Have you ever thought something was a certain way, forever, until one day a light-bulb moment happened and you realised you had completely misinterpreted that something for a long, long time?

My Mother told me she’d had piano lessons when she was a little girl. Every week she struggled with reading the music, desperately trying to avoid the wrath of her fierce teacher. Invariably, she got into trouble as the tunes just didn’t sound right. Every week the teacher became more exasperated and every week, my Mother was told off for getting it wrong.

Then one week, her light-bulb moment happened. She realised that the notes she played weren’t denoted by where the tails of the musical ‘blobs’ appeared on the five lines of the stave, but where the centre of the ‘blobs’ appeared! For weeks my Mother had believed that she had to make sense of the tails, sometimes pointing up, sometimes down, until a new teacher explained to her how to read the music properly. She changed her way of reading the music and her piano skills flourished.

This paradigm shift can happen with voice work, too. We all have a habit of speaking a certain way, which is not questioned by anyone and we assume it’s correct. However, when an expert reveals a more effective way of doing it – a small change in behaviour can make a huge difference to the power and impact of our speech.

I have clients with poor vocal habits which prevent them from being impressive speakers. They have known that they wanted to change something, perhaps to soften their accent, perhaps to have more confidence. However, with help and by approaching their difficulty from a professional perspective, the true issues are identified; old habits can be stopped, new habits formed. Speech can become smoother, clearer and have more impact. The change can be quite striking – as well as speaking more clearly and with more impact, I have reports of clients being warmly welcomed to new conferences, encouraged to do more presentations and listened to with interest and respect. Good speech habits make a tangible difference to work-life as well as self-esteem – not to mention skill as a talented speaker.

Noticing things in a different way – re-interpreting – is a great way to break paradigms and flourish.