What’s the Soundtrack to Your Life?
A Metaphor for Understanding the Role Thought Plays in Our Experience.
I was watching my favorite British documentary last night, 24 Hours in A&E.
It’s a fly-on-the-wall documentary about an Accident and Emergency Department in London. I am usually so gripped by the stories, the relationships, and the trauma that people are experiencing, it often brings tears to my eyes. It’s a show about our humanity, our vulnerabilities, and our innate desire to help each other. You can probably see why I like it.
But last night, as I watched, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before — the music. As the ambulance races through the streets of London, there is a musical score that punctuates the drama, its rapid beat sets the pace, and there are siren-type sounds that are startling and create discomfort. I must have watched hundreds of hours of this program over the last 15 years, and yet I had never noticed the musical score. Nor had I fully appreciated the impact it had on my experience of the show.
Then I realized that our thinking is like the soundtrack to the movie of our lives. It has the same impact on our experience of reality, as a score does in a movie or TV show. It creates drama, suspense, tears, and joy.
An Experiment
This morning I watched a YouTube clip of the Scariest Jump Scares from Horror Movies.
First I watched with the sound off. Rather than get drawn into the drama, I noticed the set. The way they had painted the walls in a distressed finish. The darkness of the scene, the only light, was a cold one. Everything felt hard. The kid walks barefoot down a rough, wooden floored hallway. You can tell he is on edge, he looks over his shoulder. He stumbles into a firetruck toy, its lights start flashing. I am taking all this in. I am curious about what’s happening and the way the story is told. I am also curious to see what’s about to make me jump. But I feel pretty neutral as I watch. The clip finishes. No jump. I don’t feel scared.
Then I watch it again with the sound on. It’s a completely different experience. The score is quiet at first, barely perceptible, the sound of white noise. A fire truck siren pierces the quiet. And as the kid gets into bed, the orchestra kicks in — with those suspense-building string instruments. Drama.
The noise surrounds the visuals, and the suspense builds. And then silence again. White noise. Creaking boards, breathing, and then………BOOM….. a loud scream. It’s the scream that makes you jump. The hairs on my neck stand up. I have goosebumps.
The Soundtrack of Our Lives
Our thinking is like a movie soundtrack. When the suspenseful string instruments play, with their strings taught against the bow, we feel anxious and on edge. When the drum beats loudly and rapidly, our heart races, and we feel urgent, we feel the need to go faster, to match the beat. When all of the instruments are playing, but out of sync and out of key, jumping from one beat to another, one tune to another, never quite settling on a score, our minds feel frazzled and tired. It’s hard to function. That’s why we say, I can’t think straight. It’s a sign we are stressed.
But when the music ebbs and flows, when instruments play together and complement each other. When there is space between the notes and a steady smooth pace. It can feel relaxing and creative. It can feel calming and stable.
It’s helpful to notice what score is playing in your mind and how that creates your emotions and impacts your perception of life.
Right now is your mind playing a score like the soundtrack to All Quiet on the Western Front? Or is it playing the score from the Fablemans? One is serious, full of weight and dread, the other a symphony of hope and possibility. You can listen here BEST ORIGINAL SCORE NOMINEES — OSCARS 2002 /2023
The Power of Noticing
When you recognize it’s your thinking that creates your experience of reality, and not reality itself, you realize you are the one creating all that stress and tension. It’s your thinking about life that creates happiness and hope. It’s the way you relate to life and what’s happening, that creates your experience of it.
Realizing this for myself has literally changed my life. I am no longer a victim of my circumstances. If a friend cancels a trip we had planned, I get to choose if I want to be upset about that, or not. It’s not about forcing positive thinking or even trying to change my thinking. When I know that I am the creator of my experience, I am the composer of my musical score, it just doesn’t make sense to me anymore to create a disappointed, frustrated, annoyed soundtrack. I want to crank the windows down and listen to stuff that fills me with joy.
There are times when my soundtrack shifts of its own accord into a more solemn, dreary tune, but the less I react to that, the sooner I get back on track.
Reality is neutral. Terrible things can happen in reality, but we get to choose the musical score that underpins it.
What is the typical musical score of your life? Is it a helpful, hopeful, positive one? Or does your mind like drama and reactivity? Do often find yourself in combat with the world, struggling against life and other people? Do you feel frustrated and annoyed that things don’t go your way? Or do you feel overwhelmed by all the demands, harried, trying to keep up with the pace that life seems to set for you?
How Coaching Helps
Coaching is a conversation where you share your story of life and together, we curate new stories that feel more hopeful and empowering, more positive and solution-focused. Coaching is about forward movement and creating the changes you want to see in your life. It’s in these new stories that we curate, that you see what’s possible and that’s when you start to compose a different musical score.
If you would like to explore how coaching can help you rewrite the soundtrack to your life, let’s connect. Changing your music can fundamentally change your life.
I am offering three free coaching sessions at the moment, so if you are curious, take me up on that offer! melanie@therestorativecoach.com
