Among the four Macro-skills of Communication: Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, writing is perhaps the most complex among the communication skills for most people. It does not only involve deep thinking and creativity -- it also requires persistent and consistent practicing to master.
Because writing takes a lot of someone’s time to hone, it also is the least regarded of the four despite the immense benefits it could potentially bring to a person. Below are the great ways writing can affect your day-to-day living:
1. Writing makes you happier.
Expressive writing about one’s future plans, dreams and goals in life have been linked to people becoming happier and healthier. This is according to a study conducted by Laura King in 2001.
2. Writing relieves your worry, pain and distress.
However you want to do it, being able to vent your feelings of anger and anxiety definitely alleviates the intensity of a person’s emotion. If you wish to feel better but not regret anything you do and say out of anger later, the safest way would be to express your frustrations on paper. Write everything down.
3. Writing heightens your ability to focus.
Writing requires one to focus on details to properly convey his message to readers. By constantly writing, one’s mind is rehearsed to focus more and in a much longer period every time.
4. Writing enhances your creativity.
When writing about something, our brain is actively piecing events together to compose a story we desire. This brings out our artistic self and our ability to vividly imagine scenes, moods, characters as well their individual attributes.
5. Writing promotes word-awareness.
To come up with a written work, a person has to have sufficient vocabulary to communicate his opinions and perspectives. In most cases, it is not enough to just stick to the words you have already known; searching for the best words to use in different cases is necessary to most effectively express points.Through word-searching while writing, your awareness of various words is promoted.
6. Writing increases your level of emotional intelligence.
In a study conducted by Wing JF and team in 2006 involving 175 adults, participants who were cued to reflect on emotional regulation while writing about positive experiences rated their emotional intelligence significantly higher than the participants in the control writing group.
7. Consistent writing improves verbal expression of thoughts and feelings.
The four macro-skills of communication are undoubtedly interdependent, making one’s proficiency in a particular skill have a direct impact on another. Through constant writing practices, one is able to boost not only his ability to write good articles and literary pieces, but also his ability to better communicate his ideas to others orally.
8. Writing helps in maintaining social relationships.
With the aid of highly-modernized technology today, connecting and reconnecting with people through writing has become more convenient. Sharing details of important events or even the typical daytime and nighttime routines through tweets or posts in Facebook and Instagram is widespread, thus, creating boundless opportunities for enriching social ties.
9. Your written work, in the form of a journal, is a good medium for revisiting memories of past significant events in your life.
Before the introduction of computers, cameras and other recording devices, it was writing on paper strips and notebooks that was the main mode of recording essential information and affairs. In spite of the innumerable writing applications available to us today, a journal is still as valuable in terms of keeping notes of meaningful life experiences and an excellent reminder of how much your life has changed through time.
10. Your written work can be an inspirational source to others.
Whether you are writing a fairy-tale or tragic story or simply narrating about normal occurrences, there will always be a lesson that audiences can get from your output. The moral behind your written stories could have an unpredicted, immeasurable impact to a reader --- steering him to a new and better direction.There are certainly many more ways writing can influence people’s lives, depending on how much value and appreciation we put to it. Find out how it can transform yours in the future and at present. Start writing your story now.