The Soundtrack to Your Life

Music is an evocative medium, and often when we remember significant moments in our lives, we recall the song that was playing too.

That can be a good thing - the song that was playing when you met the love of your life can continue to bring a smile to your face for many years afterwards.

However, it can also be a curse, as certain songs might remind you of personal tragedies and lost loves.

In the case of the latter type, you can't control when and where you might hear those tracks while you're out and about, but you can make certain that they do not come on while you are in your own home.

Eliminating Emotional Tracks

The first step towards ridding yourself of upsetting songs is selling old CDs that feature the offending track; you could just throw them away, of course, but you may as well make a little money out of songs that have caused you emotional distress, by way of recompense for your suffering.

Erase any digital copies of the songs from your MP3 player, iPod or PC's music library, and you can be more certain that they will not suddenly appear during a session of listening to your collection on random.

Depending on how upsetting you find each track, you may want to take steps to prevent anything by the same artist from being played as well.

Remember the Good Times

With the depressing tracks removed from your music library, you can start to focus on building your playlist of songs that you really love, and which bring back happy memories to your mind.

In digital music libraries, there is often a fairly easy way to highlight your favourite songs; this might be a five-star rating system, or a simple 'favourite' option.

You should usually be able to sort your library by the rating you have given to each track, or there may be a function to play back only your favourite tracks in random order, without them having to specifically be added to their own playlist.

Some systems can even give each track a rating out of five, based on how many times you listen to it - meaning those you queue for playback again and again will gradually rise to the top, as a kind of organic way of finding out what your true favourites are.

Curate Your Collection

If you have lots of physical CDs, you can start to select those that mean something significant to you, as opposed to those on which you just like the music.

My own collection includes, for example, songs that were used as the soundtrack to childhood firework displays, or which were dancefloor hits during my teenage nights out.

Select the CDs that have similar chronological landmarks in your own memory, and you can begin to build a playlist of tracks that make you feel happy or reminiscent.