, you also gain knowledge and indirect experience which can aid a reader in the future.
3. It increases empathy – Reading helps to increase one’s empathetic capacity for the same reason it reduces stress: it allows you to exit your mind and experience the emotions of others. This allows a frequent reader to understand the motives and thoughts of others, making them more empathetic in every day social interactions.
4. It helps your memory – When you read, the mind is made to remember new information in the form of plots, names, and characters. In remembering these facts, we strengthen the brain’s short-term memory and reinforce our existing recollections.
5. It can help you sleep – While staring at your lit phone screen can actually make it harder to go to sleep, reading can help. Nightly reading creates a routine that indicates to the body that it’s soon time to go to bed. In addition, reading’s de-stressing abilities can help to quiet the mind for an easier time dozing off.
6. It improves your vocabulary – When you read regularly, you vastly increase the words that your mind is exposed to. In this way, you improve your vocabulary, which in turn can improve eloquence, and, as such, can even help to improve your self-confidence.
7. It improves your writing skills – When you are exposed to any author’s literature for a prolonged period of time, their writing style will inevitably influence your own writing skills. Add to this the induction of new vocabulary, and it’s no stretch that frequent readers make better writers.