A short monologue (YouTube video) urging listeners to notice and shift their tones of voice—impatience, frustration, anger, fear—to improve relationships and reduce harm. The speaker invites self-reflection, describes practical benefit of catching and shifting tones in the moment, and references a recently published book that catalogs 75 challenging tones and 75 healing tones. The talk closes with a request for comments to start a dialogue.
One of the things that's always blown my mind since I was a very little boy was how little emphasis has been placed on tone of voice. And as I'm speaking to you, please look at your own tones of voice, because it's really about each of us noticing more sensitively our own tones and those tones of people close to us. I'm pretty sure you'll agree with me that we didn't really get much help in school on this or for most of us at home, probably 99% at home from our spiritual teachers or religious teachers. And so we really weren't educated in any way to look at the tones of voice that are most troubling. So I'd ask you right now, take a look. Can you see whether you're impatient or frustrated, annoyed, disappointed, judgmental, superior? What tone for you is yours? Or what tones are yours? And are you interested? Are you interested enough to even not only look at them, but to actually have it be a fast forward where in the future I want to remember, I want to remember when I have this tone arise. And if you do, can you see how golden that is? Because if you catch yourself in a moment of impatience and instead you shift to becoming more patient, that's a huge change in a relationship. And of course it's the same with anger and being a bit more tolerant or frightened and being a bit more courageous. Any shift in tone of voice is going to change your relationship to your husband, your wife, your kids, and none of us have arrived. And so as you take this in, the greatest hope I have is that you will take this into your future and it will matter enough to you not only to understand the concept, but to actually have a great yearning and longing to apply it to your life, to make that shift, to recognize first, ah, this is my tone where I usually cause hurt and suffering, that if I knew I was doing it, I would stop myself. And I am going to stop myself and take the time to try to find the tone to that will really help me. In my newly published book, I've identified 75 challenging tones and 75 tones that are healing and it will help you be more specific if it's hard for you to identify which ones really have hurt you and which ones could help you. So again, my greatest wish is please take this insight to your future and take it to your heart and recognize that it does take a few moments of really caring to make that shift. If this resonates with you, I'd really love for you to leave comments and let's start a dialogue.
