***If You Are Soft-Spoken, Try These 5 Steps for Being Heard the 1st Time You Say It

Do others ask you to repeat yourself a lot? If so, do you realize how much time and energy you waste saying your message a 2nd or 3rd time? In today’s fast-paced world, being heard the 1st time you say it is vital to your success. If others continually ask you to repeat yourself, eventually they will stop asking and stop listening. What this means is that your words and your ideas are not going to be heard.

Learning to increase your volume is a bit tricky, but with the right technique, you can retrain your inner ear to accept a larger volume of sound. [Your inner ear is how you recognize your sound; your outer ear is how you hear yourself on a recording.] If you are soft-spoken, speaking with a bigger voice is uncomfortable because you have spent your entire life talking at a level which is below normal. When you try to increase your volume, your inner ear thinks you are shouting.

The best means of learning to increase your volume to a normal level of sound is to:

1. Record someone else who is speaking in a normal volume. Then record yourself immediately following the 1st voice. It is important that the microphone is the exact same distance from your mouth as it is for the other person.

2. Play the recording back and adjust your volume to a comfortable listening level according to the other individual – not you.

3. Compare the two voices. Do you need to increase the volume control on your amplifier or TV set to hear your voice comfortably?

4. Practice speaking with more volume (even if you think you are too loud). Record it and play it back. Make sure your volume control is set for the exact level it was for the other person’s voice. Was there an improvement? If so, did it sound normal?

5. Every time you open your mouth to speak, use a little bit more power so that you can retrain your inner ear to accept a larger volume.

Learning to increase your volume takes a lot of practice but it will be worth the effort if it means you can stop repeating yourself time and time again. In addition, you will notice an increase in your self-esteem because people will start listening to you.

For the sake of your family, your friends, and your colleagues, learn to speak at a normal volume level and let them hear you the 1st time you say it.