Have you ever found yourself singing along to a song that you hadn’t heard in years?
I recently heard the song One Last Breath by the American rock band Creed. The song was the third single released from their 2001 album Weathered. It was a big hit in the early 2000s, reaching number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts in 2002.
Although the song got a lot of airplay in the early 2000s, for me it was often background music. It’s not a song I ever intentionally sought to listen to, that I have on any of my playlists, or for which I intentionally set out to learn the lyrics.
My best guess is that it’s been at least 15 years since I heard this song regularly.
Yet I found myself singing along to its lyrics without missing a beat.
The Power of Repetition Over Time
This is an example of the power of repetition over time — whether intentional or not.
Anything we do with repetition over time becomes habitual — it grooves neural pathways in our brains. The same is true for things we say — and what we listen to.
When you hear a song enough times, it becomes encoded in your memory; embedded in your subconscious. Even when you don’t hear those lyrics for years, all it takes is one little moment for them to come flooding back to the surface.
Our thoughts and speech habits are the same way.
How the Soundtrack Influences Your Beliefs
The things we hear other people say are like the songs that play in the background.
We internalize what we hear, even if we aren’t fully paying attention.
It doesn’t matter whether people around you are speaking to you, about you, or about something else entirely.
Whatever you listen to — or overhear — with enough consistency over time becomes the song in your head. You learn the lyrics even when you’re not trying to learn them.
Those lyrics condition your beliefs and stories about yourself and the world at large. They shape how you speak to and about yourself, and how you speak to and about others.
The Importance of Intention
Over 30 years ago, as a young intern at Soap Opera Digest magazine, I wrote an article about the background music that played in soap opera scenes.
My curiosity about how that music was chosen led me to the world of music editors — the people who choose that music.
In my interviews and research for my article, I learned about the intention they brought to that role. As I had already realized from my curiosity about it, the background music played a pivotal role in setting the mood of a scene.
You are conditioning your stories and beliefs with everything you listen to — whether the soundtrack comes from music, television, podcasts, or things that other people say within your earshot.
How intentional are you about what’s playing in the background?
What’s on your soundtrack?
Love it? Hate it? What do you think? Don't hold back...