Reading Is Good For You: How To Cultivate A Practice To Strengthen & Relax Your Mind
Have you found yourself starting a book only to leave it sitting on the shelf for months or longer unfinished? Or maybe you have a stack of “to read” books sitting on your bedside table but you just don’t get around to opening them. There are countless studies that show how reading can improve our health and wellbeing and even prolong our lives. Sometimes, however, committing time to do it regularly can be really tough.
Building any good habit takes time, persistence, and practice. Today I will set out some suggestions which might be helpful to you, but first I’ll tell you why reading is so good for you.
7 Proven Reasons Why Reading is Good For You
‘Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body’
-Joseph Addison, 18th century English poet
Reading Reduces Stress
This seems kind of obvious to me, but what I found interesting was that according to a study by the University of Sussex demonstrated that six minutes of silent reading can reduce stress levels by 68% making it work better and faster than other methods such as listening to music, going for a walk or sitting down for a relaxing cup of tea. Why?
Reading allows the mind to focus and concentrate on the words, which pulls the reader away from anxious thoughts. Reading also has the effect of suspending reality. When we read, we escape into another world or another person and enter into an altered state of consciousness, which alleviates tension in the muscles and heart.
Reading Boosts Your Brainpower
Not only does regular reading help make you smarter and increase your vocabulary, but it can also increase your brainpower. Just like going for a jog exercises your cardiovascular system, reading regularly improves memory function by giving your brain a good workout. With age comes a decline in memory and brain function, but research shows that regular reading may help slow the process, keeping minds sharper longer.
Reading Helps Combat Alzheimer’s & Dimentia
Since reading is a workout for the brain, keeping your mind active can help preserve brain health later in life.
Research shows that elderly patients who read books or play mentally challenging games are two and a half times less likely to develop Alzheimer’s. Reading is also associated with lower risk of developing dementia. The study found that it didn’t matter if people began reading or engaging in other mentally challenging activities early or late in life, there was a slower rate of decline either way, so it’s never too late to pick up a book.
Reading Can Make You More Empathetic And Have Better Relationships
Finding yourself lost in a good read can make it easier for you to relate to others. Literary fiction, specifically, has the power to help its readers understand what others are thinking by reading other people's emotions, according to research published in Science. The impact is much more significant on those who read literary fiction as opposed to those who read pop-fiction or nonfiction. This is thought to be because literary fiction explores the psychology and relationships of the characters in more depth than genre fiction and non-fiction books.
Reading Helps With Sleep
Transforming your reading into a nighttime ritual can help with sleep for a couple of reasons. Mainly, it helps you relax and unwind before sleep, making a difference in being able to push aside anxious thoughts and allow your consciousness to drift off.
Secondly, is that the repeated ritual allows your mind to associate bed and reading with sleep. To do this, it is important not to mix up your habits. Make sure you switch your smartphone or tablet with a paperback book as backlit screen devices can disrupt the production of melatonin, and browsing the internet or scrolling through email and social media on your phone can keep your mind alert and in an active state. Also, the feel of paper pages under your fingertips provides your brain with some context, which can lead to a deeper understanding and better comprehension of the subject you're reading about, Wired reports.
Reading Inspires Success
Have you heard of the saying ‘not all readers are leaders, but all leaders are readers’? Well, there’s a lot of truth in that.
Studies in the US show that active readers are likely to earn up to five times than those who spend little or no time reading. Many historical leaders were known to be avid readers, and some of the most successful business leaders such as Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Elon Musk have associated reading with their career success. A study of the world’s wealthiest people found that the only trait in common was the fact that they read. This was echoed in a study in the UK, which uncovered that on average, the higher the socio-economic group an individual belongs in, the more often they read.
The link between reading and success is thought to be driven by the desire for knowledge. Reading makes us better thinkers by improving our critical thinking and problem-solving skills, boosting our general and specific knowledge and developing our social and communication skills. Tech billionaire Elon Musk learned how to build rockets by reading books and would spend more than 10 hours a day reading science fiction novels.
Reading Can Decrease Loneliness & Isolation
For most, the act of reading is a solitary act but this doesn’t have to be the case. Reading can be turned into a social event by finding a like-minded group of friends or members of your community and joining a book group.
The benefits of book groups is transforming an isolated practice into a social ritual and being able to discover a group of individuals that share the same interests. Reading and discussing books have the effect of getting a deeper understanding of the story through listening and debating different points of view. And even if you don’t get to discuss the book, getting together with friends regularly for snacks is fun too!
Tips to Literally form a habit
Set Fresh Goals
Having a reading goal can help to create a regular habit. It could be the number of pages you’d like to get through each day or the number of books you want to read in a year. I think setting a goal of 10 minutes or 10 pages a day is a good start and once you get into that habit you can set bigger goals. Whatever works for you.
Carve Out Some Time
Reserve some time for you and your book once a day or even just once a week. You might have it be your wind down before bed each night, or it could be your Sunday morning ritual. When I lived in Boston, my daily commute on the train was where I got my reading in which worked for me. If you work from home, maybe your midday break is the perfect time to lose yourself for an hour or so. Or if you’re on site, maybe there is a nice park near your work where you can enjoy being outside with your book and a sandwich.
Keep It Simple
If you aren’t in the habit of reading yet, you don’t have to jump right into War and Peace or Anna Karenina. Start with something shorter, like a novella or a book of short stories. Something that will catch your attention and get the pages turning
Remember, It’s Your Book
Years ago I was reading a Pulitzer prize winning book of fiction that everyone who had read it told me I would just love it. It was very long and and I hated it. Although well written and having an interesting plot, it just didn’t speak to me. I got three quarters of the way through begrudgingly until I started talking to a friend about it. She also struggled with it and before abandoning it entirely. “Don’t you feel bad about not finishing it?” I asked. And she told me, “No. I read for pleasure or for learning and I was getting neither. I never force myself to finish a book if it doesn’t capture my attention.”
From then on I never forced myself to finish something that I wasn’t getting something out of. I put that Pulitzer prize winner away and never picked it up again.
There’s an endless amount of books in the world. Don’t let reading become a chore.
Find Your Community
Finding your fellow bookworms is a great way to discover new books and make new friends. Finding a social media page for readers or getting a book club meetup together is a great way to stay excited about reading. I love that many of my patients are bibliophiles and we pass around books between us frequently.
It might take some time and patience getting in the groove of your new ritual, but once you build it into you’re daily or weekly routine, I think you will appreciate all that you will get our of your new hobby.