With this article I open a series of articles about music. For a long time, I considered music to be not an important thing to write articles about self-development on it. But over time, my view on this issue has changed.
Music helps to fill the present with pleasant emotions and for a while to take a break from thinking about the future. It improves mood, relieves stress, helps to relax, raises the tone and does it without causing harm to the body. And in fact, if our whole life revolves around the desire for positive experiences, how can music be considered less important than anything else?
These considerations and prompted me to share what I have long wanted to share. In the first article, I will talk about how music helped me cope with depression and to discover the shortcomings of my personality. And in the second part we will discuss how to develop musical taste. Also in it I will share my favorite music a bit.
Music as a way to know yourself
On my website I wrote a lot about how I coped with depression and, based on this experience, offered readers effective methods of getting rid of this ailment. When I interpreted the experience, my mind, at its own discretion, broke up the changes in my life into substantial and insignificant. Of course, the mind considered that the development of volitional qualities, improvement of stress tolerance, changing the reaction to unpleasant events, getting rid of obsessive thoughts were very important steps in getting rid of depression. And the changes in habits related to my hobbies and hobbies, my mind is not rated as particularly significant.
But now, recalling the time when I had just begun to take initial steps aimed at getting rid of depression, I understand that the first glimpses of awareness began not at all with the understanding that I need to change my character, my views on things. It was not quite so, it all began not with serious things, but, it would seem, with trifles.
One day the following happened. I suddenly had the thought, "why have I listened to the same music for many years now?" “Because you don’t like the other, that’s your taste,” my mind responded. To which I replied to him: "so maybe try something new that I never listened to or disliked, maybe I will find something in it too?"
Then I was absolutely not struck by the fact that I suddenly began to think about it. For many years I did not want to change my habits, but for some reason at that moment I wanted to act contrary to the established patterns. I still did not understand that these were the first signs of that I began to look at myself, to realize my habits simply as habits, and not as permanently established personality traits. After that, I found many more habits in myself and made sure that, for example, anger, irritation, sadness, oddly enough, can also be only habits from which you can unlearn. But more about that later ...
But it all started with music.
Ecstasy - no less!
Before, I didn’t like electronic music at all, basically it seemed to me terribly primitive compared to the virtuoso elegance of some kind of rock.
Even if the electronic composition seemed interesting to me, I could not catch any charm in it that could make my heart beat faster and cause goosebumps on the skin. That is why at some point I was interested in discovering the unknown, but rich world of electronic audio art, simply because I understood this music least of all.
I can not say that I immediately began to enjoy her. I patiently listened to album after album, until I began to pick up in it what was previously unavailable to me.
In the process, I realized what it was that prevented me from doing this before. My attitude to music (and as I understood later, to everything in life) was expressed in one interesting feature. All the time I was waiting for the musical works only acute pleasure, which covers the skin with goosebumps, and the mind rushes somewhere to the heights. And I just could not perceive other, softer facets of musical pleasure. In short, all the time I needed was only ecstasy, and nothing less!
Therefore, I loved bright, intense, pathos-filled music! Only she gave me such feelings. And I listened to the same thing, because not so many compositions could cause such vivid experiences in me. The fact that ecstasy cannot last for a long time has caused a curious feature in listening to the playlist. I listened to the composition convulsively, switching from one to another, it was enough to stop the strong sensations. I could not patiently enjoy the whole album throughout its duration, I certainly had to feel something, at the same time, to feel quite intensely. Therefore, I listened to music in fragments, chose a moment in the composition that I liked the most and after that switched to something else. It was difficult for me to hear something new, I could not calmly wait for the arrival of "ecstasy", I needed it here and now!
And it seemed to me that any pleasure from music is limited only to such sensations. But while listening to new directions of music for myself, I began to understand that this is not the case and there are still many facets of music.
Verge of music
Different music affects the brain in different ways. More often, this effect is much more subtle than just the powerful pleasure I’m used to.
Some kind of music can simply hypnotize, gradually immersing into its rhythm. Other music creates an atmosphere that conveys a certain mood. Or processing and sound quality brings pleasure. And it happens that the progression itself, the logic of the development of a musical composition carries away and delays. Or quiet, smooth, abstract sounds evoke certain reflections.
This refers to the very different music, but is mainly inherent in electronic music with its monotonous structure, lack of vocal singing, as a means of expression. Such music has to express itself through abstract musical symbols, rather than concrete words, and its compositions are often characterized by smoothness and static, as opposed to the energetic dynamics of rock and changeable and pathetic classical music.
And my strong attachment to strong feelings filled me with a callus of perception, which prevented me from seeing all these facets. As if my ear instead of hearing all the sounds that people hear, would perceive only a narrow range of frequencies. The same thing happened to me, but only in the area of feelings and sensations: I could not feel what was beyond my narrow “emotional spectrum”.
And I discovered that this is my property not only for listening to music! Indeed, in such an emotional spectrum, my whole life passed! If I watched a movie, then it must be a strong movie, causing shivers and tears!
If I wanted a love relationship, then it had to be a strong and unbridled passion. But when it stopped, it only caused boredom. And then I had the need to "switch" to other relationships, just as I switched songs in my player, because I could not catch many shades of love due to the narrowness of my spectrum of perception!
My dependence on strong emotions made me look for sensual pleasure everywhere, and that is why I became so dependent on cigarettes, alcohol and even love quarrels, because they helped me to feel something! (In psychiatry, such an addiction is called “borderline personality disorder,” but I am convinced that this is not a disease at all, but simply a set of habits, as well as depression itself.)
I can not say that I realized this problem only because of the music, this understanding must have developed as a puzzle, fragments of which were scattered in different areas of my life. But music, of course, played a significant role here. I felt my anxiety, my passion for experiences very acutely at the moments when I was spinning on a chair, being unable to listen to a calm composition to the end.
New musical horizons
But my friends liked this music! They could catch something in it! Maybe they were just calmer and more patient than me? I began to intuitively understand that I am missing something that other people see. And so I started listening to music that I never listened to. I armed myself with patience, in no hurry to turn off the player, even if I had a great desire for this, but I waited calmly for me to catch something.
After some time, but not immediately, before my hearing, my mind gradually began to hear that which was hidden before. I found some new feelings for me, softer than a sudden ecstasy, but more subtle and prolonged. Of course, some compositions still made me wildly delighted, the feeling that I loved so much before. But I realized that it is only a narrow part of the emotional spectrum, and you should not switch the track as soon as it passes. There are many more different sensations besides this! You just need to wait and listen!
Igor Budnikov says in his course that meditation helps us to experience more different emotions from our emotional spectrum. Accept those feelings that we ignored or ran away from.
But not only meditation helped me, but also music! I learned to rejoice in the quiet tranquility, which began to bring me long walks and contemplation of nature, tacit satisfaction caused by the pleasant news from a friend's life, the feeling of comfort and contentment resulting from the comfort and warmth of home environment ...
Previously, these feelings were inaccessible to me, but I became more sensitive to the soft and diverse semitones of the emotional world, and this fact was limited not only to my musical passion.
This became an important element of the mosaic from which my self-development, relief from depression and panic attacks developed.
First results and inspiration
I realized that my anxiety, restlessness, impatience, which were manifested in listening to songs, were the causes of many other problems. For example, the fact that I could not work for a long time, sitting still or concentrating on a lecture at the institute, and everything fell out of my hands because of this.
But after all, I began to calm down and pick up that beauty in the melodic electronic modulations that were hidden from me before! After all, I learned to listen to the album to the end, instead of switching from track to track!
Consequently, I can improve my patience, calmness, concentration, if I often engage in listening to music, as well as, of course, meditation, exercises on awareness and concentration of attention. The result, which was expressed in changing musical tastes, gave me confidence that I could change my habits.
I was able to change what I thought was given and unchanged, namely, my musical taste with the help of the fact that I began to actively listen to music in different directions. And I realized that, just as well, I can change my irritability if I learn to restrain my emotions. I will begin to understand smart films and smart books if I just watch and read them. I will eliminate my inability to the exact sciences, which I considered to be innate if I just do these sciences!
Everything turned out to be very simple! Music, among other things, helped to understand that much of what I considered to be innate qualities turned out to be just habits that can be changed!
In addition, she helped me learn to relax, to find some more natural way out of stress than cigarettes and alcohol.
Music therapy today is an actively developing field of psychotherapy. Music has proven its effectiveness in dealing with depression and emotional disorders.
And now I realized that it was not very right for me to downplay her role in my life.
But why should we develop a musical taste? Why listen to something new? I will tell about this in the second part of the article “How to develop musical taste and how to properly listen to music”
