by Emilie West

Created on: February 19, 2010   Last Updated: February 20, 2010

Imagine the brain looks like a bunch of wheels, spinning like a carrousel around their axles when thinking, getting older and rustier when worrying too much. A worrisome person like myself can hear the wheels spinning and buzzing in its head and almost hear the soft squeaking of the rusty screws falling apart, because of the endlessly spinning rollers have become overworked. Thoughts are racing around, the brainwork going on high speed.

Sometimes, you just need to give your brain a rest and recover from all the twirling around up there and focus on one thing. Focusing on a specific object or thought in order to relax and release stress is called mindfullness, which can be very healthy for your mind.

But in this modern, often stressful world, we all know how difficult it can be to empty your mind of the tiring stream of thoughts that haunt you in your daily activities. To forget all of that and concentrate on one thing entirely is not an easy task. Luckily, we have a pretty nifty device to help us and it's called music.

Music has an effect on your mind as well as your emotions. A song can put you in a specific mood or put a specific thought into your head. And when listening to a song you enjoy, it can literally 'fill you up', meaning it can take over you brain and push all your other thoughts away. It's the perfect way to achieve mindfullness and release stress.

When you're working, you often have to concentrate on your work, and not be distracted by the millions of other things going on around you as well as in your head. Since music overall has a calming effect, it won't come as a surprise that during work, it can calm you down and help you focus. Of course it gives you two different things to focus on: the music and the work, but the two seem to be perfectly compatible. The music can easily be pushed to the background, drowning out the de-concentrating thoughts flying around up there at the same time, and it leaves plenty of space for focus on work.
As earlier mentioned, music can also help reduce stress, which is a very helpful quality when it comes to work, for work is often the cause of stress itself.

 When listening to music you like, you can calm yourself down and get yourself to focus. Listening to silence often opens the door for all your thoughts to distract you even more. Just plug in your headphones and turn to your own little world of concentration and productivity.  

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