Latest / Kickin’ It With KeKe: Life, Love, & MINDSET / Ep.#181 What does it really mean to find your voice? w/Barbara McAfee

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Ep.#181 What does it really mean to find your voice? w/Barbara McAfee · Kickin’ It With KeKe: Life, Love, & MINDSET

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Kickin' It With Kiki. Kickin' It With Kiki.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Kickin' It With Kiki.
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  Speaker 3: Full of personality.
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  Speaker 2: Switchin' up the storyline. On God, we makin' history.
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  Speaker 3: Writing books. Changing lives.
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  Speaker 4: One day at a time. Put your problems to the side.
• 0:25
  Speaker 3: Enjoy yourself.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: Freeze your mind.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: Welcome back to another episode of Kicking It With Kiki, Life, Love,
• 0:44
  Speaker 3: and Mindset. I am your host, Kiki Chanel, award-winning author,
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  Speaker 3: lifestyle blogger, and owner of 19 Lifestyle Magazine. We talk
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  Speaker 3: about life, love, and mindset, the things that make us
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  Speaker 3: who we are so that we can become our best
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  Speaker 3: self moving forward. Today, I am joined with a very
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  Speaker 3: special guest. She is a voice coach, a speaker, an author,
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  Speaker 3: and a performer for more than 30 years of experience
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  Speaker 3: helping other people find and unlock their voice. I'll give
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  Speaker 3: her a moment to tell you a little bit more
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  Speaker 3: about who she is like I always do. So, Ms. Barbara,
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  Speaker 3: thank you for coming to kick it with me today.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. Thanks for inviting me.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 4: You know, the long list of things makes me sound
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  Speaker 4: like I never do anything but work, but it's been
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  Speaker 4: accumulating over time, and everything I do takes root in voice.
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  Speaker 4: I lead people in community singing just for the joy
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  Speaker 4: of it because I think people need to sing together,
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  Speaker 4: and I have a comfort choir that sings for people
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  Speaker 4: in hospice. Um, so everything, I do a lot of
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  Speaker 4: different things and I love them all. And they all
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  Speaker 4: have a lot to do with voice. Mine, other people's,
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  Speaker 4: I like to sing and write songs and yeah, but
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  Speaker 4: it all makes sense to me. It just looks kind
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  Speaker 4: of hard to figure out on a business card.
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  Speaker 3: I love that. See, my son is a singer. He's
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  Speaker 3: 17 and he made Allstate Choir last year and he's
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  Speaker 3: getting ready to audition for the States like on Saturday.
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  Speaker 3: So I'm excited about it. And the fact that we're
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  Speaker 3: talking about voice is amazing.
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  Speaker 4: I remember those Allstate Choir conferences. They were really stunning.
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  Speaker 4: I grew up with a great choir director and we
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  Speaker 4: always like rocked it. So I still use things he
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  Speaker 4: told me when I was 17. 17 and younger.
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  Speaker 3: That's good to know. He's going to pursue it in college.
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  Speaker 3: I'm excited about it.
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  Speaker 4: That's great.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. So we're talking about finding the voice behind the noise, right? Right.
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  Speaker 3: When you say someone can unlock their full voice, what
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  Speaker 3: does that actually mean beyond vocal technique?
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  Speaker 4: Oh, so many things. So when I was researching my
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: first book, Full Voice, I am kind of a word geek.
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  Speaker 4: So I looked up the etymology of the word voice.
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  Speaker 4: And the Latin root is vocare, which means to call, invoke,
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  Speaker 4: or name. And then I kept looking further, and that
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  Speaker 4: is the Latin root for words like vocation, like what
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  Speaker 4: we're called to do in the world, advocacy, when we
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  Speaker 4: use our voice in service to others, provocation, when we
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  Speaker 4: stir things up, and my personal favorite, invocation, when we
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  Speaker 4: call the sacred into the world through the sound of
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  Speaker 4: our voice, which.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, so I think the language reflects how many places
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  Speaker 4: in our lives our voices are connected. It can be
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  Speaker 4: connected to our history, things people told us growing up,
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  Speaker 4: what the dominant culture tells us we're supposed to be. Things,
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  Speaker 4: you know, trauma, everybody's got that. And under, you know, that's,
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  Speaker 4: our voice gets affected by all those things. And so
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  Speaker 4: my work is a lot of shedding, you talk about mindset.
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  Speaker 4: I should call it like voice set. It's a voice
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  Speaker 4: reset to sort of, you can't change your voice without
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  Speaker 4: your life changing right alongside it. So that's what I've
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  Speaker 4: seen in my own life and in working with people
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  Speaker 4: for all these years is the voice. When you move
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  Speaker 4: the voice, everything moves, the body, the spirit, the heart,
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  Speaker 4: the relationships, all of it.
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  Speaker 3: Absolutely. I do. I agree with that. Now, do you
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  Speaker 3: find with working with people that they sometimes change or
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  Speaker 3: minimize their natural voice because they've learned that certain parts
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  Speaker 3: of themselves aren't acceptable?
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  Speaker 4: Exactly. Yes, I have. And, you know, I've worked with
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  Speaker 4: a lot of women over the years, women leaders especially,
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  Speaker 4: because they're, you know, they have to be 16 times
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  Speaker 4: better than the men. Still, are we still having this conversation?
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  Speaker 4: But we, it's still happening. And women of color, then
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  Speaker 4: you got to be like 32 times better, right? And
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  Speaker 4: so a lot of how women are socialized, a lot
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  Speaker 4: of women, is to be more soft-spoken and to be
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  Speaker 4: nice and to not ruffle anybody's feathers. And you can't
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  Speaker 4: be a B-I-T-C-H. You're either a wimp or a bitch, right?
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  Speaker 3: Pick.
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  Speaker 4: And so they're trying to navigate all that and trying
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  Speaker 4: to lead things. And then I've also worked with lots
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  Speaker 4: of men over time. And the way to be a
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  Speaker 4: good man in this culture is to basically be dead.
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  Speaker 4: You can't move. You can't feel. You can't wear any color.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, there's just a lot of, I think women
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  Speaker 4: have been wearing girdles. I remember watching my mother wrestle
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  Speaker 4: herself into her girdle. Women get girdled in one way,
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  Speaker 4: but I realized that men do too. And that they
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  Speaker 4: end up, you know, shoving their voice. They might have
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  Speaker 4: like a higher voice and they end up shoving it
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  Speaker 4: down here and trying to artificially change. I like to,
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  Speaker 4: for people to keep what they have, I like to
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  Speaker 4: just expand their options. So what you have now is
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  Speaker 4: great in certain circumstances and absolutely terrible.
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  Speaker 3: In other ones. Hmm. I've never thought about the man
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  Speaker 3: in the girdle, so to speak. But you're absolutely right.
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  Speaker 3: You can't be one thing or you can't be the other.
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  Speaker 3: And then if you're somewhere in the middle, that's still
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  Speaker 3: a problem. Right.
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  Speaker 4: You can't win. And frankly, it's all like rooted in
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  Speaker 4: patriarchy and it doesn't work for anybody.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: It's just designed to make us feel less than human
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  Speaker 4: so that we'll end up buying things we don't need
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  Speaker 4: and also feeling terrible about ourselves or something like that.
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  Speaker 3: So.
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  Speaker 4: I think all of us deserve to be really alive
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  Speaker 4: while we're living.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah. And the voice is something that we should, I
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  Speaker 3: didn't like my voice for a while because I'm a
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  Speaker 3: little country girl. And I was like, well, I don't
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  Speaker 3: like the way you sound. And the more I got
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  Speaker 3: in the mirror and said things to myself and talked
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  Speaker 3: out loud, I found that I love my voice now.
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  Speaker 4: I love your voice too. I'm so glad you came around.
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  Speaker 3: Yes. Yes.
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  Speaker 4: But yes, so many things. Like region, accent. I work
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  Speaker 4: with a lot of people who are living in a
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  Speaker 4: second or third language. And I work with a lot
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  Speaker 4: of people who code switch based on ethnicity or class.
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  Speaker 4: I've worked with people who were raised poor and now
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  Speaker 4: they're in the middle class, but they still have to
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  Speaker 4: kind of talk differently than they do with their family.
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  Speaker 3: Right.
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  Speaker 4: And all of that affects your voice. All of it.
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  Speaker 4: You know, that suppression and that thinking twice. And then
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  Speaker 4: a lot of us were... not encouraged to fully express
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  Speaker 4: ourselves as young ones, you know, be seen but not
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  Speaker 4: heard and all that kind of stuff. And some of
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  Speaker 4: that's necessary just to learn how to be a polite person.
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  Speaker 4: But a lot of it gets a little more violently
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  Speaker 4: enforced for other reasons as well.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was seen and not heard and I became
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  Speaker 3: a writer.
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  Speaker 4: That happens to a lot of us, right? We get
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  Speaker 4: driven into something else. And I think I became... I'm
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  Speaker 4: shocked that I'm a singer, Kiki. I can't even believe it.
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  Speaker 4: Because I grew up singing in good choirs, but I
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  Speaker 4: never wanted to sing alone in front of anyone. It
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  Speaker 4: was my worst fear. And now I'm fearless and write
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  Speaker 4: songs and sing, and it's a joy. And so much
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  Speaker 4: of that healing came through my rediscovering and reclaiming all
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  Speaker 4: of my voice, not just the... parts that are socially sanctioned.
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  Speaker 3: I love that you say that. Somebody needed to hear that.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm glad that we are having this conversation because
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  Speaker 3: our voice needs to be heard. It matters. Your message
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  Speaker 3: is something that will help yourself, first and foremost, but
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  Speaker 3: somebody else get through what they're overcoming. Somebody needed to
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  Speaker 3: hear that. Ms. Barbara, she just dropped some gems. So
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: go back and rewind and listen to it again, what
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  Speaker 3: she just said. But we're going to move into our
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  Speaker 3: mindset moment. Now, I'll ask you this question. What mindset
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  Speaker 3: shift helps someone move from how would people react to
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  Speaker 3: what I have to say to what do I need
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  Speaker 3: to express honestly?
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  Speaker 4: Well, there's so much complexity in that question, Kiki, because
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  Speaker 4: there are circumstances under which it is not wise to
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  Speaker 4: fully express yourself, right? And I know that you're seeing
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  Speaker 4: the movie in your head and I'm seeing it in
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  Speaker 4: mine too. And I bet your listeners, All those places
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  Speaker 4: where you go, it's just not safe to be fully
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  Speaker 4: expressed in this place. And don't have enough support. There's
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  Speaker 4: too much on the line. I've got to have this
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  Speaker 4: job to feed my kids, so I have to suck
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  Speaker 4: it up, buttercup, and just not say it. Over time,
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  Speaker 4: that will wear a person down. But I just want
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  Speaker 4: to speak to the fact that not everything that pops
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  Speaker 4: into our heads is worthy of airing all the time. However,
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  Speaker 4: there are those fundamental truths that a lot of us
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  Speaker 4: feel in our guts. that gut instinct, there's that stirring.
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  Speaker 4: And I think if that gets overridden too long, then
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  Speaker 4: that gets to be tricky. So I think it really
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  Speaker 4: is helpful to think about how do you want to
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  Speaker 4: say what you say? So my work focuses on tone.
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  Speaker 4: So I work with this and created this framework that
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  Speaker 4: divides the voice into five distinct sounds using the elements
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  Speaker 4: of earth, fire, water, metal, and air. And each one
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  Speaker 4: correlates with a part of the body and it also
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  Speaker 4: correlates with certain expressing human qualities. So the earth is
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  Speaker 4: good for getting grounded, setting boundaries, projecting authority.
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  Speaker 1: No.
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  Speaker 4: No is good down there. Which is very different than no.
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  Speaker 4: You know, the tone and the words are at odds
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  Speaker 4: and it's like, that's confusing and people are going to
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  Speaker 4: believe the tone more than the words. Fire is great
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  Speaker 4: for expressing passion, waking up your physical vitality, and being
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  Speaker 4: seen and heard. So it's about enthusiasm. It can be
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  Speaker 4: about anger, but it can be about, ta-da, here I
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  Speaker 4: am world. Water is the voice of the heart. So
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  Speaker 4: this is a good place to apologize from. Or if
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: you have bad news to deliver, or you're with somebody
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  Speaker 4: who's having a really hard day, water is the voice
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  Speaker 4: of the heart. Metal is great for getting loud without
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  Speaker 4: any vocal strain. So if you're with that relative who
• 11:52
  Speaker 4: really needs a hearing aid or you're in a loud
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  Speaker 4: crowded place or you're outdoors and need to get someone's attention,
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  Speaker 4: metal is like right through the front of your nose
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  Speaker 4: and it's super bright and easy. My mom, when I
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: was her caregiver for many, many years, she'd lose a
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: hearing aid now and then. And I could just talk
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  Speaker 4: to her like this all evening and she could hear
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  Speaker 4: me just fine. And then she'd replace it and go like, whoa,
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  Speaker 4: that's too much, Barbara. And then finally we have air,
• 12:20
  Speaker 4: which is good for telling stories. Hey, let me tell
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  Speaker 4: you a story. Or I have an idea about something
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  Speaker 4: that hasn't happened yet. And so I would invite, this
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  Speaker 4: is a long answer to your question, but I feel
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  Speaker 4: like the mindset is we think so much about what
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  Speaker 4: am I going to say? And that's good. Prepare that.
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  Speaker 4: But then add that other question in always. How can
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: I say it in a way that the message and
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  Speaker 4: the tone will match so that the person will really
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: hear what I'm intending?
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  Speaker 3: Exactly.
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  Speaker 4: To consider those possibilities. We don't even think about voice
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  Speaker 4: most of the time. So think about it.
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  Speaker 3: Play with it. I love that, though. I've never thought
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: about that. Never, ever.
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  Speaker 4: And I find myself just thinking about it.
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  Speaker 3: I'm gonna practice that more i'm gonna practice that more
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  Speaker 3: because i'm an earth sign so i'm all about the
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  Speaker 3: the boundaries and the grounding and all of that so
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  Speaker 3: yeah and i.
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  Speaker 4: Can hear that you have earth in your voice but
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  Speaker 4: you also have a lot of fire all that like
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  Speaker 4: passion and you know i bet people can hear you
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  Speaker 4: just fine when you're talking and so i hear you
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  Speaker 4: I hear earth and fire dominant. Fire and earth, probably
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  Speaker 4: in that order.
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  Speaker 3: Fire and earth, okay.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, but then, okay, then you kind of went up into,
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  Speaker 4: you know, we change it all the time, unconsciously. You know,
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  Speaker 4: people often have a voice for babies and pets. Oh,
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: it's a good girl. Oh, it's me, baby. You know,
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  Speaker 4: so we change it, but mostly not consciously or choicefully
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  Speaker 4: and often not effectively.
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  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 3: I love that. You're going to have me in my head.
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  Speaker 3: I'm going to be like, oh, I just went from
• 14:08
  Speaker 3: earth to air. Like, okay, I'm going to be thinking
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: about this Barbara movie. We're moving into the reality check.
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  Speaker 3: When life teaches you to silence yourself, what are some
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: of the most common reasons people lose confidence in their voice?
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  Speaker 4: Oh, there's so many. And I have to say, I
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: go through, I teach mostly online now. I lead classes
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: and things, but I used to do a lot of
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: individual coaching in my home. And I went through a
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: lot of tissues because people just start talking about something
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  Speaker 4: that someone said when they were five, six. I've worked
• 14:49
  Speaker 4: with a lot of people who are survivors of various
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: kinds of abuse and that had to keep the secret.
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  Speaker 4: And when you have to keep the secret, that affects
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  Speaker 4: your voice. And sometimes that's the bigger trauma than the
• 15:03
  Speaker 4: actual abuse itself, uh, depending, but that not speaking the truth, um,
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  Speaker 4: it comes up and, you know, out of your center
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  Speaker 4: and it gets your throat and you have to choke
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  Speaker 4: it off. So that is a very common way that
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: people get, um, suppressed vocally. Sometimes they have a physical issue,
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: you know, they might have, uh, An injury or something
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: like that. But most often, it's an emotional injury that
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: they're dealing with. And then also just all the cultural
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  Speaker 4: stuff I just said before that your voice doesn't matter.
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  Speaker 4: You don't have a right to speak.
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  Speaker 3: Right. Okay. What about the person who says, every time
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  Speaker 3: I try to express how I feel, I get shut down?
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  Speaker 3: Where can they begin?
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: Hmm. Oh, there's so many different ways because it's like,
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  Speaker 4: why are they getting shut down? Is it that they're
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: in a place that is not friendly to their spirit?
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  Speaker 4: That's one thing. And you could like amputate your whole
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: soul and you still wouldn't be the right person. You know,
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  Speaker 4: there'd be somebody picking at you. So there's that. Often
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  Speaker 4: we're not reading the room, right? We may not. And
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  Speaker 4: a lot of us, like I worked with a woman,
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: who was like all fire all the time. She was
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: like super fiery and she learned how to be fiery
• 16:30
  Speaker 4: because she was a small Asian American woman, only woman
• 16:34
  Speaker 4: at the table and the youngest person. So she's Asian,
• 16:38
  Speaker 4: small female. And the, you know, it's like, oh my gosh. So,
• 16:41
  Speaker 4: and she was with this, this really intense team of dudes.
• 16:44
  Speaker 4: So she was like, bring in it all the time.
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  Speaker 4: And it worked there for her. And then she moved
• 16:51
  Speaker 4: to a different, organization that was more diverse and a
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: little more chill. And she thought they hated her and
• 16:59
  Speaker 4: her ideas because they would just like kind of diss
• 17:02
  Speaker 4: it all the time. And she came and worked with
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: me and shifted her voice pretty quickly. Sometimes that takes
• 17:08
  Speaker 4: a little more time, but in her case, she was like,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: for some reason, ready to roll. And so she just
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: started bringing, I have an idea, you know, the air
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: with her ideas and And more water, just a little chiller,
• 17:22
  Speaker 4: more calm and flowing. And it turns out they liked her,
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: and they liked her ideas. But in that culture, what
• 17:31
  Speaker 4: worked in the old culture didn't work in the new culture.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: And so I think that was a real teaching story
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  Speaker 4: for me about what works someplace doesn't work other places,
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  Speaker 4: which is why I like to give people a lot
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: more choices. And so if something's not working, a lot
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: of times we can see it, And we persist in
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: what's not working. So fire's not working. We're going to
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: bring a little more fire. And then you see the
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: people backing up. And so the idea, if you can
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: just still feel like yourself and switch it up a
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: little bit, you might be able to find that connection
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: with people, which is all we're looking for. And so
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: that's the thing. Can you find the way into that
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: human being? And if you can do it with your
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: voice changing a bit, that's powerful. That's powerful. Because you
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: can talk to more people about more things more effectively.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. And then different conversations get started and people always
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: feel like they can be heard in the conversation. Because
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: I've been in rooms where I felt, oh, I needed
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: to say something, but I didn't because of the way
• 18:42
  Speaker 3: that everybody was coming in at it. So, yeah, I
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: love that. I love that, how we have to find
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: what works when we're in different situations, because not everything
• 18:53
  Speaker 3: is going to work in the same.
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  Speaker 4: Exactly. There's a great American poet named Theodore Arethke. I
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: don't know his work well, but one of his lines,
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: I should have it tattooed on my forehead, may my
• 19:07
  Speaker 4: silences become more accurate. Isn't that great? May my silences
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: become more accurate. Yes. There are some of us that
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: feel entitled to speak and we take up too much
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: air time. And then there are a lot of people,
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: I've worked with a lot of introverts, and expression for
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: introverts is like a second language. It's not always going
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: to be their first go-to, but they can learn how
• 19:32
  Speaker 4: to express themselves because they care about something that they
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: want to express themselves about. They'll learn that. But I
• 19:40
  Speaker 4: do feel like as a person who likes to talk,
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: my silence has become more accurate.
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: I love that quote. I'm definitely going to go look
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: it up and probably print it out and write it somewhere.
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: Put it in my journal or something. Because I'm an introvert.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: Can you believe it?
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: No, I'm in the middle. So I'm a lot of both.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: But we have learned to perform well.
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: Uh-huh. Yes, I was like, when I tell people that,
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: they don't believe it. I'm like, I am a big introvert. Yeah.
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: Says the girl with the podcast. But yeah, it's just,
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: I don't know. I gravitate to those that I feel
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: connected to. So thank you, Ms. Barber, for being here.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: I feel connected to you. So I feel like I
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: can be myself with you.
• 20:28
  Speaker 4: And likewise. And thank you for this conversation.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Now you talked about boundaries a little bit and
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: how they require a voice. So asking for what we
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: need requires us to say something because otherwise people can't
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: read our minds. Although we like to think that some
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: people can, right? Saying no requires a voice. How can
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: someone become more comfortable speaking clearly without feeling that they're
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: being rude, difficult, or confrontational?
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: Well, I do feel like there are conversations I've felt
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: like I've had to practice saying what I want to
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: say because I'm so nervous. So I do think if
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: it's a critical conversation, it doesn't hurt to practice. I
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: like to practice my talks and presentations and things like
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: that when I'm hiking. I walk every day here. where
• 21:29
  Speaker 4: I live in this beautiful valley, and I talk to myself.
• 21:32
  Speaker 4: There's nobody around most of the time, and if they are,
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: I just say hello, and yes, I'm the crazy lady
• 21:37
  Speaker 4: talking to herself in the woods. But I do feel
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: like that preparation can be really, really important because when
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: you're nervous, your brain doesn't work very well. So to practice,
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: thinking about what you want to say and how you
• 21:51
  Speaker 4: want to say it, and I do want to say
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: a lot of us sabotage ourselves, especially women. where we'll
• 22:00
  Speaker 4: pick the wrong moment, you know, like it's not the
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: right time. And we'll say, I'm sorry, 85 times. You
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: know what I mean? There's this kind of like, I
• 22:11
  Speaker 4: know I don't deserve this. And I, you know, I
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: know money's really short and I want to raise, you know.
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: So I do think it's, the first work is inside
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: to really know what you want. which I think is
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: often difficult for a lot of us because we're used
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: to saying, well, what can I get? What can I
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: settle for? And so to be able to say, what
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: do I really, really want? And then how do I
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: ask it in a way that absolutely, I have the
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: total conviction that I deserve it. And so I remember
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: when I would be quoting keynote fees, I would have
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: to count to three inside myself to say that number.
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: Nobody else cared. They just had their budget. You know
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: what I mean? It wasn't like they weren't trying to
• 23:08
  Speaker 4: decide if I was a valuable human being. They just
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: was like, we can do that or we can't do that.
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: But sometimes I would just go, one, two, three, and
• 23:18
  Speaker 4: then I would say the number.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Okay. I like, I love numbers. So I probably done
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: that before, like count to 10 or something like that.
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: Or I'll, if I feel myself get into a place
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: where I need to take a step back, I'll count,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: I'll close my eyes and I'll count. And then I
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: bring myself back to center. And then I'm able to
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: say what I, what I need to say or what
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: I want to say. Cause I, like I said, I didn't,
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: I didn't use my voice very much growing up. My
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: favorite place was under the bed, reading a book.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, same.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So finding my voice... when I realized I was
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: always pushed into leadership or in the forefront, oh, Kiki
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: will do it. Or come on, I have somebody that'll
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: read this and this and do this. And I'm like,
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: I really don't want to do that. And I'm thankful
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: that those people saw the leadership in me and those
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: different skills. I'm grateful for that. But at the time
• 24:18
  Speaker 3: when you're like 12 and you have to sing in
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: front of the whole school because it's a Christmas play.
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, Okay, but I'm going to do it
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: because that's what I do. I show up.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: That's right. That's right. And that is so much of leadership.
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: It's like showing up. Just showing up. And all of
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: us can't see. None of us can see our gifts.
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: None of us. That's why we have other people. And
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: the things that are innate to us and natural to us,
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: I used to think that everybody was the same. Like,
• 24:51
  Speaker 4: isn't everybody like me? That's a child's thought.
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Right?
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: Well, this is I'm just a person and so are
• 24:58
  Speaker 4: they and so we're the same. And so I am
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: so grateful that I have had such great mentors and
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: mirrors along the way to say, I had a friend,
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: I used to do community projects. I was an organizational
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: development consultant for 12 years completely by accident. Didn't ever
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: intend to do that, have no education in it except
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: what I learned from my wonderful friends. But this woman, Marilyn,
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: just said, after we were working with a group of women,
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: she says, do you see how they look at you?
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: I was like, what?
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: Uh, no.
• 25:32
  Speaker 4: I was just, no, I have no idea. And I
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: didn't think anything about it. She says, they really look
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: up to you. They see something in you that they want.
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: And I'd never, I would have not known that unless
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: Marilyn said it. And now years later, I get it.
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: I own it.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: But she was the prophetic voice in my life and
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: so grateful for her and many others who see those gifts.
• 25:59
  Speaker 4: That's our job, I think, as leaders of anything, of
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: our lives, our families, our communities, you know, is to
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: see the gifts in people and to make the circumstances
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: friendly to them giving those gifts.
• 26:14
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. I totally agree.
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: I totally agree with it. I totally agree with it.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: So we're going to move into our mic drop moment.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: So I'll ask you some questions and you just leave
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: an impression on the listeners today. First question is about life.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: What's something life taught you that completely changed the way
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: you use your own voice?
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: That's a great question. That life is worth living out loud.
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: That I will not die. from speaking my truth, telling
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: the truth, sharing the secret, and singing my song. I
• 26:55
  Speaker 4: didn't die. I thought I might.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: I love your answer. I love that answer. Okay, love.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: What has love taught you about the difference between being
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: heard and truly being understood?
• 27:16
  Speaker 4: Well, love is such a good teacher. I feel like
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: my kind of daily wish is like, may people feel
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: a blessing in my presence. Just like I had a
• 27:32
  Speaker 4: friend call me a permissionary. I want to be a permissionary.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: And I can always feel when I'm in the presence
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: of a permissionary, someone who is like, tell me more.
• 27:45
  Speaker 4: Not just like, okay, stop talking so I can talk now.
• 27:49
  Speaker 4: Like I am curious about you. I'm interested in you.
• 27:55
  Speaker 4: And that is gold. Most people are so lonely right now.
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: Not connected. So that's what I've learned.
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: I love that. Okay. We're talking about mindset now. Finish
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: this sentence. The moment you stopped silencing yourself.
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: It was many moments. First of all, it was a
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: long process. I had to change my whole story about
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: who I was. In my first workshop with these people
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: who kind of helped me blow open my voice, I
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: thought my voice ended here, which isn't that high, especially
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: for a young woman. And they helped me make sound
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: way up here. And I had to change my story
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: about who I was. in that distance, but in many
• 28:49
  Speaker 4: other ways. And so I just keep, there's just always
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: more to be discovered on the other side of that
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: suppression and silencing.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Love it. So before we go, Ms. Barbara, tell everyone
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: where they can connect with you, learn more about your work,
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: and explore the resources you offer.
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: Well, the best place to find absolutely everything is at
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: my website, BarbaraMcAfee.com. There's two TED Talks there. There's a
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: ton of music videos. There's exercises, links to my books,
• 29:26
  Speaker 4: and classes. I lead a regular five-week full-voice fundamentals class
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: where we go into the five elements framework, and it's
• 29:36
  Speaker 4: a small group, and it's fun learning. So that's all
• 29:39
  Speaker 4: that my website, BarbaraMcAfee.com.
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: I love it. And all of this information will be
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: included in the show notes guys. So you can go
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: in and find out more about Ms. Bob on her website.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: And before we leave out today, I have to ask
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: you the question that I always ask my guests. When
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: life challenges you, and love stretches you, what mindset keeps
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: you grounded?
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: Can I sing?
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: You can.
• 30:15
  Speaker 4: And here's my answer. This is a quote by a
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: great Sufi mystic named Hafiz. And the tune is by me.
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: And this is sort of the voice of wisdom speaking
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: to me. I wish that I could show you. I
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: wish that I could show you.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Whenever you are lonely or walking in the.
• 30:36
  Speaker 4: Dark I wish that I could show you I wish
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: that I could show.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: You The astonishing light of your being The astonishing light
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: of your being.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: I love that. That's it.
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: And I'll send you the link to that whole song
• 31:06
  Speaker 4: so you.
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: Can include it in the show notes. Absolutely. Listen, Ms. Barber,
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: thank you for joining me, coming to kick it with me,
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: pouring into me in ways that you cannot even imagine today.
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: I didn't know how much I needed our conversation until now.
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: So it has been a pleasure. For all the listeners,
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: I want to let you know that you don't necessarily
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: need a louder voice. You need the courage to trust
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: the one that's already yours. So until next time, make
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: sure that you trust yourself enough to speak loudly, speak boldly,
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: and speak powerfully into yourself so that others can hear you.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: But first, you have to hear yourself. Thank you for
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: tuning in. I am back with a new episode every
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: Thursday on all major podcast streaming platforms. Make sure you
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: go and check it out. The links will be also
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: listed on my YouTube channel, Kicking It With Kiki Media
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: on YouTube. Until next time, purple hugs, and I will
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: see you later.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Thank you.