13. That's my voice? Ew, *cringe*
Most people shudder at the sound of their own voice. Why is that? In this episode I share three big benefits to recording your voice and playing it back - once you get over the cringe factor!
Transcript
"Oh, don't play it. Oh do I really sound like that? I hate the sound of my own voice."
As a voice coach who forces people to record their voices and listen to them back. I hear this sentiment quite a lot. Why don't we like hearing our voice played back and why should we learn to love it?
I'm Sally Prosser and you're listening to That Voice Podcast. No matter who you are or what you do, your voice matters and unless you've sworn a lifetime vow of silence. This is the podcast for you.
Okay. Give me a virtual hands up if you like the sound of your own voice played back to you. I'm guessing there's not too many hands or those of you who do are listening on the train or a bus and don't want to randomly put your hand up in public. Even if you're like me and have really come around to the sound of your own voice, believe me, editing these podcasts would be extremely traumatic if I hated the sound of my own voice. Of course in the past I have shuddered hearing my own voice and I'm sure you have too. I mean I have scratch marks on my door from people trying to claw their way out because they don't want to hear their voice played back to them. In fact, not liking the sound of your own voice is so common. There's actually a term for it. It's called voice confrontation. When your own voice confronts you, it's quite funny. And can you believe even actor John Malkovich hates the sound of his own voice. I mean, I think it's gorgeous. Listen to what he told Conan O'Brien a few years back. It's a crack up.
Conan: Do you like your voice?
John: I hate it.
Conan: You hate your voice.?
John: Yeah, when I hear myself, which I try never to do. To me it sounds like someone has kind of labored under heavy narcotics for years and years.
Very descriptive. I've had clients describe their voice to me as squeaky, like a mouse, husky, like a chain smoker. And my favorite is actually someone who described their voice as the love child of Pauline Hanson and Dave Hughes, which I realize might be lost on those of you listening from outside Australia. But wherever you are, if you book in for private session with me, we can do this. We'll record your voice, we'll play it back and talk about it. It is quite satisfying. So if it's something that you're putting off, it might be time to bite the bullet. And I do explain a bit later on the benefits of listening to your own voice back. But before that, let's talk about why we don't like the sound of our own voice. So the most common reason or excuse I hear is that our voice sounds different in our own head to when it does, when it's played back to us.
And yeah, it's true because when we are listening to our own voice, we get this thing called bone conduction and basically it means that the vibrations from the vocal cords are vibrating through our skull and they reach our inner ear and it makes our voices sound richer and lower and generally nicer than they actually are, whereas other people are only listening to what comes out of our mouth. And you can look into the science behind this. There's a bit more at play than just the fact that we hear our own voice in our head. We hear a lot of other voices in our head, especially those inner voices. I think that's a good topic for another episode actually. And there's actually a TedTalk about all this. It's called “Why you don't like the sound of your own voice” by Rebecca Kleinberger. There's also a couple of psychologists, Phil Holzman and Clyde Rousey, they looked into this quite a lot.
One of the interesting things they found was people who are bilingual who learned their second language after the age of 16 showed more discomfort when they heard their own voice back in their first language. And that's interesting because that can't really be explained by the bone conduction argument. So there's lots of reasons why we don't like our voice played back to us. And it is partly because it does sound different in our own head, but let's just forget all that. I reckon we think our voice sounds weird played back to us because we don't pay that much attention to the sound when we're talking. I believe if we do this, if we start listening to our voice as we're speaking, there's lots of benefits. I believe recording your voice and playing it back has three main advantages. The first one is awareness, the second one is memory, and the third one is progress.
So the first one is awareness. You know what they say? Awareness is the greatest agent for change. And if anyone's done my workshop, you might've done that exercise where I record your voice just on my iPhone and you have to say, hi, I'm Sally and this is my voice. It sounds a little bit like an AA meeting, but it really has a similar effect. You need to be aware of your voice if you're going to start making changes. And so if you start listening to your voice, you can pick up your inflections, perhaps some speech that needs fixing. You can listen to the pace of your voice, and so you can use that as a base to make improvements. You know, I can listen to voices and I can tell you until I'm blue in the face. Okay. Right. You need to change this inflection. You have a habit of clicking your tongue. You really need to slow down you're not giving enough emphasis to the words at the end of your sentence. You know, I can go on and on, but there is nothing that compares to you actually listening to your own voice and hearing it firsthand.
Now the next benefit to recording your voice and playing it back is memory. They did some research at the University of Waterloo and they found that reading aloud was the best way of retaining written information. Now in their study, they also looked at listening to yourself reading it aloud. So I will say that playing the voice back wasn't the most effective way of memorizing something. It was reading it out aloud. But by recording your voice doing it, it forces you to read it out loud and it's a fantastic way to reinforce your memory while you're doing other things. So when I'm practicing for a big presentation, I always have it recorded to my iPhone and it means when I'm in the kitchen or putting the washing away or something quite mundane or making up the Airbnb room, it means I can play that and be learning the content while I'm doing something else.
So it's a really effective way to memorize the content. And also when I'm hearing it in my own voice, I'm not just listening to the words, I'm listening to the delivery as well. And so sometimes I hear a sentence and I think, Oh no, I need to take a bigger pause there or that was a bit too quick. And so you can refine your delivery at the same time as learning your content - really, really valuable. I go into this in a lot more detail in module three of my Speak to be Heard online program. It's called how to own the stage and charm your audience. And I take you through the seven steps that I use to memorize large amounts of content. Now if you're interested in the program, please get in touch with me. I know this is a terrible way to be at the moment, not having a functioning website, but the online courses are on something different and it's all available.
I just haven't got the marketing on the website. But if you just get in touch with me, either Instagram @sallyprosservoice, LinkedIn or the holding page on my website sallyprosser.com.au I can send you those details. So that's memory.
Now the third reason I think it's really valuable to record your voice and listen back is to monitor progress. So in the same way that you have those before and after shots of doing a fitness challenge or a weight loss challenge or something like that, it works in the same way. So if we're hearing our voice every single day, it's hard to monitor progress. But if we record at point A, do a whole lot of work and then record at point B, it's really clear, you know, how far we've come. And I use this especially when I work with my young journalism students and they'll listen back to the way they read the script in the first session and think, Oh my gosh, I can't believe I sounded like that. And you can clearly hear the difference. It's a very valuable tool to show you firsthand that your voice, you know it's not something you're stuck with. You can absolutely strengthen it and improve it to become a better speaker or a better journalist. And if you've got a voice, I reckon you owe it to yourself to not only look after it, but get the most out of it.
Next week, I speak to a gorgeous client of mine who's lucky to have her voice at all. She was diagnosed with cancer at the age of just 12 and she had a tumor that was crushing her voice box and doctors told her that she would never again speak louder than a whisper. Imagine being told you can essentially never speak again. So Niamh Sullivan is such an inspiration. I really struggle to hold it together during our chat. It's well worth tuning in for next Monday and a good reminder to be grateful for the voice we have.
Thanks for listening to That Voice Podcast. If you're in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, come along to my next Voice & Vinho night. All the details are on my Instagram page @sallyprosservoice.