Ariana Newcomer

Healing the soul's voice

Becoming Fearless (Or Not)

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I was in a coaching program for a while with “Fearless” in the title. I learned a lot, but I didn’t become fearless.

Lots of people out there want to teach you how to become Fearless!! – to banish fear, to get rid of it, to stop it – because fear is BAD. Fear is negative, and we can’t have any negativity in our lives if we want to succeed. Or so the story goes.

The truth is, it’s not actually a good thing to get rid of fear.

There are 3 pieces of this.

One: Fear is actually a very valuable thing that tells us something is wrong, or could go badly wrong. Sometimes it is necessary to survival. That fear you feel when you’re thinking about whether to get into an elevator with a shifty-eyed, bad-energy-pouring-off-him guy is a good thing. It says, “Danger! Don’t go in there!”

Two: Making the automatic judgment that fear is negative usually misses the point.Continue Reading

Will You Support Women Speaking Powerfully?

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In our journey to create a better world, one of the crucial things we need to do is support powerful women speaking powerfully.

ALL of us.

We have what I call a “cultural voice story” – that women’s voices are less important than men’s. There’s another one I’ve just realized we have – that women have to compete (and compete hard) with each other for the attention of men.

Men can be very dismissive of women’s voices. Another story – we don’t need to pay attention to what women say. I worked with a woman pilot, whose male co-pilots didn’t pay any attention to her voice over their headphones unless she dropped her pitch to sound more like a guy. In her normal speaking voice, they completely tuned her out. It was as if she hadn’t even spoken. When she sounded more like a guy, their brains paid attention.

Voice stories can be insidious, because they are largely UNCONSCIOUS. You don’t even know you have them.

So men, please be aware of these cultural voice stories, and stop buying into them. Notice if you’re tuning women out, and make a choice to tune them back in.

And women, we can be even more critical of other women than the guys are. Men may tune us out, but we often actively tear each other down.

I may have been lucky with women – I’ve been knocked down more often by men than by other women. But I have female friends who have been really savaged by other women.

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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

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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