How long does it take to change your voice?

We are conditioned to think of this process in terms of hours, days, weeks, months, and years. There is an element of playing the long game when we envision the process of unfolding that is our voice journey. This is absolutely unavoidable, and when embraced as a concept, can be the capstone project of life’s great journey.

But there is another kind of change that can happen instantaneously. The kind of change that we do not expect. Change that makes us sit up and say, “my voice is different. Mm, that’s wonderful.”

We all have some aspect of our voice (or laundry list of issues) that we would like to improve, remove, or transform. My question to you: how much time are you willing to co-exist with stress, potential suffering, and that existential “oh, well” that has become how you view your singing?

Hours, days, weeks, months, years?

When placed in this kind of frame, this doesn’t even make sense! Because the issues we confront in our singing practice seem timeless, don’t they? They will always be here, right?

My voice is getting older, I will never feel good about it again.

My voice is stuck, I guess that’s the way it is.

My voice is faulty, I will never be able to have control.

NO. That inner “oh, well, I guess this is the way it is” is a mask for what I view as an intense friction between you and your voice.

Friction is uncomfortable. It builds heat slowly, until one day it becomes unbearable, you cannot avoid it, and you are at your wit’s end. But somehow we humans have managed how to stay at our wit’s end for a very long time, indeed.

But you are enabled with a choice: are you willing to live with this friction for an indefinite period of time, or are you willing to change?

Are you willing to default to suffering for hours, days, weeks, months, years with this numbing “oh well,” or are you willing to release the friction in one, single second of a moment?

The preferred answer is obvious. But dear Lord, how?

Once you muster the will to change, there is nothing more that you need to do except to state your new intention:

“I no longer want to live with _______. I am ready to change how I feel about my _______.”

That’s it. But what happens then?

What happens is the sweet unfolding of your new voice timeline. A proverbial fork in the road, where the suffering is not met with more suffering in a steady downgrade, but with clarity, ah-has, inner guidance, and a knowing that you are on the Right Track.

Every choice I have made to release my limited beliefs about my voice has resulted in nothing short of a million mini-miracles unfolding before me. Importantly, when I rub up against some new, unexplored friction (which there always is!), I know how to release it because I have a template.

The inner resistance to my expansion and the healing of my voice becomes easier to manage and overcome. I recognize the patterns, and I have learned to trust the outcome.

The only friction that remains is that which you feel when your ego voice reminds you that this should be harder… you should be more uncomfortable… you can wait it out… it’s not that bad… who are you to want more, you are not that good anyway… you don’t have enough skills… just give up trying… 

You do not have to suffer on account of your voice, my friend. But you must be willing to overcome the volume of the ego voice, to relieve the burn of that invisible, sneaky, sweet-talking psychic friction, and to demand better for yourself.

And that, my friend, is how you heal. It is through the choices you make, and the intentions you state, that initiate that transformation to feeling better and to changing your voice.

I will warn you: there is no confetti, no trumpets, no unfolding scrolls of proclamation, no noisy celebrations for you. Just the profound beat of your own heart that pounds with the knowing that you made the right choice.

And then you feel different. You have changed. And your voice feels different. It has changed.

And then you say, “mm, that’s wonderful.”

Hugs,

allison

IMAGE: Javier Allegue Barros on Unsplash

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