The music we listen to is a mirror for our minds and a window into our souls.

I’ve been on this kick for a long time now, but I really really believe that we can see who we are and better understand ourselves (and others!) through the music we listen to and identify with… especially when looking back in history.

I can’t emphasize enough how much of an introspective, self-learning, and therapeutic process it is to go and create a story of one’s life by making a playlist for that time period.

This playlist here is of the 31 songs that most define who I am… one for each year of my life (cheating a bit on the last one cuz I’m technically 30).

I’m sharing both because there are a lot of amazing songs here that some might like, but also because I want to encourage everyone to go through the exercise of making a playlists like this for themselves.

There are many ways to go about it. You can just do high school, or just college, or that period where you lived in a certain city… or your whole life.

How many songs you give yourself for each period is an important choice. The more songs you give yourself the more nuance/color/depth you can add. The fewer songs, the more you are forced to really consider what captures your essence.

Doing an exercise like this forces one to make a lot of decisions about how one defines and represents oneself.

These songs aren’t necessarily my favorite songs, nor the ones I most listened to, nor even the ones I consider to be ‘the best’ (though many of them are). These are the ones that I think most capture the music that was in my life that then defined who I was and who I have become… in chronological order.

It’s all a bit messy and of course colored by my own current view of who I am and who I was, and yet, it communicates a lot.

I am sure that you, whoever you are, can look through this playlist and feel like you’ll learn a lot about me. If you don’t know me at all, this will give you a good sense of my personality and cultural background. If you know me well, maybe this will explain to you little eccentricities of my personality, or why I ended up doing that thing or another.

I find that I learn something new about myself every time I do this and I encourage everyone to also do this for themselves.

The music we listen to is a genuine mirror and window into our soul.

Try making a playlist for a period of your life. I promise you will find it eye-opening and valuable. It’s also a pretty neat thing to have if you ever want to just do a throw back and re-live the past.