How to choose the right hobby

How do you decide on a hobby? Here are some ways to figure out what is best suited to you.

What is that thing you’ve always wanted to do?

Finding a hobby can mean taking the first step to actively pursue that thing you’ve always thought about doing. Have you ever started a sentence with the words “I’ve always wanted to…”?

Look at your childhood

Think about what pursuits made you happy as a child. Did you take lessons in dance, music, ice skating or art? All of these childhood pursuits can be turned into adult hobbies.

Go on a quest for inspiration

Just walking around a craft store amid the chalk, paints, scrapbooks and bric-a-brac might remind you of an old passion or a fun craft you always wanted to try. Sometimes just enjoying new experiences can spark interest in a hobby.

Sometimes we take part in activities every day that could become hobbies with a small change in awareness and attitude:

Enjoy cooking

If you spend a lot of time cooking for your family, consider devoting some free time to the fun parts of cooking.

Consider the family pet 

Train your dog as a therapy dog and spend free time taking the dog to visit people in hospitals. Or take obedience classes and discover the world of dog agility training and competition.

Try home decoration 

Offer to help friends decorate their homes, or go room by room in your own home and think about the projects you’d love to complete.

Increase your reading

You might decide to collect rare books or make it a point to explore independent bookstores. You can take a writing course, attend story slam events or start a blog.

Find fun in organisation or exercise

People find a lot of pleasure in creating scrapbooks, tracking family history, taking photos and creating video memories of family events. And one of the best (and healthiest) ways to start a hobby is to focus on exercise. One way to make exercise feel more like a hobby is to actively set goals and attend events related to it.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.