Harmony at Work

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We’ve all heard the phrase, “You don’t get a second chance to make first impression.”  We know that, to make a good impression, one should dress in nice clothes, look the other person in the eye, and give a firm handshake. But one of your most important assets may be neglected: the sound and quality of your voice. (This is of course crucial if your first impression is made over the phone.)

Here is an example. Haridas and I once got into a cab in Calcutta. The driver gave us the silent nod, thereby asking us where we wanted to go. We weren’t sure of the exact location or the directions, so we called a friend and handed the phone to the cab driver. He proceeded to shout into the phone with a voice so harsh that it was almost frightening. We were so put off by his tone of voice that we jumped out of the cab, and he lost our business.

Swami Kriyananda explains how to improve the quality of your voice in Creating Opportunities (Lesson 25 of Success and Happiness through Yoga Principles).

Your voice can and should be one of your chief assets. Many people however, unfortunately for them, never take the trouble to develop magnetic voices that express warm feeling and other uplifting qualities of the heart. Some people croak at others like frogs. When they announce, “It’s great to see you!” your instinctive reaction, often, is to ask yourself, “What do they want from me?” Voices like that repel; they do not attract. Their friends will make excuses for them, perhaps by explaining, “He really has a heart of gold.” (“Yeah, sure,” we mutter silently to ourselves.)

To bring magnetism to your voice, learn first to breathe properly. Think of a garden hose for an analogy. There are two ways to strengthen the flow of water passing through it. One is to tighten the nozzle; the other is to increase the flow at the tap. “Tightening the nozzle” is also a very common way of increasing the power of one’s voice. What people do is squeeze the throat, which enables them to produce a thin, cackling noise that may, for some things, be effective, but that cannot but be unattractive also, and sometimes even offensive. Instead of trying to squeeze the vocal cords to increase the volume of sound coming through them, try to increase that volume by using the diaphragm as a bellows from below. Relax the throat; don’t tense it. Lift your breath upwards, past the vocal cords, like a violin bow stroking the strings.

One can inject much more power into the voice, and do so quite effortlessly, by simply relaxing the vocal cords and “lifting” the voice up through them to the lips and the forehead.

The “violin bow” of the breath can also stroke the heart strings to bring warmth, rather than a pure operatic tone, to the voice. I can’t easily explain this discovery through this medium of the written word, but in classes I have worked with people on their voice production, and have found that within very few minutes they were, virtually all of them, singing—audibly so—from the heart. To the extent that you can understand these written words, experiment with what I am saying. You will find that if you can infuse consciousness into your voice, people will want to hear you, and will feel even before they get to know you that you are (as you must in fact feel yourself to be) their friend. (Listen to Kriyananda’s guidance on voice production (MP3)).

The better placed your voice is, the better your own individuality will come out. It will be like your “calling card.” Often, when I return to some city where I have spent time in the past, and phone a friend after reaching there, I may only say, “Hello,” and a pleased voice over the wire exclaims, “Swami! When did you arrive?” Sometimes I get to say nothing but, “Uh,” and the same thing happens.

Here are several things that will help you when speaking:

1) Don’t speak in a monotone. It will lull people to sleep. Your voice will be much more magnetic if it has a certain melody to it. Melody should be very individual, not the product of a socially recognized pattern. Americans tend to speak in a monotone. The English often infuse an attractive melody into their speech—until one realizes that the melody is culturally induced, and hasn’t creative feeling behind it.

2) Avoid the common practice of dropping your voice at the end of a sentence. Imagine someone saying to you, “I find it simply amazing!” but reducing that last word to a mumble or a whisper!

3) The beginning and ending of a sentence are vital to the impact it has. Your voice will be more magnetic if you can inject extra energy into those first and last words.

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Tags: diaphragmatic breathing, energy, law of attraction, magnetism, opportunity, voice

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 3:59 pm and is filed under success course, techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.