OUTSIDE INFLUENCES

I love music. I absolutely love how hearing a song from the past can bring me right back in that moment from childhood that I loved so much and held so much meaning to me. I especially love how I can be in a terrible mood, but one of those songs comes on the radio and I’m immediately on a new trajectory. Although, that works in reverse too. Such as a song played at your mother’s funeral, could bring about a sudden sadness or melancholy that wasn't there before. This phenomenon can be said for more than just music; it could be said for a specific tv-series/movie, book, video game, sport, etc. This nostalgia is like a person’s own time machine and it's amazing. That being said, lately, I’ve been thinking about how much lyrics to a specific song can influence the minds of our youth. Now armed with the knowledge and awareness of how powerful thoughts and words are, I’m not sure where the line is between what’s appropriate or not. I remember in junior high getting ready for the high school’s current dance in my room with my best friend with Eminem’s album blaring from my speakers. The music used to get us so pumped up that my mom often wondered if we’d snuck some alcohol upstairs. We hadn’t. We also weren’t rebels by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve never tried a single substance other than alcohol in my life, so the idea that Eminem’s lyrics corrupted the minds of the adolescence is ridiculous. However, I have started wondering lately where that line is. As I drive to work in the mornings, I hear song after song about how person A’s actions are causing person B to act inappropriately or about people drowning their sorrows in whiskey, drugs, etc. For example (note, I have nothing against these songs or artists, they just happened to be the song’s that prompted my inquiry), Taylor Swift’s ‘Look What You Made Me Do’ no further explanation needed or Sam Smith & Normani's 'Dancing With a Stranger’ lyrics of:

‘Look what you made me do, I'm with somebody new
Ooh, baby, baby, I'm dancing with a stranger
Look what you made me do, I'm with somebody new
Ooh, baby, baby, I'm dancing with a stranger
Dancing with a stranger’

I can’t help but wonder what kind of limiting beliefs these types of songs could instill in someone over time. Maybe something along the lines of how they don’t have control over how they react? Honestly, have you ever stopped to see how different you feel when a disempowering song just gets done playing vs. an empowering one? For demonstration purposes, let’s pretend that our teenage child or, if you don’t have kids your best friend with the lowest self-esteem, just got dumped from the person they believed was going to be ‘the one’. What message would you want reverberating throughout their unconscious mind (which is essentially the driver in our lives) for the rest of the day, the refrain above about being powerless to handle their own emotions and actions or the refrain below about knowing that there will always be obstacles to work through in life and how we take responsibility for getting through them is what life is all about? I know what refrain I want to be running through my children’s minds. 

Miley Cyrus’s ‘The Climb’

‘There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be an uphill battle
But Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose
Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waitin' on the other side
It's the climb’

One might argue that most people, let alone young kids, don’t pay close enough attention to the lyrics, so this whole pondering is worthless. I remember driving my 5-year-old sister home from daycare one way when Kenny Chesney’s “When the Sun Goes Down” song came on the radio. Not thinking anything of it my 14-year-old sister and I sing along to the radio. When it was over, my youngest sister states that the song isn’t accurate… things get colder once the sun sets, so why is this guy on the radio singing about how everything gets hotter when the sun goes down. We had a good laugh at that and said she’d understand when she was older.

As I said before, it’s not just messages in music that our subconscious mind gathers information from. When my son was 6 he used to whine and complain whenever we’d watch Dateline while he was still awake. He said it was scary and he really didn’t like it.  I’ve said before how much I like detective shows so naturally, I would watch this program from time to time because I liked to see how detectives in real life could put the pieces of the puzzle together to hopefully get a resolution for all of those poor families that were shown the darker side of humanity. Since he’d clearly gotten old enough to understand what was going on, we’d just put him to bed before it started on the nights that we were going to watch it. However, after learning Reiki, I did a cleansing on myself one night after watching Dateline and I was amazed at how much extra loving energy I needed to clear out the negativity around my brain.  It was shocking. Although I haven’t personally tested this same situation after playing video games like Fortnite, I feel that it would produce the same effects.

I’m not saying that you can’t or shouldn’t listen to certain types of music, watch programs like Dateline, play games like Fortnite, etc. I think the key is to be mindfully aware of the impacts that these things have on you and those that you love. When you know exactly who you are, you know when something that you’ve been doing is making you act out of character. For example, if you’re a normally happy lively person and after binge-watching a new darker series on the tv for a couple of days, you feel very lethargic and depressed, then you would know that specific series is not right for you. This an example of a drastic change, most changes caused by these types of things will be subtle and more gradual, so just stay curious. If you're feeling something or notice someone else starting to act out of character, get curious. Ask them about it in a non-accusatory way. They may not even be aware of the change. I feel it’s also important to incorporate tools like EFT tapping, positive affirmations, mediations, etc. into your life and loved one’s life to balance out the negativity that we come into contact with. If you have kids, you may want to talk to them about the impact that these things have on them and check in with them about how they feel after participating in these activities. There are a lot of degrading, body shaming, messages out there, it’s very important to have open lines of communication with loved ones to debunk the validity of these messages. Knowledge is power. Now that we are aware of the impact that these types of things can have on us, we can make the appropriate adjustments needed in our lives to live a healthier, happier life.

Love, 

Yara Rose