Healthful Beats: Create a Playlist That Keeps You Balanced

Many of us may be thinking of ways we can brighten our mindset this spring as well as improve our overall daily performance. In this post, we will discuss one simple way you can use your favorite music to help you reach this goal.

In our book, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life: 10 Proven Ways Your Favorite Music Can Revolutionize Your Health, Memory, Organization, Alertness (2012), my co-authors and I discussed many ways to use music and natural sound to relieve anxiety, stress, and insomnia, as well as increase memory, organization, alertness, focus, and happiness.

At the heart of this matter was achieving a balanced mindset. We defined balance as the state of mind between calm and alert. This is that “sweet spot” when your mind is operating at the middle ground between an activated (focused and energized) state and a relaxed (calm) state. This doesn’t mean that you are only partly focused or calm, far from it. It means you are optimally focused and optimally calm. If, for example, you increased (or decreased) your focus or calm, your overall performance would deteriorate.

Having the right balance of each allows you to proceed toward everyday goals in a state of mind that is both calm and simultaneously focused. This allows you to operate at your optimum performance because you are flowing and functioning at your best.

Music Has Been With Us Since the Beginning

So why does music work? Encoded deep within your memory are the earliest vibrations—the comforting rhythms of your mother’s heartbeat and the whooshing, low-frequency sounds vibrating through her placenta and your umbilical cord. These primitive scores began entraining (two or more rhythms synchronizing into one) in your brain and orchestrating the essence of music within you. So, from your very beginnings, your brain was already establishing the relationship for how music affects you today. It is not surprising these early influences can stay with us throughout life. Consider this for a moment: On any given summer day we could go to the beach and see individuals lying in the sand, eyes gently closed, listening to the whoosh of waves and easy hush of wind, not exactly thinking about why it all feels so good, just flowing with it comfortably and calmly.

Historically, rhythm, music, and song have been used as a way to tune the mind. Again, without surprise, the core features of music are rhythm, harmony, resonance, and dissonance and those are the same processes the brain uses to coordinate its activities and carry out complex behaviors. This “connection” is yet another reason why music can have such a deep effect on us. We now know that music permeates every part of the brain. This additional connection is why music is able to help regulate your thoughts, feelings, and actions as you approach daily goals. It is now well-known that music can change brain wave activity. From highest to lowest these frequencies are called beta, alpha, theta, and delta. We measure these by using an electroencephalograph (EEG). What do these frequencies have to do with your favorite songs? By changing certain frequencies in your music, you can move through a variety of mental states that range from high alert to wholly relaxed.

It doesn't matter if your musical taste is Andrea Bocelli, Bob Dylan, Billie Holiday, or Taylor Swift. You can use your favorite tunes to achieve a balanced mind state at virtually the push of a button. This means you can use your playlist to move from a highly alert mind state to a meditative, relaxed, or even drowsy or dreamy state.

Now, imagine heading to your next meeting or any important part of your day feeling your mental best.

Try This

1. Do this part in advance. Consider your favorite songs. Find a few that you already know have a calming effect on you (take you “down”) and a few that energize you (take you “up”). Save these on your cell phone or other electronic devices and label them Activating File and Calming File, or make up your own labels.
2. Reflect on what you feel like when your mind is not in balance—you may feel out of sorts, too jumpy, or too mellow to get a certain task done. This way you will know when and how to apply your activating and calming files.
3. Use your playlists (or any particular song within them on repeat mode) to help you balance your mindset by either activating you or calming you based on your needs. Note: It may take longer to relax than to energize. Remember: Balance is that middle ground between calm and alert.
4. Make task-oriented, balancing playlists—e.g., drive to work, athletic activity, committee meeting, drive home after work.
5. Train your brain with your calming or activating tunes before and after specific tasks. This sends your brain the message that you want this specific state of mind in a specific situation.

Note: Pay attention to when a certain song works and when it doesn't. Songs are not always situationally interchangeable.

Remember, train your brain like you would the rest of your body in a gym—often and with lots of repetition. Eventually, it will get the message that you want a certain mindset for a specific situation, and it will start bringing it on, for you, all on its own.