Never underestimate the power of your vocal image.
It may sound weird, because it’s audible rather than visual, but it is more powerful than you may give it credit for. The reason being if someone hears your voice before seeing you, there will automatically be a picturing of what you are like. Just from the tone, accent, annunciation etc.
Depending where we are from, we will have an accent. Not necessarily obvious to ourselves, but when you go somewhere else, it will definitely show. Being from a geographically small country like Northern Ireland, it always amazes me the variations in accents, and in very short distances too. My hometown of Antrim is a prime example of a ‘non-accent’ in terms of the Northern Irish. This is due to an influx of workers to the town in the 1960’s coming from all over Northern Ireland to work in a new yarn production factory ‘British Enkalon’. A Dutch firm who were responsible for the overwhelming growth of the town, as workers came from all over to secure well paid jobs in the factory. This lead to a melting pot of accents and essentially the Antrim ‘accent’ isn’t really an ‘accent’ at all.
However, since moving to England, I stand out as Northern Irish. I’m softly spoken and tend to speak fairly quickly, so I am aware at times when I have to annunciate more, or think of how I say certain words.
One thing that I have maintained is I don’t raise my voice. I have always been a firm believer in when you have an audience who want to listen – they will. If you have to shout to be heard, you’re not being heard.
That said, it is still quite easy to be heard without having to raise your voice. Remember when I said at the start about tone?
Never be afraid to speak out. Never be afraid to say what you need to say. It may feel uncomfortable and it may be hard to do, especially if you kid yourself into thinking that “perhaps I’ll just say nothing”. Don’t ever allow those feelings to take over the desire to say what you need to.
I also am aware that I don’t say a lot, well at times anyway. My reasoning is you can be heard as well in 20 words as you can in 200. The exception to this is story telling; painting a picture with your words.
Our voice is merely the chaos of our minds, reborn as perfection…
Happy Damn Friday! x
I’d love to hear from you – you can reach me on:
@happydamnfriday on Twitter
happydamnfriday@outlook.com