The Journey Of A LifeTime

There is one method or practice that I do every day that has completely changed my outlook on life. It has given me countless benefits. Everyone should learn it. It had no name until recently when I started thinking about sharing this method. I  had always used it since childhood, but I have added to and refined it in the last two years. It changed me from a cynical man who almost committed suicide to a man who is optimistic about life and can control his emotions at will. I call it resonating with music. This practice has become a lifeline that allows me to stabilize my life, and I hope this practice will do the same.
This will be a long blog post, so I will break it into three different sections:
My Personal Transformation
The Countless Benefits and drawbacks
My Specific Process of Resonating with Music

My Personal Transformation
As a child, I first discovered music listening to the music my sister played in her room. She would play the music as loud as possible so I could hear it in my room. I loved music for all the emotions it could express. My life was the same every day. I would go to school and then to the daycare after school. Music added emotions to my life. I could hear the heartbreak in a singer’s voice when singing about it. I could listen to all the experiences I missed as a shy kid in middle school and high school, like having a girlfriend. Music has been my companion all my life. My sister listened to pop music all the time, so I had access to that. Thankfully, pop is one of the most expressive and lyrical categories of music, so it made it easier to find the story in the music. Every song has a story to it. A song also has emotions to it. The story is different from the feelings of a song. For example, a song can be about heartbreak. But the feelings can range from being sad about it to being sentimental. Growing up, I would separate songs by their story and emotion. This was the beginning of my skill of resonating with music.
However, at this time, I still listen passively to music. That all changed when sitting in my parent’s car driving back from some event. My mom changed the song, which completely changed my life. She changed it to Call me Maybe. I was only 11 at that time. I never heard a song like it and sang it with my parents. I was swept up in the song. After singing it, my emotions completely changed. I realized this when I got home and thought about the song. That song led me to a realization. Music can influence my emotions if I focus more on the song while it is playing. However, my time to listen to music was limited. I had no choice on what type of music to listen to. It was only when I got a smartphone right before high school that I could listen to music whenever I wanted. By then, that epiphany that music could influence my emotions had faded to the back of my mind. So, I just subconsciously used music to affect my mood. I also was not good at resonating with music because I could not afford a membership that allowed me to skip songs I could not resonate with then. I would have to listen to a song I didn’t like, which would destroy my enjoyment. This meant I could not focus on the music, which would affect my mental state. Even the songs after it would take a lot of work to focus on. This meant I could influence my mood with music 10% of the time. Eventually, in college, my life became a hell that I created. I just rotted in bed all day, only getting out of my room to get food that had been delivered to my room.
After months of that, I decided to move back home to fix my mental health. I got a job and started going to Pensacola State College. The college was 45 minutes away, so I had an hour and a half to listen to music. I also learned to link my phone to my car, allowing me to play music. That and my Spotify membership allowed me plenty of time to practice resonating with music. I had no choice at that time because music was the only avenue that I could use to improve my mental health. Eventually, I was able to tune my emotions using music. This process increased my internal locus of control, and I became happier.

Benefits and Drawbacks
Learning the skill of resonating with music has countless benefits and drawbacks. As you improve at this skill, you will get more benefits but more drawbacks. The most tremendous benefits come with the most risk. The main benefit is the improvement in controlling your emotions. As you use this skill, you realize that emotions can be controlled. You will not care about happiness because you can make yourself happy using music. You start to get in touch with your feelings more. The music begins to affect you. You start to process all these new emotions, and these songs affect you more and more. Eventually, you will reach a point where you immerse yourself so deeply in a song that it changes you. This is the best way to increase your self-awareness. Naturally, you start to process these emotions and become calmer. It becomes like meditation. Your personality changes and you become more conscious or hard-working. As you process your emotions, you look at others differently. You start asking yourself what they are feeling because you are so in tune with your feelings. Eventually, you can use music at will to motivate yourself or dull emotions you don’t like. All this is a benefit of using music to connect with your emotions.
Now, there is a big drawback to this method. This skill makes you more open to the music, which can affect you negatively. As you learn this skill, music becomes less enjoyable unless you actively resonate with it. If you are listening in the car or through your phone, resonating is limited. That means you can only go so deeply into the song. That limit goes out the window when you go to concerts or nightclubs. If you have a strong sense of control, I recommend not going to these places or being cautious. Why? Once you learn this skill, you want to do it with every song you listen to because without doing it, the music is not as good. The method makes you more suspectable to the music. You can resonate so profoundly that you lose all sense of self and become one with the music. It is the most incredible experience I have ever had, but also the most dangerous. Let me tell you a story about the one time I went to a nightclub. At that time, I was still subconsciously resonating with music.
I also did not know the side effects. I had never danced before, and the nightclub was pitch dark with many people dancing together. It was the perfect storm of everything I needed to enter a trance state. I lost myself as I got into the music and dance for even longer. Everyone around me became shadows or silhouettes. All I could remember was dancing back to back with a woman. Never knew what she looked like. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life. I did not care about the people around me or the woman I was dancing with. All my focus was on the music. I was in an altered state of consciousness. It was like I was on drugs. However, I was knocked out of that state. A man pushed me and then tried to fight me. I was so bewildered. Why did he try to fight me? I moved away, but he followed me. Eventually, people around us broke us up before we could start fighting.
Later, I realized he probably was jealous; I was dancing with a woman, or he could be her boyfriend. Whatever the reason that knocked me out of my altered state, I could not resonate with the music for the rest of the night. I went home an hour later because the music was no longer enjoyable since I could not resonate with it anymore. My legs were sore for days since I danced for hours. My friends asked me if I had been on ecstasy or MDMA. That night left me with mixed feelings about nightclubs and concerts. Imagine what it will be like now when my skill at resonating with music has at least tripled.

My Specific Process of Resonating with Music
You have now learned all the information to decide whether to learn this skill. I have given you the biggest drawback to this skill. Now, let’s talk about the method I use. Resonating with music is about becoming so in tune with the music that the music affects you emotionally. The first step is to do what I did in my childhood. Whenever you listen to a song, classify it into an emotion and a theme/story. Remember, theme and emotion can be different. Do this with every song you listen to. Once you do it enough, it will become automatic, and you will do it with every song. Listen to the music, especially the lyrics, to discover the theme and emotion. The lyrics tell the story, and the beats or instruments tell the emotions.
As you do this, create one playlist, and every time you find a song you like, add it to the playlist. Do not ever delete songs from the playlist. Over time, this will give you a massive playlist of songs you have resonated with at one point. As a result, you will become more appreciative of songs even if you don’t like them. Next, you will get a music membership that allows for unlimited skipping. As you listen to songs, skip the ones you do not like. Being forced to listen to songs you cannot resonate with kills your ability to resonate with other songs. This kept me from increasing my skills for the longest time. Once you can naturally classify songs by emotion and theme, try to immerse yourself in the song. Just focus on the song. I sway and sing along when driving to better attune myself to the music.
The more attuned you are to a song, the more your emotions or the theme matches your life at that point. This lets you recognize your feelings. Once you are tuned to a song, the themes and emotions boost the same emotion inside you. For example, attuning yourself to a happy song will increase happiness proportionately to how attuned you are. Eventually, you can attune yourself to the opposite emotion of your feelings, allowing you to dampen that feeling. You can listen to happy music when sad to deaden the sadness. As you do this songs will affect you more and more. I do not recommend attuning to rap because the music will affect you more. Do you really want to program your subconscious mind to enjoy being a gang member?

Thanks for reading towards the end,
Tyler Van Drunen