Things You Probably Should Know about the Power of Music

An article about music might seem a bit off-topic for a blog based on slowing down and focusing on the important things in life. However, for me, music is a part of the important things in life!

All of our histories are highlighted by music in some way. Even if you don’t listen to music, and never have, I’m guessing you’ve been exposed to music via advertising, the radio, while browsing the aisles of your local shopping outlets, while dining at a restaurant, and countless other venues.

My history has been fairly rich with the presence of music. As a child, I grew up listening to my dad play guitar and piano, and compose his own music as well. My brothers and I all learned to play the piano. I was a member of a few choirs, and I chose to be in musicals for extra-curricular activities. I also took ballet lessons for a number of years - we were taught to allow the music to move through us, in order to transport our grace and fluidity to the next level.

As I grew older, and reached high school age, my friends and I devoured music on the radio, made mix-tapes, then CD mixes, and drove from the suburbs to downtown Chicago to see our favorite bands play in crowded, smokey venues. In my moody teenage bedroom, I would immerse myself in musical baths of my choice, depending on what mood I wanted to elicit. Its power over me was immense.

I was never without music. I had a Walkman, then a Discman, then an iPod, and now I can get music anytime on my smartphone. Music has always ornamented my life, highlighting certain moments, making some more memorable than others. Music, to me, is almost synonymous with memory. In fact, to process music, the brain uses the same processing technique as emotion and memory. 

Trying to remember how to play piano, Dad’s house, 2016

I listen to music less often now, but when I do, I still feel its effects, perhaps just as potently as I did when I was young. 

We humans have always sought music and art to express ourselves. By playing music, we celebrate life, we honor the future, and we mourn what has been lost. Music invokes memories from the past, transports us to different times and places, and makes us feel incredible joy. According to neurologist Oliver Sacks, “Music imprints itself on the brain deeper than any other human experience.”

Music is so influential that it has purportedly brought up birth weights in premature infants, elicited positive effects on plant growth, and aided in the recovery of patients suffering from brain damages. Music has also been documented in boosting performance in sports, improving literacy scores, and helping patients recover from heart attacks. 

Music is clearly exceptionally powerful. 

However, in addition to boosting our mental and physical health on many levels, music can also bring about negative outcomes, such as profound sadness, over-stimulation, hearing loss, memory triggering, emotional flooding, and distress. For example, studies have shown that music can create false memories, confusion, and anxiety in dementia patients who are hoping to recall their lost selves. Music’s adverse effects can multiply and snowball into potentially serious psychological and physical distress, depending on preexisting conditions.

Warped Tour, 1999

As a teenager and through my early 20s, I often used music as a way to escape instead of face reality. Music had a way of altering my mindset, causing me to view both the world and my place in it much differently. The music I chose to listen to, coupled with the circumstances surrounding my consumption of the music, may have had a role in some of the choices I made at the time.

Music has a way of putting us under a spell and forcing us to move against our wills. This can be clearly seen in the very young and also very old. Studies on older infants and toddlers show that when little kiddos hear music, they start to wiggle around and “dance,” as though moved by an unseen force. This also happens to the elderly, as seen in dementia patients, showing that music can make people say or do things that have no relation to reality.

Advertisers have been using music’s powerful effects to their advantage for decades. The familiarity of a song can have powerful sway over consumer behavior. Marketing and advertising firms (and other institutions that use music to rouse an audience) are very successful in eliciting a desired emotional response, and they are very aware of the type of music that might create it. For example, they know that certain major or minor key tunes can manipulate emotion:

“Different melodies, chords, or key changes in songs can elicit responses. For example, strings playing short and sharp notes in a major key were found to elicit feelings of happiness and excitement in 87% of respondents. Meanwhile, a shift from major to minor keys provoked a sense of sadness or melancholy in 83%, and 90% found acoustic guitar sounds to be caring, calm and sophisticated.”

From “Science of Sound: How music makes advertising more memorable”

Part of living mindfully is being a mindful about what we expose ourselves to. In addition to being aware of the effects of “too much” in terms of our digital lives, our possessions, our schedules, and our mental loads, we should also be aware of music’s powerful effects.

Music can wield incredible power over our minds, bodies, and emotions. To quote Stan Lee from Spider Man: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This power can do wonderful, beautiful things. Music has the wonderful ability of accentuating and enlivening our days, providing richness to our earthly experience, and ornamenting our realities, but we need to be aware that music’s power does not always work in our favor, and can actually bring about negative effects.

---

I’m not a music scientist, nor am I a licensed psychologist, so the opinions above are my own, highlighted by research I’ve done. I personally find the effects of music to be very fascinating. What about you? What is your personal history with music? I’d love to hear what you think about any of this, or if you can add to the discussion. Please leave a comment below or email me at ali.everthrive@gmail.com

Welcome the Unexpected

We may not be aware of it, but we always have a chair pulled out for the surprising demands of our hearts.

Happiness, loneliness, fear, sadness, anger — each comes as an unexpected guest. Each moment contains a new arrival. Instead of turning them away, according to the Sufi poet Rumi, we should extend our hospitality.

We should “Welcome [unexpected guests] and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”

When unpleasant forces enter our lives, we often shut them out. When we send these forces away, we have lost an important chance to grow. Instead, we should admit them as guests to our table, because they can teach us how to become more conscious human beings.

When we welcome, entertain, feed, and listen to our unanticipated emotions, we become better at regulating and respecting our feelings, and we aid ourselves in development as people.

Learn from Loneliness

Do you like to be alone? Oftentimes, I do.

When I’m alone, I’m at ease. In my solitude, I’m free to be my authentic self. And, even though I could just be comfortably hanging out in my living room, I feel like I’m away from the constraints of society.

When we are comfortable and happy in our alone-ness, we can use the situation to reflect on life and use it as an opportunity to experience growth. However, many people aren’t happy being alone. Instead of feeling alone, they feel lonely.

Loneliness is something very different than being alone.

When we are lonely, we are not reflecting on our lives with growth and mindfulness. We are not at ease with ourselves, and we are not free.

Loneliness, when allowed to take hold and fester, can cause anxiety and depression, as well as an array of physical ailments leading to poor health and a shorter life expectancy. Instead of encountering truths and experiencing growth, loneliness gives way "to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd" (Thomans Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales).

Loneliness does not imply alone-ness. We can be lonely even when we are surrounded by people.

Loneliness is an emotion that can be experienced suddenly, or over time. The abrupt loss of a loved one, a job, or a marriage can initiate sudden feelings of isolation and hopelessness. Gradual loneliness is caused by our tendency to self-isolate because our expectations of others may be too high, or we might not be able to withstand the social stress of communicating with others.

If, after a period of self isolation, we do initiate contact or have the occasion to,  we sometimes end up scrutinizing others' behaviors towards us. We think that their benevolent interactions are fake or forced. This produces anger and fear, causing us withdraw into our loneliness even more. In this way, loneliness has the potential to alter our perception. It is very difficult to climb out of a pit of despair, where we are emotionally raw and feel that we do not deserve the contact of others.

In our loneliness, we begin to see the world as a negative place.  

According to Thomas Wolfe in his essay entitled "God's Lonely Man," loneliness is a "central and inevitable fact of human existence." When experienced, this emotion can be devastating; however, loneliness should be explored and understood before it is banished, because it can inform us of behavior patterns that we need to change. 

Loneliness forces us to make decisions about our lives. 

It is important to be aware of our emotional well-being, and acknowledge when we are feeling lonely. In order to stop our decent into the abyss of loneliness, we have to understand that change needs to occur.

Loneliness should be explored and understood

We owe it to ourselves to take action when we feel cast aside or unnecessarily isolated, even when we are surrounded by people. We should push ourselves and reach out to those who care for us. We need to reinsert ourselves into the work of friendship, where our social needs will be satisfied, and pangs of loneliness will subside.

When we force ourselves out of loneliness by prioritizing our emotional health, the quality of our lives will improve, and we will inevitably thrive.