If you’ve been wondering all your life what is the one hobby that you must force yourself to pick up, reading it is and if you’re someone who loves reading, you’ll know why you’re so awesome after reading this piece. Here are the various advantages of being a regular reader of books. While reading is on a rise across the world, the quality of reading is declining since reading posts on social media also counts as ‘reading’ and that is seriously worrisome. So go ahead, read this and start reading ‘printed books’.
1. Readers are smarter people and that’s a big turn on
How: Reading undoubtedly increases your knowledge about things and makes you smart and a recent study confirms that being smart is an irresistibly attractive and one of the sexiest traits in the eyes of a woman.
2. They are more likely to make this world a better place to live in
How: Reading is a path to learning a lot more about the real world than you can ever imagine without reading. It reveals the hardships of the same world you are a part of. Hence, regular readers are thrice as likely to get inclined towards social service than those who do not read books on a regular basis.
3. People who read are less likely to have Alzheimer’s and Dementia
How: Exercising helps you keep your body fit and fabulous. Reading also is an exercise that helps stimulate your brain and people who have hobbies that help stimulate the brain are less likely to have Alzheimer’s disease, various studies have shown.
4. Readers are able to step into others’ shoes more easily
How: It was found in a study that reading fictional stories makes you better empathize with other people’s troubles, you are more likely to be transported to another person’s emotional state. You are able to switch between the book story and your real-life easily – you connect the book character’s (the one you can relate to) emotional state with your real-life relationships.
5. And they are good listeners, which makes life so much easier for the people around them
How: Reading makes life easier for those who have lots of friends who love to talk. Basically, reading helps you improve your vocabulary and grammar skills, and hence, your listening skills because you are able to absorb more when a person is talking, studies have found. This was true especially when the words were spoken out loud and clear.
6. Learning different languages is much easier for regular readers
How: More white matter is produced in the brain when you read regularly and that’s a tissue that plays a major role in learning, especially in learning different languages, studies have found.
7. Reading a book is as much of a therapy as listening to music or watching movies
How: A person going through difficult times can work on his/her issues with a fictional character who’s going through similar problems, the American University suggests. Reading books, therefore, helps you get over your difficult times by gaining new perspective.
8. Readers have better brain functioning
How: A research at Emory University has revealed that reading a good book may cause significant connectivity in brain and neurological changes that is similar to what muscle memory does. This connectivity sticks around for at least five days after reading.
9. Reader parents and children have better relationships
How: Reading out stories to your child and creating that friendly environment beats all other ways of bonding with your children such as watching television and reading creates a special parent-child relationship that lasts forever.
10. Reading allows readers to have clearer life goals
How: Ohio State University found in its study that the more a reader can relate to a positive character in a book, the more he/she can act accordingly in life and take action towards a goal. Reading about how someone comes out of problems and obstacles in a book encourages readers to do the same in real life.
11. Readers are secretively creative
How: Obafemi Awolowo University’s educators carried out an experiment in primary school classrooms where they incorporated education-themed comics and they noticed a healthy sense of creativity in the mixture of words and images.
12. Reading helps in criminal rehabilitation
How: Inmates who completed literary courses behind bars were found to be 30% less likely to commit a crime again than those who did not take the course, a study reveals.
13. Most readers are financially stable
How: Only 4% of the readers with strong literary skills were found to be living in poverty, on the other hand, 43% of individuals with poor literary skills are living in poverty. Therefore, regular readers are far more likely to be financially stable than non-readers.
14. They are more accepting and more cultured
How: National Endowment for the Arts found in a study that those who read are more likely to blend in culture and they are more likely to accept and participate in different cultures because reading gives you a chance to learn so many new fascinating things
15. Readers are open-minded individuals
How: The conclusion of a study that was published in the Creativity Research Journal reveals that participants who read a short story in their experiment were more open to ambiguity and alternate endings, they did not have a mental blockage for a “cognitive closure”. Thus, regular readers are more prepared to face uncertainty.
16. Stress doesn’t hit readers as hard, in fact, it takes the stress away
How: The University of Sussex suggests that reading is a better way to calm down than listening to music or walking. Reading can defeat stress in a matter of a few minutes, it was found.
17. Readers are better off at remembering things
How: Reading helps you exercise your brain and that in turn creates new synapses that help sharpen your memory. You create new memories by reading and this exercise allows you to retain more information in your brain. This is why Harry Potter lovers remember the minutest of details of every part of the Harry Potter series.
18. They are fit and fabulous
How: Readers are much more concerned about keeping fit than those who don’t read. They are more likely to spend far more time in the gym and exercise for longer durations.
19. Young readers who read for fun perform better at school
How: Young readers make tremendous progress in math, vocabulary, and spelling by reading and they perform better at school, a study has confirmed.
20. Reading self-help books eases depression
How: Reading self-help books during a low phase helps combat depression at all levels, it has been scientifically proven. It was found in a study that after a full year of reading books, participants were found to be far less depressed than those who went through proper treatments.
21. Readers can sleep better
How: Whereas bright light is a form of a signal to tell your brain to wake up, reading a book under dim light puts your brain to rest and allows you to sleep comfortably.
22. Regular readers have a better vocabulary
How: Rhode Island Hospital staff carried out an experiment to compare the “receptive” vocabulary (the number of words that they could understand) among two groups of eight month olds. They found that while there was a 40% increase in the vocabulary of those who had been read to as babies, there was only a 16% rise in those who had not been read to as babies.
23. Readers – with their amazing vocabulary, smartness and creativity – are better writers
How: If you’re a regular reader, you helplessly turn into a thief (not literally). You can’t help but pick up the author’s writing style in the books you’re reading, the same way – listening to music affects your music sense.
