Key 4: Use Music to Enhance Your Life
Key Points:
1. Music has a strong effect on our brains and bodies. It can give us energy, boost performance, and actually helps the brain execute tasks at a higher level.
2. The idea of 7 C’s interestingly highlights what music can provide: contact, cognition, co-pathy, communication, coordination, cooperation, and cohesion.
3. Create a soundtrack to your life and harness the power of music to either energize or relax you when needed.
“Life seems to go on without effort when I am filled with music.”
If you think about how music affects us—from pumping us up to filling us with pleasure or bringing tears to our eyes—it’s not hard to imagine that music, especially live music, has a powerful effect on the brain and body.
Music can help energize your body, activate your brain, reduce fatigue, and increase your performance. For example, if we listen to music while exercising, our bodies pick up on the pace and flow of the music and start to mirror it. Music can even make a tough workout feel easier to complete. Studies show that endurance is increased when listening to music and that motivational music—whatever personally lights you up—has an impact on stamina.
Along with changing our mood and energy, music can also have an important effect on our brain’s ability to execute. Listening to or studying music consistently remodels your brain and enables you to function at a higher level. MRI imaging has also shown that the pathways in your brain affected by music run from the cochlea in your ear, through the auditory nerve, and into the basal centres of your brain (the very, very early centres of the brain that run up into and through your limbic system, the emotional centre of your brain). This means is that listening to or playing music amplifies your brain—which means you can use music to amplify your life.
Stephen Koelsh has published a literature review that documented the effects of music on individuals and groups and identified the following “seven Cs” of music. Music provides opportunities for:
1. Social contact with other human beings;
2. Dramatic increases in cognition (the function of your brain);
3. Co-pathy (empathy shared with others);
4. Communication (sharing lyrics and experiences);
5. More effective coordination (people are attuned to each other);
6. Enhanced cooperation because (shared experience); and
7. Greater cohesion among groups.
Music has throughout time been an important and universal part of society. It can have a powerful effect on our emotions and mood. Studies using MRI imaging have shown that music affects the regions of our brain associated with emotions (the limbic system). We are just starting to learn about the interactions between music as a performance enhancer and has a way for us to improve our mental health.
This means that if we create a soundtrack for our lives, we can use music to help us get excited, energized, focused, or on the other hand relaxed, calm and joyful. Align your music with your life and amazing things can happen. Oh yeah – and get a good set of headphones!
Dr. Greg Wells Podcast: The Power of Music
For more information, check out an episode of my podcast Here with guest Brent Jensen where we discuss the effect music can have on us.
Today’s Call to Action: Leverage the Power of Music
Listening to or playing music amplifies your brain, which means you can use music to amplify your life. Use music on your way to work to get ready for whatever lies ahead. Use music to transition to new activities, like the deep concentration required for a project or at the end of the day when you need to wind down.
Make a handful of playlists that put music to work for you. If you’re feeling tense and anxious and don’t even want to get moving at all, listen to a calming soundtrack—songs that touch you personally and engage your emotions in a soothing manner—to lower your heart rate and de-stress. You can also use a calming soundtrack when walking or practicing moving meditation or even doing household chores.
Create as many life soundtracks as you like and put music to work for you.
Today’s Bonus Video
Check out this video of Greg as he further discusses the power of music.
The information and advice provided in this program is intended to assist you with improving your performance, as well as your general health. It is not intended and should not be used in place of advice from your own physician or for treatment or diagnosis of any specific health issue. By participating in this program you acknowledge that undertaking any new health, diet and/or exercise regime involves certain inherent risks, that you assume such risks, and that you release Wells Performance Inc. from any responsibility or claim relating to such participation.