Listen to Yourself

I'm doing a course in professional voice & voice over.  I now have two CDs of my tracks.  Listening to yourself is a strange but enlightening experience.

I find I sound better than I feared, and not as good as I hoped.

My piano students say they find the same thing when they hear recordings of themselves.

Once I start listening, I can hear tiny hesitations or stumbles, which I can then choose whether to work on - or not.  Some variations are "just us", they are the tiny things that make up our style, our sound.  Other 'variations' have me cringing... "I don't really sound like that... do I?" 

Knowledge is power, and until I know what I sound like, I'm working in the dark.

I think that might be a metaphor we can use in the rest of our life too.  So many little hiccups in our personal life come because we haven't listened to ourself.  Or have listened from our own narrow focus, not the other person's:

"You tried really hard, and I know you'll do better next time!"

It's meant to be encouraging, and it is.  It also gives the game away that I thought this attempt wasn't actually any good.

"I'll try to get it a bit better next time..."

When a student said this to me, I said:  "How about trying to get it a lot better, then?  Why limit yourself to just a bit better?" It's better to concentrate on what you'll do to get better, than how much you'll get better.

So, have a listen to yourself.  See what you find out.