The Voice and How it Relates to These Biomechanics
These biomechanics are behind having a great voice. And having a great voice is far more powerful than you think.
Throughout my 20’s and 30’s it felt like my voice was getting tighter and tighter.
When I was in high school my voice was pretty loud and it made it easy for me to be a bit of a wise ass in class, etc.
But then it just got tighter and tighter. The resonance was disappearing.
It made it hard to speak in loud rooms.
It made it easier for others to interrupt and talk over me. Which was extremely frustrating.
It impacted both my personal and professional life significantly. In some ways it took away some of my desire to socialize… despite the fact that I was a very social person by nature.
I declared war on it and decided I was gonna figure it out no matter what.
Eventually i did. And surprise surprise… it was related to this biomechanical shit the whole time.
The years I was losing my voice
During the nearly 20 years from ~21 till 38 yrs old, I was looking for answers to why my voice felt tight… i literally looked at everything.
I googled for hundreds of hours about the voice and what could impact it. Then chased down each potential option like a serial killer till I could rule it out.
I started out with a voice coach in 2000 that I paid to teach me how to develop my voice to be stronger. And when I was ‘singing’ my voice was actually pretty strong.
But my normal talking voice was the main problem. It sounded a bit ‘muffled’ unless I strained it.
And if I strained it for an extended period of time in a loud room it would get tighter and tighter. Plus my neck and shoulders would for some reason tighten up with it.
I also went down all kinds of other avenues like stomach issues (reflux), treating muscular issues with various types of physio, and taking tons of various pharmaceuticals that were prescribed to me over the years.
Particularly powerful muscle relaxants that had some beneficial temporary effect but also made me feel pretty weird. I even tried botox a couple times.
Nothing had any kind of permanent effect.
How I fixed my voice for awhile in late 2015
It was in 2015 that I got my answers about my long struggle with my voice.
I was coming back from the incident in 2014 where the dentist had drilled my teeth that I talk about here:
And i was learning how these biomechanics worked for the first time. I’d started with Starecta but by mid-2015 was also iterating a bit with my own stuff.
And not only was I feeling and looking a lot better but my voice was getting stronger.
It was as if the soft tissue that was holding the structures of the voice in the wrong position were now being loosened. I was getting my resonance back and I was speaking louder effortlessly.
Note too that in 2015 I was promoted 2x in Lazada from a senior PM to a SVP of Product (one of just two that reported to the CPO). I credit this less to my cognitive and neurologic improvements than my voice improvement.
The return of my voice allowed the confident and sharp-whitted Ken that I was many years before to return.
Unfortunately I only held it for a few months before I did a few bad experiments and once again screwed it up.
But I’d seen a glimpse of the truth finally. The root cause that i’d chased all those years..
The Power of the voice
I’ve been paying attention to the voice for over two decades now and I cannot begin to tell you just how powerful it is.
When my voice was strong, for example in 2015, everything just became easier. Particularly it became much easier to convince people to do things. I just became a more persuasive and charismatic person without trying.
Then as it got worse… this ‘charisma’ left as soon as it came.
Over the next 5-6 years I was fluctuating up and down. And as I repeated the same patterns over and over again, it allowed me to see just how powerful the voice is.
One thing I like to tell folks is… “Your voice is 99% of charisma.”
Find a person with a very resonant and crisp voice like Matthew Mcconaughey, and you will almost always notice that that person is a very charismatic person.
Because they can get people to listen to them and focus their attention on them easily.
It is like an unfair advantage that is constantly at their disposal, thus making for very fertile ground to develop their personality and the content part of charisma.
Voice will almost always trump content. This is the other thing you notice…. a person with a loud and pleasant voice can basically interrupt anyone they want all of the time. Even if what they say is not that smart.
I’d paid attention to numerous instances of this over the years. And it is like we are just programmed as humans to listen to the more powerful and resonant voice. And forgive it of its trespasses.
I notice this stuff in others all the time
I’ve been paying attention to the voice and it’s relationship to these biomechanics I talk about here for so long that it has become more of a law for me than theory.
I can hear someone speak and I more or less know what their skull looks like (symmetric, ‘inflated’, and usually always attractive). Because the more you pay attention to this stuff, the more you realize that it is just two sides of the same coin.
Think about it…. can you listen to a voice and form a strong opinion on whether that person is a model or a professional athlete?
Yes, you probably can. Because their voice is almost always very crisp and resonant.
I remember watching this one model talking in a loud bar. I was yelling to my friend to be heard and here she was about 4-5 people down talking in her normal speaking voice and I could hear her every word clearly.
The voice, in my view, correlates more highly with success in life than pretty much any other factor. Intelligence, education, you name it.
Run a regression analysis on people who have an awesome voice and I bet this factor will kick the asses of all those other factors. By a wide margin.
Parting words
So hopefully by now i’ve imparted on you just how powerful the human voice is. And why it is by far the most important thing that I am optimizing for as I fix this stuff and take it to its finish line (later this year).
Will I look better? Yes, a shitload.
Will I be healthier? Yes, a shitload.
Will I think faster and probably be smarter? Yes.
But the one I look forward to the most… getting my ‘true’ voice back.
Why? Because that is the one that truely enables you to kick some ass ;)