Soundtracking your life!

Most of us have ears that work OK most of the time—there’s the occasional ear infection or very bad cold, but that is a passing thing, at least generally.
So what’s best to hear as you go about your daily life?

• Quiet nature soundtracks do work out the best, for what goes on in our heads and our bodies—so the best sorts of things to hear are gently rustling leaves and grasses, peacefully singing birds, and burbling water. It’s a bonus when you live in the right place and it’s the right time of year and you can open your windows (and your windows can be opened!) to let in these sorts of sounds. If you can’t let nature sounds from outside your house into your home at some times of year, or any times of year, play nature soundscapes available online.

• Adding a tabletop fountain, that generates the sounds of serenely flowing water can be a particularly good idea—seeing that moving water is as good for our brains as hearing it!

• White noise can be a good substitute for nature sounds if you’ve had a run in with a bear or for some other reason break out in hives when you start to think about being outside—white noise isn’t as good for your mental or physical health as nature sounds, but it’s better than making no attempt at all to control your sound world.

• Music may seem like the way to go when you’re considering what your place sounds like, but the nature sounds and white noise win out in terms of definitely improving your mood. If you do play music, keep in mind that your heart will start to beat in time to it, which can be relaxing when beats per minute are lower than your usual heart rate or energizing when there are more beats per minute than that. You can learn about the number of beats per minute in music that you like by googling it.

Whatever you do as you try to soundscape your world, don’t try to make it silent. First, you won’t succeed because it’s basically impossible to eliminate all sound unless you run mega-sized government labs. Second, a space that seems very quiet to us, too quiet, sets us on edge, we find it upsetting, probably because it is so different from the sorts of environments where our sensory systems developed originally.