And Now My Heart Shall Sing

 You're sitting in the car by yourself just listening to the radio. It's been a long day, and you are honestly feeling kind of out of it. A song comes on though... maybe it's a rap song, country song, or even some classical music but it alleviates some of your tension and makes you smile. Soon you are feeling upbeat and ready to go. 

Ever had an experience like this? Maybe you've had another opposite experience where a certain song with either bring you down or just emphasis how you feel in that very moment. Whatever your experience is you have probably at least once seen the power of music in your life. 

Music has an incredible power over our reactions and lives. Throughout history, we have used music as a way to bring us into closer union with God through worship and organ music. It has been used to bring us to joy and celebration during festival and parties. In this day and age, we use it for motivation during workouts, calming for sleep, and even minor relief from depression or sadness. 

So we get that music is powerful. We see the power it has over our emotions and reactions. If something has this high of a capability to do us good, it also has the possibility of adverse effects. Music has been seen to cause spikes in depression when the music listened to is sad or even just depressing to the person such as love songs when you just broke up. We have seen angry teens become aggressive or violent after listening to equally angry music that praises and glorifies violent behavior. 

The point of all of this is that we need to be careful what we are putting into our minds because what we put in is what comes out in our behaviors, actions, and lives. What I want to encourage you to do in this post is a musical detox. Below I have a step-by-step plan for how exactly to do a musical detox. I do this about every two months because I fall into the trap of just wanting catchy cool songs that might not be good for me over and over again. 

How to Musically Detox

1) Find whatever you use to play music. This could be your MP3 player, CD case, phone, or anything else that holds your media. 

2) Pull it up either to albums or artists. If working with CDs just start from the front. 

3) Going one by one open the album or artist at the top and filter through deleting songs after asking these questions.

            a) Does this fill me with positive or negative emotions? If negative, delete. 

            b) Does this blasphemy, swear, or otherwise use inappropriate content? If so, delete. 

            c) Is this artist's music promoting a lifestyle that does not coincide with my beliefs? If so, delete. This one can be tough to recognize. Let's just say, if the singer keeps bringing up running off with various boys or shotting someone, maybe not something you should listen to. 

4) After going through if you feel like you've lost too much music research artists that better fit the life you want to lead. 

Just as a note, I have also used this for other forms of media such as books and movies and it seems to work for all of them. 

It can be tough to get rid of things like this, primarily because this material is often designed to be catchy or addictive, but there is so much music out there to listen to and so many wonderful songs that encourage a life you want to live. Always strive to be the person you want to be, and you will go far, no inappropriate soundtrack necessary. 

Thanks for reading as usual. I hope this helps some of you as it has me. Also, if you are interested in a recommended song list, please let me know in the comments below and I will try to post one soon.