A hobby is a daily activity that you do for fun or pleasure. You can do it in your free time, and the main reason why you feel the urge to do is disconnecting from your daily routine. From these arguments, you can assume that hobbies are leisure activities. For this reason, many people believe that having hobbies is a waste of time. What they don’t know is how much a hobby can positively affect their lives.
It is much more than just a way to have fun. Picking up a pastime has immediate benefits such as getting a sense of self-efficacy, increasing levels of creativity, keeping your brain engaged, creating expectations towards the future, and building new passions and interests. With this said, here is a list of five hobbies that will change your life:
Try Growing Plants
Many people don’t know this but gardening is a very beneficial hobby. It is not just about growing your own vegetables and fruits. It goes way beyond that. Among the top benefits you may find:
- Reduction of your levels of cortisol (a stress hormone).
- Acquisition of the ability to feel positive towards the world due to the nurturing of a plant from the seed to its fruit-bearing capacity.
- Gardening is a form of exercise which you can carry out daily. The bigger the garden the more exercise you do.
- A decrease in the incidence of dementia by 36 percent.
Find Your Hidden Talent in the Kitchen
Scientific studies have shown that those persons who are able to cook their own meals at home tend to be healthier and live much longer than those who prefer eating or ordering out. Nutritionists are constantly encouraging people to buy their own food products at grocery stores. As experts have pointed out, this will lead to a decrease in the amount of processed, starchy and fat foods that people usually buy.
Additionally, cooking at home saves you a great deal of money. Don’t believe that cooking is a waste of time. Learn to cook a wide variety of meals from as many different recipes books as you can get your hands on. This is proven to increase your creativity levels as well as your attention to details. Furthermore, it helps you manage time in a very efficient way.
Start Plucking Some Guitar Strings
Learning to play an instrument, such as the guitar, can drastically increase your cognitive development. Scientists have also found out that learning the functioning of a music instrument improves the eye-hand coordination and subsequently, the rest of the motor skills. It has also been proven that playing an instrument raises your IQ by at least seven points. What are you waiting for? Get up and go to that music store around the corner or visit GuitarGeary to find one that suits your needs and budget. It is time to start plucking some amazing tunes.
Pick a New Sport
Participating frequently in any sports activities doesn’t only exercise your muscles but also your brain. Actually, if you play sports regularly, you are working towards the improvement of your brain function, your body’s fitness and your quality of life. Sports have many other added benefits as well. Only by watching sports, you get an increase in brain function. But only if you also practice it, then you are getting the whole package.
Overall, getting involved with any form of sports results in an enhancement of your response time, coordination, proficiencies, and confidence. It is not a race to become a top athlete, but of just practicing sports. Whether if you practice football, tennis or basketball, remember that the whole point is exercising and playing what you like.
Frequently Exercise Your Brain with Puzzles
You may already know this, but doing puzzles and other similar brain-demanding activities are excellent ways to stay up-to-speed and constantly improving your brain’s cognitive functions. For these reasons, you must first think of your brain as both a computer and a muscle. The more information you put into your brain, the more you are demanding of it so the more functions it can perform. Likewise, constantly exercising your brain will increase the workload it can process.
Also, find a way to maintain your brain’s plasticity (it is the term used to refer to the constant connections made inside the brain as you take in information). Puzzle games such as Sudoku, crosswords or strategic games (like Battlefield, Go or Chess) are really good ways to force your brain to think and remember.
After reading this short list you should know how important it is to pick a proper hobby, not only to have fun but also thinking about improving your quality of life. There is an endless number of hobbies to choose from. Start with one of the above mentioned and start feeling the change.