4 Habits for Energy, Productivity, & Happiness That Changed My Life (Science-Backed)

Your favorite music from the past can help you hit the reset button on your mood right now. What was some of the favorite music from your past? Maybe it was the song that played the summer you graduated from high school, or the song that your dad always played, and every time you hear the song, you immediately think of him. Or maybe it was your first dance song. According to researchers, you and I can use the happy associations from these songs of our past to lift our mood in the present, 'cause all you got to do once you learn everything that we're going to talk about today is just hit play. (clock ticking) Hey, it's your friend Mel, and thank you for being here with me. And I want to just acknowledge you for taking time to listen to something that could improve your life. If you're a new listener, I also want to welcome you to the Mel Robbins Podcast family. I am so glad that you're here. I'm Mel Robbins, and I cannot wait to share this time together with you. And today, you and I have such a cool topic to talk about. We're going to talk about this incredible research related to music and how you can use music to hack your concentration, your mood, to prime your brain to learn. There's even certain kinds of music that will help you focus and sleep better, and research even shows that a certain type of music at a certain frequency can help you heal. I mean, how cool is that? This is way better than learning how to juice a lemon, because the research that you're going to learn today is going to help you squeeze more juice from your entire life and from your brain. You're just going to love this, 'cause all you got to do once you learn everything that we're going to talk about today is just hit play, and the music and the incredible wiring in your brain and your body, they will do all the work for you. So let's jump in, and I want to start by talking about how you can use music as a hack to put you in a better mood almost instantaneously. It turns out, according to research, that when you listen to songs that you liked when you were growing up or songs that were kind of like the anthem during certain periods of your life, research shows that simply listening to these old songs puts you in a better mood. And I think you kind of know this. You kind of know this, right? Because you've experienced this before. But when I share the research with you and we really unpack this and what's happening in your body and your brain, I really want you to lean into this because it's a powerful tool that you can use in your day-to-day life. Okay? So just picture this. You're driving in your car. You're just cruising down the highway. You're thinking about work, or you're thinking about your grocery list, or you're wondering, "Oh my God, did anyone even feed the dog?" Your mind is just busy turning over these thoughts, and all of a sudden, one of your favorite songs from high school comes on the radio. For me, oh boy, there was a phase early in high school, I was so into The Cure and The Specials, you know, Friday I'm in la- I can't- I'm- I don't even want to sing. I'm a terrible singer. You guys know my daughter's a singer. You will turn this off if I sing, so I'm not going to be singing. But then there was a phase where everybody in my high school in Western Michigan was way into Bruce Springsteen. Born in the USA came out, I believe, when I was in high school, and there was also this whole body of music that's now called yacht rock that's that sort of like easy, soft rock stuff that my parents were constantly playing. It was like always in the house or in the car or, like, in the boat. You know that song: (singing) If you like pina coladas. Oh, I'm so embar- I am so embarrassed when I sing 'cause I think I have a terrible voice. But when you even think about those lyrics, "If you like pina coladas," aren't you immediately transported back in time? I mean, first, if you think about your favorite songs, st- stop and think right now. What was one of your favorite songs when you were in high school? Maybe you even had a poster hanging in your room. You played it over and over and over again. If you had siblings, they were like, "Turn it off." Oh my gosh, you knew all the words. If you think of that song, you immediately start thinking about all the memories that you have from that period of your life, and what's so interesting about this to me is you don't have to think to yourself, "Oh, I'm going to think about that time I took a road trip with friends and... now that the song is on." No, no, no, no. Your mind naturally, just hearing the song, goes there. I cannot hear that word, th- uh, that song rather, "If you like pina coladas," I don't even know what the heck the name of the song is. Dum, dum, dum, dum, dum. You know that song, right? And not immediately just go back to being in middle school and nights in Michigan where I grew up. Uh, it just naturally goes there. You think of your song. Maybe you're thinking about a road trip with friends or the day you went to see that band in concert or a school dance where, you know, you were just so excited because you had a huge crush on that person and that song was playing in the sweaty gymnasium in middle school. Or, I don't remember what song it is. Maybe you guys can remember this, but there was a song when I was in middle school. Gosh, I, I was racking my brain trying to figure this out. I'm hoping you will write in and tell me what this was. It was a song that would play near the end of every middle school dance, and I'm talking early '80s everybody. It is a song that is probably eight minutes long.And this song would come on, and so help me God, I cannot remember what it is, but if you were dancing with somebody that you really liked, you were so excited. I mean, 'cause you were gonna hold them close. This was gonna be like that hip rocking circle for, uh, you know, eight minutes long. Oh, yeah, you won the lottery 'cause you get to be with this. But if you were with the wrong person, this is like a slow death march in a circle with the wrong person. And that's... I... God, I wish I could remember that. You know what it is. It, like, starts out slow and then it builds, and it's, like, so long and it was at the end of our... Anyway. Or, I'll give you another example. When I was in eighth grade, my dad fulfilled his lifelong dream of renting a motorhome and taking his family on a cross-country road trip where we visited all of these national parks. And we had three eight-track cassette tapes in that motorhome. We had Neil Diamond's Greatest Hits, we had the band America and their Greatest Hits, and we had Hooked on Classics. And I'm going to tell you something. If Hooked on Classics comes on, I can feel myself just hearing that music, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da, da, da, da, da, like just the ba-da-da-da-da-da, I feel myself in the motorhome cruising down I-90 toward the Corn Palace in Iowa playing Gin Rummy with my mom and my brother in the back while my dad drove. I mean, it's immediate. You know what I'm saying? You've got these songs, right? There's research around what's happening because you don't have to think, your body and your brain remembers. And here's another one. So I haven't talked to you guys about this, but I am all fired up because my daughters and I just went to see Taylor Swift in concert. Holy cow. I gotta do a whole episode about everything that I learned from Taylor Swift, but that's a whole nother thing. It was insane what a sensory experience that concert was, because her first album debut came out when Kendall was, I think, seven years old. When Kendall picked up a guitar in order to learn how to play Taylor's music, her music was the soundtrack of my life as a young mom and of their life growing up. I mean, when you got two girls, like, that's what was playing. And so fast forward almost two decades later, here we are in concert screaming our brains out, and it's almost like as all the music was playing, I was both in the concert with my adult daughters, but I could also feel in my body like I was in a car, like in 2010, driving carpool to a lacrosse tournament and Cruel Summer is playing. You know what I mean? "I'm drunk in the back of the car. Oh-oh." Like a, like a just... Uh, uh, holy cow. What about you? What was some of the favorite music from your past? Is there a particular song that brings up fun memories for you? Like maybe it was the song that played the summer you graduated from high school or the song that your dad always played and every time you hear the song you immediately think of him. Or maybe it was your first dance song, right? Every time our first dance song comes on the radio, Barry White, Can't Get Enough of Your Love. That's what Chris and I first dance. I'm like, "Wedding song!" Like, and I'm right there. Well, I want to explain the research to you, because according to researchers, you and I can use the happy associations from these songs of our past to lift our mood in the present. How cool is that? And you've experienced it just by accident. But I want you to get intentional about this, because check this out. The researchers dove deep into understanding why memories associated with songs, like, (snaps fingers) immediately change your mood, and they say that you and I tend to have more memories associated with older songs than newer ones. And there's a term for this. It is called neural nostalgia. In other words, these songs from our past where we have really positive memories and positive emotional associations with them. I'll give you another one. The Steve Miller Band, that album with the horse head on the cover, that... I played that, oh my gosh, sophomore summer in college. And these songs from your past that you and I have positive associations with, it's kind of like reminding you of a time in life when you had less stress, when maybe you had a little less on your plate, you were a little more innocent, you felt a little more hopeful. You have happy memories that are intrinsically linked with music from your past. So the fancy way that scientists talk about this is they call this music-evoked autobiographical memory, which means you have emotions that are, like, crazy strong driving to the grocery store simply because you hear a song from the past. And what's also cool is like let's just say you're driving to the grocery store, right? And all of a sudden, the song that was the defining song of your high school summer or your college years or being a young parent or being in your 20s in the city all of a sudden hits the car. Your body changes immediately. And you know what else happens? (snaps fingers) Vivid memories. You immediately remember living in the city post-college with your friends. You immediately remember-...that summer that you took that road trip. You immediately remember your childhood and-and something you were doing. And we're gonna get into the science of why this is the case, and I am so fired up about this topic 'cause I just experienced this, uh, with the Taylor Swift concert. Not only at the concert, by the way, but a week before, our daughter Kendall, uh, found a playlist of the set that-that Taylor was gonna play and again, Kendall is the super fan, and so she was like, "You gotta listen to the playlist," and I'm like, "I know all these songs." And she's like, "I know, but you gotta listen to the playlist." I'll tell you what. Even listening to the setlist before the concert as I'm driving my errands and I'm going here and there, it flooded me with a decade and a half of memories raising my girls. And the same thing is gonna happen to you. I mean, you've experienced this. There's nothing cooler than it being a beautiful day, and the windows are down in the car, and yet the song is coming on the speakers and the wind is blowing and you feel this feeling of freedom and joy. So let me explain what's going on inside your brain when you hear music that you associate with great memories. It's so cool because what's happening is biological. See, the music is activating a part of your brain called the limbic system and the limbic system is located beneath the brain surface and it's involved in learning, but it also is in charge of memory and emotional responses. And I find it personally fascinating that the research shows that the limbic system is involved and activated when you are listening to music from your past and all of a sudden all these memories are triggered, and it made me think about something. So in the world today, we talk a lot about trauma, right? And when you hear the word trauma, you immediately think negative past experience, right? And if you've ever had a traumatic experience, one of the things that happens is all of a sudden you'll be living your day-to-day life and boom, some negative memory pops into your mind from the past. And I can give you a quick example. So one traumatic experience for me is that I was in a car crash where the car rolled, and I can remember being in that car like it was yesterday. Like, I can literally close my eyes. The memory is so seared into my mind and into my body that I know exactly what it felt like to be in that car as it rolled. Now, here's an interesting thing. That accident happened when it was snowing, and there was a particular sound that I heard as the car was rolling, and it's the sound of snow crunching. Re-re-ruh. You know how s-s-snow's like ruh, ruh, ruh? And to this day, I'm talking decades later, if I walk down a sidewalk and the snow crunches under my feet, I have the sensation of immediately being back in a car that's rolling. It's a form of negative neural nostalgia, right? Like, we've just been learning about how songs can take you back to the positive. So here's what I want you to understand that I think is super cool. The same mechanism in your body that records negative traumatic experiences, right? And you then get triggered and you remember them, or you feel things from your past. It's the exact same recording system that records the positive ones, and it explains why you remember positive memories when it was like something super emotional. It's because the high state of emotion, being in a car crash, high state of emotion, right? And when you're in a high state of emotion, the limbic system's activated and it's trying to remember everything. The-the emotions are on fire and it's trying to protect you. "Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god," which is why it records it. It's why I remember the sound. Same thing with positive. Same thing with positive. You're in a high positive emotional state. Think about graduation from high school. Think about graduation from college. Think about your wedding day. Think about when your first child was born. Think about some of the most positive experiences, even positive experiences like you are seeing your favorite band play. I will never forget what it was like to be in that stadium with my daughter screaming every single word of those Taylor Swift songs. I was in such an activated, excited, positive state that my limbic system was on fire recording the memory. And it's the reason why, for example, you can remember things like... I bet you can remember what kind of day it was and details about your high school graduation years later, right? You can almost put yourself back there. Highly positive state. But I bet you cannot remember what you did the Thursday before graduation, can you? Of course not. If you've ever been in a car accident, you know exactly what you were doing right before the accident happened, but you don't know what you were doing two days before, and there's a reason why. The heightened emotional state that your body went into is what triggers the recording of the memory. That's why this works. And, you know, I hate the fact that, you know, it's good that we have a word for negative trauma, but I wish we had like a really amazing pump up word for the positive recording because it's the exact same thing. It's only with your best memories, not your worst. And what this research is telling you is that this neural nostalgia that gets created because of the heightened emotion and also repetition, that's also part of the research when it comes to the encoding of these memories. And you listen to the song over and over and over, and you're having these happy days and it's the best summer of your life and oh my god, dah, dah, dah....that it's the heightened emotion that locks in the memory. That's why this works. Isn't this science so cool? And this explains why neural nostalgia is such a hugely cool thing and can be a remarkable tool for you to help you lift your mood or to help you change your mindset because you know that song that you heard at one of your favorite concerts? Boom, it can put you right there. You know, like for example, for me, one of the best concerts I have ever been to in my entire life, 2017, Gillette Stadium, U2 Joshua Tree album tour. All I have to do is hear the opening riff-