How Music Directly Affects Your Thoughts
Drawing Motivation From Music
Music has the power to evoke strong emotions and inspiration.
Learning how music affects you can help you become motivated to achieve any goal.
Music is inherently linked to your mood, with happy music producing positive emotions and sad music creating negative ones.
As we learn more about the brain through advances in imaging and mapping, our understanding of how music influences our neural networks continues to evolve.
Below, we share some necessary information about how music affects your mind and mood as well as tips on how to harness the power of music to improve your motivation.
Music’s Influence on Mind and Mood
With the right music, you can change your mindset, alter your perception, or boost your mood.
Each piece of music elicits a specific response from you, and when you can identify that reaction in yourself, you can learn which songs are the most influential to your motivation.
Because music has a direct-line connection to the emotional centers of your brain, it actually has the power to influence your perceptions of the world around you, according to researchers from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
Happy music has the ability to improve the way your eyes and other senses perceive the world, even when it is neutral or negative, while sad or angry music can make the world seem more negative.
Music has the ability to pump you up, to create a sense of invincibility and optimism that can help you stay motivated to attain a task or achieve a goal despite pain or turmoil.
Happy music allows you to remain optimistic in the face of obstacles, enduring long past the time when you would have typically given up and called it quits.
Neuroscientists have discovered that music enters your nervous system and consciousness through bottom-up processing, starting in the brain stem, which triggers responses in other parts of the brain.
Your brain stem is the home of your conscious mind, your sentience, and when you hear music, your whole body, including your brain, automatically feels the beat and translates the music into movement and emotion.
This bottom-up processing means we perceive and understand music will all parts of our mind, not just the sensory input networks or cognitive processing channels. It becomes part of our lived experience.
Harnessing the Power of Music
Your reaction to a specific song is unique to you, and what others find motivating or uplifting may not work well for you.
The process of finding the right series of tunes to keep you motivated can be tricky, involving lots of trial and error.
When you hear a song, you should ask yourself how it makes you feel. Is the message or the tune what affects you more?
What songs does it remind you of?
Does the song significantly alter your mood or state of mind? Keeping track of which songs make you feel which way will help you identify those that are a good fit for specific situations.
You can create playlists that are good for keeping you motivated for specific tasks for events.
You may have a fast-paced workout playlist, an optimistic one you listen to before stressful events, and ones you reach for when you are running low on creativity or focus.
All of these are times when motivation is waning, and you need an extra charge, and music can help you with that.
Remember to make it about you and how the music affects you.
Your happy songs may not be what others would consider positive.
It’s not about what others like, it’s only about what you like. Even sad or moody songs can offer catharsis or perspective, which can help you stay motivated for the long road ahead.
Experiment with new artists, different genres, and unknown songs. Today’s streaming music services, with unlimited, customizable playlists, make it even easier to explore and find new songs to add to your motivation arsenal.
Even your guilty pleasures, the songs you don’t want anyone to know are on your player but secretly bring you joy and energy, have their place in your motivational playlists.
Select only music that speaks to you and evokes the specific emotional reaction you are seeking. After all, it’s all about finding motivation for you, no one else, right?
Final Thoughts
Keep your playlists fresh, create lots of variety, and avoid overplaying favorites, as this can create a dulling effect on your mind, and you’ll lose that motivational benefit.
Start making your motivational playlists today to add optimism, energy, and positivity to the moments in your life when motivation is hard to find.