Reducing anxiety through song

On the Atlantic web site, there is an article about reducing anxiety by turning those negative thoughts into a song. It's actually an intriguing idea.

I find that there is tremendous power in music. Over the weekend, we had a lengthy discussion about Gabby Giffords. After she was shot in the head, her brain lost much of the normal ability to string together words in the manner we normally use to construct speech. She now learns her speeches as songs. It seems that the parts of her brain associated with music is still working and that she simply eliminates the music when giving speeches.

In my own life, it's amazing to me that I am able to recall so many things that are woven into songs. Many years ago, we invented a simple song in Spanish that I can still recall (even though my Spanish skills are actually almost non-existent).

I would imagine that the way that this particular phenomenon works is likely due to the fact that translating a fear into song might help to demystify it and make it much less frightening.

Here is the link to the full article:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/04/relieve-your-anxiety-by-singing-it/477960/

In sixty seconds or less

Original post:  Dec 4, 2013

When you are at a very large meeting, there is a strong likelihood that you will meet many individuals who have only a passing familiarity with you and your work. It happened to me this morning at breakfast. I was sitting at a table with three people who I had just met. We exchanged very brief backgrounds.

Prior to coming to the meeting, we had one main objective. We are trying to introduce new technology to the sales team. In order to maximize our effectiveness, we worked as a team to come up with an "elevator speech". The basic idea is that if you are riding an elevator with someone, you are supposed to convey your main point before the other person steps out.

It's actually much more challenging than it appears at first glance. We often have a tendency to take one of two extremes. At one end, we overestimate just how much the other person understands about our issues and give a story that is too vague to understand. At the other end, we may try to stuff ten pounds of details into a five pound speech and end up confusing or losing our audience entirely.

For our speech, we really came up with three key points to share with our target audience. For each point, we used an example that our pilot group had given us in their experience to underscore the point. Finally, we would point out all of the ways to get additional assistance if required.

So far, I think it's working. I suppose the best way to tell would be to check in with a few of the people we talked to later in the meeting.