The benefits of reading are numerous and you would have heard of it over and over again from your English tuition teachers, school teachers and parents. From increasing your vocabulary bank, to honing grammatical skills and widening the horizon of your mind, the advantages of reading are never-ending. This is precisely the reason why knowledgeable individuals insist young ones to make reading a habit.
One does not need to pore over one book after another religiously; instead, it has to be smoothly weaved into a daily routine, making it a more leisurely affair. The real deal is the implementation of this idea!
Here are some ways in which reading can be made a habit and the reasons why you should learn to love it…
MORNING ROUTINE
Pick up a book and set aside some time in the morning every day to read a few pages. Either you can set your target with the number of pages (for example, 3 pages per day), or you can set a time frame (for example, half an hour of reading session every morning). You can do it whichever way you like it; there’s no right or wrong way and it is just about what you are comfortable with.
When something becomes part of your routine, your mind gets programmed to follow that and you will reach a point where you cannot do without it. You will feel as though some part of your day is missing when you don’t read a few pages of your book.
ANSWERS TO YOUR QUESTIONS
The best part about reading books is that you will realise that it opens up dimensions to your thinking in unexpected ways. As human beings, we have numerous questions floating in our mind about anything and everything; some which are even taboo to even talk about or overtly ask someone for answers.
Reading offers answers to questions which you thought you’ll never get answers for and liberates your mind from undue thoughts which might have been suppressing you for a long period of time.
CRITICAL THINKING
Your curiosity will lead to the accumulation of your knowledge. When you enter the world of habitual reading, you will realise that one book would lead you to the next and the journey continues; it becomes never-ending.
The experience of gaining knowledge through reading is absolutely exhilarating; even more so when the author has written in a way in which it encourages readers to think critically about the concepts or social issues being discussed or set as the context in which the characters are placed in.
EXPLORE
There are various genres that you can explore in reading. We live in a small bubble and there’s very limited amount of knowledge that we can gain from our surrounding. Through books, we expose ourself to places and people that are miles away from us. Learning about cultures that are starkly different from us, and reading about characters that we may not have seen in real life would offer us new dimensions to our thinking.
The way we look at the world and the way we interact with others would change for the better. We will evolve as a human being the more we read. Reading needs to go beyond just being a habit; it has to become a lifestyle.