In this new year, many people take it as a tradition to make new year resolutions, and some new year resolutions can be hobbies.
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Definition of Hobbies
Hobbies are activities undertaken at one's own convenient time for relaxation or pleasure. Hobbies ease the stress from the daily hustle, and they are more than just a means to pass time, they can as well be a means for personal and professional development. Acquiring new skills is one of the numerous benefits of having hobbies.
What are the benefits of hobbies?
1. Hobbies relieve you of stress by engaging in an enjoyable activity, this helps you stay calm and improves your productivity at home and at the office. Reducing distress is also good for one's mental and physical health.
2. A hobby can give you something to be passionate about, helping you develop your skill in that particular activity. This can lead to you becoming a figure of authority in that particular activity, whereby you can help people get better at it. Engaging in hobbies provide you with opportunities to experience new things.
3. Hobbies help in taking your mind off your worries, a way to escape from all the noise and stress that you experience on a daily basis. Engaging in a hobby helps with boosting your creativity.
4. Engaging in hobbies with people with shared interests help improve social life and strengthen bonds with others.
5. Engaging in hobbies is a means of keeping you entertained and stave off boredom.
6. Hobbies can provide educational or informational benefits as well.
There are numerous hobbies that one can engage in which promotes self-growth. Let's take a look at a few hobbies:
1. Gardening - This is a wonderful hobby and growing some flowers, fruits, and vegetables in your garden do definitely comes with some benefits to you. It reduces stress in your body and studies have revealed that it reduces the incidence of dementia by 36%. It also provides an adequate level of exercise for the body which leads to improved physical health.
2. Cooking - It a well-known fact that people who cook their food in their own kitchen tend to be healthier than those who regularly eat out. It is more likely that when you buy groceries at the market for cooking, healthier foodstuff is purchased instead of processed foods. One of my favorite benefits of cooking your own food is that it saves money, which is pretty important these days, lol.
3. Reading a book - reading a book improves brainpower just as hitting the gym builds muscle strength. It reduces stress(by 69%), sharpens comprehension, helps the mind to focus, and helps one to sleep better especially reading at bedtime.
4. Playing a musical instrument - playing musical instruments such as a piano or a guitar helps improve eye-hand coordination and fine motor skills, increases cognitive development, and has been shown to increase IQ by seven points in kids and adults. It kind of makes you wish you had taken those music lessons in elementary school more seriously, eh? It is not too late though to start taking music lessons.
5. Playing Games - be it board games, video games, games help increase cognitive development, strategizing, quick thinking, and pattern recognition.
6. Sports - of course, sports help improve physical and mental health. Team sports build social skills, helps you meet people, and make new friends. Having a fun time with people is key to your happiness. There is healing in spending fun time with people.
7. Meditation - engaging in meditation helps reduce stress, improves your ability to concentrate, lowers blood pressure, and strengthens your immune system. Meditation helps you attain complete relaxation which definitely puts you in a good mood. Here is a video on meditation by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.
In summary, it is clear that engaging in hobbies helps with personal development or growth. Which hobbies do you have or which new hobbies are you looking into for the new year?
For me, I am looking at getting into sky diving, lol.
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That's all folks.
Great advice, thanks for sharing
Thank you Tiffany, for reading my post. 😊
Great post! I love how you have given not only the benefits of hobbies in general, but also of specific hobbies. This was a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing!