One of the basic reasons why reading is important is that it helps you grow mentally, emotionally and psychologically. Every book gives you an opportunity to learn new things and explore new ideas. Reading books increases your knowledge and makes you smarter. But the importance of reading is not limited to just these benefits. You will be amazed to know how beneficial reading books can be for you. And that is exactly what you will get to know here in this article.
Here are 17 reasons why reading is important for everyone!
1. It helps you discover yourself
Every good book opens up new dimensions of thoughts for the reader. When you read a book, you somehow try to connect the events, emotions, experiences and characters in the books with yourself. This not only keeps you engrossed into the book but it also makes you realize how you would react and feel to those situations that have not yet occurred in your life.
It helps you broaden your dimension of likes and dislikes and things that would please you. So with every page that you read, you have a chance to discover a new part of yourself!
2. Imparts valuable lessons from years of experiences
Books are not written in a day. For an Author, it takes a lot of hard work, understanding, experiences, knowledge and in many cases lots of pain to come up with a single book. But we as a reader get to read them in just weeks or days thereby living years of experiences in considerably less time.
3. It improves your Focus and Concentration
The Internet has definitely revolutionized our world. But there’s a huge drawback too. For many of us, a large part of our day is spent surfing, chatting, watching videos, reading unnecessary memes and articles online. No wonder people are growing more impatient and losing focus.
However, reading books is one of those constructive habits that actually help us improve our concentration power. It helps us to train our brain to focus our attention and live in the present.
4. Reading improves your emotional health
Books are full of emotions. Sometimes they will make you cry with every turning page and sometimes they will just keep you smiling. It can fill you with anger when the antagonist of the story succeeds in his evil plan, but again it can give you immense pleasure to see your hero achieving his goal.
Books can make us happy, sad, jealous, loved, betrayed and so on! Books are thus an amalgamation of different mixed emotions that ultimately help us grow emotionally!
5. Importance of Reading in memory enhancement
There are a lot of things that we need to remember while reading a book. Name of the characters and their features, name of the places, plots and sub-plots, the sequence of events, important conversations etc. are some of the key information we need to keep in mind while reading. And the ability to retain these information keeps improving with the number of books that you read.
As your brain learns to remember the information from the story-line, it also becomes better at remembering other things of your life. So by reading books, you are also indirectly training your brain in improving your memory.
6. It’s a great source of motivation
Life is tricky. Sometimes there are moments in our life when we feel down and discouraged. We may lose our hope and interest in life and just want to give up. Well, in times like this, sometimes all we need is a little motivation, little push in the right direction.
Reading a good inspirational book during such period can change our way of thinking and give us hope and motivation. Books are no doubt a huge source of motivation. We can derive great inspirations from them and transform our lives positively.
7. It expands your knowledge and makes you smarter
Books are a very rich source of information. With every book you read, you get to learn new things. The more you read, the more you know about different people, their behavior and experiences, different places, different cultures and facts that otherwise you would not have known.
Reading books somehow or the other adds depth to your knowledge base. With your increasing knowledge, you become capable of making better decisions and choices in life. You become aware of your surroundings and tend to have an open mind.
With so many new things learned, people who read, obviously tend to be smarter than people who don’t!
8. Broadens your Imagination and enhances your creativity
“It was a bright cold day on April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”. This is the famous opening line of the novel 1984 by George Orwell.
How do you interpret this line?
In reality, we hardly experience conditions like this. Standard Striking Clock strikes a maximum twelve times. Similarly, we rarely have a day both bright and cold simultaneously. However, George Orwell tries to paint the gloomy yet hopeful condition of life by some imaginative references. The interpretation can vary from person to person though.
This is the beauty of books. It makes you imagine things beyond possibility – things that would not come to our mind normally. Books give you a lot to think about. They also give you the opportunity to have your own perspectives and imaginations into play!
Apart from this, different creative characters, plots, and approaches trigger your creativity as well. You become both creative and imaginative!
There are also many books on creativity that can particularly shape and boost your creative thinking.
9. It makes you more empathic
Another reason why reading is important is because it makes you empathic. Being empathic means being able to understand and share the feelings of others. Books connect you with their characters and plots. You yourself become a part of the book and feel what the characters are supposed to feel. You understand their pain and grievances.
Books also somehow make you feel connected with the authors. You are constantly in some sort of conversation with the book. When you are attentive to reading books, you are actually listening to what the book has to say to you. This makes you a good listener. So reading books develop empathy and thus help you to understand what others feel under different circumstances.
10. Reduces stress and helps you sleep better
Reading is one of the best ways to relax your mind. According to a Research by University of Sussex reading for even six minutes can reduce your stress levels by as high as 68 percent!
Psychologists believe that this is probably because when we are lost in a book, our mind is focused on reading and that little distraction from the real world and our problems into a literary world eases the tensions in muscles and heart.
So the ultimate way of relaxing your mind is by losing yourself in a book! Read more and you will realize yourself that your stress level becomes significantly low with time.
Reading has a pretty positive impact on another important aspect of our life – a good night sleep! Reading books calms your mind and helps you sleep better. You can check out my article on benefits of reading before bed to know more.
However, avoid reading thrillers, horror, and mystery or suspense genre books before going to bed. If you are so lost in such books, you might end up staying awake instead. So, better read some calming, inspirational books that would give you positive vibes without making you impatient.
11. Importance of Reading in enhancing your critical and analytical thinking
While reading, a lot of information are being processed in our brain simultaneously. It opens up many different perspectives for your brain to comprehend. If you are reading a mystery or suspense book, your brain constantly tries to guess certain outcomes and events. It also has to relate one event to the other to make sense in the story. All this, in turn, sharpens our mind and enhances our critical and analytical thinking skills.
12. It gives you joy and pleasure
One basic reason why we read is simply because we enjoy reading. Reading brings joy and happiness in our life. We don’t have to depend on someone else to be happy and pleased. It’s true that sometimes reading can be little challenging or even boring, but such conditions are very rare if you know your taste and choose your books accordingly.
13. It makes you humble
Reading books not only enlighten you with knowledge, but it also makes you realize how much you do not know about the world. With each book teaching you something new, you can’t help but think how limited your knowledge is.
You read a book because you know it will add some new pieces of information in your mind which was so far unknown to you. However, it definitely does not mean you are not smart. It simply shows that you have accepted the truth that what you know is not everything.
There are so many things you can learn and this would not be possible unless you are humble enough to accept this truth!
14. Improves your vocabulary, language command, and communication skills
If you are a reader, you probably know the importance of reading in enhancing your vocabulary. Reading books is one of the best ways to improve your vocabulary.
Moreover, the conversations in the books also help you to strengthen your command over the language. Your sentence formation becomes quick, better and qualitative. You rarely get stuck for lack of words.
Once you have a richer vocabulary and controlled command over the language, your communication skills automatically become better.
15. Importance of reading in improving your brain functions
Books has tremendous power. It can shape our lives for good. It can also significantly improve our brain functions!
Research from Emory University in Atlanta Georgia suggests that reading a powerful work of fiction can make neural changes in your brain thereby improving your brain functions! The changes occur in the ‘resting-state’ of the brain and can last for days.
16. Being lonely will not bother you much
If you are a book lover, you are never really alone! You can always have a friend in the form of a book. And there’s reason why book lovers consider books to be their best friends. Books don’t complain, neither do they have any demands. They just be with you no matter what. You can carry them wherever you want and read them whenever you want provided you make time for reading.
If you are interested to know more on why we book lovers consider books as our best friends, check out this article on 12 reasons why books are our best friends!
17. It makes you a better person
One of the most significant importance of reading is that it helps you grow as a person. As mentioned above, reading makes you empathic and humble.
You learn about the hardships in life from experiences of others. You will learn to understand people and be kind and gentle. You will have a better emotional health.
Your increased knowledge can also be useful for other people who may look up to you for advice and suggestions. With all this, you are bound to become a better human being!
Of course, these are just a few reasons to show the importance of reading in everyone’s life. There can be many other specific reasons why reading is important.
For a person in the corporate world, reading may have different benefits than that of a person in sports. But the bottom line is that reading actually is very important, no matter in what field you are.
And if you aren’t reading yet, you should not wait any longer. The best time to start reading is today!
Happy Reading!
Source: GLADREADERS
