Someone in class asked a great question last night. A talented voiceover artist had just finished a great read, and the new person asked a simple but important question. The question was this. What made his read so perfect. There are of course many things that could be said in answer to this question and they would all be correct in their own way. However, I felt at that moment that there was a need to explain in a more global way, a more practical way that would help everyone in class understand that they can achieve their own great reading ability using their own gifts to do just as well. The answer begins with these five words. Patience, Process, Familiarity, Realization, Revelation.
It is perfectly natural to say things like, “why can’t I do that,” “I wonder how to do that”, oh I could never do that.”
Learning to allow time for process is the single most important thing that we can learn in this life. Process is how the earth was made. Process is how math, science and art achieve all their great accomplishments and inspirations.
Some will simply say, “well you have to have patience to learn any skill and of course that is true. But it goes far beyond that simple true statement. Becoming good at anything, developing a high level of skill always follows a series of events and processes.
When we are starting out on a new path to learn some new skill….we must use our patience to allow time for process. Notice I didn’t say allow process, but allow time for process. People work on a new skill for a bit and then say, I don’t know why I can’t do this. The brutal answer is, you can’t do it as well as you want yet because you haven’t taken the time to become familiar enough so you can see how to do it. We must allow process to continue so that we can build up familiarity with the task. As we become familiar with the task, we see more clearly. We sometimes unconsciously have no regard for the time it takes to learn. We make a generic judgement... I have put in SOME time so why aren’t I better. The question isn’t have you put in SOME time... The question is have you put in ENOUGH time. It’s so obvious it’s funny and yet this is exactly what goes on in peoples minds all the time.
If we don’t allow process because of impatience we are literally making the choice to NOT understand because we have interrupted the process of building up familiarity.
When we practice Patience, we allow Process. That helps us build up Familiarity, and then we start to Realize what’s going on, and then we start having Revelations... about how to do things.
t is far more important to have in depth experiences with how to read a few pieces of copy than it is to have perfunctory experiences reading dozens of pieces of copy. Now of course, perusing vast quantities of copy helps you get a certain overview. But learning how to read a piece of copy requires delving deeply, playing with the cadence, the tone of voice. If a person works on a complicated piece of copy that is, say one page long and they read it 20 times and it sounds really good, then that is a great start.
But all the learning takes place after you get it about right. If you continue to work on it and read it a hundred times after you’ve gotten it down pretty well, you will hear it completely differently than you did when you had first, “gotten it right”. People simply usually stop when something is pretty good AND THEN wonder why it isn’t BETTER!!!!!
Once you realize how to read it, you don’t want to stop there, for heaven's sake. Realization is the last stage before REVELATION. If you stop at realization you have just made the decision to prevent revelation and that is why you can’t do it. It’s not that you couldn’t do it, you just quit the process before you had gotten to the revelation of what would have been brilliant instead of merely good.
Many people have an awful lot of talent and don’t go as far as they might have. And a great many people seem to have less talent and go way beyond what we might have thought possible for them. They, through their persistence and determination build up their familiarity to the point that they have greater and greater revelations from their realizations.
Sometimes people who have a lot of up front talent are too convinced of the superficiality of the task, so they never get beyond their natural talent that makes it easy for them in the beginning.
So when you find yourself saying I wish I could understand... I have one thing to say to you…snap out of it!!!!!!!!! You will understand if you stay with it.
Not understanding is most often a product of interrupting the process that , if allowed to continue, would always result in understanding. It is rarely about can you do it, it’s almost always about…will you stay with it long enough to achieve what you want.
Lets examine some of these elements and specify what is meant. We'll take them in order:
Patience-Patience is NOT working on something while you roll your eyes….patience is NOT tolerating something while you work on it… Patience has nothing to do with begrudgingly working on something….. patience is clearing your mind of these negative traits and dialogues so you can concentrate on the process of learning. This process should not involve self critical dialogue in your mind while you’re working. It’s important to remain observant but neutral while you are working. You just can’t have whiney distracting thoughts going on in your head and expect your mind to learn anything. Patience is: detached participation. You are completely focused on what you’re attempting and observing whether you are succeeding or not, but you are not saying negative things to yourself WHILE you’re making corrections. You are making an effort without the anxiety of fear coloring the attempt.
Familiarity-As these multiple attempts pile up in our minds we find that we are becoming familiar with the results and the reasons why things work. This familiarity is the beginning of control…the development of skill. The ability to steer our efforts and control the result. We only start to get the idea so to speak after we have been immersed in any skill for a while. People often question themselves and wonder why they can’t do something correctly when in fact they simply haven’t invested the time to be able to do it correctly
Realization-Always happens when we are immersed in activities that are producing familiarity. If you keep at something you will always start to understand what is going on. Perception is a by product of familiarity. It’s how our minds analyze things and come to conclusions and develop skills that enable us to progress in our training. As we get familiar with things, and techniques, we stat to realize the relationship between tasks, and that’s when we start to understand the causal relationship between skills and tasks.
Revelations-Only occur if we don’t interrupt this process. As you keep reflecting on your realizations..that very process will produce revelations that are far beyond your current realizations. The main characteristics and differences between realization and revelations are simply the depth of understanding. A realization may reveal how to do something but a revelation will tell you why, and how and take your skill level to a much higher level because you have connected your intuition to your physical skills in a much more profound way.
You can be excited about your voiceover future, because there has never been a time when there are so many opportunities to do voiceover work, and so many new ways to find them.
