8 Ways Music Can Help You To Calm Down and Fire Up – Part 2
5. Boring Things cease to be boring. Homework gets done. The day goes faster.
Let’s face it – not everything we do every day fills us with excitement, lifts us up to do the best we can be, or makes us want to rush out of the house to face the joys of the universe.
Sharing and eating an evening meal with loved ones is an activity that human-kind has enjoyed since we came down from the trees and moved into caves.
However, someone still has to wash the dishes.
Ever since teaching was invented, students have plotted and schemed their way out of doing their homework.
Ever tried ironing the weeks shirts in total silence and finished the job ?
In the modern western world, how many people do you see on the train or the bus at each end of the day during the morning and evening commute with their headphones on, listening to music ? Almost everyone !!
People with tedious jobs take their ipods or radios to work with them. Many factory floors have music playing for their workers.
Grass seems to grow and paint appears to dry much more quickly when you are listening to your favourite music.
Music is entertaining. Music is fun. Music is soothing. Music is encouraging. People get lost in their music.
Quite simply, if you know you need to get something done but it bores you to tears and makes you lose the will to live, make sure you have a musical player of some description, and some appropriate music, handy and available.
6. Motivation and Music can go hand in hand.
Rocky Balboa had his “Eye of the Tiger”. The All Blacks have their Haka. Queen knew that “We Are The Champions”.
Athletes throughout the centuries have had their fanfares and the motivation to hear their national anthem as they are presented with the gold medal is very compelling indeed.
Your stock standard champion Roman Gladiator standing alone in the middle of the Colosseum in the 1st Century AD knew that those trumpets meant business.
Aerobics instructors know full well that fast paced inspiration music gets the blood pumping and fires up everyone in the room.
Yoga instructors and Guided Meditation leaders also know that more appropriate music will also provide the mental stimulation and clarity required to achieve the desired outcomes of their classes.
Even knowing the length of a particular song, album or piece of music can provide huge amounts of motivation to get things done…..setting yourself the challenge of completing a specific “thing” before the end of the song / album / music can make people strive to go faster, think harder, achieve more with less.
The listener can be transported to another world where they are stronger, better, have more self-control and are able to leap tall buildings in a single bound: all because of the motivation that their music of choice can provide.
7. Share your headphones. Music plus friendship equals two happy people.
Everyone has their own tastes in music.
But what is equally true is the fact that everyone likes similar styles of music to at least one other person.
Chances are exceptionally high that while your friends might not like every song on your MP3 player or in your CD collection, they will enjoy at the very least a small proportion of your “style” of music.
Kids especially love it when they share their headphones with a friend. It is also a fantastic way to spend time with your children – just sitting on the couch or in their bedrooms or on the floor or outside in the backyard, you with the left earphone and your child with the right headphone.
Let your child control the songs that are played and see how much enjoyment they will experience just with you being there plugged in to the same music as they are.
8. Live, Love, Learn. Musical history, musical currency – Mozart, The Beatles, Ancient Civilizations, Modern Beats.
Music has been a form of communication, a source of comfort and community for tens of thousands of years.
Men and women with large hairy eyebrows, dubious personal hygiene and clothes made out of freshly slain animals used to sit around in caves while rhythmically banging on rocks and having a fantastic time relating pantomime stories of their days hunting and not being eaten by sabre toothed tigers.
Then some clever caveperson made some holes in a piece of bone and blew into it – and the first flute was born.
The Ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans all had music as a key part of their social, public and private lives.
Variations on their musical instruments still exist today, such as the flute, the trumpet and the harp.
What gladiator didn’t feel the adrenaline rush from a blaring brass fanfare ?
What Egyptian Pharaoh wasn’t relaxed by the enchanting sound of his favourite court musicians harp ?
What European peasant from the Middle Ages was not inspired by the angelic choirs and natural reverberation of the local church or cathedral ?
Studies have shown that babies and small children learn better when they are exposed to music – this is known as the “Mozart Effect”.
Most of us in this modern, rushed and faced paced world have heard of The Beatles – and the picture in our minds eye of John, Paul, George and Ringo shows what we perceive to be the swinging sixties.
Even the mention of Elvis brings two separate mental images: one of the clean cut late fifties / early sixties and another of the fashionably questionable and jump suited seventies.
In exactly the same way, history might show that rap music may have defined a culture and a snapshot in time.
We have learnt these ideas and concepts from the music and from our ancestors, passed down from generation to generation.
——–
Music is the key to life.
Make sure you go out of your way to listen to some music each and every day.
Music is a tool – but different music can help you with different objectives. Calming down or firing up, relaxing or inspiring, music can help you to do both. And more.
How does music inspire you ?
What memories do you recall from particular songs ?
How do you use music – to calm down, to fire up, or both ?
Please write your comments below, and don’t forget to share this article on Twitter or Facebook !
Thanks,
Matthew
Calming Music Weekly
Flickr creative commons image thanks to Charles Rodstrom and Rene De Paula Jr and lunamom58
