Change Your Brain Every Day - Why Your Voice Matters - Set Your Voice Free with Roger Love Part 1

Episode Date: February 22, 2017

Did you ever think about your voice as an asset? Well, you might not be a singing sensation or a diva, but today we'll talk about why your voice matters. In this episode, we'll be joined by renowned voice coach who've handled celebrities like Reese Witherspoon, Joaquin Phoenix, and many other Grammy winning artist, Roger Love. Roger Love is also the author of the book Set Your Voice Free. 

Hi, I'm Donnie Osmond, and welcome to The Brain Warrior's Way, hosted by my friends Daniel and Tana Amon. Now, in this podcast, you're going to learn that the war for your health is one between your ears. That's right. If you're ready to be sharper and have better memory, mood, energy, and focus, well then stay with us. Here are Daniel and Tana Amen.

Welcome everybody to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. And we are here with one of our close friends who we love and we want to share him with you. So this is Roger Love, who is voice coach to the stars, but also to Tana, Chloe. He's been my voice coach. I was completely freaked out because I was losing my voice. And, you know, one of my great fears in life is having an aging brain, but also an aging voice, because it's your voice that connects you to the world. It's your voice that connects you to other people. And I think people do not understand how important your voice is. Roger has a new book, actually a book that he revised called Set Your Voice Free. It's phenomenal. He has coached so many different people, Reese Witherspoon and

Walking Phoenix in Walk the Line, which I thought was just phenomenal, and many other Grammy-winning artists. So Roger, welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Thank you so much for having me. So we're going to break this into three. The first one we're going to do is why is your voice important? The next one we're going to do is how do you lose your voice? What are the things you do to hurt it? And the last one is going to be how do you help it? So, and I want to point one thing out as we do this, because this is really important. I really wanted to have you on. I mean, you know, I saw my daughter's, her skill level changed drastically in

such a short time. And I think a lot of people think that they're stuck with what they have. And it's not really true. I've seen that happen. I came to you for voice coaching so that I didn't lose my voice and just for some tips on speaking. And what I learned was so interesting. So there's lots of reasons that your voice is important, not to lose it, how to strengthen it, how to increase your skill. I mean, we just think of, oh, only singers take voice lessons, but it's not really true. So talk to us about that. I think that people need to start from the understanding that there's no difference between singing and speaking. So I spent 17 years teaching at the beginning of my career, just teaching amazing singers. I was a voice coach for Stevie Wonder and the Jacksons

and Earth, Wind and Fire and the Beach Boys. And I really cut my teeth for 17 years on working with amazing singers, and then speakers, presenters, influencers like Anthony Robbins, and Susie Orman, and people like that started coming to me. And I realized early on that we shouldn't separate singing from speaking, that the voice is capable of making incredible sounds that move people emotionally, that we should focus on what sounds could we make? What song sounds could we learn to make? And how could we create a communication style that made it so that every time I opened my mouth, you believed me, that you felt the best of me, that I felt the best about myself, that we communicated authentically and believable, and that we could move each other emotionally. So literally, for my lifetime, it's been about

telling people the voice you were born with, if it was air, or if it was nasal, or if it was squeaky, or if it was weak, and if it was not getting you the things in life, the relationships in life, the business success in life, if it wasn't getting you the life you want, you could change your voice. And by changing your voice, it would dramatically change how the rest of your personal and business life unfolded. Well, and it's so interesting. We don't really think about it until you are speaking to somebody and we like subconsciously and sometimes consciously go, oh, that person's voice really irritates me. And you can't listen or someone who's super influential. And you're like, why do I just want to listen to that person? I trust that person. And oftentimes their

voice is one of the things that draws you in. Look, we can't deny that a beautiful voice is captivating and it creates emotions in the listener. So if your voice is aggravating the people that you're listening to in the same way that your voice is generally aggravating you, when you listen back on your voicemail message, how many people like the sound of their own voice, hear it back on the message. They're like, oh, that sounds terrible. And they settle. So that voice that you don't like that's on your voicemail message, that's the voice you're trying to introduce yourself to the world about. And here's really amazing statistics. The words you say hardly matter at all. The sounds you make aside from the words, the pitch, the pace, the tone, the melodies, the volume, that counts for almost 93% of whether or not anyone believes a single thing you say.

Wow. 93% when you match it with what your body is doing while you're making the sound. So why should we be so focused on the words when it's the sounds that we make that create belief, emotion, trust? We need to focus on those things. And one of the things you said that was so fascinating and drew us in is that you mentioned that there were studies done that show that singing actually increases people's longevity, right? There's a ton of scientific evidence now that proves singing for up to an hour a day can increase your life expectancy up to eight years. There's evidence that says- See, I sing all the time and I get,

okay. Then they're like, why are you singing Christmas song with your brain and the voice that we'll work on together? You're going to live forever. Singing eliminates snoring, singing. Wow. You just sing more pressure singing releases endorphins into the whole system that fights against disease. And the way I teach my singers how to sing has all of those benefits, but I teach my speakers exactly the same thing. Oh, I know. I was horrified. I was horrified that you made me sing. If you're a doctor, you're a lawyer, you're a teacher, you're just a communicator and you're just a parent.

I'm telling you that you'll have the same benefits from realizing that your voice could be singing and it could be making you healthy even just by speaking. That's awesome. So this is really important to us in our community for this reason. So we're excited. So it's funny. I'm sitting here thinking, you know, I do brain stuff. That's why we're called the Brain Warriors Way. And I've often said you can change your brain and change your life.

You're not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better. I can prove it. But you can actually switch out brain for voice. You can change your voice and change your life. You're not stuck with the voice you have. You can make it better. And there's science that proves it.

And it's not hard. So why did you write Set Your Voice Free? Because I realized early on that we were all born with a voice. We were born with an instrument. And yet I was looking everywhere in my crib. And then when I came home in my bassinet, I couldn't find the manual. That's hilarious. I thought my parents just left the manual for my voice at the hospital. And maybe they gave it to me later, but they did it. And then I thought I would get a manual how to use my voice when I went to kindergarten, but the kindergarten teacher didn't have one either. And neither did they all the way to all

of my college professors. So I realized early on that there wasn't the manual that said, here's what your voice is capable of. Here's how it could make you happy and healthy. And everyone else who hears you happy and healthy, I better write it because nobody else seemed to be doing it. So set your voice free, which you can get at rogerlove.com. It's also available in bookstores and Amazon and Barnes and Noble, but on rogerlove.com, they can actually get you as their coach with the coaching programs that you have. Well, that's so interesting because you don't really take a lot of people

anymore for lessons, correct? But you've created this amazing program that's pretty accessible to just about anybody. Two years ago, I basically stopped teaching private one-on-ones. I'll do special projects. I'll do a movie here. I'll do this particular actor. And when I have time, but I stopped doing one-on-ones. So I had to make sure if my goal was to teach the world how to sing and speak, that I had the material out there that would actually do it. So the book, which comes along with the website and all of the content that I have on my website,

it teaches you because you feel like you have me. You have my technique, you have me in video, you have me on audio. I take you through it step by step. It's awesome. Do you have a favorite story of someone you've helped to change their voice and change their life? I have many favorite stories. I'll tell you, I was at an event teaching Anthony Robbins, Tony Robbins, and I was his coach for many, many years. And it was the last night of, this was Life Mastery. And it was in, I remember it was in Hawaii. And it was the last night. And this gentleman came up to me and he said,

I'll pay you, I'll pay you for a lesson. And I said, what? He says, I need a lesson. And I said, I would love to help you, but it's 11 o'clock at night and I fly out tomorrow morning. Where were you for the last four days? I really need a lesson. And he said, I really need a lesson. And his voice was garbled and mumbled. And he said, please, I'll pay you double. I said, it's not about money. I can't teach you at 11 o'clock in the hotel room. It'll bother everyone else. There's no place. He says, I'll pay you 10 times what anyone else has paid you.

I'm like, come on back to the hotel room because I'm not stupid. We go back to the hotel room. He is this very large person who was finding success because he had created a barbecue sauce that everyone else loved. And he started with that barbecue sauce and he started creating restaurants. He started with one and then it built into more and built into more and built in more. And now he had a chain of restaurants everywhere. And this business was hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars successful. So he thought he was saving the world through barbecue sauce. And his name was Dave and the chain of restaurants were famous Dave's barbecue. Oh, wow. Okay. But he said I had, he had a dream. He had suffered his whole life with alcoholism, with drug addiction, and he was a Native American. And he said his dream was to go out and help

Native Americans find their voices and realize that they didn't have to be alcoholics, that they didn't have to follow this horrible pattern that had been created and that he fell into. So I fixed his voice that night. And then we did some follow-up sessions. And within two months, the president made him chief of Native Indian Affairs in Washington. He went out. He stepped down from his business. He went out and started speaking to Native Americans all over the world, changing people's lives. Then he started a foundation, which was literally all about finding your voice. And it branched out from Native American Indians to young people who are in situations where they don't feel like they have found their voice. They have no power. They're powerless and they need to find their voice. He has helped hundreds of thousands of

people since that day and went back and not only proved he could, he went back and did the business and all of that. But this is one of the stories that I'm the most proud of because you help someone find their voice, they find their purpose, and then they go out and help other people, by example, find their voices. And this person has changed Native American culture and changed the culture of youth in ways that if I wouldn't have taken him back to that hotel room and done that one lesson to help him find his voice would have never happened.

I couldn't be more proud of that. Set your voice free. Roger Love. So grateful you're with us. But stay with us. When we come back, we're going to talk about all the things you do to hurt your voice. And then after that, we're going to talk about all the things you can do to find and help your voice. The Brain Warriors Way podcast. Stay with us.

Thanks for listening to today's show, The Brain Warriors Way. Why don't you head over to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com. That's brainwarriorswaypodcast.com, where Daniel and Tana have a gift for you just for subscribing to the show. And when you post your review on iTunes, you'll be entered into a drawing where you can win a VIP visit to one of the Amen Clinics. I'm Donnie Osmond, and I invite you to step up your brain game by joining us in the next episode.