Music: The Sound of Happiness

It’s a dreary day here in small-town Texas but I have some music playing in the background to drown out the thunderstorm. I listened to the notes being played and I had an odd epiphany of sorts…I suddenly realized that music makes life beautiful, and on a grand scale. It makes it exceptional and a life without music is nearly a life without living. I’ll explain why.

Music seems to make everything better. Communal gatherings, weddings, parties, even office parties, and many times just by yourself. It’s a beautiful human connection that traverses through notes. All good music equates to good food essentially, it’s just good. Its origin is meaningless, and it’s universally palatable.

Its power is immense, transcending both space and time. It has an uncanny way of unifying people and breaching seemingly impenetrable cultural divides.

Music and Science

Scientific evidence shows that music is beneficial in medicinal manners as well. A study from the University of Missouri directly correlates listening to music when you’re angry or sad providing an instant boost to your mood.

There’s also compelling evidence that music can help reduce stress and anxiety, especially if it’s slow in tempo and soothing at a low decibel.

A study involving surgery patients found that when they listened to music before entering an operation, it significantly reduced stress levels even more than anti-anxiety medication. Which in and of itself is mind-blowing. Music is much better than taking Xanax.

Also, if you have the ability to play an instrument both proficiently and as an amateur, it has also been proven to reduce stress. Research has also shown music helps release dopamine, the neurotransmitter most typically referred to as the “happy chemical” directly correlated to the brain’s “reward system”. This is all beneficial, I believe even more so than most medications.

Robert J. Zatorre and Valorie N. Salimpoor, both neuroscientists, have conducted extensive research on music’s impact on the brain. As they explain it:

When pleasurable music is heard, dopamine is released in the striatum — an ancient part of the brain found in other vertebrates as well — which is known to respond to naturally rewarding stimuli like food and sex and which is artificially targeted by drugs like cocaine and amphetamine.

Simply put, our brains are programmed to be happier when we listen to music. It speaks to us and affects us in ways we can only begin to fathom.

Happy people are productive people.

In nearly the same way that music is beneficial to our health, mental health, and general outlook on life, happiness helps improve our own productivity…and music makes people happy.

Happiness is hard to come by these days and its a major burden amongst some people. It takes effort, and a strong willingness to focus on positive thinking, but hard work always pays off.

Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Steven Kramer, an independent researcher, stated in the New York Times:

Employees are far more likely to have new ideas on days when they feel happier. Conventional wisdom suggests that pressure enhances performance; our real-time data, however, shows that workers perform better when they are happily engaged in what they do.

Music makes you happier. It’s proven. Please enjoy this benefit.

Along with greater rates of productivity, teamwork, and creativity, research suggests happy employees lead to increased profits.

Even more so, there is also a link between listening to music and efficiency. A study found that nine out of 10 workers performed better while listening to some form of music.

There was also a correlation between efficiency and the type of music they listened to. For example, classical music was shown to aid in work that involves numbers that require high proficiency. So if you’ve got math homework, Beethoven might be better than Kendrick Lamar.

In all reality, this article is about the appreciation of music and how much happiness it brings to all cultures and nationalities. With all the hustle and bustle of the world, music is an indispensable gift, and we should never take it, or the happiness it produces, for granted.

In other words, music is arguably the centerpiece of all that’s positive in this world, or as Jack Kerouac once put it:

The only truth is music.

If you’re not currently listening to music then you’re doing yourself a huge disservice, believe me, science says so.

Best,

J. Robert Fallon III