The voices in our heads are the biggest influence on our daily success. Choose music with narratives to empower and strengthen a positive mindset so you can rule your day. You will want to have your headphones on to hear the links on this blog.
I remember getting my first Walkman as a teenager. (Gen X'ers out there, send me a HIGH FIVE or 🙋 in the comments if you had one too.) It took me a summer of saving my babysitting money to buy one. I learned to make my mixtapes with my father's stereo system. Sometimes I would record favourite tracks off vinyl record albums, and sometimes I would record the latest hit songs from the radio when they were broadcast. (The original way of downloading music before iTunes and Spotify.😉)
These tapes became my soundtracks for when I was happy, sad, mad or heartbroken from my latest crush on someone at school.
This is how my habit of creating soundtracks for my day began. I would pop in my upbeat "Start The Day" tape on my walks or bus rides to school. Then my "Winding Down The Day" tape with more mellow and soft music when on the way home from school. If I had a frustrating day, I had a song-list filled with lyrics of angst and furry to help me vent and then included songs about redemption and resilience to pick me back up. Or if I was feeling blue and needed a good cry, I had a song-list with lyrics of heartbreak and despair to empathize with me and would move on to songs with lyrics of hope and strength to build back confidence. I loved how I could create a mood for myself or release emotions through listening to my favourite songs. Music was a tool for me to find strength and confidence to deal with my turbulent teenage years.
Proudly 80s: Some of my favourite teen anthems. I was there for the first release of some of these albums. I think I wore out the grooves in the vinyl Whitney Houston album. 😂
Here are some therapeutic effects of music:
Sourced from verywellmind.com article How and Why Music Can be Therapeutic
1. Stimulates brain wave activity:
Upbeat and faster tempo music creates sharper concentration and an alert state of mind.
Slower-tempo music promotes a calming meditative state of mind.
Promotes brainwave activity that helps the brain shift speeds more readily.
2. Helps to regulate breathing and heart rate:
Altering brainwaves with slower tempo music can slow breathing and heart rate to activate your body's relaxation response.
3. Induce a more positive state of mind:
Uplifting music and lyrics help to reframe the mental state.
Can help to create higher levels of optimism.
The effect on brain wave activity impacts the state of mind and emotions which impact physical benefits such as lower blood pressure, reducing anxiety and stress.
Building Mental and Emotional Strength Through Music
My instinctive love of music evolved into my version of Music Therapy as an adult. With our modern-day technology of iPods and iPhones, our music is always with us and can be a powerful tool to help us achieve the state of mind we need in various moments in our lives. In times when my internal voices were anxious and negative, a happy or hopeful song can help to change the negative self-talk narrative.
In a particularly stressful year in my work life when our department was facing uncertainty and adapting to new senior management, I found myself suffering from high anxiety and lack of motivation as I had to defend the value of my work and that of my team daily. I was the Learning and Development department head of a regional team for a global retailing company. During this time there were frequent management meetings where all department heads had to justify the value of their teams' productivity and spending in order to reduce department budgets. It felt like the decade that I had spent building the regional team and helping to establish the affiliate teams didn't matter.
The knock-off effect on my mental and emotional state was building. Every morning on my commute to the office, the negative voices in my head of self-doubt in my abilities and my professional worth were deafening. The feeling of fight or flight was taking hold, but I was not ready to quit just yet. However, I also could not continue to beat myself up mentally and emotionally each day.
So going back to my "mixed tape" days, I created a playlist for my morning daily commute to boost my sense of self-worth. I used songs like personal anthems that made me feel proud, brave and strong. Here are some of my favourites and excerpts of lyrics that made me feel strong. You can also click on the title to enjoy the official music videos. I strongly recommend you watch and listen to a couple to benefit from the power in the music.
"This is my fight song
Take back my life song
Prove I'm alright song
My power's turned on
Starting right now I'll be strong
I'll play my fight song
And I don't really care if nobody else believes
'Cause I've still got a lot of fight left in me"
"When the sharpest words wanna cut me down
I'm gonna send a flood, gonna drown 'em out
I am brave, I am bruised
I am who I'm meant to be, this is me
Look out 'cause here I come
And I'm marching on to the beat I drum
I'm not scared to be seen
I make no apologies, this is me"
"Cause you're a sky, 'cause you're a sky full of stars
I'm gonna give you my heart
'Cause you're a sky, 'cause you're a sky full of stars
'Cause you light up the path"
"Here come bad news talking this and that (Yeah)
Well give me all you got, don't hold back (Yeah)
Well I should probably warn you I'll be just fine (Yeah)
No offence to you don't waste your time"
"I got this feeling inside my bones
It goes electric, wavey when I turn it on
And if you want it, inside your soul
Just open up your heart, let music take control"
Even if you just read these lyrics, you will feel stronger. For my toughest moments, I would pull from these words, use them like a mantra and immediately feel stronger.
In the end, my previous company's new approach to regional management became a deal-breaker and did not align with what I wanted from my career. I eventually left a brand and job that I loved because it no longer felt the same. I am proud of how I was able to maintain my integrity, work ethic and leadership values right to the end. The daily infusion of powerful music was instrumental (pardon the pun😁) in helping me overcome negativity and build up my self-worth.
The Power of Listening
In the last two years of Covid-19 life challenges, I have relied on music to help me get through days when I am particularly lonely for the family I cannot visit in Canada or feeling hopeless as we continue with wave after wave of pandemic restrictions. I added podcasts and audiobooks to my playlist to build learning and inspiration to my weekly routine. These tools continue to help me quiet negative thoughts and even help me to think positively more consistently as a response to daily stresses.
Here are some podcasts that I have found particularly resonating during these unpredictable times.
There are still days when I just want to stay curled up in bed with all the continuous bad news that surrounds us. There are days when my heart feels like it will literally crack because I miss my sons studying in Canada (and cannot visit due to Hong Kong Covid-19 travel restrictions). In those hard moments I put on a favorite song to comfort my soul, take a deep breath and put one foot in front of the other to move forward.
I'm always looking for the next great song to add to my power playlist. What are your power songs or personal anthems? Let me know in the comments and give me your recommendations.
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