Are You Listening to the Wrong Soundtracks?

What soundtracks do you have running in your head? I don’t mean music. I mean the self-talk that runs on repeat inside your head. It plays in the background of your life, and like a movie soundtrack they subtly affect our emotions.

I thought this soundtrack metaphor was a great way to describe what was happening in my head, so I eagerly got the book behind the concept: Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking by Jon Acuff. Here’s what I learned:

Our soundtracks can help or hinder us. They color how we think and how we respond to life. When the soundtracks are unhelpful, we can waste lots of time and energy going round and round with unhelpful thoughts that keep us stuck, instead of more useful thoughts that could help us move ahead.

We can’t switch our brains off, so we can’t make all the soundtracks go away. But we can choose which playlist we listen to. It takes effort to replace unhelpful soundtracks with better ones, but it’s worth it.

Here are four steps to help you move beyond the unhelpful soundtracks in your head.

“If you can worry, you can wonder. If you can doubt, you can dominate. If you can spin, you can soar.”

Jon Acuff

Notice your soundtracks and listen to what they’re saying

Just as background music can disappear from our conscious thoughts, so too can these mental soundtracks. When you find yourself stewing over a situation, it’s a signal that unhelpful soundtracks are probably at work. Pay attention to them to figure out what messages your soundtracks are telling you.

Here’s an example.

I hit an unexpected snag while working with my publisher to finalize my next book. Discovering the issue sent me into a whirl of broken soundtracks and anxiety. My brain fell into monkey-mind thinking, going over the problem on endless repeat.

 When I paid attention to my soundtracks, I discovered that the anxiety wasn’t coming from the problem itself (which was fixable) but from more subtle and sinister self-talk like this:

1. Dealing with errors always means a hostile confrontation.
2. Fixing this problem will take a lot of energy and that could ruin my entire day.
3. Corporate entities (like publishers, retail stores, or banks) don’t really care about me or what I want. I’m not important enough to matter to them.

What a mess! Especially when you hear what happened the next day.

The problem was resolved with two emails.

Those soundtracks were lying to me and getting me upset for no reason! Which leads me to the next point…

How to Identify which soundtracks are unhelpful

When you notice a repetitive message, stop and ask yourself three questions:

• Is it true?
• Is it kind?
• Is it helpful?

Let’s look at my examples from the previous step in relation to these questions:

• Is it true? Dealing with errors always means a hostile confrontation. It’s true that this might result in a hostile confrontation, but it won’t always do so.
• Is it kind? I’m not important enough to matter to them. This attitude isn’t kind to me and my self-worth. Nor is it kind to whoever “them” might be.
• Is it helpful? Fixing this problem will take a lot of energy and that could ruin the rest of my day.? Fixing a problem will take some effort, but ignoring the problem isn’t helpful. It’s more likely to ruin my day and to sap energy (due to guilt and stress over the unsolved problem).

Replace unhelpful soundtracks with better ones

If you want to create a new soundtrack, pick a broken one that’s loud and flip it upside down.

Jon Acuff

Here are two simple ways to build better soundtracks:

Reframe them.

Take the unhelpful soundtrack and reframe it into a positive, kind, helpful statement. For example, I could change soundtrack #2 to this: Fixing problems will take effort, but it will be worth it, and I’ll feel better afterwards. #3 could be reframed to this: Good companies care about customer satisfaction and their employees want to help me.

Be on the lookout for words like always, never, every, nobody, everyone. Those are exaggerations that are untrue and unhelpful. You can reframe those statements using more realistic words such as sometimes or occasionally.

Steal better soundtracks.

The internet is filled with positive quotes, inspirational slogans, meme, and Bible verses. When you hear one that resonates with you, or helps you combat a negative soundtrack, write it down and make it yours.

Repeat your better soundtracks

“Once you’ve picked the right soundtracks, it gets easier to pick the right actions.”

Jon Acuff

Neuroscience tells us that our brains can be reprogrammed. Neuroplasticity is the reason we can replace broken soundtracks with better ones, but the way we reprogram out brain is by repeating the new thinking pattern. Every time you repeat a new, better soundtrack you are reinforcing it in your head.

When you first begin to repeat new soundtracks, you’ll probably feel like a liar. If so, remind yourself that:

• The broken soundtracks you’ve been listening to for years are just as untrue, if not more so.
• Your new soundtrack may not be true YET, but it can become the better truth of a better you—if you stick with it.
• The more you repeat it, the more firmly it will lodge in your brain and eventually it will become a normal way to think.

But wait, there’s more!

You can intentionally reinforce those better soundtracks before you need them, so when a crisis occurs you already have them in your head. One way to do so is by reciting an affirmation statement every morning and evening.  

Stay with me here!

OK, I admit it. I usually squirm away from these sorts of repeat-every-day rituals. (Even the ones I recommend in my blog posts.) They sound like good ideas, but I’m rarely motivated enough to try them consistently.

However, after reading the chapters about how powerful the daily affirmation statement can be, I decided to give it a try. It can’t hurt and it may just make a big difference. I’ve made myself a goal to recite my own positive soundtracks every day for 30 days. I’ll report the results in a different post, to let you know how the experiment fared.

Your Turn

I hope you resonate with this soundtrack concept like I did. This week I hope you will pay attention to the unhepful soundtracks in your heads and begin to rewrite your playlist to include better ones.

Want more information on soundtracks?

An interview with Jon Acuff on Positive U.

A podcast with where Jon talks about soundtracks and personality

Announcing Book Two in the Livia Aemilia Mysteries. Coming to bookstores in early 2022.

“This novel reads almost like a cozy mystery. Two people are dead, and an amateur detective is compelled to discover the murderer. There’s even a black cat with a big personality. The page-turning twist? This suspenseful tale of murder and intrigue, good and evil, is set in first-century Rome and the spunky detective is the newly married wife of a senator’s brother. Lisa Betz skillfully weaves historical details into an action-packed story populated with complex characters. Definitely a fun and entertaining trip back in time.”

Johnnie Alexander, best-selling and award-winning author of Where Treasure Hides and The Cryptographer’s Dilemma