We all relate to music at a personal level as the tempo and lyrics impact and resonate our emotions. Since the days of old, when our ancestors played drums to date when you can stream live songs from your favorite channels and stations, music has played an integral role in managing human feelings and emotions.
It has enhanced positive emotions such as calm and happiness while diminishing or regulating undesirable emotional states such as stress and fatigue. But what is the interrelation between music and your mood?
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The Power of Music
The cerebellum is highly activated by your favorite music, which triggers increased blood flow even to the legs. The part of the brain most impacted by music is also the part that makes you want to move, even if it means just bobbing your head or tapping your feet. This is part of why dancing is closely associated with almost every genre of music.
Have a look at our brief rundown to help you understand how songs impact your emotions and feelings and how music can lift your moods especially in your golden days of gray hair.
1. Get a Healthy Dose of Dopamine
Whenever you listen to your favorite song, it naturally triggers the brain to release dopamine. Dopamine is a happy chemical messenger involved in memory, attention, reward, motivation, and regulating body movements.
Dopamine creates feelings of pleasure and reward, which prompts you to repeat a specific behavior or set of actions. Low dopamine levels are linked to decreased enthusiasm and reduced motivation for things that would excite most people.
While dopamine is usually well regulated within the nervous system, listening to music can naturally increase dopamine levels. It's like your brain rewards you for knowing a great chorus is just about to play, thus keeping you jovial all the time.
2. Bring Back the Memories
Regardless of how sophisticated or cool your tastes have become since the years of yore, the opening guitar riff of an old pop-punk song has the magic to transport you back in time. Suddenly teenage feelings and memories come flooding your mind, and you are wondering whether side fringes and guyliner will ever make a comeback.
This is because music makes you incredibly nostalgic. Listening to the songs you heard during the formative years or particularly memorable events helps your brain to retrieve the memories and feelings of past times, especially the happy times.
3. Music for Your Moods
Usually, most people are particularly drawn to songs that are reflective of their moods. For instance, you are more likely to listen to mellow music if you are sad and to more upbeat music if you are happy. Whereas it is conceivable why listening to upbeat music when you are happy prolongs happiness, it beats the logic why another person may want to prolong sad emotions by listening to relatively sad songs.
It is likely because everyone needs an understanding and listening friend during their low or sad moments. This empathetic friend helps to boost your mood while holding your hand to defeat the challenges you face. A sad tune feels like that buddy who comes through during your low moments.
Whether it is the music's tempo or the lyrics in the song, sad music has proved to have positive effects on our moods, just like having an empathetic friend. Listening to songs that are congruent to your mood is quite validating and therapeutic.
Nevertheless, the intention of listening to this kind of music is not to intensify your negative emotions but to help you overcome them.
4. Challenge Yourself to Feel Better
In the same way, we use music to validate our feelings; we can also use it to challenge our negative moods. Listening to your favorite music is an excellent strategy to cope with emotional distress. You can consider listening to upbeat music to enhance your mood whenever you are feeling blue.
Studies reveal that you can boost your mood by playing more upbeat music, and you will have better results when you have a preset goal to feel happy. Next time you want to shave off the bad moods, use the goal to be happy coupled with good music that evokes positive vibes to diminish the negative emotions.
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