Set Your Voice Free: How to Get the Singing or Speaking Voice You Want

by Roger Love

2. Immediately Move to Grateful Happiness is a good start, but it’s not enough. People know that you can be happy and still be a jerk. So you can reinforce your identity as a good person by using sounds in a way that communicates that you are honored your audience is listening to you, and lets them know that you sense their attention and appreciate it. Grateful, because it is a response to the audience, is slower and softer than Happy. It’s a pause to say, “I noticed you, and I’m savoring our contact.” Slightly drawing out the syllables of your words creates a subtle reason for the audience to lean in and feel the appreciation you’re sending it. Grateful is gracious—it doesn’t rush. Grateful is softer because it comes from a place of honor, a place that is noncompetitive. Too many conversations are like a boxing match—you punch, they punch. By lowering your volume you are saying, “I do not wish to overpower you, only hear you and show you how much I respect your presence.”