The Top 6 Reasons To Make The Greek Language your next hobby
Are you in this part of your life that you want to make a new start? Have you recently overcome a light or heavy period of depression ? (Doesn’t mean you talked to a doctor or anyone about it) Do you feel that the past years of your life you got stuck and you haven’t had even a slight step of progress?
Either you believe it or not, taking up a new language as a hobby can help you get out of this psychological labyrinth.
I would say that I was a kind of guinea pig in this. Some years ago I felt trapped in a stable situation where I couldn’t move from. I had demonized the idea of change and I was completely afraid of it. This behavior forced me living in terms I didn’t want to and led to my depression. I needed something to get me out of there.
After many years of this kind of life, I understood what I had to do was to generate positive thoughts for myself so as to fight the negative.
I didn’t have any other option.
I was completely broke, with extremely poor physical and mental health, I had reached my point zero and I had thoughts of ending this misery together with my life.
In the article “Excercise Was The Best Thing I Did For Myself” you can read part of my journey in the beginning, before the part I will talk about now.
So, after some time, I decided to start learning French. Day by day, tiny steps, without pushing myself, would give me the pleasure to communicate in an extra foreign language. And you know what? This activity boosted my positive thoughts to the top. I could never imagine how happy and proud these ten minutes per day made me feel and how motivated I felt to start doing more.
I felt proud that every day I learned something new.
I felt that I was improving myself. It may be funny for a high-performance person, but for me that I had just recovered from depression and I felt like I was a rubbish bin, it was the machine that gave me the energy to keep on moving.
So let’s narrow down together some benefits that you can have in your hands after you decide to take up a new language as a hobby.
- It will make you feel proud of yourself. The closest thing to us is to speak to ourselves in a way that we would never dare to speak to anyone else. We tend to constantly sabotage ourselves and discourage every dream that our mind produces. After your first days with your new positive activity, you will feel so proud of yourself that you will start thinking that everything is possible for your mind to achieve if you keep on taking small humble steps every day. This is a practice that learning something new as a hobby and getting the result of pleasure has the potential to help you move from the situation you currently are.
Your inner talk will be completely different.
2. It is a highly interesting hobby. We need hobbies in our lives. I hadn’t paid attention to that in my life. But we need hobbies so as to help our mind relax and play. Hobbies help us learn new skills and be more productive. They give us a feeling of flexibility and creativity. The positive emotion after we have practiced our hobby is the one that motivates our brain for having more of this positive feeling. Hobbies fight depression.
Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is the key to everyday happiness. Organized knowledge and a plan on knowledge is potential power. We need to know that this information is worth as much as a chest of gold.
3. You will get smarter. Every day your mind will be getting smarter. Practicing new vocabulary will help you practice your memory. Understanding and practicing grammar rules will help your brain work and find solutions so as to memorize this new way of thinking. Your perspectives on the way your brain has been programmed will change. From now on you will start to suspect the way you have been thinking, as you will experience the way of thought of a completely different culture.
I was surprised to learn that we tend to think according to the structure of our mother tongue. Did you know that? I didn’t!
4. You will become more positive in your everyday routine. By taking up a new language as a hobby, you will be having an easy task to complete every day. If you struggle with your everyday duties, you understand what I mean.
To have a task ticked means that you can have even one more task ticked. It gives you the encouragement to keep on your list. You can then have the energy to write one paragraph, read five pages of a book, walk for half an hour or eat a salad. If we master this routine, we can then level up.
5. You open yourself a new door in new perspectives. As I mentioned above, once you start taking a glimpse of this new culture, you will start to question everything you know. The first language we learn programs our brains to think in a certain way. Once you first see the structure of the new words, how complicated words are formed, the number of strange expressions that exist and how people that don’t live in your country express themselves, you will have a bright door opened for yourself. You will find words that you use every day having origin from a country you would never imagine.
This way, you will understand that we are all connected as a global community. Languages stay alive when people get together.
6. You can enjoy more music in your life. Do you think you know much about music? Well, maybe yes, but have you ever thought about being able to understand the lyrics of a country you could never imagine? 5 words a day give you 140 new words of another language in a month. In about two months you will be able to understand the lyrics of an easy song in your target language.
I don’t know about you, but I think this is the ultimate reward for all this effort. Being able to understand the expression of feelings in a language that I didn’t understand two months ago is a miracle for me. A miracle I made happen for myself, just for my entertainment. In combination with beautiful music. Yes, give me this. The more I have something like this the happier I am.
The Top 6 Reasons To Make The Greek Language your next hobby
Taking up a new language as a hobby was the psychological machine I needed back then to get me moving and feeling useful to myself.
I bet you can imagine even more reasons why taking up a new language as a hobby is a great idea, in these black and depressing days that we are going through. I would love to see some of your ideas…
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This article was also Published in MyGreekTeacher Publication in Medium
Join us in this exciting adventure and let the timeless wisdom of Greece enrich your life in ways you never imagined. Sign up for our Greek language courses today and start unlocking the doors to a richer, more fulfilling future.
With Respect,
Teacher, Podcaster & CopyWriter @ MyGreekTeacher.com
If you are thinking about taking up Greek I can suggest 2 options for you:
- Have you checked the amazing memebership Demetra Lambros has created? Get all the infromation you want here
- you can have a look at adult classes and we can arrange an online coffee so as to have all the time to reply to all your questions and then you can decide if what I do is a good fit for you or not.
- “Learn Greek without a Teacher” podcast, if you want to be a self-taught learner. It is perfect for complete beginners and those who want material to revise.
