Can Music Make You Happy?

Hi, I’m Paul Krismer. I’m your happiness expert and this week, I’m coming to you from Savannah, Georgia, where I’ve had a lovely time both being a tourist and working at a big event that I spoke at. The video content this week is about the sense of calm that we all want and know that it’s this wonderful feeling that makes us just feel, well, happy, a kind of serenity. It’s a particular kind of content, happy feeling. I saw an interesting study recently, a cross-cultural study, specifically looking at the influence of music on infants. It was what they call an electrodermal study. So they’re looking at the activity on the skin that can see kind of excitement versus calm, and they were subjecting little infants to 14 second incremental exposures to particular music. They could just very, very clearly see the responsiveness that we humans have to music, that we have this relationship to our auditory senses and the way our body feels. It’s lovely, intuitive, we all know it, and also profound.

You’ll note as you listen that calming music has rounded, beautiful, subtle contours, low complexity, and that characteristic of a lullaby makes us feel calm. You know, if music has been your muse today for your own sense of calm, there’s clearly other things. So easy accessible tools to become calm. The main one is to be distracted. If something’s irritating you, look to something that just takes you away into a different place. A good book, a good movie, something like that. Help others. We know that through altruistic acts, it gives us a sense of well-being, a type of calm. Thirdly, get some exercise. Just getting out, getting our bodies moving, we all know, and science is really strong on it, helps us to feel imbalanced, calm, regulated. Fourth, go on a no news diet. Get away from the gloom and doom of the weekly or evening news. And maybe if you really can’t get away, at least put yourself on a reduced news diet. Fifteen to twenty minutes, set a timer, and then be done. No more for the day. And finally, and I’ve talked about this in many, many videos in the past, one of the most effective happiness interventions that science knows is to grow more and more mindful. And the best way to learn that is through learning to meditate.

That’s it for this week. If you like this content, please click the like button, share with your friends and family. We’ll see you again next week.