Speak up! Speak out!

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DEMYSTIFYING VOICE PROJECTION

Okay, so if you attended the workshop, you learned all the factors that contribute to being heard even if you are not being seen, but did you really learn it? As in, will it change your life?

Let’s recap that workshop and see what we have:

What is this thing called voice projection?

Being able to project your voice does not mean speaking louder or pushing harder to force the sound out of your body, instead, in a nutshell, voice projection means speaking clearly, enunciating properly, and communicating with your audience.

How does one accomplish these tasks?

Well clarity in sheech comes from clarity in intention. If you are unsure about what you are saying, you will speak hesitantly, quietly, and/ or in a garbled manner, and rapidly. These are done in an attempt to concela the fact that you are unsure of the words you speak. And all of these speech patterns will individually serve to sabotage clarity. Done collectively in any scenario, your audience will wonder why you are even speaking.

So what are the key components to voice projection?

In a nutshell: posture, personality, and confidence.

Since your posture affects your breathing, it stands to reason that a misalligned body will adversely affect the uninhibited passage of air being expelled through your lyranx (voice box). It also follows that you will need good breath support to achieve power in your deliver. But even with a powerful voice, if you are just uninteresting and flat, it will just be a booming monotone, like the continuous sound of bombs being fired, and we all know how much aversion we have to warming up to that sound!

So spicing up your speech with some vocal layers and textures that are uniquely YOU, will certainly serve to enhance the communication between speaker and audience.

Now what are we missing?

Confidence

Confidence needs its own category and paragraph(s), because not only does it affect your speech and your ability to deliver a scintillating and motivating speech, but confidence is the backbone to everything you want to achieve in life.

Without this one ingredient in your life, your life boils down to a torn and tattered notebook of pages and pages of enumerations of a life unlived. A tabulation of what we commonly refer to as our ”wish list.”

So ask yourself, are you doing what you REALLY want to do? Or have you settled for a life that is comfortable, because you lack the confidence to reach further? A life that stretches you beyond the succesful accumulation of a spouse, a two-car garage, 2.5 children, and a cat and dog?

Perhaps you are like the millions who have convinced themselves that what they are doing is what they ”really want.” Because what they are doing is safe, and safety represents comfort, which equals stagnation.

But stagnation is the precursor to death.

Thus, when we cease to push further, beyond our comfort zone, when we make the choice to not stretch and challenge our confidence level, we are essentially chosing to sign our own death warrant.

So ask yourself today, one day post-workshop, how is my voice projection? Is it not good because I need to work on my personality, posture, and pronunciation, or is it suffering because I lack confidence in myself?