Ariana Newcomer

Healing the soul's voice

Should I Just STFU?? Part 2

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STFUBlogBannerPart2 Last week, I wrote about why you can’t claim your habits of speech are “feminine speech,” and critics of your voice should just STFU.

My experience in coaching hundreds of women to shift their old voice stories and their disempowering habits of speech, and watching their whole lives open up afterward (businesses taking off, relationships healed, creativity unblocked, money flowing, confidence soaring) shows me how vital it is that you NOT accept this stupid idea.

If you haven’t read last week’s article, read it HERE, otherwise this won’t make as much sense to you.

So what are disempowering and/or injurious habits of speech? Why are they disempowering rather than just “feminine?”

First, some info about our brains. Hearing is the act of collecting sound. Listening is what the brain does with what it hears, and that involves lots of complex functions in the brain called “auditory processing.” If you want to be truly heard and understood, you have to give people’s brains the opportunity to do all this auditory processing in a way that results in actual listening, not just hearing.

Actual listening results in communication, more often than not. Hearing does not guarantee listening. Speaking to create communication is a skill most of us need to get better at.

Disempowering and potentially injurious habits of speech actually IMPEDE communication. Here’s how:
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Should I Just STFU??

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I’ve seen a lot of articles recently on women’s speech. Some of them address ways of speaking that are disempowering, weaken leadership, or are self-sabotaging, and the authors encourage women to speak more directly and powerfully.

Others point out that women’s voices get criticized MUCH more than men’s. You can find gazillions of articles recommending that women change their speech patterns, and almost none that do the same for men. And if you are a woman who is broadcasting or podcasting, you can be criticized for the same kind of speech by different people in opposite ways.

In other words, we can’t win. Fair point.

One woman claimed that ANY criticism of her “uptalk” speech habit was just misogynistic, because uptalk is “feminine speech.” (Uptalk is the habit of raising the pitch at the end of every statement as if it were a question.) Another author agreed, and basically said women should speak however they want and everyone should just STFU.

I hear you. It’s true that women’s voices are criticized when and where men’s would not be, and are often criticized unjustly. So, am I a woman-hater because I work to change self-sabotaging habits of speech and empower women to speak with power and confidence? Should I just STFU?

Not on your life. Dear ones, here’s one thing I know: There is no such thing as “feminine speech.” Continue Reading

Are You Authentic?

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areyouauthenticIt’s mid-July. Wow! How did that happen? Wasn’t it just January??
Time to reflect on our goals for the year, see how far we’ve gotten (or not gotten), and refresh and re-focus ourselves to make the fullest, best use of the rest of the year!

Here’s a tip to open things up for your year. Open up to speaking in your authentic voice.

I’m all about authentic voice. I work with clients to open up their full range of self-expression, and their ability to speak in their authentic voice.

Often, when I ask a client to try a new level of expression, or a new way of speaking, they get uncomfortable, and say it doesn’t feel authentic.

This issue came up again with a client just the other day. I was coaching her to use more expression, and she said “That doesn’t feel like me.”

So, what does it really mean to be authentic? What does it mean to speak in your authentic voice? Continue Reading

What Do YOU Want To Say?

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Our need to “self express” is deeply human. It is a key to our creativity and having a life that has meaning.

It’s also key to both our spiritual growth and our worldly contribution.

Your voice is your primary instrument of self expression, yet you normally take it for granted.

So much of our culture conspires against your full self expression – cultural expectations of women (and men), the things you were told as a child, traumatic events that caused you to shut down, your own perceptions of how you’re “supposed” to sound.

I call these “voice stories” – unconscious decisions you’ve made about how to sound (or NOT to sound), and about how you can speak, that cause you to hold your voice back.

I’m on a mission to bring back your full self expression, and I’ve discovered that opening up your voice is an overlooked, underutilized way to do it.

When Connie came to work with me, she had a very small, quiet voice. We met in Zumba class, and she would always stand in the back. She never smiled. If she came in late, we never noticed her coming in.

She felt that people didn’t listen to her, and told me that people would often talk over her.

Now, she was not a tiny woman, nor was she any kind of dummy. She was a CFO in between jobs.Continue Reading

Beat Stress and Overwhelm By Taking In The Good

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by Ariana Newcomer

The news is almost uniformly bad. We feel like there’s never enough time. Traffic is terrible. We worry about money and our health. We worry about work and family. We worry about the planet.

We feel stressed. It feels like the world is stressful.

In truth, the world is just happening. The stress we feel comes from the inside. In an earlier article, Perspective Is Everything, I wrote about how we can shift the stories we tell ourselves (our perspective) about what happened so we can get out of the negative loop and move forward.

Perspective is key. But there is also a neurological reason for our tendency to focus on the negative.

Our brains are wired to pay more attention to things that are threatening, or MIGHT be threatening. It’s a survival mechanism that was very important to early humans.

These days, this brain function can be less than helpful, since many of the things we perceive as threats are not really life-threatening at all. Yet our brains and bodies react as though they were.

The good news is, we can change our brains! Neuroscience has realized that our brains are capable of learning and growing all throughout life. We can create new habits and pathways in our brains with the right input, delivered consistently over time.Continue Reading

Tonality And Making Your Offer

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I find that many coaches, speakers and entrepreneurs, when they deliver presentations from the stage, on webinars, or during 1:1 sales conversations, totally shift the tone of their voice when it comes to asking for the sale!

Here’s an excerpt from a free video training I created last summer in the lead up to my first Voice Your Value™: How To Charge What You’re Worth and Get It! group program.

In this free video, I share a highly effective technique at about the 2:21 mark that helps you dramatically shift how you’re using your voice in sales conversations and presentations.
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