HOBBY AND HABITS
What is a hobby?
A hobby is an activity, interest, or recreational pastime that is pursued outside one’s regular occupation and engaged in primarily for pleasure or relaxation, usually happens during one’s leisure time, with enthusiasm.
What is a habit?
Anything we do repeatedly either good or bad is a habit.
Knowingly or unknowingly all of us have some good or bad habits. We generally get attracted to bad habits when there is lack of environment for good habits. No one wants to acquire bad habits unless the environment or society forced us to tilt towards bad habits. Where is the place and environment, if people want to do physical and mental fitness activities? Our successive governments failed to guide the people to choose good habits. It’s true. Nobody should have any doubt on this aspect. Some of the hobbies take palce without anybody’s notice. This is a partial list of those hobbies:-
Indoors games (chess, cross word puzzles) Collections (stamps, literature)
Social service Learning vocabulary Listening music Watching movies
These activities are hobbies but not physical or mental exercises. It’s the duty of the parents to see that their children should at least take up any sport of game, so that their stress levels will decrease due to heavy syllabus, because of too many competitive examinations and more pressure to get more marks and better ranks. Important thing for children taking part in sport activities is that they may learn team building and leadership qualities without their conscience.
When we form a habit, we repeat it automatically without errors, because every habit is unconscious behavior. The key to forming a habit is nothing but rote and repetition. For example, the army training and discipline is a perfect illustration, where every war time technique imparting to soldiers are formed and formulated in a safe and peace time environment, and the habits so learned come to the rescue of the soldiers, when they are confronting the real enemy in a battle field.
In the same manner, successful people make a habit to identify opportunities regularly in their lives and grab those opportunities whenever they see it. They are able to do so because they train themselves to identify an opportunity, when it comes along. The world offers enough opportunities all the time. Thus a well laid preparation must become the habit of every aspirant to get success. It’s a habit.
Positive habits build good character
We all know that our thoughts lead to actions, our actions lead to habits, and our cultivated habits form our character and finally our character makes our destiny. Anything we practice long enough permeate into our mind and embedded into our system and becomes a habit. If we practice positive habits, we shall defi- nitely have good character.
Typing skill is a result of habit: When I was a student, I started learning typing. Initially, it looked cumbersome, but with constant practice without using any logical methods, over a period of time, I mastered it. Now, I can be able to type without seeing at key board by sprawling my fingers across the key board. With regular practice, the fingers automatically go wher my mind says, because I am seeing at document with my eyes and my fingers follows. It’s a skill and habit.
Working round the clock and not taking any game or sport is not good
Naturally, all the people in the universe do some kind of work, whether it is for living or it is for passion or
under compulsion. While performing the tasks on daily basis, at times we either get bored or stressed. In order to come out of monotonous and uninterested tasks, we need to play some kind of games which are very helpful for our body and mind. Doing herculean tasks all the time, and not found ample time to reinvigorate our energy levels is not good at all, for our health and for our mental balance. Always remember, not to squander your leisure time hanging around doing nothing.
With the advent of technology, many job types are sedentary. Working for more than 9 to 10 hours every day sitting in front of the systems and writing million lines of code and algorithm and screwing with the data of all kinds, which flows incessantly across the world, with accuracy and perfection. Even though, we have the capacity to work longer hours with enthusiasm, the stress surmounts gradually taking a toil on our body. In order to mitigate the stress, we need to engage ourselves with some kind of games and sports. At least practice Yoga, if taking part in games and sports is not possible, in order to keep you in good health and mental balance.
Lack of good hobbies sometimes leads to drastic steps
The recent reports of suicidal tendency in educational institutions and IT companies are major concern for parents, organizations and the government. Nobody is looking into the actual problems that are caused to taking drastic steps towards suicides. Most of the damage is being done at schools, where unrealistic or inflated Board marks, social isolation, thanks to long hours of tuition classes and family pressure. It is because of deterioration of mental health that is taking the toll of their bodies. Parental role is very crucial in these cases. People are busy that they can’t even find time to communicate the primary issues with each other. There is an urgent need for regualr sessions of motivation. Being a human is the best gift and we have to give something back to the family, society and the world by showing our ability along with impeccable personality. Always remember that there is no reason for taking this drastic step, whatever the situation you are in.
Parents should realize the importance of keeping children involved in positive activities rather than sticking in front of the TV all the time watching ‘breaking news’ that shows ‘Gang rapes’, ‘Brutal murders’, ‘Political and bureaucrat scams’ etc., If parents want their children to build a pleasing personality, then parents have to examine children’s habits closely and must ensure that their wards take part in some type of sports or games. Thus paving the way for good behavior and character build up, and making them the best citizens. We need good citizens to see good world. Without good citizens, we shall have no option but to see the same incidents happening around us, even for worst.
