What are the benefits of hobbies? Well, for a long time in my life, I never had a hobby.1 I realized the importance of having a hobby in my early 20’s. Yes, it was way too late but better late than never, right? So, if you’re someone who always answers your hobby as listening to music or browsing the internet when someone questions you about it, then you’ve got to read this till the end.
Seriously, are they even real hobbies? I don’t think they also come under the list of hobbies for a reason. It’s high time to unleash your potential and indulge in your hobbies if you haven’t discovered yet. Here are some of the benefits of hobbies you must know.
Top 6 Amazing Benefits of Hobbies
1. Benefits of Hobbies: It Keeps You Sane
Back in my school days, I was told that getting good grades is extremely important. I used to reach home, relax for a while, and start studying soon after. On the other hand, my friends attended dance classes after school hours every day.
Let me tell you this; I did attend dance classes, music, guitar, keyboard, art, and every other class. But, after a week, my attendance at these classes became irregular, and the week after that, it was zero. The same thing happened with each of the courses I had enrolled in.
My only reason was, I didn’t get enough time to study while attending these classes. I regret to date having left them half-way because I see a bunch of my friends indulging in their favorite activity on weekends and some taking up as their career.
Though I liked painting, I never did that out of my interest as I thought it was a waste of time and a block to my study-time. Well, the point is, there’s personal growth when you engage in your favorite pastime. It doesn’t let your mind wander into irrelevant matters. It keeps you composed and relaxes you.
2. Benefits of Hobbies: You Learn How to Balance Time
Most often, we are so preoccupied with work that we reach home with frustration and sleep with the same thought and repeat the same. Hobbies are a type of therapy, more like a relaxation-therapy2 where you get to calm your mind and soul after a busy day.
If you’re in your teens, then along with studies, for recreation, you can engage in hobbies, be it painting, writing, or playing guitar. It relieves you of the tension and pent up exam stress. While learning a new skill, you need to allot a specific time to it, which means you will learn time management.
It teaches you how to balance work and ‘me-time’ in the right way. I used to ask my friends as to how they balance time between studying and learning a new skill; their only reply was that they love doing it.
For the things that people love to do, they always find the time. That teaches another lesson. If you do not like the current job, then that means you do not love what you do. Just finding time for doing something is one thing, but to love what you do is another thing.
3. Benefits of Hobbies: Helps you Succeed in Life
If you think having a high-paying job makes you successful in life, then you cannot be more wrong. While a job is of prime importance, it’s the individuality that leads to success. Everyone will know the necessary skills, but to stand out from the crowd, you should be unique and have a talent.
That said, if you think talent is the one that comes naturally to people, then you have to work on plenty of things. There are stories of people, who have discovered their talents at a later stage of their life, and there are stories of people, who even with immense talent, have not used it to their maximum potential.
So, it’s all about nurturing your talent. I was good at painting. People appreciated my work, but I never spent enough time to enhance my skills. Perhaps, I would have been an artist, illustrator, designer, or in a field that involves playing with colors if I had dedicated even an hour every day to paint.
When you see a guitarist on stage, you should know the amount of time he toiled hard to be where he is now. Hobbies help you succeed as they differentiate you from the rest and network better.
4. Hobbies Help you Build a Strong Network
For a long time, I thought getting good grades is proportional to being recognized by people. How stupid could I be, right? Yes, good grades can aid in better recognition, but your hobbies can define the person who you are.
If you’re good at singing, then people remember you for your voice. When you join a music class, you meet like-minded people. Even at your family or office ceremonies, you get to gel with people of your type. Your network increases gradually. You might meet like-minded people who share the same vision as you.
You can form a team and pursue your hobby as your career or least, hang out with passionate individuals whose thoughts align with yours. Networking is a crucial thing in our life, whether in school, college, or work. You learn a lot by meeting new people; you can exchange opinions, express ideas, have the same vision and mission in life.
Accomplishing tasks are more manageable when a circle with positive thoughts surrounds you. If you think about it, we always tend to form a loop that shares the same interests and thoughts, be it in school or work.
5. Hobbies Teach Self-control
If there’s one thing you shouldn’t trust in your lifetime, then that’s your mind. It keeps wavering time and again, depending on innumerable things. Well, it’s inevitable, but one should learn to stay focused at all times. Engaging in your hobbies or teaching new skills keeps you busy and focused.
It’s always beneficial to be occupied doing productive things. Back in my college, I used to come home, watch movies till midnight, and cry either because the character died in the film or the movie itself was heart-touching. It continued the same for over two years. Only during exams, I opened my books to study.
I regret having wasted my precious two years. I could have learned a new skill, been a part of an NGO, or tutored children in my neighborhood. I could have spent my time working on an artwork.
As you all know, practice makes a man perfect; all I had to do was to devote an hour or so. Though I can do it now, I could have learned and understood earlier. Self-control is one of the benefits of hobbies and is essential at every phase of our lives, and hobbies are the ones that keep you disciplined.
6. It Challenges You and Your Creative Capacity Improves
Discovering your hobby at an early stage of your life is beneficial as it unleashes your true potential. One of the unique benefits of hobbies 3is that you get challenged every day while learning a new skill, which helps you tackle any issues with ease in your daily life.
Say, you’re learning to play the guitar. It takes immense dedication and patience to be a good guitarist. In your learning journey, you might feel like quitting when you start learning how to shift chords, you might have to spend hours to get that chord right, so learning new notes can also be challenging.
However, the result will always be satisfying when you play a song with perfection. You might also come up with your song and play with your chords. The point is, this aspect applies to your everyday life. You might be challenged at your workplace or anywhere, and you need to work hard like how you did while learning to strike a chord.
Think out of the box for a problem and come up with unique strategies that differentiate you from the rest. The more you dig deeper into a subject, the better you become as an individual.
Final Thoughts
If you don’t know what you like, try the things that you feel you can do it. There are certain things which may not be for all, but there will be at least one activity which you will enjoy doing it. Whether it’s designing, dancing, singing, crafting, writing poems and short stories, or playing a keyboard, it can be relaxing if you spend an hour or so every day.
Hobbies are the roadmap to your soul; they de-stress you and also discover your hidden potential. Do what you love to do and do it with wholehearted dedication. You will be surprised by what you’ve been hiding in you all this while. You gain a sense of self and become better by having and learning new skills in your life.
- Ochoa, Severo. “A Pursuit of a Hobby.” Annual Review of Biochemistry 49.1 (1980): 1-31. ↩︎
- Conrad, Ansgar, and Walton T. Roth. “Muscle relaxation therapy for anxiety disorders: it works but how?.” Journal of anxiety disorders 21.3 (2007): 243-264. ↩︎
- Caltabiano, Marie Louise. “Main and stress-moderating health benefits of leisure.” Loisir et societe/Society and Leisure 18.1 (1995): 33-51. ↩︎
Last Updated on by Sathi