How many times have you turned to music to uplift you even further in happy times, or sought the comfort of music when melancholy strikes?

It seems that the healing power of music, over body and spirit, is only just starting to be understood, even though music therapy is not new. For many years therapists have been advocating the use of music in both listening and study for the reduction of anxiety and stress, the relief of pain. And music has also been recommended as an aid for positive change in mood and emotional states.

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“Happiness gets trashed. It’s considered too pink and fluffy for the workplace,” Alex Linley, founder of the Centre for Applied Positive Psychology (CAPP) in Coventry, England, told attendees at the 2008 World Federation of Personnel Management Associations World Congress here April 15. Linley, a psychologist and management consultant, founded the nonprofit CAPP to help companies find the happy, positive sides of employees in order to attract, retain and develop them.

“Neurological research shows that when people are happy, they learn things better, are more receptive to [manager direction] and are more engaged,” Linley said.

A positive, or “strengths-based,” organization seeks to buoy what is right in people rather than correct what is wrong. It’s an ingredient that is missing in the workplace, Linley said, noting that only 17 percent of U.S. workers use their strengths at work, according to Gallup Poll research that was first compiled in Marcus Buckingham’s bestselling book, First, Break All the Rules (Simon & Schuster, 1999.)

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A quarter of a century ago (I’ve always wanted to say that), when I was a young engineer with Texas Instruments, I had a manager named Dick Carroll. Dick was a big guy who looked a lot like Mr. Clean without the eyebrows.

One day, I was working on a drafting table in a large, open bay, when Dick walked up and started talking about how great his sex life was. That was more information than I needed to know, but I held my tongue. Conversations with the big boss were always precious, regardless of how they began.

On this occasion, Dick’s upbeat demeanor so contrasted with how crappy I felt that morning - how I felt every morning, in fact - that, instead of asking what middle-aged, wrinkly sex was like, I asked how he always managed to be so optimistic.

That’s when Dick explained the power of positive thinking to me. In a nutshell, when you whine and complain, you annoy people and they avoid you like the plague. When you’re positive and optimistic, that attracts people and opportunities.

The concept wasn’t new; the book by Norman Vincent Peale was originally published in 1952. But it was new to me.

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