Learn to Sing by Wanting Your Own Voice

I listened to Carrie Wilkerson tonight.  She is the “Barefoot Executive” and is basically a brilliant marketing business woman.

I love her energy, transparency and her ideas about how you can experience success.

Of course, she talks about success in business, but as I finished listening to her webinar tonight, I got to thinking about how her ideas apply to singing and how you can succeed with the voice that you have at this moment in time instead of waiting for some distant moment in the future thinking back to a “better” moment in time.

She talks about 4 “W’s”:

• Want
• Woo
• Win
• Wow

Again, she’s talking about marketing and business, but I want to give you some singing mindset secrets utilizing her 4 “W’s” because I think she’s amazing and I love to utilize amazing principles to help you!

Here we go!

Want Your Voice Not Someone Else’s Voice!

What do I mean by that?

Well, the truth is I work with people all the time who want to sound like someone else instead of themselves.  In fact, you may be one of those people.

Here’s the reality.

If you want to learn to sing better, you need to discover the unique voice that no one else in the world has but you!  It’s your authentic sound, not someone else’s sound.

Trying to sound like someone else is not going to help you learn to sing as well as you are capable of singing either.

That is because the person you think you want to sound like has a voice that no one else in the world has either (including you) so trying to sound like them can be counter-productive.

This bugs a lot of people.  They pull against this truth.  They want something else for themselves.  They don’t like their own voice and they think they are going to find what they want by trying to sound like someone else.

Now I hope this isn’t you.  I hope you know how to love your own voice for what it is.

But if not, then think of what your world would look like, feel like and sound like if you actually starting WANTING YOUR OWN VOICE!

Think about that for a moment and then answer this question totally honestly since there is nobody around to hear your thoughts anyhow:

Do you really want YOUR voice or are you wishing you had someone else’s voice?

If you found out that you honestly want someone else’s voice instead of your own, then we have work to do!

If YOU don’t want your voice, why would anyone else want to hear it?

And, even more important, how are you going to learn to sing with it if you don’t even want it?

Wrestle with this thought for awhile.

Woo Yourself Instead of Expecting Others to Woo You!

This, of course, has to do with the first “W.”

This is the work you need to do.

Remember how it feels when you woo someone or someone woos you?

It’s a sweet time, isn’t it?

The world looks more beautiful.

The flowers smell more lovely.

Life feels good and you feel good.

You believe in the other person and they believe in you.

Now think about how you would feel if you take the kind of energy that you use to woo someone else and put it into wooing yourself into loving your own voice more than you do right now.

You see we humans are always expecting someone else to woo us.  When it comes to our voices, we expect them to encourage us or make us feel good about our voices, give us support, believe in us.

And that is all good and extremely important too!

But you have to be the first person to believe in your voice and in yourself otherwise all your efforts to improve your singing voice will end up disappointing you over and over again.  And that’s because you will always be looking in the wrong places for your answers.  The answers are truly inside of you.

So ask yourself this question and also honestly answer it:

When was the last time you wooed yourself with your voice, meaning when was the last time you got goosebumps when you sang all by yourself with no one listening?

Work that one out too.

Quiet your mind before you sing a single note.

Be sure you connect with the energy that makes goosebumps.

I tell all my students that we “aren’t there yet” until the goosebumps happen.  That’s my measuring stick, my way to evaluate the authenticity of your voice, of your particular and unique sound.

Win the Singing Mindset Battle!

When you get to the point where you can honestly say that you WANT your own voice and not someone else’s sound or voice; when you can consistently WOO yourself when you sing and consistently give yourself goosebumps, then you are ready to WIN the biggest battle of all:  your singing mindset!

What am I talking about?

I have actually covered this topic in a couple of other places, so you can read more about that by starting with Inside Voice Outside Voice.

Basically, one of the powerful secrets to learning how to sing is discovering that what you think about your voice deep inside your mind and what others have told you about your voice, good or bad, directly impact the way you sing now.

The old saying, “You are what you think” applies here big time.  So, check out the article I mentioned above and then answer this:

Do you have patterns that are deeply rooted in the past that hinders or slows you down from making the kind of progress with your singing voice that you long for?

Let me give you a pointer on the answer to that question:  we ALL have something leftover that holds us back!

So work on getting down and dirty with your inner thoughts about your voice.  Go all the way back to your childhood and your school experiences.  It’s time to WIN the battle for your voice and it all starts right inside your head!

Now Go and Wow Others!

This is the fun part.

After you do the hard work of facing what you honestly feel about your voice and whether or not you want the one you have or you want to sound like somebody else; after you get the hang of creating goosebumps just about every time you open your mouth to sing; and after you take a hard look at the messages you were given about your singing voice when you were a child and then later in life, then you are ready to go out and truly WOW others with your voice.

The world becomes a better place when you do this.

So get to work on your true inner attitudes about your voice.

And remember, I’m here to help and answer your questions, so be sure to let me know what you got out of this article by writing to me in the Comments section below.

Thanks,

Joy