The next time you are feeling down, just do this.

You are back home after a terrible day at work. Or maybe you are feeling down, and you can’t seem to shake it off. One thing is for sure, you would certainly like to get out of this mood and feel better.

Well, what if there was an easy solution? One that takes no effort on your part, other than to press play and listen. Yes, I’m talking about the magical, harm-free, sugar-free, dopamine-releasing drug that can elevate your mood. Music.

You can probably recall at least one occasion when music was able to make you feel better and instantly lift your mood. Yet for some reason, we don't think of turning to music when we are feeling stressed or when we are feeling down.

Music is one of the things I love most in this world. It makes me feel such a wide range of emotions and can even make me cry. Music from the 60, the 70s and 80s particularly has this impact on me. And for reasons I can’t put my finger on, the music from this period strangely feels so familiar, and it feels like home to me.

When it comes to a love for music, I know I am not alone. I am yet to come across someone who dislikes music. All of us have songs that hold special meaning for us or one we have lots of memories attached to. It has that magical ability to make us relive feelings we've had years or even decades ago!

Music makes us stop, listen and helps us to get out of being stuck in our head when we are having one of those negative thought patterns playing in our head. Since when we are feeling down and blue, we tend to keep replaying whatever caused us to feel this way.

But if we can just stop for a while and just let the music do its magic. Then bam!

Before you know it, it hits you. Like Bob Marley once said, “The one good thing about music is that when it hits you, you feel no pain.”

Research says it just takes about 15 minutes of listening to your favourite music to releases dopamine – a feel-good neurotransmitter and reduce the stress hormone, cortisol. However make sure to put on music that makes you feel good, not one that makes you go about moping, feeling sorry and terrible about yourself.

Apart from having the ability to lift our mood and lower stress, it’s also great for many other situations as well. Putting on some music also makes doing the mundane tasks more enjoyable, provides more energy for working out, can make us calm, listening to relaxing music can even slow down our heart rate.

If you are not in the habit of listening to music, give yourself a treat and take the time out to make it a part of your routine. Even putting on some music in the morning can make your mornings more enjoyable and improve your state of mind for the rest of the day.

At the end of the day, our body is just a bunch of vibrations, and music is pure vibration. Therefore, listening to some good vibrations is bound to lift our mood and make us feel better.

If you find, however, listening to music is not doing the trick. Take it a step further and start singing along. That will be guaranteed to raise your mood. You can’t be too down when you are singing, just like you can’t cry when you are laughing.

Don’t take my word for it but rather try it out for yourself. The next time you find yourself caught in a bad mood, press play, and lose yourself in the music.

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