How a Woodworking Hobby Can Improve Your Mental Health

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If you’ve been searching for a new hobby, whether out of boredom or plain desire, you’ve come to the right place. Woodworking is a great option for a hobby as a beginner or as an expert. After all, all experts in any field or hobby start off as beginners at first. Woodworking is exactly what it sounds like—taking pieces of wood and carving them into purposeful objects.

You can also join multiple pieces of wood together and even create decorative pieces that serve no actual purpose other than looking good in your home or office space. There are many ways to improve your mental health, but having a hobby is one method that’s both fun and impactful at the same time. 

You can have more than one hobby and even combine them with other helpful practices like therapy, which you can access through MyTherapist or some other similar resource. Woodworking is unique, but so are its benefits.

Keeps Your Brain Active

While woodworking can be a relaxing activity, it requires attentiveness and focus. It is not a mindless pursuit, as precision and accuracy are paramount. Paying close attention to your work is essential to avoid mistakes that can occur more easily when concentration wavers.

woodworking as a hobby
There are some hobbies that are mindless, like listening to music, but they probably won’t do as much for your brain (short or long term) as woodworking can. Woodworking engages the whole brain, even parts you may use less frequently. Activities that work the entire brain tend to help ward off memory loss and even memory conditions like dementia. What other hobbies can boast they do the same?

Gives You a Sense of Purpose

At the end of a woodworking project, you get to hold something you made with your own two hands. It could be a simple decorative piece for your home, or it could be something useful or even life-altering. You can invent and then create anything you think will help make life easier. Whether it’s for your kitchen, bathroom, office, or garage, there is always some new invention just waiting to be made.

At the same time, you can even layout your woodworking plans yourself – aside from referring to guides, allowing you to express what you really want.  

choosing right surface

Making your own life or other’s lives simpler will fill you with a sense of accomplishment as well as a sense of purpose. Just imagine how the look on your husband or wife’s face will make you feel as you hand them a new gift you made with your own hands and creativity. 

We all need a sense of purpose in our lives. It’s what makes us jump out of bed ready to tackle the day, and what gets us through the tough times as well. So, if you’re looking for some extra motivation, picking up a hobby like woodworking may just be the answer.

(Looking for the best woodworking plans for you? Then, you should check our review of Ted’s Woodworking Plans here)

Forget Your Worries

Hobbies like journaling or listening to music are great, but they may make you dwell on your problems more than forget them at times. Woodworking, on the other hand, allows you to become completely immersed in the project you’re working on. 

There’s very little time or room to think about much else because it requires a lot of focus. Expert woodworkers make intricate crafts and especially tend to zone out when they’re in creation-mode. Breaks from the daily stressors of life greatly benefit your mental health. Everyone needs a chance to relax, focus on something besides the worrisome things of life, and feel a sense of pride in their work.

Dewalt Portable Bandsaw

At the end of the day, a woodworker is likely to get a boost in their self-esteem for what they’ve accomplished making. Positive self-esteem is directly correlated with good mental health. Although anyone can begin a woodworking hobby, it still takes skill, practice, and precision, especially for those who desire to get to the expert level. 

Having a hobby isn’t about being the best, it’s about finding something you’re passionate about and that makes you happy. We tend to underestimate the value of happiness on our mental health, but in general, those who are happy tend to have better mental health.

using pva gue on leather

If you’re someone who’s more social, consider taking up woodworking alongside a friend or family member. It’ll give you a chance to bond with that person and you’ll both be able to learn something new. Be patient with yourself as you go along as some people pick up hobbies more quickly than others. 

If you’re not great at woodworking right away, don’t give up on it so easily. Keep coming back to the shop and giving it another chance. Hopefully, you’ll pick up a lifelong hobby that you can carry with you for the rest of your life and that will impact you in more ways than one.

Robert Johnson is a woodworker who takes joy in sharing his passion for creating to the rest of the world. His brainchild, Sawinery, allowed him to do so as well as connect with other craftsmen. He has since built an enviable workshop for himself and an equally impressive online accomplishment: an extensive resource site serving old timers and novices alike.
Robert Johnson
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