Why your voice is stuck.

Picture this:


You go to your piano, practice room, or wherever you go to sing and you start to warm up.


“Ok, so far so good”, you say to yourself.


But then you start working on your song.


It’s all wrong.


Nothing coming out of your mouth is acceptable.


At least it feels that way.


It feels off, it feels yucky, and you can’t stand the way it sounds.


😬


I HATE it when that happens.


It used to happen to me FREQUENTLY.


You feel like you’ll never get where you want to go with your voice, you feel frustrated with your progress, you are ready to throw your hands in the air and call it a day.


Do you know what is happening?


You are choking.


What are you choking on?


You are choking on perfection.


Perfection is the very thing that’s getting in your way.


It’s getting lodged in your throat.


You have an idea of what you want this song to sound like, and you can’t STAND that you're not already there.


You can’t stand that you don’t sound like the recording you’ve listened to.


So you continue to beat yourself up and continue to punish yourself with this idea of… perfection.


This idea, this standard, this illusion that you are holding yourself against….


This is the very thing that is stopping you from being able to find the freedom, achieve the growth, actually improve in the way that’s best for you in your journey as a singer.


It’s ingrained in us to avoid at all costs “making mistakes”.


This is a HUGE disservice to us as singers and also as humans.


It’s the way we learn.


We make mistakes in order to find our way.


When you are at the beginning of the process, ESPECIALLY, at the beginning, permission to “suck” is imperative.


(And the reality is, you don’t suck, it’s just your inner critic that is driving that point home, so you have to either ignore that voice or make a deal that you’re going to do this anyway.)


If you don’t give yourself permission to not be “good”, to not have it all figured out yet, to make mistakes, YOU WILL NEVER FIND YOUR ANSWERS.


And actually, if you think about that level of pressure you are putting on yourself, you’ll realize it’s totally unfair.

You haven’t even begun to have the opportunity to sort it out, try it on for size, give your voice and body the chance to work it out.


This takes time.


A LOT of time.


We can only find our answers when we give ourselves a safe space to be messy in.


We get messy and then we also bring in 2 additional elements:


#1 Curiosity

#2 Playfulness



We need the curiosity to learn from what is happening in the messiness and we need the playfulness to free up our minds and our bodies.


When we incorporate play into our practice sessions, free-er ways of singing are revealed to us.


The spontaneous sounds we made as children are allowed to be released and our bodies remember this natural way of expressing.


So how do we intentionally mess up when practicing? How can we incorporate more play? How can we have more fun while we sing?


We turn it into a habit.


Make it a habit to sound weird.


To sound even… “bad.”


We make mistakes on purpose.


God forbid we should crack!!!!


But cracking means there is a letting go. A release.


So actually, it’s a good thing.


It’s movement forward.


So crack away.


Be “bad on purpose.”


Your voice will thank you.


And you’ll find your answers.