Well, I think we can answer that question by starting to look at the pain, the problems that people have in communication. Some of these may resonate with you. A lot of the people I've worked with over the years, feel frustrated, they feel disempowered, people aren't listening. I can't get my message across so that people listen to me. You know, some people just have that natural charisma, they walk into a room, big booming voice, big presence, everybody stopped, stops to listen, if that's not you, you're going to learn skills in this course, which will make your presentation much more powerful, your content much more appropriate and give you much more impact in your speaking not being heard. Not being listened to.

As a matter of regularity in one's life leads to all sorts of frustrations it leads to disconnection. It can even lead to loneliness and isolation. As one feels disconnected from the other people around in the wider picture, I think communication skills have never been more needed than they are now. Listening leads to understanding, lack of listening, lack of ability to speak persuasively and intelligently. Those tend to lead to conflict, even hate. And a lot of the violence that we see in the world from war down to individual violence is a result of lack of communication, lack of understanding, lack of listening, apart from anything else, but also the inability to put a point across without having to, you know, inflict violence on somebody to make yourself heard.

So speaking and listening powerfully, I believe, great forces for peace in the world. And you only have to look at the politics that we're inflicted with now. The way that it's done the the shouting, not the Listening, you know, politicians go out for talks, don't they? I tend to think it would be a better world if they went off and had lessons instead of talks. So politics in 140 characters, the media, interrupting this sort of attacked of journalism that we have polarization of all political parties, which is happening over the world, more and more where people are being pushed more to the polls and shouting at one another, and not synthesizing, not understanding, not taking the best from every position. These things again, are very much about not listening.

And if you're interested in that kind of concept, I can point you at a TEDx Athens speech I gave in the in the cradle of democracy, which was all about the lack of listening and why listening is crucial in politics. A little exercise I can recommend to you right here, and these exercises will all be in the workbook that you will see associated with this chapter. So your first exercise, listen to someone you disagree with. That's a really fine exercise, giving them the respect to listen to their position fully without jumping in, butting in. Yeah, but No, you're wrong and none of that stuff. Just listen to them, and let their views wash over you and integrate them.

There may be something in there you can learn from who knows. So that is a great exercise. So that's the pain. What's the game? Well, what's at stake, the price that's at stake is three things. They are quite important things, happiness, effectiveness, and well being.

Let me explain. Now all the research I've seen on happiness shows that wealth is not the answer. there are just as many miserable people with money as There are miserable people without money. health, wealth doesn't create happiness. Nor does fame adulation respect. Other people's opinion isn't a generator of happiness, it's not guaranteed to make you happy.

Actually the two things that are most correlated in the researches that I've seen, with happiness, our connectedness, and service, those two things. Now, if you want to be connected to other people, speaking and listening, are fundamental. And if you're going to do service for people, it's very important to know how you can best serve other people, acts of kindness, not best done in terms of what you think they might like. It's important to ask them to communicate to understand again to be of service. So your happiness is very based on your communication skills. effectiveness is much more obvious even than that your productivity is so affected by the sound around you and how you can listen and how well you can put your point across.

Can you inspire people? Can you lead people? Can you make a difference in the world by being a persuasive and empowering speaker? A couple of exercises before we go on, which may help with this that you'll find on the, on the workbook with this chapter? What makes you happy? What are the things that actually make you happy?

And how does speaking and listening and sound involve itself in that how to sound figure in what makes you happy? And also what sounds are most productive for you? Now, that's a really important one to think about. And I do urge you to complete these exercises as you go through the course. And think about those things because you can really transform your effectiveness. By being more conscious of those things.

Now, the third key is well being. It's hugely affected by your ability to communicate. And by the way you listen to the world around you. Sound effects your well being in three powerful ways, actually, first of all you're hearing and if you're surrounded by loud noise all the time, it will damage your hearing. And we have a huge issue with deafness actually, in the modern world, not least through headphone abuse. We'll come on to that when we talk about listening and hearing later on.

But also industrial noise, traffic noise, there are millions of people who can't sleep at night because of traffic noise. So the world is a noisy place It has an effect on our hearing, and it has an effect also the second level on our blood pressure. Noise tends to elevate your blood pressure and creates stress and long term blood pressure elevation leads to cardiac issues. Use strokes, and so forth. So noise is actually a killer. And it's certainly is compromising the quality of life of many, many millions of people.

And finally, in terms of well being, it's not just your hearing, it's not just your blood pressure. But it's also how expressed you feel as a human being because it is not good for you to feel repressed, ignored, not taken seriously in the world. That's bad for you. It's stressful, it's upsetting, and it will have a long term health effect on you. So, happiness, effectiveness, well being. These three things are powerfully affected by your ability to communicate, and the power of your listening the skill that you have of listening to the world around you.

Now we're going to move on to the meat of this chapter. Which which really starts to examine your relationship with sound actually, the voices just sound so Sound is very powerfully affecting you every day. And we're going to move to the other mode of presentation with that as well, the course is not going to be me talking to you like this all the way through. quite large chunks of it will be my voice over slides. I love using slides you may have noticed in my TED Talks, I use slides behind me all the time. For me, it's the most powerful way of expressing myself and I'm really looking forward to sharing some great visuals with you and talking through the slides and around the slides.

And then at the end of this, I will be back here to talk to you about what you've learned in chapter one and introduce chapter two. So without further ado, let's move on and explore the power of sound.