If you have never felt the need to take up a hobby, then you are naive to all the mental and physical benefits they can offer. First off it can change the way you perceive the world and make you a happier person who is more passionate, caring and empathetic. You can learn an awful lot from a hobby, and it can even enhance your intelligence as well as your ability to make sense of your thoughts and communicate them. It doesn’t really matter what your chosen hobby is there is a wide range of benefits you will see, and this can improve your life in a range of ways. Hobbies can make you a heightened version of yourself and this can help you see the beauty in the every day. So, let’s discover more about how a hobby can enrich our lives:
Your Ability to Communicate
Being able to communicate effectively is essential to your everyday life. It can help you progress in your career; it can help you make friends and build romantic relationships, and a lot more. However, it is not always easy to express how you feel, especially if you have not taken the time to understand or control your thoughts. Good communication is a way of broadening your horizons and being able to organize your thoughts better as well as make better, more informed choices. Hobbies such as writing and art are a get way of helping you achieve this. Writing is good because it forces you to write down what you think and feel, and by reading it back to yourself, you will discover if it makes sense. If not, then you will have to find better and better ways of expressing yourself to communicate in the best way possible. Art is a way to help you express the inexpressible. Painting, for example, can help victims of abuse get some of their emotions out ion to the world. Having people look at this art and translate it into words can help the artist understand themselves better. The very act of creating in this way can be a catharsis that helps break a downward spiral.
The Creating Process
A hobby generally means you are creating something or doing something positive for your body. What this means is that the very act of creating something is in itself something to be proud of. You are spending your time constructively, and that is a good positive thing. When you are creating something too, you know that is is a one and only; it is a completely unique thing, whether it be painting, writing, or textile making by getting a macrame supplies for beginners set; it does not matter; the end result is the same – you get a sense of achievement from going through the creative process and making something truly unique.
Meditation
The creative process is quite a thing. To create that unique item, whether it be a painting, a clay model, a mosaic, etc., you enter a sort of flow state. This is a focused state of mind where you block out everything around you and are totally engrossed in the work. This is a fantastic thing to do, as it can take you away from your everyday worries and start becoming more focused on the positives in life. It can help you reach more clarity and even make you happier. Because the brain is only capable of focusing on a limited number of things at any one time, having a hobby is a way of training your mind to focus on the good. Negative things are no longer relevant, and it is a way of enhancing your well-being. This flow state is similar to the meditative state that you can enter while meditating, and there are a lot of benefits associated with that. In fact, if you have ever been interested in meditation, it may be in your best interests to start a hobby like painting to help you delve into that flow or meditative estate more easily.
Dopamine
Starting a hobby is a great natural way to help you relieve the symptoms of stress, and anxiety, and it can even have a positive impact on depression. Stress can happen as a result of t a wide variety of factors, these include your love life, your family, friends, money problems etc., and for some people, stress is a permanent factor in their lives. Some people even claim to thrive on a little stress, do their best work under pressure etc. However is important to find ways to relieve stress, as stress can be a killer. Getting engrossed in a hobby is actually a way of helping the brain create dopamine,a chemical that is important in your ability to feel pleasure in life. Do[amine also plays a significant role in how we make decisions and our ability to plan and strategize. A lack of dopamine can cause a range of issues from anxiety, depression and other mental health conditions, and it is even a cause of neurological illnesses like Parkinsons’. If you can find ways to increase the amount of dopamine, then you are giving your brain the chemicals it needs to deal with the stresses and strains of life. A particularly good way of creating more of this chemical is to take a hobby which involves exercise or is exercise. Jogging, boxing, cycling, anything that gets the blood pumping and the body moving. Other hobbies like painting and writing can help you develop the reward centres of the brain, and so increase your levels of dopamine. A hobby can make you feel good, and feel good about yourself, and in turn, this can reduce depression, stress and anxiety.
The Social Factor
Starting a hobby could be a great way to increase your social circle and have more social opportunities. If your chosen hobby is anything artistic, then in and of itself, it is a communication tool. You are trying to express something, an emotion, idea, or just show the world something you think is beautiful. In this regard, it is something that is by its very nature, meant to be shared. You create a piece with an audience in mind, another person, that makes it social. It is also social in the fact that no matter what your hobby is, eventually, you are going to want to join a group, or go to a museum, or do something or go somewhere where there will be like-minded people. If you are taking up jogging, maybe you will eventually want to run a marathon, so you will join a running group, and sign up for marathons. This gives you a lot of opportunities to meet people who are into the same hobby as you. Talking to people about your hobby, having a shared interest is such a great way to connect. You can deepen your understanding of your hobby, find out about other things to do as a result of it and so on. This can help deepen your understanding about life. Another aspect of it is that if you are a little shy and introverted, having a hobby that you are passionate about s good because you always have a topic of conversation. So you never have to worry about those awkward moments. Therefore a hobby can help you meet new people who are interested in the same things as you, and this can lead to some great friendships as time goes on. A hobby can open up your world.
Main Image Credit: Pixabay
