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8
Expressing Yourself

“If you want the truth,

I’ll tell you the truth:

Listen to the secret sound,

the real sound,

which is inside you.”

– Kabir

I've heard people declare, “I mean what I say and I say what I mean”.

If only it were that simple! What if I were to take you by the shoulders, shake you and yell, “I love you!” How would you interpret those words? Or if I folded my arms, tightened my jaw and said in a high clipped voice, “No, I don't mind! I don't mind at all!” Would you take my words at face value?

You hear people lament sometimes, “But I told him I wasn't upset!” sounding deeply hurt even as they say the words. The words are the surface structure, and the meaning is a much less obvious deep structure. Being hidden under the surface language, the meaning of what you say has to be “interpreted” by the listener via your expression, breathing, tone of voice, body language, pauses, and a host of tiny clues. Words don't have fixed meanings.

So when you think about expressing yourself in a conversation, you need to take into consideration various different factors beyond the actual words you say; and the first of these is the sound of your voice.

8.1 Expressing You – Voice

“There is no index of character so sure as the voice.”

– Benjamin Disraeli

Be Heard and Understood

The first possible misunderstanding in conversation is thinking that in saying the words you have communicated with the other person. You haven't communicated anything unless they've heard and grasped what you're saying. People don't always let us know if they haven't quite caught our words, and if the effort to understand is too great, people just give up.

You can find much more about how to speak clearly in my book, Voice and Speaking Skills For Dummies.

So the first voice principle is to be understood. Here are some basics to help you:

Speak at a steady pace. Slow down even more if your accent is unfamiliar to your listener.
Take good breaths to power your words and give them flow.
Relax – your voice will work much better if you're not tense.
Open your mouth when you speak. Articulate the consonants clearly, and shape the vowels. Especially enjoy long consonants, as in mmagic and wwonderful; and long vowels, as in vaast and cooool.
Emphasize the most important words in each sentence – the ones that really matter to the sense.
Vary your pitch. It's much more difficult to understand the meaning if every word has the same emphasis and tone. It's boring too.

Speak with Flow

If you fear that you are not articulate, practise speaking in whole sentences and expressing your ideas clearly.

To get used to a flow of words in everyday life, practise answering with more than a simple yes or no when people ask questions. Get used to making a sentence each time. Here is an example with three possible answers that are all more than just yes or no.

Do you like fish?

Yes, I do.

Yes, I love every kind of fish.

No, I'm not very fond of fish, to be honest.

To make a conversation flow, try adding a question back to the other person as part of your answer:

Do you like fish?

Yes, I do. I think I prefer it to meat. What about you?

Are you speaking at the meeting?

Yes, I'm speaking about the Africa Project. You were involved in organizing the finance for that, weren't you?

If you find that you tend to hesitate and stumble when you speak, practise the following:

Ask yourself a question (or get a friend to ask you); for example, “Explain your work role to me”, or “What have you organized for your holiday this year?”
Answer the question out loud. It doesn't matter if you hesitate or ramble a bit – this is your first reply.
Now ask yourself, “What were my main points?” Marshall your thoughts and give a second answer, shorter than the first one.
Ask yourself again, “What's my main thrust?” This time make your answer even shorter and more to the point than before.

Gradually, you will find you get used to organizing your thoughts before you speak, to achieve greater eloquence and flow. This is a useful exercise not only for conversation, but also for interviews, speaking in meetings and any occasion where you are called upon to express yourself without preparation.

Getting Rid of Useless Fillers

Some of us pepper our conversation with little filler words and sounds like, you know, sort of, erm, well, what I'm trying to say is, um, you see, er … They can be persistent, and it's quite difficult to eliminate them if you just try consciously to cut them out of your speech, as they slip in even before you're aware of them. By focusing on other relevant elements of your speech the fillers will disappear on their own. For example:

Give yourself space to think before you reply. A thinking pause is good! Many people stumble because they rush into words before they're ready.
Take a deliberate full breath before each thought. Many filler sounds slip in when you run out of air and take an extra snatched breath halfway through a sentence.
Use your air freely as you speak – don't hold it back to make it last longer. Take a proper breath each time and breathe where you need to. Using lots of air gives your speech energy and direction.
Once again, slow down! This steadies your mind and gives it longer to formulate what you want to say.
The more comfortable you are in your own shoes, the easier you will find it to be fluent. So relax, chill and give yourself a pat on the back to encourage yourself every time you manage a fluent sentence!

Expressing Interest and Sounding Interesting

Your voice has a much bigger role than merely shaping the words you want to say – its tone can express interest, passion, determination, excitement, uncertainty, caring and much more. It has enormous potential to express what you really intend and feel and to bring life to a conversation.

I was tremendously excited to be going to visit my daughter in Australia. I told a friend. She replied in a monotonous voice, “That's great. I hope you have a good time.” I quickly passed on to other things, feeling unheard. Later, I told another friend my news. Her voice rose in enthusiasm. “Oh, that's so exciting for you! That's great. When do you go? I bet you can't wait!” And through the liveliness and energy of her sound, I felt truly heard.

This is where little words come into their own. When I heard my friend's high pitched, “Oh”, I heard that she shared my excitement. “Ooh” in “Ooh, I've just remembered something” gives a sense of urgency to the statement. “No!” in response to surprising negative news shares the speaker's emotion without taking over the conversation yourself.

You may have one tone of voice that you use for everything. It will greatly help you connect in conversation if you are able to vary your voice according to what you are thinking and feeling. This is partly about learning how to use your voice in different ways – maybe from a voice coach or a course on voice – and partly about allowing yourself to take a risk and be more open, so that others can see and hear what is actually going on for you – your pleasure, anger, determination, passion and joy.

It's good to remember that people can only connect with what they see, hear and feel – in other words they only have externals to go on. They are not inside your head and heart. So when, for example, someone hears your voice, they interpret your message through your voice, whatever words you use. If you say, “I care about you!” in a sharp voice, they interpret “sharp” and feel uncared for. If you say, “I want you to stop that immediately” in a high wavering voice, they interpret “wavering” and don't take much notice. The Persian poet, Rumi, talks about “the enormous difference between light and the words that try to say light”.

It is so easy to betray meaning even when you don't intend to. I heard a neighbour in the summer holidays ask her teenage daughter: “Are you going to stick at home or go out and get a job?” “Stick at home” was spoken in a dull low voice, and then her voice rose to an upbeat “get a job”, making it absolutely clear where her own preferences lay.

Rapport

Sound is particularly important for building a connection. Many people would say that they notice people's appearance more than their voice tone, but voice impacts strongly beneath conscious awareness. If a business-woman is calm, efficient, smart, emotionally intelligent and has a shrill voice, she probably won't be seen as leadership material because her voice jars with people's idea of leadership. Other reasons may well be given for the judgement, but her voice is key. Someone who mumbles is usually considered weak. You can be wonderfully empathetic, but if your voice is harsh, most people won't consider you so.

8.2 Expressing You – Body Language

“She let her walking do her talking,

She's a brilliant conversationalist.”

– T. Graham Brown, lyrics to Brilliant Conversationalist

You don't need expansive gestures to converse, and in many cultures – China and Japan, for instance – people gesture little. But that does not mean that the body is not intimately involved in communication. Every actor knows that you use your whole body to express yourself, from the look in your eyes to the position of your feet. Everything about you says something:

Your posture suggests confidence and ease, openness and stillness – or the opposite. The balance of your body shows how grounded and calm you are.
Gestures underline the sense of your words, support the voice and help you to explain abstract concepts. According to research by the psychologist Jana Iverson, they even help you to think.
You move more when you get animated and become still in quieter calmer moments.
Your breathing changes with your mood, faster for heightened emotion, slower for calmer moments.
Your eyes speak volumes – friendship, trust, fun, humour, seriousness, sadness, wisdom – they are truly the windows of the soul.
Your face expresses your thoughts and emotions as you frown, raise an eyebrow, tighten your lips, stiffen your jaw, soften your look or smile radiantly.
Your skin colour may change as your state of mind changes – from pale when you are detached to coloured when you are emotional or embarrassed.

Give your body language a workout. Imagine you have lost your voice temporarily, and need to communicate some information. Imagine how you would do this without your voice, using just your body – posture, gestures, movement, breathing, eye movements and facial expressions as described previously. Think up your own scene, or try one of these – all in silence!

You explain to the waiter that your coffee is cold and you'd like it replaced with a hot cup.
You thank your host warmly for his hospitality, and explain that you can't say it in words as you've lost your voice.
As someone steps into the room you tell them in no uncertain terms that they cannot come in and that this room is private.

In this exercise, most people are aware initially of the gestures and facial expressions they make in the effort to be understood. But notice too how much you use feelings and movements inside your body to convey your meaning. You won't feel as much movement as this when you use your voice as well, but if you normally keep your body still, reflect on how much more you might use your body to add to your meaning.

You might think that body language is for the speaker to think about rather than the listener. But as a listener too, your body movements are vital to show the speaker that you are listening and understanding. The movements can be small, but without them the speaker will probably feel as if they are speaking into a vacuum. When you feel connected to the other person and relax, you move naturally.

8.3 Expressing You – Your Emotions

“There can be no transforming of darkness into light or apathy into movement without emotion.”

– Carl Jung

Voice tone and body language are the outward and visible signs of your inner energy, which is fuelled by your emotions. Emotions play an important part in conveying your meaning to the other person. If you keep your emotions locked away, you make it much more difficult for the other person to understand you. Yet many of us are so used to hiding our emotions that we do it instinctively, and so create a distance between ourselves and other people.

Influencing with Your Emotions

Emotions are highly influential. Once both of you are at ease in conversing with each other, emotions become “sticky”, and the other person catches your emotional energy. If you become passionate, the other person catches your passion. Your joy makes them joyful, your excitement energizes them and your stillness calms them. This is exactly how you inspire others – through feelings.

This only happens, though, if you genuinely feel those emotions yourself and allow the other person to witness you feeling them. And here's the rub. For many of us, we have to feel very comfortable with another person before we allow them to see our emotions. Otherwise we feel vulnerable and the risk seems too great.

An intelligent awareness of emotions is extremely useful in conversation. Let's look at some of the ways here.

When you are at ease, you put others at ease. Your emotional calm allows others to find a sense of calm too.
When you adapt emotionally to what is going on – i.e. show concern when someone is anxious, react in a lively way when someone is excited, and show strength when someone is aggressive – you get onto the other person's wavelength and they feel understood. This helps the conversation to flow.
When you are able to read a mood, you are able to judge situations better and have more choices in how to respond.

8.4 Expressing the Real You

“Whatsoever you do, if you can do it with your total presence, your life will become ecstatic; it will be a bliss.”

– Osho

Connection at a deeper level happens when both people are authentic. To connect closely with someone they need to see you as you truly are, not as someone you are not.

If you feel anxious or critical or not good enough, you pretend, thinking it won't be noticed. But pretence puts up a barrier between you and other people, and they notice that something's amiss. Your thoughts produce feelings; feelings leak out into voice and body language, and people pick it up.

Being yourself is not the same as selling yourself. Some presentation gurus recommend high-octane self-presentation of an image of power whenever you communicate. Though it's good to feel alive, presentation that is obviously a performance often creates resistance in listeners.

If you have the courage to be imperfect, you give others permission to make mistakes too, and then you can both be at ease. Letting go of who you think you should be, you open the way for kindness to yourself and others and they connect with the real you without your mask. It means not numbing yourself against the bad, but staying aware, sensitive, open to feeling, even if you find yourself blushing with self-consciousness or trembling with fear. If vulnerability frightens you, know that it frightens everyone. Keep breathing and let time flow on. You are most powerful and most alive when you are yourself. Being yourself you can connect in conversation with anybody. You can step into the unknown, and enjoy the wonder of discovery with another human being.

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