When you feel small or made to feel small, so does your voice. Your voice will shift and sound smaller or quieter.
In this episode, I’m sharing my live session from the Extraordinary Asian Women event hosted by Claudia Chan. This was recorded back on January 30th, 2021, yet is still so relevant today. I was so happy that Claudia said I could share my session with you on this podcast because even though I touch on growing up in a Chinese immigrant household which has its own societal pressures of what a girl or woman is supposed to be, how I’m supposed to act, a lot of the tips I shared is essential to anyone wanting to share their voice and do it in a way that creates so much confidence in what they have to say.
And if you already know that you have something important to say, yet you’re still holding back on your voice, I’d love for you to join me on my free webinar happening on March 31st. It’s called “Master Your Voice to Create Confidence in Your Message”. It’ll be 60-minutes which will also include some time in the end for live hot seat voice coaching. So if you have a question about how to speak more confidently, to get rid of the crackly voice at the of your sentences, how to not feel so scared to speak up, I’d love to have you join me for this webinar and I’ll do some quick one-on-one coaching on the spot as well to immediately shift the way you speak to showcase who you really are.
Head on over to the homepage of the website and on the top of the homepage is a purple button for you to register for the webinar. See you on March 31st!
Links mentioned in the episode:
Connect with Claudia Chan on Instagram @ExtraordinaryAsianWomen
Connect with me!
Find more secrets at http://www.VisibleVoicePodcast.com/
Leave me a voicemail through the “Send Voicemail” purple button on the right of your screen.
Email Mary at VisibleVoicePodcast@gmail.com
Engage with the show on Instagram at @VisibleVoicePodcast
To learn more about or work with Mary, click on over at http://www.OrganizedSound.ca.
Our Conversation:
Claudia Chan
When I first saw it I was like oh my gosh I need to have you on the show. Share with us who you are and how you get to where you are today.
Mary Chan
Wow, big story. Yeah, so like many of you were told to be quiet stay small, I am the youngest of three. And so you know there was an older sister, my brother was the oldest and like many Asian families, brother took priority over everyone so I felt like I needed to be loud and really be louder than everyone just so I can be heard. But my dad. He was a volatile at times so he always told us to shut up, shut up. You’re not supposed to be talking. And so, growing up, I was that fine line of, then who am I, you know, I want to be loud, but I’m told I’m not allowed to be, but being the youngest I also felt like I was able to play with that a bit more, and just stretch it as far as I can because I was not the boy, I was not the oldest girl, so I kind of became the black sheep the rebel of the family. And I really took that to heart because then I was able to figure out what my identity was. And like putting on those different tasks at home. I was the proper Chinese. No did what I was told was very polite and small and spoke with a softer quieter voice maybe a little more high pitched because I was small was one of the families so I kind of spoke like this all the time. And then I realized that how people saw me outwardly. And that because of my voice, and so I was like Well, when I outside of the house. Maybe I can be somebody different, and then I realized no not somebody different. I can be who I truly am. And so, I realized that, you know, it’s okay to be loud, it’s okay to take up as much space as you want. And I’m 5’1″, maybe. So, you know, I can take up more space because I’m so tiny, and it’s okay. And the judgments that we get from other people from our parents from our aunties and uncles and all of that, it’s not a judgment on us. It is their perspective, it’s a judgment on themselves. I find, because maybe they didn’t have that when they were growing up.
Claudia Chan
Yes yes so true so true and when you were talking about how small you are I when you’re talking about that I just feel like I just see you like in this thing portal and just browsing across the room and bouncing around it that you bring across and I love it, I love it. So, I bring you on because you have such a magnetic voice, like, I know that you are listening to your voice and of course like with you being in the radio industry for 20 years. What can you share with us, and we will be diving more into like learning how to exercise our voice and all that which I really want to get into, like, what exactly they choose, get the most out of, like, what would be the two or three lessons that you learn from most from working with the radio.
Mary Chan
Yeah, so what I was saying earlier how my outward projection of myself. People put me. And people do this all the time because we’re human and we want to be able to understand things so we put people into categories, and there are labels for everything right, but even when people did that. Ignore them, because that’s just the way people are processing the brains and that comes with part of the judgment. So what I learned was that when people heard my voice. When I started radio before radio in high school all this, like I was saying, I spoke more out here. And because I kept being told that I was cute and I was small, so I would speak more here and then people would think that I’m cute. And then when I got older I was like wait a minute, I’m not cute. I don’t want you. How can I change that, because I was already a tomboy. You know I didn’t own any dresses I didn’t wear skirts, I were boots. I was sweats, or jeans. In fact, my high school grad I wore boots in a pinstripe suit because I like not wearing a dress. I realize it all came down to my voice. So when I started radio school, it was learning about all the different techniques and intonation and pitch. And I realized I was only speaking up here because everybody thought I was cute, but if I wanted people to really understand who I was, you had to lower your voice a bit in this in here is my natural voice, not open here, because you’re higher you’re up here you’re a different person. But if you can find that trueness who you are, where you’re speaking from your heart, your voice needs to lower and be in that comfortable position. And I’m not talking about, you’re going to be speaking way down here because I’m the boss and have the boss voice. But where’s your natural happy medium Who are you and your voice is going to reflect that.
Claudia Chan
Oh my god, like just that alone like we’re talking about speaking from the heart and like when you’re talking about like when you’re finding that voice in this area where the heart is and sharing with people and then that’s when you show your true self to other people. And that just like it just links everything together. I don’t know about other people I’m just like, a mind blown moment right now. Mind blown moment right now. And, and one of the things that my husband always tells me is that you need to like fluctuate your voice because you still monotone, you put people to sleep. Okay, so let’s dive into learning about voice. When people come to you to want to work on their voice, what are the few areas that you usually teach people, open themselves up or be aware of.
Mary Chan
Yeah, so there’s various things but one of the first things that I always step into first is, what is that fear behind your voice again like we know this, the most of it is all in our head. So, let’s get it out. What is holding you back from using your voice, your true voice, your heart voice. And where is that fear coming from. And if you can just acknowledge it, then you can be aware of it. And then just move past it. Because the learning that I can teach you and the different techniques won’t do anything if you don’t get past the fear first and acknowledging all of that because if I say, oh yes so you’ll need to talk with different levels of pitch and pacing and elongation that doesn’t matter because that will come naturally. Once you’re more free to speak your mind.
Claudia Chan
Wow. Wow. One thing I do have to share is acknowledging that fear, because even coming on to like starting this morning to now, I felt like more ease, because it’s like that initial fear of like oh my god I’m going to forget my live
Mary Chan
Virtual is great though. We all have our notes and nobody can see you.
Claudia Chan
Exactly. I remember like watching one of your videos you went like go you don’t want to write your script, because you, you’ll be like beating. Yeah, I have to just do point form. It’s all up here right?
Mary Chan
Yeah, yeah, reading, reading a script takes talent that takes a lot of experience so I always recommend to people, it’s the bullet points, because once you have the bullet points, that’s where your real true heart voice comes from.
Claudia Chan
Maybe we can dive a little bit deeper into like looking at into this fear because I’m sure when you’re working with your clients. You can tell all they want like like y’all have to get your fear out of it, that’s specific things that people can do to actually work with that
Mary Chan
Record yourself. A lot. I hated that. When I first started radio school I hated it because you had to listen to yourself, and you get to hear all the different nuances in your voice and that’s what I realized I spoke up here. Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do, that’s how that’s how people hear me? That’s amazing. That’s amazingly bad. How do I fix this? So it takes practice and getting used to listening to yourself and hearing how you sound, and then being able to get feedback too, because how you hear yourself sound like the first time you’re going to record yourself and listen to it. You’re gonna think that’s how people hear me oh my gosh, that’s not how I hear myself, but remember too that your voice when you hear it yourself, your voice radiates out of your mouth. But first, it needs to move through your vocal cords through your skull through the bones in your body, and then it comes out. So how you hear it, your speakers are in your ears, but other people, speakers are outside of your mouth so they hear it differently it resonates differently. So when you record yourself and hear it back. Just know that it’s not how you hear yourself in your head. So you will then get used to hearing. Oh, this is how people hear me. And not only just with the tone of your voice, but also how you’re saying it. It’s never the words you use, but it is how you say something so my favorite example is saying I love you, you write it on a blog writing blog posts, Instagram, whatever. It says I love you, and you can say it that way. Or you can say, I love you. Or, I love you, or I love you. Three same words, but expressed so differently, and how you say something. So start recording yourself and see if you can play around with it and be silly be goofy. Be serious. Be animated because like I said your voice isn’t just your vocal cords that comes out of your mouth. The sound waves. It is your entire body. So be animated with your face, use your hands, try something new, you know like, I’ve got a five year old, you have kids I know Claudia You said you have a half a three and a half year old. So there you go, you probably have some books hanging around, right, kids books are awesome at practicing your voice, because they’re fun, sometimes they rhyme. And you can put on voices. I love reading to my daughter, because you can play the fairy voice and we are going to go down the forest path now, and then you can switch be the ogre and have the ogre voice and it’s going to be scary because the goats are walking on the bridge. The billy goats gruff, you know, and so you get to play around and be silly with it and take any opportunity to try and expand your vocal range.
Claudia Chan
That is such great tips and I have to agree with you because a lot of people don’t like their voice, including myself, I did not like, like the first few times I was recording myself, it was like cringe worthy to listen to myself talk. And every time I go on to a Zoom call, and I when I listened to myself, I was like oh my god what, what am I saying?
Mary Chan
But even in this instance right now like when you are having this conversation with me. Your voice is totally different than when you went to say, read everybody’s introduction to me and my ears. It sounded like you decided to switch on the different voice, so you’re like, Oh, I have to be presenter now.
Claudia Chan
Okay, okay. Yeah.
Mary Chan
So I’m going to be proper. I’m going to sit a little bit more straight. And I’m going to start reading. Rather than you know what this person is amazing, her bio is going to be outstanding because she’s an amazing person. And when I read this bio, she’s gonna sound that way. So how do you want our listener to feel when you do have something to read. A bio isn’t boring because a bio is going to be introducing who the person is and the person is exciting. So, make the bio exciting
Claudia Chan
Okay yes yeah, thank you for pointing that out great feedback and I love it! We don’t know these things until other people pointed out to you.
Mary Chan
That’s the other point about recording yourself that I was trying to get to do like tangent over here, that when you record yourself. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback, it could be from your sister, your mother, your best friend, your husband. But what you’re asking for is how do I sound to you? You know what feelings, am I conveying about this? It’s not about what I’m actually saying again. But how does it make you feel when you hear me in this recording, and that’s the feedback you want. So they’re not critiquing you for every little thing, they’re just showing you you’re outward projection of what you’re trying to say.
Claudia Chan
So the other thing I would like to ask you is that you can give us tips on is, when I was re-listening to some of my previous recordings is that I say a lot of um’s and filler words. Could you give our audience some tips on how do we go about getting rid of those.
Mary Chan
Okay, so first of all, I just want to say that filler words like “um” the word “like”, “ah”, “right”, “yes”, “Uh huh”. Those are all part of our natural speech, it’s not terrible. It can be, if you say it a lot, and all you keep doing is “ah” “um” every five words that can get annoyed and people won’t trust what you’re saying, but having a little bit of it here and there is part of our natural speech, especially for women I want to make that distinction too that men and women speak very differently because you know if you think back in the olden days, men tend to make all the decisions of the world. And so, they have more of a ladder type speech where somebody would say something, they didn’t win the conversation. The other man would say something and they’re trying to win a conversation. Where women we weren’t allowed to speak at all. And so when we started to have our own voices in history, we spoke more in a horizontal plane, meaning that when one person says something somebody else is going to say something to acknowledge what the first person said, so we’ll say, “uh huh, yeah” or repeat a phrase, and we’re not interrupting. But what we are doing is creating a real conversation, and to validate the other person’s feelings and acknowledge who they are and so that’s kind of why as women, we do a lot of “ah” “um’s” and “uh-huh’s” because you know if we’re going to say, you should see a therapist, that’s going to be kind of harsh. If you just say you should see a therapist, but if you said, um, you know, I just think that maybe yeah you should see a therapist. You need those “um’s” and “ah’s”, because the parts, after it are more vulnerable. So if you don’t have the “um’s” and “ah’s”. You’re not showing your true authentic vulnerable self, also. So, that’s one point. But I understand that, you know, especially in the corporate world that you don’t want to come across as flighty when you’re doing the “um’s and “ah’s”. But again, that’s a lot of policing of women’s voices. And so what I can say is, when you do speak from the heart again when you figure that out those “um’s” and “ah’s” disappear because you’re speaking your passion, and there is never going to be a spot where you are totally going to be lost for words. I mean, yeah, we forget words every now and then, but your message will always be there.
Claudia Chan
So powerful, and yes, and we get to change our speech, according to the situation as you said ‘cuz when you are trying to connect with the other person. You do need those filler words in there so that they feel like it’s a softening of the recommendation, versus when you’re in like a corporate world and you need to stay strong and like that voice will be a lot lower.
Mary Chan
Yeah so maybe when you do want to have that presentation, or you know you’re going to be, “uh”, you know, I just did it there. It happens all the time. So, when you do recognize that in yourself. Silence is actually golden. So if you know you’re gonna say, ah, just say nothing. It’s only awkward for yourself because you think oh my gosh, there’s silent it’s probably been a whole minute and I have not said a thing. But if you, you know are recording this and you go back and you look it’s like a blink of a second, because you’re just thinking again so you’re gonna say something and then you’re like, I want to say, ah, don’t say, ah, think about it. Silence, recollect your thoughts, and then go for it, that silence is not a killer. Silence is golden.
Claudia Chan
Oh, Yes, so good. Thank you so much. Is there anything else that you can offer us we have two more minutes, that you would like to share with the audience in regards to what they can do to work on their toys or if there’s anything else.
Mary Chan
Yeah, one thing that you did say to me earlier. and I know a lot of people say this to me when they first come to me is I’m monotone you know it’s flat, you’re going to put people to sleep, that that whole thing. Go back to figuring out what your vocal range is. So again, when you think of a vocal range. I like to think of your throat here as an elevator. So everyone’s got a bit of an Adam’s apple even women. So if you just lightly touch your throat here and swallow. You can feel your throat jump up and down. Right. That’s your Adam’s apple. So when you go up higher in pitch it naturally moves up high. And then when you go lower down in pitch it naturally moves down low. So think of this as your elevator, an elevator goes up to the top to the rooftop garden, and down into the garage, all the time. It’s constantly moving, so why shouldn’t your voice be the same thing. Why, why is your elevator broken and always stuck on the main floor. Your elevator can move up over here and say something and then be way down here if you want to be more assertive. That’s my visual for you.
Claudia Chan
Thank you so much!
Mary Chan
So I do a lot of work with podcasters so we’re always behind the microphone. But now I realize you know with this whole COVID pandemic thing. Everyone is behind a microphone now your laptop has a microphone your phone has a microphone so we are always, always talking, and there are always speakers, like speakers as in like the box speaker not people speakers, every voice is the speaker. So there are lots of ears, and they want to hear you. Get started on figuring out what that vocal range is.
All right thank you so much Mary so good to be on here. It’s amazing, amazing amazing in order for us to voice, like have that voice, we need to practice and we actually need to be aware of what we need to practice when we need to practice on.
But also know too, you know, like, one of your questions was the “ah’s” and “um’s”, you know, know that that is societal pressure on women, especially Asian women too because we’re told never seen anything, that it’s the societal pressure for us to speak perfectly. What is this perfection that everybody is aiming towards? Everyone needs to have their personality. And if you go back and you want to actually tick through all the times that I just said, “um” and “ah” and “right”, everybody does it. So you just put yourself out there and give it a try and be, be aware of what you’re doing and if you personally don’t want to do that and say “um’s” and “ah’s”, then, let’s switch that together.
Claudia Chan
Thank you so much, Mary. So, good to have you on here.
