I have told you time and time again that fitness isn’t just in the physical sense. Fitness is being fit in every single area of your life. Sadly, many “experts” in the field only focus on the physical and leave out other aspects that need to be addressed. So here is how reading effects your health.
How Reading Effects Your Health
Reading is amazing. I am an addicted to reading like nothing I have been addicted to. I always ready before going to bed, and finish 1-2 books each month. And I still have about 125 books on my amazon wish list to read. I personally am a self-help freak and read anything and everything I can get my hands on in that genre. Regardless of the genre that you like to read, reading can affect your health in many ways.
Mental Fitness
Reading keeps your mind sharp. If you want a strong body, you have to consistently workout and train it. If you want a strong mind, you have to do the same. Reading is that workout. Reading is the equivalent of walking every single day. It isn’t going to be that main factor that puts you in optimal fitness, but it will make a HUGE difference in trying to get where you want to be. When you read, your mind is processing so much information. It is creating mental images from the stories. It is processing and storing the information to be able to remember it at a later date. It is taking a series of random letters and making words. It is taking the words and making a sentence. It is taking the sentence and making a paragraph. All within a matter of seconds. Just like any other muscles, if you don’t use it, you will lose it. Don’t lose the mental edge!
Personal Development
It doesn’t matter what you are reading, if you are reading, you are learning. I LOVE to read self-help books. I have no idea why, but I am addicted to them. Every time I read a book, at a very minimum, I find at least one thing I can take from the book and apply to my life. There have even been books that have completely changed my entire life (the book that did that for me was The Secret). Whatever you want to learn how to do, need to overcome, want to conquer in your life, whatever you want to learn or whatever else you want to change, whatever it is, there is a book out there for that. Reading keeps you growing. In life, you are either progressing, or regressing. Nothing ever stands still. KEEP PROGRESSING.
Mental Relaxation
We are busy creations by habit. Even when we try to relax, our mind constantly goes 100 mph around all the things we should be doing, we didn’t do, or we need to do. It is a constant struggle to genuinely take a break from all the hustle of the world. Reading a book gets as close to this as possible. When you were a book, it is hard for you to focus on anything else, if you truly are focusing on the book. You need to concentrate (see mental fitness) in order for your brain to properly digest the information. This, believe it or not, is actually relaxing. Get into a quiet place and get lost in the book. Give yourself time away from everything else, even if just for 20 minutes on your lunch break every day. It is like a mini-vacation, especially if you are in deep with a book that you can’t put down.
TAKE AWAY: Fitness just isn’t in the physical sense. It is complete body, mind, spirit, social, emotion, everything in life wrapped into one. Reading a book can help enhance your mental fitness in many ways, as described above.
Here are a few books that have made a HUGE impact on my life and all come highly recommended:
To Your (mental) Health,
Z
