278. Take control of your voice

This episode is about letting go of what you can’t control — and taking charge of what you can.

Inspired by a hiking trip to New Zealand, I share why worrying about audience reactions, tech issues, or being liked only disconnects you from your voice.

Learn what is in your control, how to stay grounded when things don’t go to plan, and why your voice is strongest when you focus on yourself — not the noise. 

transcript

Welcome back to That Voiceprint Podcast. Welcome, if you're here for the first time, the podcast is officially called That Voice Podcast. I'm calling it That Voiceprint Podcast for the time being because Voiceprint is the name of my book. So make sure you've grabbed a copy. Today's episode is inspired by my recent trip to New Zealand. So my boyfriend Patrick and I are in training to walk the Camino de Santiago. It's the Camino del Norte. That's the route we're taking across the north of Spain in September. So we've been getting our training in, getting our K's up. We went to New Zealand to do a training run to test our gear, toe socks, hiking poles, backpacks.

I'm all in with the hiking lingo at the moment. And so we flew into Wellington and we couldn't believe it. There were people on the beach, like the beach was packed. It was hot as anything. We walked down to get some dinner and a drink, and we were sweltering and worried about sunburn at about six o'clock at night. We were like, Oh, what's going on?

So the reason we were over there is to walk the Tongariro Alpine Crossing, which is one of the most famous day walks in the whole world. And after this beautiful Thursday evening, woke up on the Friday to drive up to Tongariro, raining, raining, cloudy, looking, a bit wooly. So at dinner that night, we were sort of thinking, Hmm, I wonder how this is gonna go because it's pretty high up gale force winds. We are checking the the warnings.

And there was actually no official warning out for the Saturday. So we thought, Oh look, it's not gonna be a pleasant walk, is it? We've got our wet weather gear, let's just go for it. And then we were getting up to leave dinner and the hotel manager came over and said, oh, so sorry guys. Your shuttle has canceled. And at the time we were disappointed, but we sort of thought, Oh, well that's the weather, right? You can't control the weather. What do you do? At least the decision was taken out of our hands.

So we enjoyed a bit of a sleep in and thought, okay, we'll go for a different walk in the morning. And we drove to the start point of the alpine crossing just to have a look. And when we walked up there, we were surprised to hear from the woman who was, you know, greeting tourists out the front to say, Oh yeah, the mountain's open. And there were 200 people up there already, and the weather didn't seem too bad. So we were like, Oh, well, I was disappointed thinking, Oh, we should have just gone for it. But by then it was too late because it's a one-way track and we wouldn't have been able to get the car, and we didn't take the food and blah, blah, blah. So we left and we did another walk, which was about six hours up to the Tama Lakes. It was pretty challenging, and it was, it

Was was great. Like it was a good walk. I was feeling disappointed. I was really looking forward to walking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing. But Patrick reminded me, he said, we didn't come here to walk that particular walk. We came here to test our gear, to test the bags, the wet weather stuff, the shoes, and we were able to do that. You can't control the weather, and we couldn't control the shuttles canceling either, could we? It was out of our control. And this is an excellent question to ask before speaking. I'm always saying to my clients, Don't worry about things that are out of your control. It's a waste of your energy.

So what are the things that I hear so often people worry about that are out of your control? And the big one is, what will people think? What will people think of you?

So the answer to this question is it's completely out of your control. They'll all be thinking something. We don't know if it's good, bad, ugly, indifferent, and everybody out there is probably thinking something different. We can't control it, not worth worrying about. We can't control the look on their faces.

I've actually been told I have resting face, which is not great. So when I'm in an audience, especially when I'm watching a good speaker, I'm working overtime to look very animated in the audience, which as a speaker really helps if the audience looks engaged. But we can't control the look on people's faces. They could be folding their arms. It might be a bit cold. They could be having that resting biatch face. They could be scowling, they could be sniffling, they could be shaking their head, they could be nodding, they could be, I don't know.

We don't know what's going on in people's lives. We cannot control the looks on their faces. We can't control whether they like us. So this is one for the people pleasers. It's a big thought. Oh my gosh, I want them to like me. I want them to like it. Now, of course, we prepare our content to please the audience. We are speaking in service, of course we are. But stressing about whether an audience member likes you, it's really out of your control. They just might not like the way that you dress or the way that you look. You might remind them of a horrible ex. I don't know. You can't control that, and you can't control what the audience is doing while you speak as well. They'll be checking their phones. They could be whispering, they could be like leaving. You also can't control a lot of tech problems.

I've had everything tested and checked, and then all of a sudden you're on stage, bang, massive formatting issue. It comes up as Vice print, not Voice print. I've also had the whole system just crash. So you can't control those things. You just need to get on with it.

Trying to control what you can't is the fastest way to lose control of your voice. So what can you control? You can control yourself. You can control your voice, you can control your state, your beliefs, your body, your breath, and I take you through exactly how to get in control of those three elements in the Magnetic voice formula.

This is a very short online course, which I've recently made free. So if you go to the link in the show notes, you'll be able to do that little course for free. I go through beliefs, body and breath, the foundations of your voice, the foundations of preparing yourself, preparing what you can control.

Curve balls will come. I've got an episode about how to catch curve balls with confidence. You know, that's why we are preparing the masculine and delivering the feminine. We have to be able to flow and adapt because it will never go exactly as we planned, might go better.

And so instead of being disappointed that we didn't get to walk the Tongariro Alpine crossing, it's a reason to go back and I bet you we'll get a beautiful blue sky day when we do.

It's the same with speaking. If something doesn't go the way you'd planned, you need to trust that it went exactly the way it was meant to. The universe always has your back. Things are always working out for you, and it's a reason to get back out there on stage again so you can control yourself. You can control your voice. Jump in and grab the Magnetic Voice formula. It's free. The link is in the show notes, and if you can't control it, then don't worry about it.