14 Benefits of Reading Books: Why You Should Read Books

Take a glass of water. Add a few drops of ink to the water. Although it's a few drops the ink pollutes the water completely. Now if you have to make the water clear again without pouring it off, how do you do it?

The only way is to add more water until the water in the glass clears itself out. This analogy is similar to our thought process. Our brain does not discriminate between positive and negative thoughts just like the glass vessel.

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary. The average CEO reads an astonishing 60 books per year. Microsoft CEO Bill Gates reads about 50 books per year or roughly 1 book per week. Billionaire Mark Cuban spends 3 hours reading every single day. And Tesla CEO Elon Musk read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica at just 9 years old. When Elon Musk was asked in an interview, “How he learned to build rockets”, his answer was, “I read books”.

So why do highly successful people love to read books? And why should we read books? What are the benefits of reading books? Let's find out a few among the thousands.

Why Should We Read Books

There are thousands of reasons one should read books. Though, we have listed the 5 most profound benefits that you get only by reading books.

1. Reading makes you smarter

"The more you read, the more you know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go." Reading is one of the greatest ways to engage the brain and increase your intellect.

Reading increases Knowledge. Scientific studies show that reading actually makes you smarter.

Our brain requires awareness, consciousness, and attentiveness.

Reading keeps your brain sharp as you age. A human being spends all his life learning. Just within 15 to 20 minutes of reading helps you to escape to the other side of the globe.

Reading improves analytical thinking, cognitive skills, expertise, makes you a better problem solver, increases your overall knowledge, and a whole lot more.

Because every time you read books, it fills your brain with new bits of information, building and increasing your understanding about the different facts of life.

Want to learn how to trade stocks? Read a book.

Want to improve your cooking? Read a book.

Want to learn quantum physics? Grab a book and read.

The more information you have, the better equipped you are to handle any challenges you might encounter. Reading as a habit will upgrade yourself to the best version you can be. Reading books gives you a different perspective. It improves creativity, sparks up your imagination, and allows you to look at things and ideas in a completely different way.

You will learn how to understand things around you in many ways, and this helps you think outside the box opening up your mind to new possibilities and ideas.

2. Reading improves your communication skills

Have you ever been in a situation in which you are having a conversation with someone about a certain topic or writing some sort of essay and you can’t get the right word to express what you want to say?

Being articulate and a good speaker is a skill that is of great help in any profession, the ability to speak clearly with confidence would surely give a huge boost in your career.

A good book with the righteous character can change the way we think. It brings creativity to our minds and our communication level becomes clearer. While reading we compare ourselves with the characters and find appropriate words to express ourselves.

We learn tradition, cultures, customs, and ways of living through books that focus exclusively on our mind set. Reading gives us ideas to verbalize our speech. It helps the brain to use the information and practice it.

Reading Helps in Effective Communication. Reading books teaches you effective ways to communicate and exposes you to different kinds of words and phrases. Which can help you learn new vocabulary, form complex sentences, and even improve some grammar points.

Helping you better understand and comprehend complex matters when communicating.

Another thing is that, sometimes, communication requires a clear-cut understanding of a certain subject to be able to communicate back and forth clearly, something reading can help you with. Reading books for just 20 minutes a day will expose you to around 1.8 million words per year.

3. Reading strengthens your memory

Being forgetful is frustrating and it happens to us more often than it should. It is a no-brainer that reading increases your memory retention helping you remember things and forget less.

Reading Habits make you a Memory Athlete Reading impacts our brains and helps us to become a memory athlete.

It opens all the blocked pages in our memories and helps us identify and reconstruct our ideas. It helps us to exercise and recall imagery in specific locations and improves our ability to dramatically open the door that reserves memory.

Reading gives power to our minds that help us recall pages of notes, equations, and formulas. Active reading helps our brain to evolve around these memories and do extremely well and help us understand the concept.

We learn cultures, customs, slang, languages, and accents through the books and our memory adapts the true benefit of reading that helps us pick and choose that eventually affects who we want to become as a person.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body. When we read, it is like our brain going to the gym and lifting weights.

Reading slows down the rate of mental aging and reduces the risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia as we grow old. Our brain, just like any other muscle in our body needs exercise to keep it strong and healthy. And, reading is one of the best exercises for our brain. Keeping it engaged and active, preventing our brain from losing its precious power.

4. It Reduces stress and improve quality of life

After a long stressful day, sitting down and grabbing a book can help melt down your stress level fast giving you the relaxation and peace of mind you need.

Reading regularly can devalue stress and anxiety. Reading book lowers the rate of psychological issues and gives us the insight to look at an anxious mind.

It relieves stress and lowers the rate of Pessimism. A research showed that reading is the most effective way to overcome stress. Reading is a distraction from stress. It requires attention and engages our mind. Losing yourself in the book is the ultimate relaxation. It enhances memory skills, develops mindfulness, reduces stress, worries, and breaks self-defeating habits.

Reading makes you so focused and concentrated that you tend to forget what is happening around you And this distracts you from stress, making your body feel relaxed, eases tensions in the muscles, and helps prepare your body for sleep reducing the risk of insomnia.

A mere six minutes of reading can reduce your stress levels by about 68%, more relaxing than listening to music or sipping a hot cup of tea. People who love to read books are also associated with being more satisfied in life compared to non-readers. This is because book worms are reportedly less stressed; less depressed, and generally have higher levels of self-esteem because they have a greater ability to cope up with challenges. This is due to their wisdom accumulated by reading a lot of books.

Reading gives you ideas, clarifications, and a consolation reminder to tackle your painful thoughts. It boosts up your self-esteem and controls your anxiety in a technical and informal way.

5. Learning from successful people

Behind every billionaire and successful person is a mentor. If we take examples from our era, Steve jobs mentored Mark Zuckerberg, the great Warren Buffet mentored Bill Gates, and the list goes on. Mentors provide you advice, ideas, and thoughts that enable you to go beyond your comfort zone and challenge you to go farther than what you possibly can imagine.

"A student is only as good as his teacher"

To succeed in life, you need a good mentor that can teach you the way of success and bring the best out of you.

Would you like Bill Gates to mentor you on how to run a business? Or Warren Buffet teaching you how to invest in the stock market? Unfortunately, you don’t know them, and they probably don’t know you either.

But by reading books they have written, you are in a way being mentored by them. Their entire experience in life, how they achieved success, ideas, their winning mindset, and everything they know of shared to you with a book. This can provide you the information and knowledge that can help you succeed in life.

6. Reading keeps you positive

There are many misconceptions about reading a book. In schools, we are told to read and memorize information and we also get tested but that is called studying.

Reading means Learning.

Reading is like exercise for the brain.

We are amazing at copying other people that is a reason why we do not read books.

Instead, we do what other people do like surfing the internet, watching TV, playing video games, and eating unhealthy foods.

A book provides you with knowledge and improves your vocabulary. Reading provides you with the world that no one can steal. A wealth of information! Eventually, it makes you a human full of positivity. You will even able to find something positive out of a negative thing.

Knowledge is the only thing in the world that multiplies if you give it away. Most people get brief and occasional inspirations to read. They read an entire book in a day or two and forget to read for months. This is like doing an intense full-body workout in one day and not exercising for another three months. It is of little to no use.

7. Reading Books can change Perspective of Life

Reading changes the perspective and quality of our life. It helps our brain to be more active and find fascination in the world of characters. It’s amazing how the world has changed tremendously and yet the wisdom of people who lived, remains relevant in our lives today.

We have always questioned our existence and mortality. Reading has given us a wider perspective of life. It has helped us to gain insight into the lives of characters and their struggle, failure, and achievements.

Our mind helps us develop solutions to these problems and gain more knowledge. We can go back to thousands of years and see how people survived in those times.

8. Reading Fiction Books increases Emotional Intelligence

Reading books refines our intelligence level and gives us the ability to perceive and control our emotions and think logically. Reading enhances theory of mind and develops a relationship between the author and the reader.

Reading fiction increases emotional intelligence and social perception. Having emotional intelligence is the predictor of higher achievement.

It increases your capacity for reasoning, planning, communication, and learning. Reading takes you in-depth and profound insights ever recorded. Books give you the feeling of drowning and getting summoned in the world of fiction. It's amazing how the entire world is encircled inside a bunch of pages that looks so plain and simple.

Books give us the power of imagination that our minds get to exercise when we read. There is nothing more captivating than entering the world and minds of people where there are no limits.

9. Reading helps to Avail and Accomplish Goals of Lives

All the principals of success and happiness that human being has discovered in the last two thousand years are preserved in the books.

Reading different books helps us to focus on every aspect of our life. It gives us the power of productivity, creativity, and living a meaningful life. By reading books you can avail, accelerate and accomplish your life goals.

Our imagination helps us to hang around the people who were actually the authors of these books or the characters that touched our hearts. Practical books were written to get help in every phase of our life. We get more ideas, plans, and goals about the future. These books have exercises and techniques to inspire our lives.

10. Reading can Increase Inspiration and Motivation

Priming the subconscious mind is very important. Humans have an amazing gift inside them that needs to be explored.

Reading raises the level of motivation and inspires us to work gradually towards success. The state of our attention determines the state of our lives.

Book reading grows your attention span and helps your master discipline and build habits.

Human Beings learn by getting inspiration. This inspiration motivates them and helps implement new changes in life.

Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk are true influencers.

Will Smith said, “There are so many people who have lived and died before you, you will never have a new problem, and you’re not going to ever have a new problem. Somebody wrote down the answer in the book somewhere”.

These are the legends who motivate us to read books and bring drastic changes in our lives.

11. Reading Builds Self-esteem

You can reverse your life and associate it with people who you admire. These people might not come to your door or maybe they are not alive anymore. The only way to associate with them and seek help is through books.

Reading helps you to understand people with high self-esteem. Reading increases efficiency and accountability and builds boundless confidence. Moreover, Reading heals all the wounds and helps you walk around the world.

It helps you to work and control your feelings, behavior, speech, and your character. It helps you to glide gracefully to face all the insecurities and failures. Books help you to achieve techniques and benefits of significant achievement

12. Reading Helps Achieve Financial Freedom

Achieving financial freedom is not something that happens randomly. The primary reason for financial problems in life is a lack of knowledge, self-discipline, and self-control.

Most people have an inability of gratification. Reading financial books helps to focus more and be precise and have a greater sense of control through planning. It gives us the ability to concentrate and focus more on setting goals.

Reading helps us to think positive and attracts opportunities and open doors of success. Achieving financial freedom can double and triple the speed to improvement and growth. Moreover, it teaches us to be generous to others and attracts more health and wealth.

13. Reading Reinforce critical and analytical skills

Effective readers read critically and think rationally. Critical thinking is freedom of thought. Critical thinkers evaluate the information which writers present. They raise questions, assess relevant information, and come up with solutions. It helps in reasoning, making judgments, and problem-solving. Critical thinkers accept or reject only on the basis of relevant facts.

Readers develop critical thinking only when they read a lot and read widely. They expose themselves to unique points of view. They understand that there are multiple ways and reasons to look at a problem.

When we read, we instinctively evaluate the work done by the writer. A good critical thinker does not jump to conclusions. They work on quality and quantity outputs. Great thinkers routinely and intelligently try to encounter on arguments.

14. Reading Help You Sleep Better

Reading is the cheapest therapy for people who are sleep deprived. Reading releases the tension in muscles and relaxes the body.

People develop emotions while reading and laugh or cry which relaxes their body and brings about a sense of peace. It stimulates our emotions and helps us in build-up relaxation and leads to a deeper sleep.

And these are the 14 benefits of reading books and why highly successful people love to read books. Do you agree with our list?