Soundtracks That Shape Us

The healing (or harmful) power of the music you listen to and how it influences your subconscious beliefs.

Jun 27, 2025

“Your beliefs are thoughts that you continue to think” - Abraham Hicks

Ever heard of subliminals? Subliminals are basically affirmations set at a low volume so that it can bypass your conscious mind and penetrate your subconscious mind. These are powerful tools because your subconscious mind is really the Big Boss when it comes to shaping your identity. By bypassing your conscious mind, subliminals are able to avoid fighting your conscious mind that might not yet believe the words that you are trying to affirm. Listening to subliminals when you are in a state of relaxation, say like when you are about to fall asleep, you helps reaffirm thoughts that turn into beliefs of things you want to become true. With consistent listening, you can start to believe statements like:

“I am strong”

“I am capable”

“Things work out in my favor”

This means that you will literally reprogram your brain, and it will start finding examples of those things in your life to affirm your beliefs.

Consistently, teachers of personal change and transformation will remind you that feeling is the secret sauce to true transformation. Our emotions are what shift affirmations from just words on repeat, to strong beliefs that start to echo into your real life. When you start to attach feeling to your beliefs, that’s when you start cooking with gas! So adding the emotion of what it would feel like to know that things always work out in your favor is much more powerful than just telling yourself those words.

The big thing I want you to realize from all this is what we listen to and put into our ears is important. It is as important to our mental health as what we put into our bodies is to our physical health. Music is special because it is designed to tap into our emotions, and that’s what makes it more powerful than just using subliminals and Affirmations. When a song gets stuck in your head over and over again, it becomes an affirmation whether you want it to or not. So the kind of music you listen to really does make a difference. When we allow ourselves to take in music that doesn’t serve the narrative we are trying to build out in our lives, it can feel difficult to see life as different than what it is. It can feel difficult to change when we keep feeding our brains the same unhelpful messages over and over again.

Music is such a powerful thing.

It evokes feelings.

It expresses relatable concepts.

It heals and it energizes us.

In some of my lowest moments, there have been songs that I have gravitated towards and ended up playing on a loop over and over. Now that I have discovered subliminals and affirmations too, I realize just how powerful my music choice actually are.

The other day I found a catchy song and it kept getting stuck in my head. It was a fun, edgy, pop-rock type song. I wanted to sing along but every time I got to the chorus I just felt uncomfortable because the chorus was literally repeating “I guess I'm just dumb” over and over. While there is a level of sarcasm to the words in the song, the truth of the matter is that your brain doesn’t really care. The more you say it, with or without sarcasm, the more it believes it over time. But when a song is catchy, you are not just listening to it every time you get in the car. You are also singing it and playing it in your head when you are at the post office or in line at the store. How often do you think you could end up telling yourself that “you guess you’re just dumb” in one day. One week? What if the song is also always on the radio and in every ad campaign on TV. And the new trending sound on TikTok? See my point?

What you listen to matters. Maybe it’s time to look at your playlist and decide if it’s empowering you or affirming something your would rather let go of.

If you want some help finding songs that might help you heal, here are some songs I listen when I am going through a hard time. For even more songs check out this playlist I made on Spotify. It’s a big mix-mash of different types of songs. Enjoy and may it help.