Embrace Your Uniqueness!

Lack of self-confidence.

You may think, “Well, after all, how can one feel confident about their singing when they’re still learning the ropes and they don’t sound so good yet?”

But what I’m talking about here is lack of confidence in our potential and the general tendency to think that our voice isn’t that great, and that we’d rather sound like this or that singer.

It’s completely unfair to judge our voice and to put a label on it while we’re still working on developing it. It’s really like comparing apples and oranges: our voice (a work in progress) and an accomplished singer’s voice (the finished product).

But then ultimately, why compare at all? Each voice is unique, like our fingerprints. If we put down our voice because we don’t like the sound of it, or because it sounds different from so and so, we’re putting down our uniqueness, our individuality.

Your voice expresses the qualities of your soul and, as such, defines you as an individual more than you may think. This is why, when someone undertakes some serious work to improve themselves as people, you always notice an improvement in the quality of their voice, even their speaking voice; it becomes smoother and sweeter.

As singers, we should learn to accept how we sound, while we work on improving our technique. A better technique doesn’t make you sound “different.” It just optimizes how you use your voice, so that your true, innate sound can surface. And you don’t know what that will be like until the job is done.

When you feel judgmental toward your voice, try telling yourself a different story. Remind yourself that this is the voice you were given, it’s part of who you are, and you’re working on improving it so you can use it to express your soul qualities. You don’t want to sound like someone else; that’s their unique sound and their individual soul qualities they’re expressing, not yours.

Once your voice is completely developed, and you’ve sung for a while, you will see that there’s no other sound you’d rather have, because your own consciousness is imprinted in your voice, and no other sound could express it more perfectly.

Here’s to your uniqueness!