Wednesday, October 22, 2025

Weekly Voice Insights #62 – Resetting the Breath When Frustration Rises

Catching the moment before reaction — one breath, one exhale, and the tension starts to release.

It usually starts with something small.
A video won’t stream. AirPlay refuses to connect. You’ve done everything right, but it still doesn’t work.

You feel that quick rush — the “why are you doing this to me?” moment. Then you catch it.
You stop, take a slow breath, and exhale completely.

That one action doesn’t erase frustration, but it steadies you enough to see what’s happening.

Anger rarely explodes out of nowhere. Most of the time it’s a small interruption — something that blocks what you meant to do. Anger is often just blocked intention — the body’s way of saying, something isn’t going the way I pictured it.

The body reacts first; the mind joins in later.
And where you feel it varies. Maybe it’s the jaw. Maybe the shoulders. Maybe deep in the stomach. Wherever it is, that’s where you start.

When you find it, let the breath do its job.
A full exhale releases the pressure that built up before you even noticed it. It’s not symbolic. It’s physical.
Breath clears the tension, resets the rhythm, and helps you return to your own sound.

Stoic Lens

Epictetus reminds us that the event isn’t the problem — it’s how we meet it.
He put it plainly:

“When anything irritates you, remember that you are not disturbed by the thing itself, but by your judgment about it.”

The Stoics taught a simple discipline: impressions first. When something happens, notice it and remind yourself, this is only an impression. That short pause keeps the event from turning into a story.

Epictetus also wrote,

“Do not be swept away by the impression; pause a little.”

That pause is the space breath gives you. It’s small, but it’s where self-command begins.

Anger is fast. Breath is slow.
Each full exhale restores your command of the moment.

He also said,

“If someone succeeds in provoking you, remember that your mind is complicit in the provocation.”

It’s a blunt reminder that reaction is never one-sided. The same applies to things — even to a piece of technology that refuses to cooperate. The device isn’t conspiring against you; your mind is joining the argument. Catching that partnership early is what practice looks like.

A 60-Second Protocol When Anger Flares

• Acknowledge: “Anger present.”
• Breathe: One full inhale, one slow exhale.
• Clarify: What was I trying to do a moment ago?
• Decide: What’s the next small action I can actually control?

Anger is fast, but it burns out quickly if you don’t feed it. Breath slows it down enough to see what’s real and what’s imagined.

Singers learn this early. When the breath gets tight, the sound tightens too.

Yes — that’s a real, observable thing, not just a metaphor.

When teachers or singers say “the breath gets tight,” they’re describing a set of physical responses that restrict how freely air moves through the torso and throat. It usually happens under tension, effort, or self-consciousness.

Here’s what’s actually going on:

  • The ribs stop expanding — the intercostal muscles (between the ribs) hold instead of allowing the sides to widen.

  • The abdominal wall stiffens — you’re bracing, as if for impact, rather than letting the lower belly move naturally with the breath.

  • The throat narrows — the laryngeal muscles tighten, which you can feel as a slight squeezing or lifting in the neck.

  • The exhale becomes forced or shallow — air trickles out in bursts instead of flowing smoothly.

When that happens, tone quality changes immediately: less resonance, more pressure, less ease. In speech it sounds clipped or strained; in singing it sounds pushed or flat.

That’s why a deliberate exhale — really letting the lungs empty — is so effective. It resets the muscles that were holding and reminds the body what an unforced breath feels like.

Frustration does the same thing. A “tight reaction” is the emotional version of that same squeeze — your body braces, your timing speeds up, and your tone carries strain instead of clarity.

The fix isn’t to overthink it; it’s to release it. Let the ribs move again. Let the air out fully. The voice resets on its own. So does your mind.

The same instrument that carries a message of warmth can also carry temper. The breath doesn’t choose sides; you do.

Before you move on, take a minute to experience what this feels like in practice.

A Short Breath Meditation

Take a deep breath, breathing all the way down into the abdomen.
Feel the chest and stomach fill with air.
Then exhale slowly and completely.
When you exhale, make a deliberate effort to empty the lungs completely.

As you breathe, notice what parts of your body respond.
Which muscles join the inhale?
Where does the release happen on the exhale?
Keep your attention there for a few breaths.

You can’t stop frustration from showing up. But you can notice where it lives in you, breathe once, and start again.

A full exhale doesn’t just clear the lungs. It clears the moment.

Related Posts

Weekly Voice Insights #9 – How Emotional Energy Affects Our Voice and Body
https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/10/weekly-insight-9-how-emotional-energy.html
Explores how tension, emotion, and environment shape breath and sound — introducing the “breath reset” as a tool for restoring calm and clarity.

Weekly Voice Insights #46 – The Four Pillars of Voice—Intention, Breath, Tone, and Connection
https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/07/weekly-insight-46-four-pillars-of.html
Lays out the DYAV framework, showing how breath supports intention and shapes tone and connection — a clear conceptual bridge to this post’s focus on breath under stress.

Weekly Voice Insights #49 – Breath Isn’t the Fix — Awareness Is
https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/07/weekly-insight-49-breath-isnt-fix.html
Challenges the idea of “just breathe” as a cure-all, focusing instead on conscious awareness of what the body is doing. Complements the idea that breath is a reset, not an escape from frustration.

Further Resources

Breathing Practices for Stress and Anxiety Reduction
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10741869/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
A medical overview of how deliberate breathing activates the parasympathetic system and calms the stress response.

Effect of Breathwork on Stress and Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis of Randomised-Controlled Trials
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-27247-y?utm_source=chatgpt.com
A meta-analysis showing breathwork’s measurable effect on stress, anxiety, and mood regulation.

Keeping Your Cool: 40 Stoic Quotes on Taming Anger
https://dailystoic.com/keeping-your-cool-40-stoic-quotes-on-taming-anger/?utm_source=chatgpt.com
A practical collection of Stoic reflections on anger, judgment, and self-command from Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and Seneca.

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Wednesday, October 15, 2025

Weekly Voice Insight #61-Listening Before Leading: The Discipline of Perception



“First learn the nature of each thing, then learn what it demands of you.” — Epictetus, Discourses 1.20.7

Hearing What’s Really There

I once worked with a coach who gave a steady stream of corrections during a lesson. That’s fairly normal — in this kind of work, you sing, they listen, and then you get feedback. Because we don’t hear ourselves the way others do, it helps to have a trusted outside ear, especially when working on subtle adjustments. The moments pass so quickly that you may not even notice what you’ve done, so a certain amount of trust is built into the process.

We usually recorded these sessions, though listening back was never easy. Hearing yourself can be uncomfortable, even humbling, but it became part of my regular practice. I’ve often said that recordings let you hear your voice as others hear it — and that habit alone can change how you understand tone, pitch, and emotion. Awareness grows when you stop relying on memory and start listening to what actually happened.

What surprised me one day, replaying a session, was realizing that many of the issues this coach described were hypothetical — things that might have gone wrong but hadn’t.  Listening objectively, I could hear that the feedback was based on possibilities, not reality.

Teaching Through Observation

That gap between perception and projection came back to me years later, when I spent time at KaosPilot in Aarhus through a teaching grant. Their facilitator guidelines said something I’ve never forgotten: step back from what you know so well. What’s obvious to you might not be to the person you’re helping. Let them observe what they’re doing before you jump in to correct it. That takes restraint — and practice.

The same principle shaped how I later approached teaching. From time to time, I’d pause the lesson or presentation for a short check-in. Everyone would sit in a circle and respond to a simple prompt — not graded or judged, just shared. I’d take notes to see how people were processing ideas, what they understood, and where their thinking seemed to lead next. It wasn’t about evaluation but perception: learning what was really happening in the room.

That practice taught me as much as it taught them. I began to see how students made sense of what I said, how they re-framed it in their own words. The check-in also became an exercise in concise, authentic communication. No one could interrupt or cross-talk, so people learned to listen fully before speaking. Over time, that simple rule created a space of safety and genuine exchange — a room where attention itself was the teacher.

The Discipline of Perception

Epictetus might call this the discipline of perception. Before you act, speak, or correct, you must see what’s in front of you and understand its nature. Then, and only then, can you respond in a way that truly serves it. Otherwise, we act from imagination — from the world inside our head rather than the one before our eyes.

That same discipline applies outside the studio. When you’re leading or facilitating, the time when you’re not speaking is often the most revealing. It’s when you can see how the room is taking in what’s been said — what connects, what doesn’t, and what still needs space.

Listening in Practice

In voice work, that kind of restraint is essential. The teacher listens for what the body and breath are truly doing, not what they expect to hear. The student learns to notice sensation before judgment — to feel the tone, not chase it. The same applies in conversation, leadership, and daily life. The more we can hold still and listen, the more accurately we respond.

Presence, in this sense, isn’t a performance quality. It’s the outcome of attention — an unhurried awareness that lets us see and hear things as they really are. The best coaches, leaders, and communicators aren’t the ones who have all the answers ready, but the ones who wait long enough to ask the right question.

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Wednesday, October 8, 2025

 Weekly Voice Insight #60 — Breath, Airflow, and Effort: The Physics Beneath the Voice


Her teaching lives on in every mindful breath.


Highlighted Quote:
“Most vocal difficulties come down to two things: not taking in enough air—or not using the air you have.” — Margaret Harshaw

Publication Date: October 2025

Synopsis

This week’s reflection returns to the foundation of all voice work: breathing. Whether in song or speech, the voice depends on how efficiently air becomes sound. Breathing may seem automatic, but when we use the voice intentionally, the physics change. This piece reframes breath control as breath coordination—a process of balancing airflow, energy, and ease rather than forcing “support.”

Takeaway: Effective breathing isn’t about how much air you take in, but how clearly you sense, manage, and release what you already have.

Teaching Note: Breathing for Singing and Speaking

  1. Airflow and Sound
    To sustain sound, sufficient air must pass through the larynx (the structure that houses the vocal folds, or vocal cords). “Sufficient” means just enough to keep the folds vibrating steadily—no more, no less. Too much air creates a breathy tone; too little makes the sound pressed or strained. Either extreme reduces acoustic power.
    For both singers and speakers, the task is to manage airflow, not force it. The body finds equilibrium through steady release, not pressure.

  2. From Air to Sound
    Aerodynamic energy (airflow) becomes acoustic energy (vibration). Only a small fraction of that energy turns into sound, but when conversion is efficient, the voice feels and sounds free. The subtle vibrations we sense in the chest, throat, or face are physical feedback—cues that airflow and vibration are working together.

  3. Freedom of the Vocal Folds
    When airflow is managed with balance, the vocal folds can vibrate freely, and the surrounding muscles of the throat don’t have to engage unnecessarily. The throat itself doesn’t produce sound; it simply houses the folds. When breath pressure is steady, those muscles can stay relaxed, allowing the voice to function with ease.

Scientific Perspective

  • Pressure and Flow: Subglottal pressure (the air pressure beneath the vocal folds) drives sound. Pressure above the folds tends to stay low until air exits through the mouth or nose.

  • Lung Volume: In everyday speech, we use only a modest portion of lung capacity. Singing long phrases or projecting the voice for teaching can draw on much deeper reserves.

  • Pitch and Effort: Higher pitches require stiffer vocal folds and greater air pressure. The chest, back, and intercostal muscles (the small muscles between the ribs) help stabilize this support.

  • Quick Breaths: For a “catch breath,” air must move through open pathways. The abdominals and intercostals release instantly, allowing the diaphragm to descend naturally.

Breath Management in Real Use

Margaret Harshaw used to remind her students that most vocal problems come down to two things: not taking in enough air—or not using the air we have. That insight applies to anyone who relies on their voice. We often under-prepare the breath or, just as often, hold it without realizing it.

“Every habit and capability is confirmed and strengthened by the corresponding actions—walking by walking, running by running.” — Epictetus, Discourses II.18

The real solution is not to take more air, but to manage how much air we take based on how we plan to use it. In most daily conversation, the body knows exactly what to do. We naturally take in the amount of air we need to finish a sentence, and we release it without thinking. But when the voice takes on a more athletic role—teaching, presenting, or singing—it helps to bring that process into awareness.

One exercise that highlights this is a breathing pattern often attributed to the 18th-century castrato Farinelli, though versions of it appear across disciplines—from vocal training to athletics and stress management. (You’ll find a deeper look at this exercise in Weekly Voice Insight #24 – The Farinelli Breath: Patience and Precision in Practice, linked below.)It’s the vocal equivalent of a dancer practicing a plié. A dancer doesn’t rehearse bending because they’ve forgotten how—it’s so they can feel what happens in the muscles, joints, and balance during that familiar movement. In the same way, breath exercises don’t teach us how to breathe; they help us notice how the body behaves when we breathe.

Sometimes we find that we’re stacking the breath—layering small sips of air on top of what’s already there, creating internal pressure instead of usable flow. At other times, we may realize we’re holding the breath entirely, a subtle response to emotion, anticipation, or even anxiety. Bringing attention to this moment—what the ribs, abdomen, and chest are doing—helps reset the natural rhythm.

Our goal isn’t to control breath, but to coordinate it. By simply observing how we inhale and release, we restore the balance between air and sound. The steadier and more responsive that balance becomes, the more freely the voice can function—whether speaking, performing, or leading others.

Why Breathe Consciously?

Humans breathe instinctively; it’s how life sustains itself. But when speaking or singing, breath must serve an expressive purpose. Conscious awareness helps us refine that connection. Ordinary breathing responds to survival; expressive breathing responds to meaning and phrasing.

No single method works for everyone. What matters is discovering the coordination that allows breath to serve both sound and sense without tension or excess effort.

Related Posts

  • Weekly Voice Insight #11 – Breath as the Foundation of Voice: Finding Openness and Expansion

  • Weekly Voice Insight #17 – Building Your 12-Minute Practice Plan: Start with Breath

  • Weekly Voice Insight #24 – The Farinelli Breath: Patience and Precision in Practice

  • Weekly Voice Insight #34 – The Breath Beneath Resilience

  • Weekly Voice Insight #49 – Breath Isn’t the Fix — Awareness Is

Further Resources

Elias Mokole

Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice
Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter – 

 https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/develop-your-authentic-voice-7337908264820453378

 
#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #VoiceMatters #Clarity #Presence #BreathAwareness #VocalTechnique #Epictetus

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Wednesday, October 1, 2025

Weekly Voice Insights #59 – Bias Alert Check-In: Guarding Clarity in Voice and Awareness

Noticing the stories we carry into the room


Red glasses on. Bias radar active!

We often walk into conversations carrying assumptions we don’t notice. The same thing happens with the voice. A singer may repeat a phrase without clear intention, or a speaker may let adrenaline carry them through too quickly, without giving the words space to land. These slips aren’t deliberate — they’re habits. In the same way, our minds fall into biases that shape how we sound before we’ve even chosen the words.

The idea of a Bias Alert Check-In came to me while working with AI. I realized the tool often gave back exactly what I wanted to hear. That was flattering, but it also meant I could miss what was really there. So I started asking it to flag possible bias in my drafts. Erasing bias isn’t possible, but paying attention to when it shows up — that is.

And what I mean by bias here isn’t just politics or surveys. It’s the small, everyday judgments that creep into our tone. Speaking too quickly because we want to get everything out without leaving a pause. Losing track of intention. Assuming the other person won’t follow us. Those cues show up long before the words are finished.

I’ve also noticed this reflected in some recent work on communication. A June 2025 article, Why Tone of Voice Matters in Communication, described how small changes in tone can shift the level of trust people place in what’s being said. Another piece, The Emotional Signature of Your Voice (July 2025), pointed out that clarity depends on whether your tone matches what you mean. That matches my experience too: when intention isn’t clear, or when you overlook how much breath you actually have for a phrase, the sound reveals more than the words alone.

“When any impression comes upon you, remember to say: you are an impression, not the thing you appear to be.”
— Epictetus, Discourses 1.20

Impressions arrive quickly and feel convincing, but they’re not always the full story.

That reminds me of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story. Her point wasn’t that stereotypes are always false, but that they are incomplete — they leave out the rest of the picture. I used her talk often in a first-year seminar course for new college students. Every time I watched it, I learned something myself. It helped students see their own single stories, and it gave me the chance to check mine too.

What made it so powerful was her honesty. She wasn’t lecturing about bias; she was telling her own. She spoke about Fide, the boy who helped with chores in her home. She had always been told his family was very poor, and that became her single story. Then she visited their home and saw the beautiful baskets the family had made. In that moment she realized she had reduced the whole family to one narrative of poverty. The story wasn’t false, but it was incomplete.

I’ve seen the same pattern in my own work. In performance, it can be tempting to repeat a phrase the same way because that’s how it’s always been done. Imitation has its place — choosing a strong model can teach us a great deal — but if we stop there, something gets lost. In my experience, the listener is more engaged when the interpretation has been made our own. Epictetus described this in his own way when he wrote about the art of the speaker and the art of the listener: communication is most alive when what we bring is genuinely ours and it connects across both sides.

Teaching was the same. Templates and old syllabi gave me a starting point, but unless I reworked them for the students in the room, they didn’t quite fit. AI is no different. It can provide useful material, but if I take it as-is, I’m not really bringing my own voice to it. The Bias Alert Check-In makes me stop and ask: is this just a convenient version, or have I adapted it into something that truly reflects me?

And we know bias can be heard, even unconsciously. An article called Silent Signals: How AI Can Read Between the Lines in Your Voice (July 2025) described how machines detect hesitation, stress, or pacing shifts in ways humans often miss consciously — but still respond to. If AI can hear our hesitation, so can people.

That’s why I use a simple Bias Alert Check-In, a short set of prompts to reset tone and attention:

  • Who or what am I reacting to?

  • How’s my breath?

  • Am I leaving space for the other side?

First impressions and single stories will always come. They tell us something, but not everything. The Bias Alert Check-In is a reminder to pause, notice, and stay aware of what comes out of our mouth. That small pause also opens the door for the listener — it makes space for a real exchange, where both sides are part of the conversation.

Related Posts

Further Resources

Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

Please subscribe here

#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #VoiceMatters #Clarity #Attention #Awareness #StoicWisdom #Epictetus #BiasAlert #SingleStory #Listening
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Wednesday, September 24, 2025

 🎙️Weekly Insight #58 -Listicles Aren’t Mystical: From Checklists to Integrated Practice

Checklists give you the items, practice tells you what really belongs in your cart.

Using lists as starting points, not finish lines, in voice work.


I recently saw an article titled ‘5 Techniques to Build a More Powerful Speaking Voice.’ Lists like this can point out the basics — breath, pace, articulation — and give us benchmarks to track. What matters most is how we practice those reminders and integrate them into our own system.

Most people don’t spend much time thinking about their voice until a moment demands it — a presentation, an interview, a performance. That’s why lists are appealing. They offer a quick way to make sense of something that feels complex. And that’s what listicles were designed for in the first place: not to give the full picture, but to offer simple entry points. The value is in using them as a starting point, not as the final word. For each individual voice user, the real work begins when you take those reminders and test them in your own system.

As Jordan Peterson once put it: “If all you can teach is the words on the appropriate list, you could just be replaced by the list.” That’s the trap with surface-level advice. It risks making the teacher — and the learner — interchangeable with the list itself.

Another list, this time from Speakeasy Inc., promises to build “a voice that commands respect” through breath, articulation, and pacing. The categories are familiar — the same buckets most lists return to. That repetition isn’t a flaw. It shows that these elements really do matter. But the lists can only give you a doorway in. The rest of the work is figuring out how those elements function in your own voice.

An article on “Why Authentic Narration Improves Training Retention” points out that learners remember more when the voice is emotionally connected. Breath, tone, articulation, and pacing are the means that allow that connection. The difference is whether you stop at the list or use it as a springboard to explore how those elements work for you.

That’s the step Harshaw pressed us to take. She didn’t deny the importance of the buckets — breath, vowels, articulation, posture. She pushed us to individualize them: to notice how I breathed, how my vowels shifted, how my body reacted. Once those elements were integrated, then authentic narration was possible. In my own recital work, I can tell when I’m focused only on the sound. But when the vowels and breath are ingrained, I can shift my attention outward — toward text, story, or audience — and the connection changes.

Presence isn’t a commodity or a medal you earn after following steps. It’s emergent. It shows up when the basics have been practiced and absorbed, and when the listener feels engaged in return. It’s relational — a back-and-forth between speaker and listener. In a (BA) Business Analysis workshop, I can see it when participants lean in; in a recital hall, when the silence sharpens around a phrase.

  • Presence is emergent — it shows up when practice and integration free you to connect.
  • Presence is relational — it’s co-created between voice and listener.
  • Presence is adaptive — it varies, and you refine it through feedback and adjustment.

Francesco Pecoraro’s “Developing a Strong Vocal Presence” outlines a step-by-step sequence for resonance, pacing, and confidence. This kind of structure can be helpful when you’re first paying attention to your voice. But presence doesn’t appear because you follow a sequence. Lists can point you toward the right pieces, but the foundation of voice depends on exploring how those elements work in your own voice.

And this connects to focus.
“If you are everywhere, you are nowhere.” – Seneca, On Tranquility of Mind 2.6

Training is about projecting focus as if your life depends on it — because in many ways, it does. Harshaw’s five-vowel exercise on a single pitch worked the same way. It narrowed attention to something so specific that, once mastered, it became automatic. From there, focus could shift: to text, to phrasing, to connection. Like the selective attention exercise — when you train your eye on one thing, you miss the gorilla walking by — practice forces you to look closely at one element until it’s ingrained. Then you can release that focus and widen your awareness.
“Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good." – Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.17

That’s also where Stoicism connects. Epictetus didn’t say, “Follow these three easy steps to virtue.” He taught that habits are built in the small, repeated actions you choose every day.
“If you have properly trained your desires and aversions, you will never fail, never fall into what you would avoid, and never be thwarted.” – Epictetus, Discourses 1.1

In one place he writes that if you’ve trained yourself to know what is in your power and what is not, you won’t be derailed when events don’t go as planned. The same is true for voice. Shortcuts can give you a quick boost, but they rarely hold up in the moments that matter. What holds up is the patient work of aligning breath, tone, and words until they move together without thought. Natural talent can get you far, just as raw athletic ability does, but it only becomes reliable when you understand how it functions under pressure. Lists can help point you toward the buckets, but real presence comes from testing, repeating, and integrating those elements until they belong to you.

Related Posts




Further Resources





Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

Please subscribe here

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Wednesday, September 17, 2025

🎙️Weekly Insight #57- The Light Behind the Clouds: The Will That Remains Our Own


Epictetus, Margaret Harshaw, and Ardis Krainik on what it means to choose rather than drift.


 
The will to choose, the voice to carry it.


On a recent morning here in Duluth, I looked out expecting another gray sky. For several days the clouds had hidden the sunrise, and more than once I decided to go back to bed. Today, though, the light was different. The clouds were still there, heavy and gray, but the water reflected a brightness that surprised me. The light wasn’t gone—it was simply waiting behind the clouds.

That image brought to mind a line from Epictetus:

“My will is my own. Nothing can truly hinder me unless I consent.”

Clouds block the view, rejections sting, evenings feel aimless—but these only take as much power as we give them.I remember one of the hardest parts of working with Margaret Harshaw wasn’t when she asked me to sing louder or higher. She never did that directly. What she pushed me to do was notice. To sense what my body was doing rather than wait for an outside signal. She asked me to pay attention to the choices I was making, not to the sound itself or the approval of someone listening.

And when I struggled—when I thought, Why isn’t this working? What difference am I supposed to feel?—she would remind me: “Singing is 95% mental. You will the voice to do what you choose for it to do.” At the time, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. I thought will was about effort. But what she was pointing to was clarity. First, you have to know what you are willing the voice to do. Without that, you just repeat exercises mindlessly, hoping something will change. The mental part wasn’t about force. It was about choosing, then directing the voice toward that choice.

During that same period, I was at Lyric Opera of Chicago as a young artist. Harshaw came in my last year and a half there, and she wasn’t the only powerful figure I learned from. Ardis Krainik, the general director, had an unmistakable clarity about the direction she set for the company. In my exit interview with her—something she offered every young artist, which I thought was a mark of real class—she looked at me and said, “Elias, I’m not concerned for you. You have the volontà.”

I knew the word meant “will.” At the time, I thought, Well, I’d love a job more than a compliment. But many years later, those words echo differently. Epictetus wrote:

“First decide who you choose to be, then act accordingly.”

That’s what she must have seen in me—the capacity to will, to choose, and then to act with that choice..

Choice shows up in quieter moments, too. Around seven in the evening I often feel caught in a strange limbo. I’m not ready for bed, but I don’t know whether to keep working, rest, or reach out to someone. The pull is strong to drift into nothing in particular. Yet that, too, is a matter of consent. If I give in, the evening slips away. If I direct my will toward even one small action—calling a friend, reading a passage, or simply stepping outside—I change the quality of that hour.

The same principle applies in professional life. Recently I reflected on how impersonal rejection letters feel. They arrive polished but cold, with no real acknowledgment of the person who applied. The words can sting, but they only gain real force if we let them. We can consent to let them define our worth, or we can move forward with the work that matters.

Music reinforces this truth in its own way, and I felt it most clearly last week at the recital in Duluth Heights. Those concerts in retirement communities often take place in smaller, more intimate rooms. The space there had tall windows that opened onto the same kind of weather I saw this morning—gray light and shifting brightness. The acoustics carried well, and you could feel how the sound reached every corner.

The songs themselves carried the weight of Epictetus’s insight. Purcell’s If Music Be the Food of Love, with the line For then my listening soul you move. Stephen Foster’s Beautiful Dreamer, wake unto me. Gerald Finzi’s To a Poet a Thousand Years Hence. And in Mozart’s “Abendempfindung,” with its reminder that life’s stage passes quickly and that each scene becomes a pearl and a crown, I could see how the words landed.

That’s the power of live performance. The notes are fleeting, but in the moment they awaken something in the listener. You can see it in their faces and feel it in the room. The acoustic vibration stirs memory, longing, joy, and sometimes tears.

Stephen Foster’s songs captured this truth directly. In All the Voice of Bygone Days, the lyric speaks of “weeping old time sorrows, or smiling as in days of yore, when each heart its burden bore of love and pity, bliss and pain.” That is what comes alive in performance—the way a song recalls burdens carried, joys remembered, and feelings once thought forgotten. The “voice of bygone days” does come back again, whispering to the weary-hearted.

Which brings me back to Epictetus. The music awakens because both singer and listener consent to be moved in that moment. The clouds, the rejections, the restless evenings—none of these can hinder the will unless we hand over that power.

When I looked again at the lake later that morning, the light still pressed through the gray. The clouds didn’t lift, but they didn’t stop the brightness either. Circumstances, doubts, or setbacks may cover the sky, but they cannot control the will unless we hand them that consent.

The voice works the same way. Harshaw’s lesson wasn’t about ignoring difficulty—it was about choosing how to meet it. Whether in a rehearsal, a job search, or an evening at home, the question remains: will I let the gray decide for me, or will I choose to bring forward the light that’s already there?

That choice doesn’t erase the clouds. But it keeps the will, and the voice that carries it, firmly our own.


Related Posts



Further Resources




Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025

🎙️Weekly Insight #56 - The Art of Listening: From Epictetus to Purcell

When the soul listens, the voice follows.

How listening deepens speech, song, and memory.

Epictetus often reminded his students that our human faculties come in pairs. Sight and vision, reason and choice, speech and hearing. Each depends on the other. What use is speaking without someone to hear? What use is listening if it never stirs response?

“for then my listening soul you move.” — Henry Purcell, If Music Be the Food of Love (text after Shakespeare, adapted by Henry Heveningham)

That line has stayed with me as I prepare for this week’s recital in Duluth Heights. One of the songs I’ll sing is Purcell’s If Music Be the Food of Love, with Heveningham’s line above. It’s a reminder that listening isn’t passive. To listen is to allow movement in the soul—something that shows up later in memory, in speech, even in the courage to sing.

Epictetus himself made this distinction. He said there’s a difference between “common hearing” and “musical hearing.”

Common hearing is universal: the ability to notice and distinguish sounds. Everyone has it, unless physically impaired.

Musical hearing is cultivated: the trained ability to recognize intervals, harmonies, or subtleties that only a musician (or someone with practice) can pick out.

The same is true of voice. Everyone has a basic vocal ability—to speak, to tell loud from soft, high from low. But trained vocal skill is something more: hearing subtle differences in tone, sustaining breath, or shaping vowels with intention.

So when Purcell writes, “for then my listening soul you move,” it’s not just about sound reaching the ear. It’s about the kind of listening that moves deeper, the kind we cultivate.

I’ve seen this in past recitals. At Quality Living Inc. in Omaha, many in the audience could not speak easily, but their listening was unmistakable. The silence in the room carried weight. In Chippewa Falls, people told me afterward not about my phrasing or technique, but about memories the music had stirred—moments that had been dormant until listening gave them life again.

Another line from Heveningham’s text is another line I’ve carried with me: “And all my senses feasted are, / Though yet the treat is only sound.”

That’s exactly what I’ve witnessed—listening that goes beyond the ear, stirring memory, emotion, and even the body.

The best artists also start with listening. Sinatra described his process in a way I’ve remembered ever since. He began not with the orchestra, not even with the melody, but with the lyrics on a page—reading them as poetry, listening for the emotions and inflections behind the words. His advice was simple: “You sing the song. If the take is good, you’re done.”

I sometimes imagine him in conversation with Giovanni Battista Lamperti, a 19th-century Italian teacher whose Vocal Wisdom is still read today. Sinatra says, “I speak the words first, experiment with inflections, find the emotional core before I ever sing a note.” Lamperti replies, “The voice must unite word, tone, and breath—diction, diaphragm, and focus forming an eternal triangle.” Two different traditions, but the same principle: listening first, then expression.

That kind of listening—quiet, attentive, patient—makes speech and song honest. Margaret Harshaw used to tell me that singing is 95% mental, which was her way of pointing to the same truth. Listening aligns mind and voice before a note is sung.

And it’s not just about performance. In daily life, listening is what grounds our speaking. Try this: send a short voice memo instead of a text this week. At the end of the day, listen back as if it weren’t your own voice. Notice the rise and fall, the pauses, the tone. It may feel uncomfortable, but it’s a way of letting listening guide your speaking, just as Epictetus said one faculty completes the other.

“for then my listening soul you move.” May our listening souls be moved—and from that movement, may something worth remembering be spoken.


Related Posts

If you’d like to explore related posts from earlier in this series:

Weekly Insight #6 – The Silent Saboteur: How Negative Self-Talk Undermines Your Performance https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/09/weekly-insight-6-silent-saboteur-how.html


Weekly Insight #15 – Choosing Exercises with Purpose https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2024/11/weekly-insight-15-choosing-exercises.html


Weekly Insight #22 – The Thoughtful Power of Your Voice https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/01/weekly-insight-22-thoughtful-power-of.html


Weekly Insight #33 – Pitch, Presence, and the Power of Vocal Variation https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/04/weekly-insight-33-pitch-presence-and.html


Weekly Insight #41 – The Quiet Power of Giving the Benefit of the Doubt https://dyavwithelias.blogspot.com/2025/05/weekly-insight-41-quiet-power-of-giving.html


Further Resources

Wikipedia: Margaret Harshaw https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Harshaw


Wikipedia: Giovanni Battista Lamperti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Battista_Lamperti



Elias Mokole Keynote Speaker, BA & Beyond 2025 | Voice Presence & Change Founder, Developing Your Authentic Voice Newsletter.

Please subscribe here

#DevelopingYourAuthenticVoice #VoiceMatters #Clarity #Presence #EmotionalIntelligence #LeadershipCommunication #ListeningSkills #StoicWisdom #Epictetus #TheArtOfListening #Purcell




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