Ariana Newcomer

Healing the soul's voice

Do you let your voice out to play?

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do you let your voice out to play

Being creative is essential to our success – in whatever we do. I wrote 2 articles recently about the process of creativity – Are You Crazy?, and The Art of Serendipity.

Here’s another crucial piece of your creativity that no one is telling you about: Your voice.

I’ve seen it over and over again with my clients. When you free up your voice, when you learn to play with your voice, and gain a greater range of self expression through your voice, your creativity sky rockets.

Your voice is an expression of your essence.
So, if you’re holding your voice back (which most of you are doing without realizing it), you’re holding back your essence. And you’re holding back your creativity, which is tied to freely expressing your essence.

Here’s what I recommend:
Read out loud regularly, especially from books or poems that are just silly and fun, so you can actually PLAY with your voice. 10-15 minutes 3x a week is enough. I love Dr. Suess books for this practice.Continue Reading

You’re not as good as you think

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goodasyouthinksm

Yes, I acknowledge it. This is the opposite of what I usually tell you.

Most of the time, I’m all about getting women (especially) to understand that you are better than you think you are, so you can stop hiding out and feeling like a fraud. So you can own your value and the value of everything you have to offer, and we can hear that in your voice.

But there’s a time when you’re NOT as good as you think you are.

It’s when you’ve finally gotten yourself to get out there and speak. You’ve got some experience. You feel like you’ve got your story down. You’ve given your talk or presentation many times, and you’re getting some good feedback.

You think you sound pretty good, and you think you don’t need a speaking coach anymore.

Or, WHEW, you’re glad you never spent the money on that speaker coach you talked to. I knew I could do it myself, you say.

Ooops.

You’ve forgotten a crucial thing about your brain. Or, maybe, you never knew this – your brain is messing with you.

You don’t hear yourself accurately. Or more correctly, you don’t LISTEN to yourself accurately.

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Are You In Partnership With Yourself?

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Are You In Partnership With Yourself?I’m passionate about creating true partnership between men and women, so we can all be in partnership with our planet to create a world we can all thrive in.

So, I’m taking a course based on Riane Eisler’s book, “The Power of Partnership.” I’ve been blessed to work with her directly in the past, and she is an amazing woman who has been inspiring me since the 80s.

Our first module is about our partnership with SELF – which is the place we have to start. We can’t create true partnership with others until we become a true partner with ourSELF.

For me, this means accepting ALL of me – even the parts that seem pretty dark or that look like they’re still sabotaging me in spite of all my years of personal growth work.

One issue that’s coming up again is the masculine vs. feminine within myself, and in our culture. I’ve found a more integrated way of looking at them in Riane’s work.

There are a lot of authors and coaches now working with “feminine principles,” “feminine power,” “feminine leadership models,” and “feminine” _______ (fill in the blank with your favorite). They encourage women to tune in to their “feminine” instead of their  “masculine,” which has been causing them to push too hard, to burn out, to operate from a way of being that isn’t natural.

Let me be clear – I’m FOR the resurgence of the feminine. We need to bring the traditionally-considered-as-female qualities — caring, nurturing, collaboration, deep listening, going with the flow, doing without forcing, etc. — into businesses, our lives, and our culture. We also need to raise women up to true equal (partnership) status with men.Continue Reading

No, no, no!!

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no

Do you struggle sometimes to say that little word, “no?”

Yep. Me, too.

I led exercises in how to say NO at the FEM Talks event, “How To Set Nourishing Boundaries and Say No With An Open Heart”.

I asked the women when it was hard for them to say no. Some of the things they said were:Continue Reading

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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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