12 Reasons why you should read books daily
A world without the opportunity to read books – for many people, that´s an unimaginable world.
Books and language, in general, are the most remarkable components that make humankind different from animals. We were able to develop complex communication and bring it into a written form so that others could benefit from these words and the messages they convey.
Nowadays, humans not only share essential information through this communication method, but it´s more a variety of topics you can choose from – informational, educational, entertaining, and everything in between.
Books are mystical.
Also, books have something mystical to it. No matter what book you choose, you can only learn its message by reading page to page. There is no shortcut for getting the information than to go through that whole thing. Of course, you can read reviews and the book description, but you will need to do more than this to experience the story’s feelings and to inhale everything provided within the lines.
If you count yourself as one of the people who almost forgot about the importance of books, and if you can barely remember the last time you bought a book and read through it, this blog post is for you.
There is no urge to be ashamed or feel guilty if you haven´t found time in recent times or years to make reading a daily habit. But in my opinion, reading books is essential to life; therefore, I hope that with this blog post, you can find your way back again to enjoying books or perhaps even get into contact with that form of communication for the first time in your life.
There are several reasons for you to grab a book daily.
You can benefit from the book’s value and what the habit of reading stands for.
In today’s blog post, we will talk about the most significant reasons for you to read books daily.
1. Reduce stress
Reading can reduce stress.
For you to be able to read word after word, page to page, you need to put your conscious mind into focus. You need to ignore the world and the chaos in your head momentarily. And with this stage of mind – focused on the words you´re reading – there is no time to stress yourself out over things outside of you. In that particular moment, there is no space in your head to worry about anything you would usually get crazy about. Otherwise, you couldn´t focus on the words in front of you.
When you concentrate on the letters you´re reading, stressful thoughts can leave your mind for one moment. The habit of reading can become some form of meditation since it´s pretty similar – whether focusing on your breath as you would during a meditation session or on the words and context you want to receive from a book.
You are in control of what you read.
Another point is that you are in control of what story you pick. You are the one who is deciding what book you want to read, and this is bringing you into a position of power. Other than in reality, where you can sometimes find yourself in a place of helplessness when struggling with problems you would never intentionally choose to deal with.
Therefore, during your reading session, no feelings are coming up that you have not intentionally chosen before. You know exactly what to expect from a book, so you can choose the best genre that fits your preferences. Being in control is one way of getting rid of stress.
Even if the feeling of being in control lasts for just one moment – the time you spend with a book in your hands – you can feel safe. With a book, you can have as much control as you wish.
When being hyper-stressed, it´s a minor success, but after all, it´s a success no matter the scope. Try out if this stress reduction method works for you as well. For many, it indeed does.
2. Build your vocabulary
The average novel contains approximately 80.000 words.
This means chances are high that you here and there get to know a new word by reading through books. Especially if you keep in mind that the average person knows and uses around 20.000 – 35.000 words – of course, this does not mean that you will learn thousands of new comments by reading books – since they are usually written in easy language, so most people can understand the information provided. Still, with a book that uses about four times the amount of the whole vocabulary you are capable of, you have at least the chance to learn some new words.
Language is about more than just learning new words.
It is about adequately using your already existing vocabulary and understanding its grammar. This way, you can even benefit from reading books for your everyday life. Correctly using grammar is far more impressive than just showing off with fancy words, don´t you agree?
And even better than that, building your tongue with the support of books is a way more fun experience than working your brain through a dictionary. With a book, you have a plot or at least context. This way, your brain can easily understand how particular new words are used within the context, and all the confusing grammar rules are being applied that nobody can remember fully.
This is possible by reading books and one reason to read daily.
3. Improve your imagination
This one is major.
As adults, it´s a sad truth, but many people lose their imagination when they get older.
Reading can help! If you decide to read more regularly, especially novels, you train your brain to imagine the things built in the book through the words used – this way, you can improve your imagination skills.
Now you could ask yourself, what role does the ability to use your imagination plays in your life and why you should even care about improving that skill.
Well, think about this one:
If nobody ever used their imagination throughout history, we would not be where we are today. I couldn´t create this blog post here since there would be no internet or a device where I could type my words.
Imagination is the most powerful tool for innovation.
Almost any invention we use regularly would´ve never been invented. Because how should it work? If not, at least one person would have used their imagination to think beyond what existed yesterday.
I guess it´s challenging for us to imagine what it takes to create something new that never existed before, since we are used nowadays to using the craziest inventions daily, like a mobile, that contains many of former innovations in a tiny device, like a calculator, the camera, flashlight etc.
All of these creations would work perfectly fine all by themselves. Still, just because one person thought about combining things with imagination, we can use mobile phones how we use them today. And this is just one example where imagination was the most powerful tool for innovation and, more significantly, evolution.
Imagination makes your life easier.
Even if you do not want to be the person who invents the next big thing, improving your imagination with the help of reading books can make your life easier. You can find ways to live more comfortably by being creative and thinking outside the box. You could make life more joyful and create a life that makes you happy and fulfilled daily.
Only by using your imagination can you be in control of whether you accept the circumstances in your current life or if you change them. Because only with the help of your vision can you imagine a new, yet unknown, life.
4. You have access to new information
Another reason for reading books daily is your ability to access new information at your terms and conditions. No matter the problem or issue you´re facing, there is probably the perfect book to assist you with finding solutions for your case.
We all face issues from time to time. Some are easier to handle, and others need more of our time and energy so that we can find solutions for them. But no matter your current issue, the final result is always finding a solution.
And for you to be able to do eventually this successfully, you´ve got options:
- You could ignore your matter – many people do this and live happily ever after until they cannot ignore it anymore – but until they come to this conclusion, centuries can pass by
- You could try to improvise and try out something that comes to your mind – this can work if you have a proper connection to your intuition or gut feeling – and if it doesn´t work out the way you expected it to be, you can continue following the trial-and-error method
- You could try to get appointments with experts every time you face some issues – this could be pretty expensive and exceptionally time consuming
- You could try and get the information you need from your surroundings, like people you spend your time with
- Or you could try and get the demanded information in the form of books – if you do your research correctly you can find hundreds of books about your issue, also written by experts who know what they are talking about or also by people who went through the same situation you´re currently facing
Whatever you do, it´s your choice. But to make proper decisions – remember that a decision is always required to solve an acute problem. Since you want to change your current situation, the logical explanation is deciding and going for it. And for you to make these necessary decisions, you need information.
The more information you have, the easier you can decide what is best for you to do. Therefore, if you face an issue, I will always recommend that you do your research for books that cover the relevant field. Afterwards, you can still decide whether you need help from outside or something completely different.
5. Improve your focus and concentration
If you need help with focus and concentration in your daily life, consider reading more books when you have difficulty keeping your mind on one task for an extended period.
Reading books is said to help with a more distinct attention span since you need to concentrate on the words you´re reading to make them make sense. Also, the ongoing investment of your time for at least a few hours to finish one book will help to strengthen your focus. You need to return to one book repeatedly and concentrate on what´s going on in the plot to understand the book’s message.
As a result, regular exercise will train your focus and concentration skills.
And with a more improved ability to focus, you can also improve your productivity since you´ve learned to concentrate on one specific task for an extended time. As a consequence, you can be more efficient when handling charges. This can help you be more successful in any way you want to be sticking out.
Improving your focus and concentration is one reason to read books daily.
6. Get better writing skills
With reading books, you´re writing skills will become better as a natural consequence. The more words you read and steadily you´re reading – the more reading becomes your habit, and the more fluent this result will integrate into your capabilities.
You might ask yourself: “But why should this be a reason to read more? Who needs good writing skills nowadays?”
Good question. Let´s talk about this one.
Everyone needs good writing skills.
No matter where you live or your goals, you need proper writing skills to achieve more than the bare minimum. Appropriate communication is a must to be successful in today´s world.
To succeed, you must develop the capability to communicate appropriately with others, whether your colleagues, employees, business partners, clients, etc.
Words are important. The ability to communicate in a written form is essential. And even more important is how you use these words. It´s unrealistic to assume that you will never have to write down anything in your life, whether in your career or your personal life.
Developing better writing skills is one reason to read books daily.
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7. Expand your understanding of the world
When discussing an expanded understanding of the world, mainly through social media’s role nowadays, thinking of travelling is very straightforward. With all these beautiful pictures and videos we interact with daily on social media, it can get tough not to feel bad about oneself. If you are one of these people who does not travel all around the world all the time and can share these experiences with millions of other people, don´t feel bad about yourself. You do not have to travel to certain places and interact with thousands of people to understand the world better.
It can make you feel you have a lesser understanding of the world than people who can explore new places and meet new people daily. Don´t worry – just because you may not be a guest at a new destination every here and there does not mean you cannot expand your understanding of the world.
There are millions of stories out there you can get to know. Millions of experiences you can be part of. You can expand your understanding of the world, from the comfort of your home, with the help of books.
The more stories you get to know, the better your understanding of the world is getting. And it doesn´t matter if you are the person who is experiencing these stories first-hand or if you are the one who is reading the story of someone else who experienced it. You feel what happens even if you do not actively make the experience.
With time and stories, you´ll get wiser.
The more stories you collect, the better you can evaluate situations in your life since you may already read about a similar situation and know theoretically what to do.
Of course, reading books can never replace any experience you make yourself – you must improvise, listen to your gut feeling and intuition, and act actively. This is a whole other level of wisdom.
You can explore the world from the comfort of your home or whatever place you choose. Nothing can go wrong; there are no unexpected consequences you potentially need to experience as it happens. With the habit of reading, you´re safe. That´s the difference between making your own experiences and getting to know other people’s stories through books.
Reading can bring you a deeper understanding of the world, without going through what people are going through who get this kind of knowledge by having specific experiences. But because it´s safe and you are not the person experiencing the situation doesn´t mean the stories in books are less valuable than a first-hand experience. It´s different but not less valuable than undergoing experiences.
Reading daily can help you expand your understanding of the world.
8. Develop your empathy
Empathy is a topic people have started to talk about in recent times more and more. Because it´s a potent tool when it comes to:
- Work environment
- Relationships
- Well-being
- Communication and cooperation
- Dealing with negativity
- Mental health
There are many more topics where empathy can play a not to underestimating role, but before we go into detail, let´s talk about empathy and why it´s essential to improve this skill.
The definition, according to Cambridge Dictionary, is the following:
“the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation. “
In other words, empathy is the ability to feel what another being may think and experience in their inner world in a particular situation, even if you are not part of that situation and just watching it from a distance.
With this knowledge, it may be easier to understand why empathy is essential and can help with the above topics.
When you develop your empathy, you can understand another being better. And understanding better what the other person is going through and why she is behaving the way she does can help you interact more effectively and lead to higher cooperation from other people.
Also, showing empathy for others can give them a good feeling about themselves. They can feel seen whenever you show them you understand why they are the way they are. And when people feel seen and understood, proper communication and problem-solving are far more possible and achievable.
And not only does empathy work for others.
It´s a potent tool when caring for yourself, physically or mentally.
When you show yourself some healing empathy, you can relieve the pressure to perform at the highest level. Consequently, you can prioritise your well-being and learn how to deal with negativity.
All of this can lead to feeling more valued, happier, and even more fulfilled and with that attitude, you can be more successful in your life no matter the area you want to improve.
But how can reading books help improve your empathy for yourself and others?
Well, with reading daily or regularly, especially when reading fiction, there is always a story with protagonists who have emotions and act accordingly to these feelings (when written well). And with you as the reader participating in the book’s story, you can easily empathise with the characters through the way the author leads them through the plot. This way, you can experience first-hand how the character development is going on throughout the book.
And with that experience, you will have a much easier time doing the same with real human beings. This is how reading daily can help improve your empathy.
9. Improve your communication skills
Being able to use proper communication is vital in the world we live in. Having suitable communication manners is essential to get what you want and communicating encouragingly and positively with others.
If you can only work with poor communication skills, interacting with others in this limited way can lead to misunderstanding and confusion. Also, incorrect communication methods could unintentionally lead your vis-à-vis to do the opposite of what you intentionally planned on achieving. And I guess nobody would ever want to hurt other people unintentionally – but this can also happen more easily when you are unaware of your communication skills and how to use them accurately.
Reading can change the game no matter how well-trained your communication skills already are.
The more you read and learn about different interactions within these stories, the more you can benefit from them.
Communication is an essential part of living life. Proper communication is crucial whether you interact with friends and family, strangers, colleagues at work, business partners, or potential clients. It gets even more important the moment you have a role of responsibility.
Just think about a moment when a teacher, your parents, your boss or whomever you met in your life had a higher role of responsibility than you treated you in a way that was confusing or even hurtful for you. We all had one of these moments or something similar at least once in our lifetime—a moment where we felt misunderstood and mistreated. It simply does not feel very nice.
Nobody wants to be hurt –especially does nobody want to be the victim of unintentional communication. And with improved communication skills, you can solve almost every problem without putting everything on the other person. In such moments it gets crystal clear why proper communication skills are crucial.
Reading books can support you in understanding how different communication methods work and how you can actively integrate them into your life.
10. Reading trains your brain
Beyond all the reasons for reading daily above, this could be the most essential.
Reading books trains your brain – to work faster, better, and more efficiently.
Making sense of the words grouped in a book and getting faster at reading is like a workout for your brain. Let me explain why:
Your brain needs to be very active while making sense of the letters written down in the book. Your brain must work hard to make single letters into words, words into sentences, and sentences into scenarios and conversations. While reading, your eyes must hold the line and switch from left to right and from right to left again, and still focusing on what´s going on in the book is a real challenge.
You could not know that the guy talking in chapter one is the same one who appears in the last chapter if your brain wouldn´t remember him. And after you´ve read thousands of words and understood what the author wanted to tell you with them, your brain needs to remember all of them; otherwise, the whole book and reading experience would not make much sense.
Reading strengthens your brain’s memory.
Also, when reading non-fictional books, most start with the basics of a specific topic and then get more complex the further you read. Your brain needs to understand the correlations, and all of this depends on just one sense – your sight. You get all the information provided in a book through your eyes.
Your other senses are not involved when reading. This makes it even harder for your brain to handle all the information you want to get from a book.
This is why reading trains your brain and one more reason to read books daily.
11. Cure boredom
No matter what you´re looking for in a book, at least one will precisely deliver your wishes. Books can be anything from funny to sad, romantic, adventurous, entertaining, educational and informational. You can have several levels of fantasy or a story based on reality, problem-solving, spirituality, etc.
Reading can cure boredom effectively. This is because of the nature of books. It´s like watching a movie but in your head with the help of words.
So, the next time you feel bored and nothing can help you cure the feeling, consider grabbing a book and looking at what happens.
12. Increase your self-discipline
Last but not least, let´s talk about self-discipline.
Yes, the habit of reading daily can support you in your goal of increasing your self-discipline.
You may ask yourself now, how does that come?
Maybe the definition of the word self-discipline can help:
“the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to.”
With this definition in mind, self-discipline means that you have the strength and willpower to handle a task you are convinced is theoretically vital to you, even when you have no single interest in performing the job at this particular moment – for instance, this could be waking up at 5 a.m., getting yourself a ginger shot for breakfast or taking ice cold showers in the morning.
Any new routine requires self-discipline.
With a routine like reading that initially sounds manageable to maintain in the long term, you will likely encounter a situation where you need to use your self-discipline muscle. There can come a time when you may struggle with your new routine, and you would love to skip your reading session for that day, but this is precisely how you do NOT build a new habit.
Especially at the beginning of implementing any new routine, it´s essential not to skip a single day. Chances are way too high that one day of not practising your new habit can become one week, and after one week, one month and in the end, you are at the point where you started in the first place. Here is the moment where self-discipline comes to play.
Whenever you combat the feeling of skipping and deciding to maintain your routine, is when you train your discipline muscle. The bigger this muscle increases, the easier you can perform tasks that seem uncomfortable; with this action, you can widen your comfort zone. And the more regularly you train it, the more it grows.
When your comfort zone gets more expansive, you will feel comfortable with many situations that could be a real challenge for people with a more compressed one. As a result, you can deal with stressful situations more quickly, making you more prosperous and a better leader.
This is also the answer to why you should focus on increasing your self-discipline.
Okay, but how do reading books can support building self-discipline?
A book requires a commitment to get through entirely; you must return to it several times, and it´s usually not finished within an hour or two like a movie. Also, when reading a book, you cannot multitask like you could while watching a movie. You cannot check your phone because your ears are still busy listening to what´s happening in the film. This is not possible with a book. It requires concentration and time more than anything in the modern world.
With the support of reading books, this is how you can build your self-discipline and one more reason to read daily.
There are many reasons to start reading regularly – it´s good for our overall well-being and can be a fun experience to do.
Of course, aiming for reading daily can also be a real challenge for some of us, but with the right attitude, you will rock it!
If you count yourself as one of the people who struggled to read more in the past, let this blog post remind you that you can start today. It’ll be enough even if you start reading for only 5 minutes daily. You do not have to go crazy about it! Always remember: you will finish any book with one page a day.
It´s not about being the fastest but the most consistent one.
If you start showing up for yourself and your goals every day – this is when miracles happen. This is precisely when you start evolving into a new version of yourself. And reading books daily gives you 12 good reasons to practise every day to be the most consistent you´ve ever been!
By reading books, you can benefit in ways you´ve never thought about. This habit can broaden your horizon and can have a significant impact on what decisions you make regarding your life. And isn´t it the most remarkable component of anybody’s life to make wise decisions so that you can live pleased with the consequences?
With all of this said, let´s get active! Start today with being a better version of yourself by reading books daily!
