Let others know what you truly want and need when you find your authentic voice!

Identify the “should’s” that are muffling your authentic voice

If you’ve said the word “should” in my presence in the past five or so years, you probably have an idea of the first step here.

Finding your authentic voice starts with identifying all the beliefs and stories that are muffling it.  When you catch yourself saying the word “should” it’s usually a great sign you’re trying to meet someone else’s standard – but not your own.

Have you ever found yourself saying – “it’s ok” or “it’s not a big deal” when in reality it really isn’t ok and it is a big deal?  Maybe you find yourself fuming in frustration because you’re stuck at work alone finishing up a big project – after telling everyone you’d be ok if they went home to their families.

Take a moment and think of the last time you found your thoughts and words were out of alignment in this way.  Now think about the story or belief that caused you to respond in that way.  Maybe it’s something along the lines of “nice women don’t make other people’s lives harder”, or “good girls respect their elders by staying silent”, or “people only like me because of what I can do for them”.

This can be big work digging in and discovering the stories and beliefs fueling your “shoulds”.  To help give you a framework in which to get started, I’ve put together a worksheet and companion blog post – you can download the worksheet using the form below.  We also did a micro exercise on this topic in Episode 6 of the podcast – and it’s a great place to start if diving in head first feels a little overwhelming.

The guilt these beliefs bring

Not only do we use the word should to muffle our authentic voice, we also use it to guilt and shame ourselves for not thinking or feeling the way we believe others expect us to.

I was on a Discovery Call with someone the other day who noted she sometimes spends more time running errands than she “should”.  I stopped her to drill down on that.  For her, running errands is one of the few times she gets a break from taking care of her kids.  It’s her alone time.  And some days she’s going to need a little more of that than others in order to return to her family as her best self.  

The amount of time it “should” take her to complete her errands was her belief of what others thought was an appropriate span of time in which to do those tasks.  In identifying that belief, she was able to shift her language to instead say – sometimes I need a little extra alone time so I drive a few miles below the speed limit, take extra time to pick out my produce, or wander the aisles of the big box store instead of having the item I need ready for curbside pickup.

The way she framed her errand running changed – that shift in mindset and languaging is key to finding your authentic voice!  

The way we say our words

But it’s not just about the words we say, it’s also about how we say them.

Maybe you phrase a statement you firmly believe in as a question because you’re not sure how the other person you’re talking to thinks or feels on the subject.  Or perhaps you use a carefree tone even though you’re talking about something you feel very strongly about.  It could be something as little as what to have for dinner or something as big as making a major life choice.

Remember those first attempts I made at guided meditations and visualizations?  When I recorded them I thought I “should” sound ethereal and enlightened.  I’d been listening to guided meditations from a few people at the time who were really breathy – and I thought that was what a good meditation recording “should” sound like.

So I attempted to recreate that cadence, tone, and airy quality.  But whether you’ve been listening since the podcast launched or this is the first episode you’ve caught, I’m guessing you know that breathy and ethereal are not words most people would use to describe my speaking voice.

As a result, you could hear the inauthenticity in my voice as I attempted to replicate the sound of someone I wasn’t.

What happens when you find a should

In order to get to the point where I was recording in a way people who knew me would actually recognize my voice, I had to address a lot of stories and beliefs I had around being good enough.  I had to excavate everything holding me in a place of feeling I didn’t have something to offer unless I sounded like someone else.

I’m still finding and releasing some of these stories but I’ve come a long way.  

I’ll be honest – if you were having a conversation with me in person I’d sound a little different then I do on the podcast – I can be a lazy speaker and I don’t always enunciate – if we’re having an actual conversation you can always ask me to repeat myself, but I don’t want you to have to rewind ten seconds a dozen times to figure out what I’m saying on the podcast.

But – if you’ve been listening to the podcast and you heard my voice in the grocery store – you’d know it was me.