Blog by: Lata Advani Viseu

“When it’s not always raining
There’ll be days like this
When there’s no one complaining
There’ll be days like this
Everything falls into place
Like the flick of a switch
Well my mama told me
There’ll be days like this”
Days Like This – Van Morrison

When fear gets loud, turn up the right song…that’s what I do.

I stopped watching and listening to the news almost two years ago when I realized how much false information we were being fed.

I still get caught up in doom scrolling and come across all the horrible things happening in the world. But the moment I become aware of it, I turn to music, and that resets my nervous system.

I feel my shoulders relaxing, my breath softening, my heart rate slowing, and a sense of coming home to myself.

Music is like medicine, and there are certain songs that feel like balm. The rhythm and the beat override anxiety, and the melody shifts my emotional landscape.

A single note or a familiar song can lift my mood and bring me joy. A certain song will take me back to happier times and the same feelings I felt then. Memories are all that remain until you make some new ones, because nothing lasts forever.

How powerful we are, that all we need to do is think a different thought and feel a different feeling. Our thoughts become things. What we think, we attract. And knowing that, I choose a different thought.

Awareness is the turning point, because things can shift quickly when you choose differently. It’s empowering to interrupt an old pattern and choose a new one.

When I was younger, I would listen to songs like “Sad Café” by the Eagles on repeat and feel sadder and sadder. Now I know better. I look at it from a different perspective, and I don’t let it get me down.

I understand that younger version of me – what she knows now, what she didn’t know then, and how she’s learned to choose differently. She realizes now that nothing lasts forever.

Some songs inspire me to get up and get going or begin moving to the beat. Music is such a gift, a never-ending source of inspiration.

The beauty of fleeting moments, the invitation to create new memories, the way music becomes a bridge between past and present…it remains a dear friend in both good and bad times.

Fear may be loud, but so is joy…if we let it in. We can’t control the world, but we can choose the soundtrack we live by.

What song brings you back to yourself?

Quotes:
“Where words fail, music speaks.” – Hans Christian Andersen
“Music can change the world because it can change people.” – Bono
“One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” – Bob Marley
“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” – L.M. Montgomery
“Music is all you really need – love and music is all we need” – Eric Clapton
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Seuss