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"  According to psychologist Cliff Arnall, this past Monday, January 16, was the saddest day of the year. To determine this, he devised a formula that includes when people are most likely to be paying off their holiday shopping bills and that at this time, two weeks into the new year, resolutions have probably fallen by the wayside. If you&amp;#039;re suffering from the midwinter blues, consider reading the book that&amp;#039;s in my carryall right now, Your Playlist Can Change Your Life by Galina Midlin, MD, PHD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University with Don Durousseau and Joseph Cardillo. It details how an individualized music playlist can improve mood, memory, and focus and relieve stress and anxiety. When I met Dr. Midlin last month, she explained that music, like scent, has an immediate neuro pathway that bypasses our &amp;quot;thinking brain&amp;quot; to directly affect our emotional state. This immediately resonated with me as I&amp;#039;ve often used the unique power of scent to make me feel good, without realizing its scientific foundation. When I spritz on perfumes that I used in my teens and college years, they transport me back to times where I was young and carefree. Now that I&amp;#039;m reading Your Playlist Can Change Your Life, my first goal as is to find songs that I like and notice how they make me feel in certain situations. Although I don&amp;#039;t know why, I&amp;#039;m infatuated with flamenco music. So I downloaded some Spanish classics to my iPhone and have been listening to them during my morning walks to the ferry station. If you&amp;#039;ve been reading my recent blogs, you know I&amp;#039;m trying to be consistent about my daily walks as part of my promise to my Newtopia coach. And the other day, thanks to a powerful Noreaster, which was responsible for a miserable day here in New York City (see pictures above and below), I needed every bit of positive encouragement to start and finish my morning walk. With the proper rain gear (or so I thought when I started out) and flamenco tunes in my ears, I felt invincible against the elements and my 17 minute and 2500-step brisk walk was a &amp;quot;piece of cake&amp;quot;.  Yet the same evening, during the after-work rush hour, I noticed that the flamenco tunes I listened to in the morning weren&amp;#039;t doing much for me. In her book, Dr. Midlin talks about the need to adjust the tune to the time of day. So I&amp;#039;m now in search for tunes that fit my mindset during the hectic evening hours when I&amp;#039;m racing to pick up my kids from aftercare on time. There&amp;#039;s a lot more to using this technique to train the brain to enter its optimum mindset and by no means have I mastered it yet. Fortunately the book is easy to read and gives plenty of sample play lists for various mental states. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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