Benefits of Starting a Side Hustle: Anyone that starts a side hustle or side business has one main reason: making extra cash during spare time. What else would be the reason, people might ask. Obviously, you’re less likely to open a side hustle if you’re already making enough money from a fulltime job.
However, it is obvious that starting a side hustle has many more benefits than just fattening your bank balance.
In fact, researchers claim that a side business holds five excellent benefits for your physical and mental health. You might ask how extra work necessary for a side gig help your mind or body.
Here are some answers.
The 5 Benefits of Side Hustle
I’ll begin by explaining what I mean hustle: a part-time business you launch from home, obviously, with the intention of making extra money or offering your skills and experience outside work hours as freelancer.
Clearly, my definition doesn’t apply to full-time freelancers or people running full-time business from home.
If you are working full-time and have a side hustle, these are some benefits you could get.
1. Putting Mental Disorders to Use
Worldwide, over 300 million people suffer from depression, about 60 million are victims of Bipolar Affective Disorder, more than 23 million are afflicted by schizophrenia and other psychoses while 50 million have dementia, says World Health Organization.
Millions of people also suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, anxiety and stress as well as Asperger’s Syndrome.
What happens to such people? With proper psychiatric care and medication, it’s possible to suppress outward symptoms of these mental disorders. However, with a side gig, it’s actually possible to convert these mental problems into an asset.
Persons with the above mental disorders tend to be hardworking, compassionate and creative. They can be great problem solvers and insightful, says a report by Inc. magazine. These skills can prove very vital for running a successful side-gig and minimize impact of mental problems on their personal lives.
2. Using Challenges to own Benefit
An old adage clearly says: “If you don’t challenge yourself, you are mentally dead.” That’s indeed true. In fact, British author CS Lewis goes on to say that hardships often prepare ordinary people to meet extraordinary challenges.
And you’ll encounter such challenges almost every day while running a side gig. Most likely, you’ll be the only person tackling any challenges that arise while running a side gig.
Such challenges can arise in any form, depending upon nature of your side business. And trying to overcome them by finding solutions makes you a mentally and emotionally stronger person.
Meeting challenges effectively also develops leadership qualities in otherwise very ordinary people. Challenges present you with immense opportunities to think outside the proverbial box and find unconventional solutions. Hence, you develop a large set of essential skills necessary for your career as well as personal life.
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3. Gives Wings to Your Passion
Let’s get this very clear. A side gig needn’t necessarily have something to do with your field of work. Instead, it could be about something about your hobby or passion. Something you wanted to do as child or teenager but didn’t have money or resources.
And it doesn’t necessarily have to do with earning extra money. Giving wings to your passion or hobby through a side gig automatically translates as money.
Broadly, a hobby or passion is some activity that we do regularly for pleasure and leisure. A hobby helps relax after a busy day at work. It helps lower stress levels that directly benefits as better health and mental wellness.
These in turn help you to enjoy a happier family life and leaves you with sense of satisfaction. Your side gig needn’t be something very complex.
In fact, it could be something as simple as teaching people to play a musical instrument or coaching in some sport.
While you get money as instructor or coach, the other benefit is lower stress and happier family life. Furthermore, this makes you more productive at regular work too.
4. Helps Develop & Upgrade Skills
There’s ample scope to learn something new in every field or profession. However, we don’t get adequate opportunities to acquire newer skills or upgrade existing ones at the regular workplace.
Working for an excellent organization doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be keeping updated with newest technologies and work practices. In today’s job market, employers look for people that possess latest skills since it saves on training and enables the employee to hit the road running.
This is where a side gig proves immensely useful. Ample opportunities to learn newer skills while upgrading existing ones will present themselves when you have a side gig. And these opportunities will definitely be attractive: they can rope in more money from a side gig.
Furthermore, constant learning provides an assurance of sorts against becoming redundant in the job market. Should the need to switch employers arise, you would have better, latest skills to offer. This gives you an edge over competitors for the same vacancy.
5. Expands Professional & Social Network
And finally, a side gig plays pivotal role in expanding your social network. Usually, a side gig will bring you into contact with other professionals in your industry, business owners, persons that share your similar hobby or passion.
Through social and professional networking websites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s possible to expand your contact base. These can prove vital for a successful career and a profitable side gig.
Crowdsourcing, for example, enables you to work online with a team of people that share a similar skill but are located in very diverse regions of the world.
You get to learn a lot about their working patterns, new, foreign ideas and techniques and something about their customs, lifestyles and traditions.
Relations with your customers helps build a wonderful social network within the geographical zone where you operate. A good social life is key to healthy living. And a side gig helps you have a good social life.
Ideas for Side Gig
If you find these benefits attractive, I’d suggest you consider starting a side gig immediately. There are several small business ideas that you can come across by reading good articles. Also, use own creativity to find a side gig that suits your hobby and passion.
Conclusion
Money you earn from a side gig also plays a major role in upgrading your lifestyle. It helps invest for a secure future too. However, having ample money is not the sole criteria or standard to live a happy, fulfilling life.
There are several other factors that go into making a life satisfying and worth living. You can get some of these factors essential for happy life by starting own side gig. And you can start a side gig with little or no investment.
From our research so far, we have been able to come out with the above article. I hope at this point you have been able to gather the ideas on Gift Ideas for Mothers on Mother’s Day. This article is very useful, share it with friends. Enjoy!
