The way you spend your leisure time has a tremendous impact on your lifestyle, behavior and even thoughts. Board games are one of the best options for people who want to have a hobby that is practically useful as well as being fun. In this article we discuss one of the many reasons that is the case. Playing board games has a number of positive impacts on your mind and is definitely good for your brain. Here are some of the ways how board games can boost your thinking ability:
1. Playing board games can improve your mental health
It is a well known fact that subjects of clinical anxiety and depression have experienced quite a noticeable improvement in their cases by simply adding board games to their daily lives as a form of entertainment. Board games are believed to reduce stress and increase mental stability. More understandably, like other forms of entertaining activities and specially group ones, board games can stimulate endorphins as a result of occasional bursts of laughter and the fun you experience as you play boosts serotonin levels resulting in the reduction of anxiety and depression symptoms. This can increase your general enthusiasm towards life in other areas as well, making you feel better about yourself and your surroundings as a long term benefit of board games for the brain.
2. Board games can help develop your social skills
For different groups of people, specifically kids and teenagers, board games have proven to be effective on evolving communication and social skills. Notable examples of these skills include waiting, turn-taking, sharing, how to cope with losing, making conversation, problem-solving, etc.
Such skills will show their value in the early stages of developing social connections in any of the different environments one might face. It is important to note that after some time of playing different board games you will be presented with new different opponents and teammates and being able to socially improvise, not unlike real life, is essential to succeeding.
Board games also provide an environment for those who play them in which engaging in conversations is not only vital, it is also quite easy. Numbers and cards make it so. Everything regarding the conversations you might have during the session is pretty much crystal clear. Everyone gradually learns exactly what they want to talk about and how they want to do that.
3. Intelligence improvements
The activity of playing board games includes challenging a number of your brain’s functions simultaneously and is best described as a mental exercise. Because of the specific ways frequent players’ brains are changed, it is believed that the hobby sharpens multiple parts of the brain and increases the efficiency of the certain skills each one supports. In other words, if you get used to filling your free time with sharing a session of dices and cards with your friends, you might be strengthening your mind and even increasing your intelligence at the same time.
This change however, happens over years of frequently being involved in board games and isn’t instantly noticeable, so I suggest that you keep up the frequency and give this one some time. With that in mind, it’s still more than a bargain to me. I can spend the afternoon besting my friends’ combat strategies with bad jokes but better strategies and my intelligence will be engaged in an intense work-out session. Everyone wins!
4. Emotional development
Unlike other modern forms of entertainment, board games have kept their ethnicity in bringing people together. While video games and their kind promote distance and the ease of access that comes with digital media, board games are all about getting together with friends and family. They’re all about getting to know your teammates and your opponents first hand and in person. It allows you to grow into enjoying the company. In video games and such, the other people who are involved in the game are either too busy with their own progress to even notice yours or are simple names on the screen and nothing more.
The case is different here. When you invite members of friends and family to a share some interactive fun conquering ancient empires or moving upwards on the food chain or even uncovering a mystery, you also present a chance to include emotional and spiritual and social contact in the play. The physical proximity greatly enhances concepts such as team spirit and competitive problem-solving.
Board games have been designed for and revolve around people who enjoy shared activities; and they continue to get people ever closer together than before.
5. Receptive enhances
Board games, like their digital counterpart, are known to significantly enhance your skills of reception. The Tangible definition of receptive skills is all those which are in any way concerned with receiving information from one’s surroundings. If you find it difficult to focus or you have problems with properly managing your intake of new information you might have a screw loose in this area of the brain.
Subjects of reception dysfunctionality have been reported not to understand language from others. They face issues regarding how to distinguish meaning from form and how to respond with the proper forms and meanings. If you have ever experienced anything even slightly similar, it’s very safe to say you will find board games incredibly helpful.
Board games require your brain to closely observe movements, plan ahead of the present moment and watch all the differences in shapes and colors thoroughly; all while also exercising your hand-to-eye coordination. This improvement happens over the long term span but usually is substantial. At the end of the day any person with a mental illness would be more than happy to replace their medications with a couple hours of shared fun!
6. Maintaining the brain at full functionality
Most of the items that were discussed on the list include “long term” in some way. It’s no secret that upgrading a system as complex as the human brain is a time-consuming process. The interesting thing however, is that board games got you covered for even longer than long term.
Firstly, as mentioned before, playing is basically exercise for the mind. This exercise engages multiple key areas in the brain responsible for tasks such as memory formation, cognitive skills, strategic thinking and problem-solving. The exercise not only significantly increases the efficiency of all these abilities but it also helps the brain stay in shape for the foreseeable future. In other words, having played a long career of board games throughout your life can come to your rescue at old age. Under normal circumstances it is anticipated that the brain lose some of its efficiency due to old age but studies have shown that board games are one way to keep your brain healthy not only at the present time but also for when the coming of age happens.
Someone who’s spent years playing board games with their friends and family has not only made a lifetime of good memories, they have also secured a good memory to store them all and to rest assured, their brain is at health and thankful to them.
7. Making your brain more flexible
As we all know, a board game is basically a set of rules, pieces, boards, cards and occasionally dice, all limited in number. Moreover, the connections between each and every piece exists to ensure that players are always facing new opportunities and new challenges.
The possibilities in the world of board games are endless and it’s up to the player to adapt to even the most unpredictable random scenarios and make the best moves accordingly. More often than not the survival of your team or your avatar might depend on it. It is then, only natural to assume that frequent board game players develop the ability to act and react in real-time. Improvising as they move on with the game. This matter is specifically important and even game-changing when playing a game you have no past experience in. Being on top of the points chart means the player has taken every single chance they were presented.
While it might be argued that luck has too big of a role in the setting of a board game and its finale results, it is also important to keep in mind that luck plays an even bigger role in the real life and being prepared to deal with the next action card before you actually know what it is, is quite a valuable skill to possess. Board games utilize luck in the form of dice and cards to ensure that the challenges each player has to overcome is entirely generated by random for the majority of the time, which also compared to all the other forms of games, assures a ton of re-playability; all while teaching your brain to boost its reflexes.
Conclusion
To sum it all up, board games are the ideal choice for people who want to get together, have some old-school fun time away from screens and compete with or against their friends while also exercising their brains’ cognitive functions. Playing board games has arguably zero harmful effects compared to the other forms of entertainment and it is good, if not more, for your brain. If you enjoy hitting numerous birds (some mentioned above) with one stone as much as I do, it’s your time to start rolling! Have fun!
