A dozen reasons why you should become a reader …

Considering the fact I’ve read thousands of books, and also considering I write books and other materials, it won’t be any surprise to you that I’m rather biased about the topic of this blog post … you should become a reader!

There really are lots of good reasons for doing so. Allow me to share just a dozen of them with you …

1. For the mental stimulation. It’s a scientific fact that reading, which provides us with much needed mental stimulation, improves our brain function. Click here to read the results of just one study that shows how reading is valuable exercise for our brains.

2. Stress reduction. We’re a vastly over-stressed people living in a stress-inducing world. A good book can help you reduce your stress, and very quickly! Anna Brech, reporting for Stylist, claims reading for just six minutes can be enough to reduce stress levels by up to 68 percent, according to a 2009 study from the University of Sussex:

Researchers found that reading silently to oneself works to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles. And it does this more effectively than other traditionally “relaxing” activities such as listening to music or having a cup of tea.

“By losing yourself in a thoroughly engrossing book you can escape from the worries and stresses of the everyday world and spend a while exploring the domain of the author’s imagination,” says cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis, leading the survey.

“This is more than merely a distraction but an active engaging of the imagination as the words on the printed page stimulate your creativity and cause you to enter what is essentially an altered state of consciousness.”

3. Reading improves memory. Memory is a major component of the work conducted by our brains, and according to a report by Sadie Trombetta writing for Bustle, reading is a great way of improving our memory.

“… it’s crucial to continually work to engage the mind and improve memory. Luckily, to do that, all you have to do is pick up a book.

According to a study at the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, mental stimulation like reading can help protect memory and thinking skills, especially with age. The authors of the study even suggest that reading every day can slow down late-life cognitive decline, keeping brains healthier and higher functioning for longer.

Ongoing studies and observations at Northcentral University published similar findings. According to the graduate school’s director, Dr. Wade Fish, reading has actually shown to have a slower rate of memory deterioration and the decline of other key mental capacities. This delayed decline means that older adults can stay mentally healthier for longer, which actually means reading can help people live longer.

4. Reading improves your focus. Many people read every day — Facebook status updates, Twitter tweets, favorite blogs, but reading a novel is different … and much more beneficial for improving your focus and concentration. Nora Inveiss explains in DeskTime:

… there’s something extra you get when reading a novel. With no hyperlinks, chats, emails, or other notifications competing for your attention, reading books requires undivided focus. This uninterrupted way of reading is conducive to “deep reading,” which is “slow, immersive, rich in sensory detail and emotional and moral complexity” and more than just decoding words on a page.

Fully immersive “deep reading” is a skill that needs to be practiced, and that’s hard to do when reading on the web. According to a 2006 study, most people who read on screens do so in an “F” pattern – they read the first sentence on the page in full, but then read less and less of each subsequent sentence. Reading a book with no hyperlinks or distractions forces the reader to focus and read each line in full. This allows for better reading comprehension and greater concentration.

This focus you get from “deep reading” is especially important for jobs that require long periods of reading complicated text. Processing what you’re reading becomes easier the more you do it.

5. Reading can improve your analytical thinking skills. You can develop your analytical thinking skills over time by consistently reading more books. Reading stimulates your brain, allowing you to think in new ways. Being actively engaged in what you’re reading allows you to ask questions, view different perspectives, identify patterns, and make connections. Compared to other forms of communication, reading allows you more time to think by pausing to comprehend, reflect, and make note of new thoughts and ideas.

6. Expands knowledge. My third grade teacher, Mrs. Avery, taught me to love learning. How did she do it? By helping me develop a love of reading. By delving into the history of the American Southwest, and then reading about the Incas, Aztecs, and Mayans … along with great adventure novels like “Robinson Crusoe” and “The Swiss Family Robinson” — I was sucked into reading, and the more I read, the more I learned! I’ve often said, if you know how to read, you can learn just about anything!

7. Improves writing and vocabulary skills. Not every reader is a writer, but most serious writers are voracious readers. Novel writer, Roz Morris, notes, “Reading — the good and the bad — inspires you. It develops your palate for all the tricks that writers have invented over the years. You can learn from textbooks about the writing craft, but there’s no substitute for discovering for yourself how a writer pulls off a trick. Then that becomes part of your experience.”

Gery Deer, owner of a communications company, says reading also improves our vocabulary …

Back in grade school, we were sent home weekly with lists of vocabulary and spelling words to memorize, usually out of context. It’s not the number of words we have at our disposal that matters, but how we use them. Without context, an advanced vocabulary is meaningless.

The idea isn’t to sound smarter, but to actually improve your cognitive and communication skills by expanding your knowledge of words. Better language skills can set you apart from those around you in many ways. Reading exposes us to more words and ideas within a context that provides meaning and proper usage. At the same time, those new words help us to better understand the root of similar words, thus further expanding the vocabulary and our language usage.

In my experience, most people with an advanced vocabulary and above average language skills tend to listen more and talk less. Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, people who read more tend to have a better vocabulary with a greater understanding of the usage of those words.

8. Reading is an effective means of equipping yourself. As I mentioned previously, if you can read, your capacity to learn is magnified and multiplied. Do-it-yourself sections are popular in bookstores, and much of what we learn in preparing for our careers begins with a textbook! If you want, or need, to learn something, there’s likely a book already published to teach you just what you need to learn.

9. Reading stirs new ideas. Many of us can think of at least one time, while reading a book, that the content suddenly inspired a new idea for us to act on. Something in a book may have sparked our thinking about how to do something a better way, or something new to add, or ways of doing things differently, etc.

10. Reading stimulates the imagination. Paul Heavenridge reports for Literacy Works that reading spurs our imagination:

Reading broadens our imagination by stimulating the right side of our brain. It literally opens our minds to new possibilities and new ideas helping us experience and analyze the world through others’ lives.

Neuroscientists at Emory University discovered that reading fiction can improve brain function on a variety of levels. They found that becoming engrossed in a novel enhances connectivity in the brain and improves brain function. Reading fiction was found to improve the reader’s imagination in a way that is similar to muscle memory in sports.

11. Reading can broaden your world. Without ever getting off your couch, you can take great adventures along the Nile, or deep into the Amazon, or wrestle with the troubles of being stranded on a deserted island. You can travel back in time, or forward, or to distant planets and galaxies that don’t even exist … except in a good novel. Reading is a portal to experiences you may never personally have an opportunity for!

12. Reading is a great source of entertainment. This one is easy to understand — if you have ever read a great novel where, at the end of a chapter you just “had” to turn the page and delve into the next chapter … and you kept doing that for multiple chapters (or maybe you just stayed up all night and finished the book), then you know how gripping, how entertaining a book can be.

That’s just 12 good ideas for why you should be a reader. There are several more. Just pick the ones you like, and then make a life-long jump into the wonderful world of books!

Scotty