You DON'T sound as BAD as you THINK

Eric Beels 0:01
does your voice sound terrible? It's all in your head. You're listening to Practical Podcast Tips. My name is Eric Beels. And today, I'm going to cover tip number 17. You don't sound as bad as you think you do, people tend to be the biggest critics of their own works. And that includes their voice. Let's get into a bit of why this is. So trust me when I say that I am not a big fan of my own voice. And I think a lot of you may feel the same depending on how experienced of a podcaster you you are. And some of you may be hesitant to even start a podcast for this very reason. And for me, I always feel like my own voice. If I hear myself, I always feel like I sound super nasal Lee, or just kind of sound annoying in my head, I, I kind of sound like this. I'm unplugging my nose right there. And that's how I feel like I sound to me. And it's strange, because when we hear ourselves talk every day, we don't go out of our way, oftentimes the least I hope you don't do this, but you're not constantly feeling like every time you speak, you're cringing, right? But when you hear yourself talk, sometimes you kind of like, oh gosh, what is I how I sound? And it's an interesting thing. And so I kind of got into looking it up a little bit, just kind of figure out like, Okay, why is this? Why do we feel this way. And one thing I will I want to say real quick to is it is completely in your head on that you are your own biggest critic, your voice does not sound as bad as you feel it does. Okay, so I just want to say that right off the bat. And you know, a big part of it is just simply getting used to it, but I did a quick some quick searches just to look into why this might be it now, I'm not a scientist. That's not my not my specialty. But you know, I do enjoy researching on some some of these things. And just to kind of get a general idea on why this is. And I even had some theories myself on like, oh, maybe it's if we hear ourself on a on a recording, like is that an imposter? You know, it's a clone, the clones are here, right? Or something like that? Turns out that was that was kind of my own made up, man, my own made up theory. I mean, there might be some truth to it. I'm not sure. But there wasn't anything I was saying anything like that. But it's still so kind of fun to think about. But what I looked up is I found something this was published by two people named Philip Holzman and Clyde Rousey. And one of the things that they use this term called Voice confrontation, they actually developed this back in 1966. Actually, I'll have a link the source in the description of this episode here. Basically, what that means is we hear ourselves differently when we talk than when we simply hear ourselves talk through a recording. And what it kind of boils down to is when we talk, we can feel ourselves talk, we do this subconsciously, we don't think about it all the time. But when we talk, we can feel our voice, almost like you know, if you put your head up against somebody's chest, and they talk it sounds very low and rumbly, right, much lower than when you normally hear them talk. Well, we hear this in ourselves all the time, because we are us. And we're talking right. And what it boils down to is when we hear ourselves outside of that context of us just talking, for instance, in a recording, like on a podcast, or on a video or on a voicemail on your phone or something like that, we hear ourselves, typically as being a higher pitch. And that's kind of where that that nasal lead, or the annoying sounding voice comes from, or at least that's how we kind of see that. Now, some some studies did suggest that there are some people who actually prefer the sound of their own voice. And that was a whole nother thing entirely. What it boils down to it's a there's a sub conscience aspect going on here. The reason I wanted to do this episode on this is this whole podcast was actually a big stretch for me to do and we'll tell you, I am definitely my biggest critic of my own voice. To be honest, I can't even edit my own episodes. This podcast has been the most difficult thing for me to edit and we're only talking these like, five six minute episodes. Right? But because I was hearing my own voice when we were getting ready to launch this podcast, I was like, Amber, I can't do this. I'm cringing so much. My ears are tainted. I can't tell if this sounds good.

Eric Beels 4:53
And it was a kind of an eye opener in that sense for a couple things I didn't want I didn't think it was gonna be that difficult for me to edit my own podcasts like that I was doing this because I knew that this would be a stretch for me. But what I didn't foresee is all how difficult the editing would be. And it really was kind of an eye opener to me on like, man, I've done a lot of research on these things. And I understand that people hear other people differently. And whenever I asked the people, everyone's like, No, Your voice sounds fine. What are you talking about? That sounds like you, you sound totally fine. And one of the reasons I want to do this is just to kind of have a bit of inspiration. Like if you're hesitant to start your podcast, or do public speaking, this isn't even necessarily a podcast thing. It could be any kind of talking, maybe you go to networking groups, and you're nervous talking in front of a small group of people. And if one of the reasons is you're self conscious about your voice, I want you to know that, first of all, you're not the only one who is self conscious about their voice, but to remember that you're the only one that hears that. You're the only one that is that critical. So that's why you know, don't sound as bad as you think you do. And I just want to inspire you on that. For those of you listening that are self conscious about their voice or they sound they feel like they sound nasally Don't worry, you are your own biggest critic. So no more worrying about that. Okay. All right. I'll see you in the next episode. Hey, thanks for listening. If you liked this episode, feel free to leave us a review. I'd love to hear how it helped. Also, if you know somebody else that could benefit from it. Go ahead and share it with them. Thanks again and see you in the next episode.

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