I’m having a bit of an Anglophile moment. It started with a podcast about some recent studies that indicate simple ways to “hack” your life for the better. The one that stuck out to me is a study from King’s College in London. According to the research, this one thing can improve your mental state for up to eight hours. What’s the magic trick? Hearing birds.
We’ve all been told that nature is good for our mental well-being, but this narrows it down, and provides a solution for those times when nature is not being hospitable. Listening to the sound of birds chirping improved the study subjects’ perceived mental state for hours at a time. And the birds didn’t have to be present… using the sound of birds on a mobile phone produced the same effect.
Think about it, nearly every Disney fairy tale has a scene where the heroine awakens from her slumber to the sound of happy chirps and cheeps, stretches, yawns, and suddenly bursts out in joyful song. Maybe it’s not all a fairy tale… maybe Disney was onto something.
Two years ago I changed the alarm on my phone to the sound of birds singing. My reasoning was that hearing birds in the trees outside my window in the summer months, when I have the windows open, helps me wake up a little more like Cinderella and a little less like the Evil Stepmother. My brain trick worked, even in the winter months, and even though the chirping is a recording. Then, on New Year’s Eve, while trying to calm the dog’s panic attack (Whoever you were with the fireworks? Bless. Your. Heart.), I stumbled across YouTube videos that are supposed to calm an anxious dog. The soundtrack? Birdsong. There’s my anecdotal evidence based solely on my own personal experience, but this is something you can test for yourself, free and with no side effects.
Given the amount of whinging (British meaning: to complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way) going on lately, it seems we could all use with some improvement to our mental state. Whining is a sound, whinging is an action. An engine can whine, but only a human (or a cat) can whinge.
How is it that we come out of weeks of holiday festivities and gift-giving and celebrating and worshiping as a bunch of cranky curmudgeons? Seriously, there’s so much griping going on about the roads, the weather, the ‘gubmint,’ the price of eggs (guilty), and how we’re suddenly bereft of plastic bags at the big box stores. You know, the plastic bags we all despised when the paper ones we complained about that tore when wet, took up too much space, and weren’t good for anything except covering textbooks were sacrificed to save the trees.
Maybe everyone had terrible holidays, maybe we’re all fighting those inner battles that tear us down, or maybe it’s the rebound effect of too much fun, food and laughter. Whatever it is, maybe we should try out the birdsong trick. Preferably for a few weeks. In Hawaii. Not in the budget? Search for “dog anxiety TV” on YouTube. It can’t hurt, and it might just improve our attitudes.
By NIKI TURNER – editor@editorht1885.com
You go girl! Enough is enough!