89. Speak from your Soul

In order to connect with your voice, you need to connect TO your voice. In this episode, I chat to my Ontological Performance Coach Kristina Crooks about how she speaks from her soul, tackling limiting beliefs from our inner voice, and the pronunciation of niche!

Transcript

Hello you beautiful, gorgeous soul. Thank you so much for tuning into That Voice Podcast. In this episode, number 89, you're going to meet my coach-- Kristina Crooks. Yes. Coaches have coaches. And of course, I truly believe in the power of coaching. Now, Kristina is an ontological performance coach. And if you're like "Onto what a?", yeah, it's a bit unusual. Ontology is all about the nature of being. I've been working with Kristina for several months and I love the holistic nature of the coaching. Like can we really silo our lives? There's so much integration: work, health relationships, et cetera. And the more voice coaching I do and people I meet, this interconnection is becoming more and more apparent. I called this episode Speak from your Soul because so much of my chat with Kristina comes back to that connection with soul.

Speaker 2:

Also... drumroll...That was my dodgy, on the table drumroll the name of a new course. I'm developing is called speak from your soul. I believe if you connect with your voice, you'll connect with others and this course teaches you how. I explain how you can use spiritual concepts and practices to speak from your soul and have your voice heard. And this isn't a tied to your computer type online course. I'll be recording meditations and exercises. You can take away from your screen and experience on a deep level. If that sounds gorgeous to you, then please join the wait list via my website or the link in my show notes. Now close your eyes, take a deep breath in, alongside out, and let's roll on into this beautiful conversation.

Sally:

It is my great pleasure to welcome my coach and dear friend, Kristina Crooks to That Voice Podcast. Welcome to the podcast!

Kristina:

Thank you for having me, Sally. It's an honor to be here.

Sally:

Oh, and you have such a beautiful voice. As soon as I hear you speak, I immediately feel more calm. Is that intentional?

Kristina:

It didn't use to be and spending seven months and hundreds of hours on Clubhouse made it so became more of my normal tonality. So yes, but not at first. No, it wasn't. I had a lot of feedback from a lot of people going, "You feel like home and your voices warm and comforting." And I thought, well, a lot of times it's warm and comforting for me. Then it became just my, my normal tonality with conscious thought.

Sally:

Isn't that beautiful? It feels like home, it's warm and comforting. And I like how you mentioned the smell that it makes you feel that way, because there was actually a study done in Sweden, which showed that our voice can affect our mood. So it's not just, if we're feeling angry, we'll sound angry, but if we sound calm, we'll feel calm. It's really quite beautiful.

Kristina:

I noticed through reflections back from my partner, who would say, you know, when you are unsure of yourself, you end a sentence on a high note. Like it's a question and you can tell that you're not sure of what you're saying. And I'm like, interesting. So I started listening back to coaching calls. I started listening back to my own voice and the times where I felt really comfortable in what I was saying, and my conviction was higher and I was speaking with conviction. It tended to have a lower tonality. And I thought, oh, that's fascinating. And I noticed if I was in an intense situation with someone, or there was a conflict, my voice would lower. And I did that both because it calmed me down and it slowed me down, but it also calmed the other person down. And I find myself in a lot of conversations with people where we're hitting up against stuff, their stuff.

Sally:

Yeah, definitely. It's been coming up a lot this season on the podcast, the idea of the rising inflection or up speak, which is that thing that we'll do it will end like that. And it makes us sound like we're not sure. And just for everybody listening, the reason for that is we use a rising inflection on questions that can be answered by yes or no. And so when we use that rise on a complete statement, it's I call it the inflection of validation. We are actually asking our audience to be like thumbs up or thumbs down. And so that's why it gives that sense of not being sure. So yes, rise when you're not finished and fall, when you are in makes all the difference.

Kristina:

The voice is so fascinating. And I know, you know, this, but the voice is so fascinating because it really illuminates where we're at. And like, I could be really excited and be really up here, have lots of joy, lots of energy, but my normal place is right about here. And it depends what's happening if I'm at a music event or a large event where it requires me to have a lot of energy, my tone is going to be higher, higher pitched, and more excited with enthusiasm. But it's, it's fascinating to me how people move their voices and use their voice.

Sally:

Absolutely. Yeah. And you mentioned that you often sit in that slower, lower, comforting kind of tone because of the work you do, would you like to explain a little bit about the type of coaching that you do?

Kristina:

Sure. So I'm an ontological coach and as you know, because we work together. And ontology is the art and science of being a human being. We hear human being all the time, but we're also being human. We're spiritual beings having a human experience and ontology has given me a framework that really, really, really changed my life. Four years ago, I started working with a coach in this realm and I knew that I wanted to go into the world of coaching, but as many people know there are a lot of coaches and there's a lot of sections you can go into and a lot of niches for coaching. But when I found my coach, it was really about, how do we get back down to the essence of our being and move from there and move from love rather than fear? How do we accept what is take responsibility for our part of what is, and then trust in our ability to make enlightened choices in the future, no matter what's happening externally. And that's really the essence of what ontology is.

Sally:

Yeah. And I love that so much something that really attracted me to it is that holistic approach, that idea that, you know, I can bring anything that's going on to our sessions. And you discover that something going on over here is very closely related to something going on in my business or something going on over here because it's all interrelated. And I really feel like my approach to voice coaching is similar in that way that sure we can talk about the vocal cords coming together and the breath going in. But it's very hard to separate that from what's going on in someone's life or the emotions that you're feeling.

Kristina:

Absolutely. And when someone works with a business strategist or a social media coach or any one of these more niched arenas, those are great for their own purposes. But I wanted to do work that encompassed the whole person and the whole being and the whole life, because how our relationships are going, impacts how our business is going. And how our day job is going, affects how we build our business. And how we work with our children, affects our marriage and whatever it may be, all these things are interrelated. And we're living in a world that expects this, this singularity, and that this thing is over here and it's categorized in this box or in this lane and this thing's here and this is here, but there's no real separation with us being human beings. We're interconnected with each one of these relationships in our life, whether it's our relationship to nature, or our relationship to time, or another person-- we're interconnected wholeheartedly with all of these things. And ontology gives a framework for distinguishing our reality and how we relate to it.

Sally:

Yeah. It's such a fascinating area. I also love the way you say niche by the way. Cause we say niche, not niche. Yeah. So funny. So when you spoke about our, all of those things, being interrelated, the role of the inner voice, we probably have quite a few of them is, is so important. Isn't it? So take us through, from your perspective, how important is it for us to get that self-talk in a good place?

Kristina:

It's critical. It's critical because how we do one thing is how we do everything. And this is where Impostor syndrome comes from. So if someone is talking about something that they're fully equipped to talk about, but they don't feel confident in who they are. It's not going to come through. And that's where imposter syndrome comes from. "Who am I to be talking about this? Who am I to be sharing this thing?" Unless of course you really don't know what you're talking about. And you're talking about something out of your element, then that's a little different. But the way I see Impostor syndrome is that it's your beingness coming through in your own levels of confidence and conviction in what you're speaking in. So when you go to the root and the essence of you, of who you are, what you are as a being and start teasing out what your beliefs are about certain things, whether it's a limiting belief or an empowering belief, you start recognizing where these things land.

Kristina:

So if you want to make a lot of money in your business, but deep down, you're always afraid you're going to run out of money. Guess what you're going to attract. You're going to attract more running out of money. Because even though you're doing all the things, deep down that's what you believe and that's the beliefs that you inherited from how you grew up. So when we dig into the soul of our voice, when we dig into the beliefs that create the tonality and create the way that we speak, we get much more clear on why we say things, the way that we do and why we have the tone of voice we do and the pitch and whether or not you have run on sentences or you use certain types of words and the context in which you use them.

Sally:

Yeah, absolutely. I often say our real voice is a megaphone for our inner voice.

Kristina:

I love that.

Sally:

Although I shouldn't say that because our inner voice is a real voice. It should be like our physical voice is a megaphone for our inner voice.

Kristina:

Yes.

Sally:

It really is. And of course, as you know, like lots of people that I work with have those, "Oh, I'm saying the wrong thing. I'm going to stuff it up. Who wants to listen to me? What do I know?" And all of these definitely play a role. For me, I don't have much of that, but every single one of us has those limiting beliefs and that little inner critic that will come in. For me, but I have a lot of shoulds in my head of where I should be and what I should be doing and what I should be making. And so, just take us through, and you can use me as an example if you like, but when people do have those limiting beliefs, how do you get to the root of them and how do you change them?

Kristina:

So it's different for every person. And the, I always look for what is the playful path of least resistance to share the knowledge that I have of this framework with a person in a way that they can hear it. Because like you and I speak English and we understand each other's words, but we also have our own set of personal experiences that give context to each word we use and how we use it. So let's talk about should, should is a big one. That's, that's a big, big button for me that if I hear that in someone's language, I know in someone's language, I know that that's a limiting belief. I know, okay there's a sticking point here because should represents when we have an expectation, but it's not matching our reality. So when we can dig into that, we can really shift what the core of that is, how we get there.

Kristina:

Like I said, it depends on the person because that maybe, that should maybe covering other beliefs that are even deeper, or maybe that's the core one. But the first thing I'll say is, why do you think that should be that way? It's really interesting in working with people like you, that are high performers that are super, just excel at doing and the doing it is always there. You're a big doer. So when we get to those shirts and you're very articulate and you're very intelligent. And in working with you and digging down to some of those, we usually have to throw certain ones out that it's not first. Like, okay, is it this? No, it's not that okay. Is it this not, it's not that. And we start noticing in our body, where is the constriction? And I'm watching for nonverbal cues. Like where did the tears come from? When, when do you kind of reel back? When do you maybe squint, when do you look away to really think about that? When is there a grimace, like when is there some indication that we hit, that we found it?

Sally:

It's so interesting because it's so similar to the work that I do in my coaching. Of course my one-on-one coaching, where I can see the person and hear the person. And the voice is the same. You can hear the blockage. You can hear when the air stops flowing or when the phrasing becomes quite choppy. Normally when somebody is very excited about something, it will just all flow out in this big wave and you can hear it. So I love how the human body can just tell us so many things. And if we can just open our eyes to what that is, and learn to diagnose ourselves as well, learn to drop into the body, listen to our voice. I know that the work that I've done, especially with you has enabled me to do that. I think that's the most powerful thing. Being able to come up against something and saying, "Hang on, I know what to do. I think I know what my body's doing here, and this is what I need to shift." And so that's the same thing as well. With speaking, you spoke about should being a loaded word. Another one that came to mind with me is "enough". I don't know enough about this topic. Well, well, what is enough? When will you know enough?

Kristina:

Yes. I'm curious from, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest blocks you noticed with people that you get to work with as a speaking coach?

Sally:

Definitely mindset. And this is why I've gone more down the path of understanding. More about the inner voice. When I first started my business, I was like, "Right, I'm a voice coach. And I'm about delivery. I'm about expression and being fancy on stage." But I very quickly realized that there was no way that I could do transformational work if I left it at that level. Because so many people who come to me, yes, they might say, "Oh, I'm struggling to have confidence to be heard around the meeting table., But you dig a bit deeper and you realize, well, they're in a job. They don't like with people who don't respect them, talking about stuff they don't care about. There's a deeper issue.

Kristina:

Right. What was one of your most proud moments with someone you've been able to work with?

Sally:

It is somebody who was too afraid to say "Yes" to speaking at a conference. Like she wrote to me and said, "Oh, I've said, no, I want to do some training. And I'll say yes to the next one." And of course my first answer was, "Go back and say, yes. Oh my God. Say yes!" And she's like, "Oh my gosh, I don't know." And we worked through all of those limiting beliefs with the mindset. We got the speech together, we practiced it and it was so good. They invited her at the conference to do an extra panel at the event and booked her for the next year.

Kristina:

Fantastic! There's a good line in the book by Marianne Williamson. I forget what it's called, but it's her main love book that most people know about. And, and she says, our greatest fear is not what we'll fail at or what we won't get right. But our greatness, our inner greatness and our light. And it sounds like that's what happened for the client you were working with.

Sally:

I love that. Yes, it is. It is our light, not our darkness that we are afraid of.

Kristina:

Yes. There's a lot of responsibility that comes along with it. And I think that makes people scared that there will be expectations placed on them that they can't fulfill.

Sally:

Yeah. And do ever feel like that?

Kristina:

Oh, I definitely felt like that when it comes to public speaking, the few times I've spoken in front of larger crowds, I have so much rapt attention. That it's a moment for me personally. It's this moment where I recognize that I have everyone's undivided attention because I'm really good at managing the energy of a room and I have to manage my own anxiety of, "Okay, you have everybody, all eyes are on you." And so there's this great sacredness to it, and responsibility of wanting to deliver content that moves people that creates, but is a canvas for inner transformation. And not just words and making sure that I can take them on a journey. And it's, it's fascinating to me because the few talks I have given, it hasn't even covered maybe 40% of what I've practiced or wrote down because I pause so much. I pause so that I get people back so that I check in with them so I can make eye contact. And I've learned that I do much better with bullet points and allowing myself to journey people through those bullet points rather than practice a complete script.

Sally:

I love that. The great speakers focus on how they want the audience to feel, not what they want the audience to know. And you're a grand master of that.

Kristina:

Thank you, received that.

Sally:

And I love the way you use pause. Pausing is such a gift. It's a gift to your audience, and it's a gift to yourself. And a lot of my clients who don't breathe, for example, I say, "You need to have your pit stop. You need to refuel to breathe again, to keep going."

Kristina:

Yeah, that's a great way to explain it a pit stop because it is. When you're speaking to an audience or a group or a crowd, your managing the energy of that space. And your like the music for them right then. And if you're speeding through it and trying to hit all the points and trying to get all the words, and you're not moving the tonality of your voice and changing pace a little bit to maybe really re-engage them and keep it interesting and just move them on that journey, then you'll lose the attention of the audience. And it's boring. I mean, I've sat through talks where the tonality always stays the same and they never changed their tone of voice. And you stopped listening after about 15 seconds. And I don't want to be that person. One of the core parts of my being is being connected to other people, whether it's one-on-one or in a group. So, back to your original thing of, have I ever felt that way of being afraid of the responsibility or what could happen? Yes. When it comes to speaking to group, because I get a lot of attention and I have a lot of focus when I do speak.

Sally:

It's so much about just getting out of the head and getting back into the body, because if somebody is just talking on a monotone like this, chances are their inner voice is just saying, "Get out of here, get it over with, am I going to remember all my words? What am I going to have for dinner? I just need to get out of here as soon as possible." And there's no connection. I know you speak a lot about connection. And I believe if we connect to our voice, that's when we can connect to the audience.

Kristina:

You really have a level of mastery for that. That is superb, Sally. When it comes to identifying your voice in that fashion, in that context of being on stage and speaking to others and speaking from your soul, I would recommend no other than you.

Sally:

Oh, you're so lovely. So Kristina, if anybody listening is keen to learn more about ontological coaching or working with you, what can they do?

Kristina:

Actually, it's perfect timing. Because October 7th, we have a workshop coming up, a virtual workshop. That's four hours it's called "What is ontology?" And we do a deep dive into being. So they can come to that. They can reach out to me@empoweredhuman.com and book a call. And they could find me in any of the social media outlets. cause I'm pretty sure I'm on all of them.

Sally:

Oh, amazing. And I will share all of those links in the show notes as well. Oh, Kristina, thank you so much for coming on the show. Is there anything else that you wanted to add?

Kristina:

Just that I love you and you're lovely. Honor to be with you.

Sally:

That's so sweet. Thank you so so much.

Kristina:

Thanks for having me, Sally!

Sally Prosser