Your voice is often the first impression you make and the lasting memory you leave. In high-stakes communication, you can't afford to let an unprepared voice undermine your expertise, passion, or message.

It’s an example of phatic communication and is the modern day equivalent of the “how do you do” of the past. It serves a social rather than an informational purpose and creates a connection with those you don’t know well. It’s a type of linguistic dance that we all know how to engage.

I looked up what the word means and tele is Greek for far, phone for voice or sound. So telephone literally means "distant sound"… This linguistic evolution reveals something profound about how we communicate. We've created devices for "distant sound" but now we use them when people are right next to us. Ironic, isn't it?

They say that children laugh on average 150 times a day. How about you, how often do you really laugh? And that’s not counting those polite laughs we do when we know it’s what’s expected of us.

Hands up who’s never procrastinated?

Thought so.

We’ve all done it at sometime: starting that proposal, replying to an email that’s been in your inbox for days, or working on that great idea you’ve been hatching for months. Whatever it may be, we’ve all been there: stuck in frozen mode, waiting for the perfect moment.

But what if the solution was just three simple words?

How do we know if we’re breathing incorrectly? Our throat will tell us. Think of those nights out in crowded venues when we’ve had to raise our voice, or when we’ve been to a concert or sports fixture and been singing and shouting. The next day we may feel it as irritation in our throats, or maybe we’ll lose our voice altogether.

The problem is we all lose our natural way of breathing at about the age of six when we go to school. We’re then told to sit still in class for long periods of time, which affects our breathing meaning we start to breathe more shallowly.

The dilemma is, we all want to be seen as real and genuine, but sometimes life pulls us out of our selves and self-doubt whispers that we are not enough and need to become someone else entirely.