In this episode: Discover why your voice is so much bigger than you think it is, and how learning to use all of it can change the way you show up in every area of your life, with voice coach, author, and performer Barbara McAfee.

Barbara McAfee spent decades helping others find their full voice — but the real story starts with her own. She grew up surrounded by soloists (a grandfather on the radio, a mother, a brother) and still couldn't bring herself to sing alone. Fear and perfectionism conspired to lock her down. What finally broke it open was when she found herself at the Roy Hart Center, where a beloved teacher helped her discover a gap in her voice she didn't know existed — one that changed the entire direction of her life. In this conversation, Barbara walks you through her Five Elements Framework (earth, fire, water, metal, and air), what your voice actually reveals about your inner life, and why the version of yourself you've been suppressing might be your greatest gift.

If you've ever dimmed yourself down, talked yourself out of singing in public, or wondered what it would feel like to just let it all out — this one's for you.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The voice you have is not the voice you were born with. It's been shaped by trauma, culture, gender, and the things people said to you at age eight — and it can be reshaped.
• The Five Elements Framework (earth, fire, water, metal, air) is a map for your voice and your life. The element you resist most is usually where your biggest growth is hiding.
• When you change your voice, your life comes along for the ride. More groundedness, more lightness, more range.
• Barbara's turning point wasn't a plan — it was permission. One teacher, one moment of being taken somewhere her voice had never gone. Sometimes that's all it takes.
• The real joy is in the creativity. Whether it's a song, a business, or a life — Barbara is proof that creating from the inside out is more sustaining than any external validation.

"When you change your voice, your life comes along for the ride." — Barbara McAfee

CONNECT WITH BARBARA

Website: https://www.barbaramcafee.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/mcafeemusic

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/barbara.mcafee

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/barbaramcafeesings/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbaramcafee/

Connect with Teresa

• Join the Becoming Obsessed Playground, the weekly email for curiosity-led women building a life they love.
• Instagram: @becomingobsessedpod and @teresaajean
• Leave a review on Apple or Spotify Podcasts. Reviews are the biggest thank-you, and reviews help ambitious women find the show.
• Website: teresaajean.com

Topics: finding your voice, voice coaching for women, personal transformation, Five Elements Framework, oral tradition singing, creativity and self-expression, living from the inside out, authentic leadership, permission to sing, grief and healing, personal growth podcast for ambitious women, building a life you love, curiosity-led living, identity and reinvention, fear of being seen, self-expression for high achievers, letting go of perfectionism, inner wisdom, creative courage, women and aging, community and belonging

Mentioned in this episode:

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I've been incredibly self referential.

I've been working for Bart and there's consequences to that.

My freedom and my being able to follow my own creative impulse, my own inspirations has been so core to how I've lived my life.

And now when I write a song, I can always be a child song.

When it was finished and I recorded it, it was like I had already won a Grammy inside.

If anybody else finds it, use.

That's great.

But for me, it's a kind of prayer.

I mean, the real joy is in the making of the thing.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed, where curiosity leads you to a life you love.

I'm Teresa Stasny, and after over a decade of traveling the world, working with small business owners and creating a couple of businesses of my own, I know a thing or two about playing by your own rules.

It's not always easy and it's often messy.

It can be hard, especially, especially if you're doing it alone.

I've seen way too many incredible women shoot for the stars only to burn out along the way.

Or worse, live on default and never chase their dreams.

We're done with all of that.

Together we're gonna challenge what keeps us stuck and figure out what it takes to live a life we truly love.

I'm obsessed from day to night talking to myself it's just what artists do.

I take it to the woods and if my listening is good, it will come through and I'll sing the song for you.

May I always be a child in the way I see the world May my growing elder's wisdom stay connected to the girls and when my time is at an end May I greet just like a friend the mystery with childlike curiosity I will always be a child On a morning after snow When I'm jumping in the lake and I'm making something new when it comes my time to go, you guys, tell me that is not one of the most beautiful things you have heard.

I was researching today's guest and this is the ending lyrics of one of her songs, always Be a Child.

And I asked, I was like, can we start the podcast with this?

Because I like have full body chills.

Barbara literally reading that.

I love it so much and to me it embodies so much of what I want for my life and what becoming obsessed is about and finding that curiosity in your life.

So before I just keep rambling about how much I adore you, let me introduce you.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed.

I'm so excited to introduce Barbara McAfee, who is a voice coach, author, speaker and performer with over 30 years of experience helping people unlock their full voice, Blending practical vocal techniques with powerful tools for authentic voice, flexible and unforgettable self expression.

Welcome to Becoming Obsessed.

I'm obsessed with being here.

Thank you so much and thank you for reading those lyrics.

I love that song.

I love the process of how it came to me, hiking in the St. Croix River Valley where I live on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

So thanks for picking that out of the big pile of songs.

Well, and it is such a big pile of songs.

I, before hopping on the podcast with you, was listening to your band camp and YouTube and a little bit of one of your TEDx talks and just found myself kind of going from one to the next being like, oh my gosh, we have to hit record.

I'm gonna have to come back to listen to all this goodness because your voice is so beautiful.

Take me back to your journey of how you have really come to know the power of your own voice and now help other people to really find their power.

And I love that you say so they can find their full voice because what is a full voice like?

I'm gonna also need to know exactly what you mean by a full voice.

So my journey in finding my own voice is like a lot of healers, I consider myself kind of a healer, is that I had wounds in my voice.

And I don't feel special or unusual in that way because a lot of us do.

And I grew up singing in good choirs.

I was very well supported in that.

I was very fortunate in that.

But singing alone, never ever.

And that's a common fear.

Except that my grandfather sang on the radio in Iowa as a soloist.

My mother was a soloist, my brother was a soloist.

And somehow I felt like if I did that, I would die.

And there was lots of layers to it.

There was some family system stuff.

There's a lot of cultural stuff.

I'm the only girl in my family.

And there's sort of stuff that women carry that men don't.

There's stuff that men carry that women don't.

And so that all just conspired to just lock me up.

So I did start singing solo through a bunch of very strange occurrences.

Singing jazz in a club full of smoke back then with a friend of mine who I trusted a lot, but terror, terror, terror.

And so I got mad about that.

I started doing therapy, I started taking voice lessons, and I found my way eventually to work with some teachers from the Roy Hart center, which is this center in the south of France that helps people open up their full extended range of voice.

I went into that first workshop in my late 20s, shaking in my boots, sure that my voice ended here, which isn't that high, especially for a young woman.

And what was beyond it was nothing at all.

And that was the story.

That was who I am.

That's my truth.

And in that first weekend, this beloved teacher, who has since become a dear, dear friend and a co teacher, we've been teaching together now over 20 years, took me here.

And this gap changed the course of my life because I couldn't put Barbara back into the story that Barbara had been living in, because no one had ever taken me everywhere.

Haven't asked for all the sounds I had.

They took me way up and they took me way down, and they had me pretending to be somebody else, like a character, an archetype.

And that was like the secret sauce for me.

And I fell in love with the discovery, the freedom, the kind of primal energy that had been released, and continued my studies with that group and then also just continued exploring voice on my own.

How I found my songwriting voice had a lot to do with being present with my dad when he died.

He was 67, I was 31.

And we had a lot of healing, as I call it, kind of the hospice makeover.

He was kind of a harsh, grumpy guy a lot of the time.

Also very funny and loyal and other things too.

But we had a really great healing in the last couple months of his life.

And then I held him while he died.

And I think he took a bunch of fear with him to the other world because I had written maybe three songs about then and from 31 to now, in my mid-60s.

It is a pile of songs, as we mentioned earlier.

So I find my voice through lots and lots of ways, and I'm still finding it now.

There's always more.

Was it really early on, like you mentioned, singing with other people?

Did you understand the power of voice back then?

Or how did you really start to understand the voice is what unlocks so much?

Was it through, like you said, the school and the teacher kind of helping you to find more of your voice?

But where did that knowing of the power of your voice start?

That first experience was like a watershed moment.

There was my life going in this direction, and after that, it went in this direction, and it's still going in this direction.

So I knew how powerful it was to find my own voice and explore it in these powerful Embodied playful, silly, terrifying ways.

And I just started working with some of my friends on voice things, kind of playing around.

And at the time, I was a business consultant, much to my surprise, no training in that at all.

But I ended up with this bunch of really creative lunatics in Minneapolis who did organizational development, team building, strategic planning, conflict resolution, things like that.

So I had my little voice and music thing happening on the side.

And then I had this other day job, and one of my colleagues came to me and said, can you please work with this woman that I'm working with?

She's brilliant.

Brilliant.

She's a brilliant leader.

She's a rising star in her company.

There's this one problem, though.

She talks like this.

She has this really harsh kind of quality to her voice.

And so all of her talents, all of her potential, all of her gifts, we're going to run into a brick wall.

And it was an extreme voice.

But it really struck me in working with her and with other of her clients that the voice is such a powerful part of how our gifts come into this world.

We can think of any number of things.

You can dream up a podcast or you can start a relationship or do something in your community, but if you can't connect with other people about that, it's never going to happen.

So she was kind of another watershed.

It was like, oh, boy, I think we all come with gifts.

I think we come loaded.

And our job while we're here is to figure out how to love and be loved and to express our gifts.

I think that's it.

And your voice is part of both of them.

How we reach and communicate with other people and how our gifts come to fruition, or don't.

A few, probably two or three years ago, I was at a conference and one of the breakout speakers was a voice coach.

And she has this incredible ear to hear the masks that we have in our voices.

She's like, there's 37 that I've identified and I can hear it in your tone and all these things that to me, I'm like, that's incredible and doesn't compute in my brain.

But it was such a wake up call for me to even understand that so much of what we say is actually heard through how we say it and the tonality of how we say it, and even helping me to understand the masks that I have in my own voice.

And it's funny because at the end of this podcast, everyone will all hear it together.

But when I wrap us up, I totally put on, like, production.

Teresa Voice And I haven't quite figured out, like, throughout.

I'm a little bit better at, like, staying conversational because I get to talk to beautiful people like you.

But then when I talk to the listeners, I, like, put on this mask in my voice.

And it's so fun to play with that, but also to just start to understand it more.

And then, like, you're saying with this story of the woman who had that very extreme voice, to start to understand where we're actually using masks in the tonality of our voice and how that might be hindering where we go in life, because we are putting up these walls instead of showing up with the guard down a little bit.

And we have so much more voice than we think we do.

The voice that we end up with is not deliberately constructed.

It is haphazardly stuck together with duct tape and Popsicle sticks that usually look like trauma.

Something somebody said to you when you were eight.

Cultural norms, the culture telling you what it means to be a good whatever you are.

Class, education, whether you're speaking in your mother tongue or not.

Regional accents, health issues.

There's all this stuff that goes into our voices, and it ends up making them smaller.

So my work starts with, well, let's throw open the doors.

Let's take the voice to the dog park, Just take that little constraint, take it out of the crate, get it off the leash, and see what it can do when it's not trying to do something right.

I have really come to love this phrase of just try it on.

It's like a piece of clothing.

So much of what we talk about on becoming obsessed is these little shifts or these experiments or trying it on.

Try to use your voice more fully.

And like you did, maybe go to a class so somebody can guide you and really coach you through it.

But I love this idea.

Yeah, try it on.

Go to the dog park, let it off the leash.

You can put it back on the leash if it's too much for you right now, but just try it on.

And I use characters like my teacher did when he took me on that journey.

I wasn't Barbara.

I was a bird.

I was this big raptor screaming out of the sky.

And, you know, Theresa, I could feel that in my body that I was there, but there was this other energy there.

And my work connects a lot with the work of Jungian psychology around archetypes, the collective unconscious and shadow.

Because so much of what we suppress, this is stuff that's not okay to express.

And so to be that, like, fierce bloodthirsty shameless bird was like, woo hoo.

That's part of me.

I love that now.

But the characters kind of help us try those voices on that may not be as familiar in a playful way.

Gets us out of our box a little bit.

Okay, so say I'm working with you, I'm a client working with you.

What are some of the ways that, especially in the beginning, you work with your clients to help them find their full voice?

What are some of these things that you really start with?

Well, the question I always start with, and I would invite your listeners to take this one for a walk, a swim, a spin, a journal, write what is your story about your voice?

And there's usually a really rich conversation about, oh, childhood singing, not singing, fear of public speaking.

I'm too loud, I'm too soft.

My so and so says, it's like you pull on the voice and you get a lot of material.

So just bringing more awareness to this thing we take for granted until we have laryngitis.

The core of my work is the five elements framework, which is this thing I cooked up.

It's a tool.

It's the subject of two books now, Full Voice and Vocal Intelligence.

It took that expanded range vocalizing I was doing with the Roy Hart teachers and combined it with Jungian psychology, the chakra system from Yoga, leadership development principles I was working with as a consultant.

And mostly I just noticed patterns in people's voices that certain qualities they carried as human beings were reflected in their voice most of the time.

So the five elements are earth, fire, water, metal, air.

Each of them, as you can hear, has a distinct quality.

I'm exaggerating them a little bit.

Each correlates with a different part of the body, somewhat like the chakra system.

And they correlate with human qualities like the earth.

Voice is good for getting grounded and projecting authority.

And fire is good for expressing passion and taking up space, being seen and heard.

Water is the voice of the heart, of compassion and caring and empathy.

Metal is that pointy sound that you can use to amplify your voice without any strain and be heard in a crowded, loud place.

And air is great for storytelling, for talking about possibilities.

I have an idea.

And also for reconnecting us to the world of spirit.

Even the word spirit and respiration share a Latin root.

So those are the five elements.

So I usually take people on a spin through all five to see what parts of their voice are awake and what parts are asleep and what that might mean.

Most of us are at home in one or Two or combination.

And some of us have an aversion.

I hated the air voice.

I'm a 6 foot 2 inch Minnesota girl.

I could never get away with being an airhead.

So I had a lot of barriers against that one.

And that's why my voice ended where it did.

But in the healing of it was a lot of joy and gifts of reclaiming a part like my child self.

Talk about I always be a child and my lightness and innocence and dreaminess and it changed the way I think about the divine as well.

So usually the ones you hate the most have the biggest gifts for you.

Barbara, I relate to your story there.

1.

Being a Nebraska girl, I might only be five' five, but I'm corn fed, baby.

Also feeling like I never want to come across as meek or mild or kind of using that voice that might signal I'm soft.

In the last four years, I've become not only okay, but happy to be soft at times.

I can see how that voice relates to that and how if somebody doesn't know the next step in their personal journey, how going through that exercise could really unlock not just okay, what parts of my voice do I have, but what do they say about my life?

And how can I use that as a tool to understand myself even better?

And here's the thing.

When you change your voice, your life comes along for the ride.

You cannot get more grounded in your earth voice without getting more grounded in your life in some way.

And you can't get more like light in the air without having it impact you in some other ways.

And we are working on our own nervous systems all the time and each other's.

So if I go, ah, your cortisol level just changed and so did mine.

It's like, yeah.

And if I go, ah, that changed everything for me and you.

So we're affecting each other all the time, vocally, unconsciously, mostly.

And I think there's so many possibilities for how we express ourselves in speaking.

And I also just think people have a human right to sing.

I really am on a campaign to get people singing, especially if they don't know how or they don't know how to read music or they're not good enough to make a record.

Who cares?

I'm with you on that mission.

This is maybe one of the only negative things I remember my mom saying to me.

And I've said this before, and she's like, you know what?

I don't remember saying that.

So, mom, I love you.

I know you're gonna listen to you Said so many beautiful, positive things in my life.

But she also said I could not sing.

I'm not a good singer.

And I, for a long time was like, you know what?

God didn't make me a good singer because he knew I'd like Chase being on the stage or whatever, this narrative I had.

But I think it was three or four years ago I actually reclaimed that and did a summer of singing lessons.

Because I love singing, especially in the car alone.

I love it.

And it really is this different way of showing up.

And I always find it so interesting that when I am really feeling grounded and good, I will make up random songs and sing them to myself when I'm alone.

And that is just not something that's unique to me.

But it is this very just instinctual core thing that happens.

And when it does, it is so fun and, like, silly and just beautiful to be creating in that way.

I had a client who was late for their voice coaching session yesterday.

They were, like, so apologetic.

And I said, you know, in that seven minutes, I wrote a little tune that I'm going to be doing at my little Unitarian fellowship here down the hill.

And it's the Shel Silverstein poem about, listen to the mustards child Listen to the don'ts Listen to the never wills the impossible the won'ts Listen to the mustards child and listen close to me.

Anything can happen, child Anything can be.

And I just sat here and I made a little supplement a flat and recorded it.

And so she came on, she's like, I'm so sorry.

I was like, no, it was actually wonderful.

It's been sweet to just be able to catch these things.

Sometimes they get produced into something out there for me, but a lot of times they're just like little prayers.

One of my little songs I made has the lyric, the world is singing to us every day.

It's the least we can do to sing on back in our own way.

So I do feel like the birds are all starting to sing their spring songs.

And it was raining here yesterday morning and I was hearing the rain on my roof and the world is full of beautiful sounds.

So why not say something Back when.

You were talking about the five elements?

I did find your exercise on your website where it has them listed out.

And admittedly, I only listened to Fire.

I don't know if that says something about me.

Welcome, welcome home.

Yeah, you're fire.

And it sounded like.

And I wouldn't know, you know, proper terms here, but I've been listening a lot to what I'll search for as like Irish or Scottish folk music or Ashanti or.

I really don't know the language for it, but that's what it reminded me of.

And I know one of your TED talks was on oral tradition singing and how that really impacts our life.

And so selfishly, please tell me more, because I really do.

This type of music just does something to my soul that I love tapping into.

And as you can tell, I don't have the words for it yet.

And so I'm like, please tell me about this so that I can understand it a little bit.

Well, it's pretty recent that people don't sing together.

It's pretty recent and pretty isolated that people don't sing together.

We have all these methodologies for consuming music now.

It's ubiquitous, it's everywhere, and it's lovely.

I mean, my music's out there too, but it almost sometimes feels like junk food because people are consuming and consuming and consuming something that they really need to do themselves.

And so there is actually a huge movement happening of oral traditional tradition singing.

There are singing camps that happen in the Pacific Northwest.

Asheville.

I have a friend who does some kind of.

In Iowa.

There's a place called singing Rabbit somewhere in Missouri and Hawaii and Toronto.

And there's these groups that have been gathering to sing together without performance any music to read.

It's like, here's a line, try it.

If you like it, stand over there.

Here's another line.

And you can have the experience of harmony, which to me is heavenly without knowing a thing about it.

It's like the classic round of row, row, row your boat.

You all start at different times, and then you get to like, oh, I'm singing a part, but there's all these other parts and they're making something bigger.

And so I initiated that kind of singing in Minneapolis, oh, very many decades ago, back when I had brown hair and built this community of singers.

Before COVID we would have 50 or 60 people in a circle.

About a quarter of them knew and we would just sing in way for a while.

And I take whatever money they donated and give it all away to a cause.

And it built this really beautiful community.

And now I live in a town of 2,000 people and my friend and I are still doing it, leading singing.

And I didn't know it, but I was planting seeds for the singing resistance movement in Minneapolis that my friends have been rocking being on stage with Brandi Carlile.

Come on, man.

You know those are my friends.

And now they're doing trainings for People.

And I guess they had like 8,000 people in these two trainings on Zoom about how to start singing in your community.

So I feel proud of them and us for creating something that's so beautiful and life giving and really helped a lot of people get through a really hard winter.

Yeah, that's incredible.

You never know what the seeds you plant will turn into, and so many.

People never see it in their lifetime.

I get to see, you know, Serena Partridge interviewed by Anderson Cooper.

I didn't necessarily necessarily mentor her.

She kind of grew up in another singing community, but came to Minneapolis and they're writing beautiful things and yeah, it's quite gratifying.

And I'll be leading singing in a march tomorrow in my little town nearby.

So I get to be in the back of the pickup truck with the microphone.

It makes me just want to dig a little bit deeper.

I'm very punny.

Today we're talking about seeds.

Let's dig a little deeper.

On getting started.

I think it's so easy for us.

Even with this podcast, it's like, oh, how many downloads?

How many?

It's like if we focus just on what the impact will be, we don't necessarily start and it's like, okay, what if we just do it again?

This podcast so much is so that I actually can talk to incredible women like you, because that's to me, just lights me up.

And it's more about where I started was for me and I would love to see this continue to grow.

But so often, like you said, we never see the impact in our lifetime.

And I think too often we're almost unwilling to start because we want to immediately have that impact and we're not really willing or conscious of allowing it to take the time to grow into something.

And so I think that that part of your story is so beautiful that again, it's like we're just gonna do this.

Where it grows will be beautiful and if it doesn't grow very fast or very far, it is still so worthy of being done and of having that.

That moment.

I just think that part of your story and of to be fair, the human existence is so beautiful when we tap into it.

Yes.

And I'm old enough that I am pre Internet.

I'm 66.

And so I had a lot more boredom in my life than a lot of people coming up now.

We used to do these.

I can't remember what the source was, but when I was a consultant, we would kind of diagnose or ask people to determine whether they were self referential or other referential?

Were they looking for approval from themselves, something inside or from the world outside?

I think kind of through no fault of my own.

I think it's just how I am wired.

I've been incredibly self referential.

I've been working for Barb.

And there's consequences to that.

My freedom and my being able to follow my own creative impulse, my own inspirations has been so core to how I've lived my life.

And now when I write a song like that song that always be a child song, when it was finished and I recorded was like I had already won a Grammy inside.

If anybody else finds it useful, that's great.

But for me it's a kind of prayer.

I mean, the real joy is in the making of the thing.

And then I found friends in Scotland through a song that some friends carried over there.

And then I got to go meet them.

Ah, didn't even see that coming.

But I do think there is something about living from the inside out.

And for me, that has so much to do to circle back.

It has so much to do with voice because I feel like I.

When I have become more acquainted with my own literal external voice, I also have a different relationship with my inner voice, my inner wisdom, and the voice of inspiration, wherever that is not me, let me just say.

And any artist worth their salt will say, I got no idea where this stuff comes from.

I just need to make myself available and then see who shows up.

So I do think there is something about honoring that.

And even, I mean, there were so many times I wanted to quit Theresa, you know, there'd be like seven people at a song.

Circle was paying more for the space than I was earning.

A couple of the people had bad rhythm.

You know what I mean?

It was like musically not that interesting.

And I'd just be like, oh God, why am I doing this?

And same with performing, I would do my own concerts.

It would cost me more to rent the space.

I quit so many times.

And then I would start over again.

I'd say, okay, I'll give it another go.

Stubbornness, good midwestern quality.

When it comes to kind of like you were saying, sometimes the inspiration, we're like, where did that come from?

You have to be open to it.

And also, I love hearing that you have quit many times and restarted because I think that's so relatable to so many of us.

But when you are feeling the resistance to being open to the inspiration or maybe you're Feeling disconnected from that source.

What are some of the ways that you come back or open yourself up to it again when it's really hard or it's been a little bit of time, how are you bringing yourself back to it?

It's this really delicate dance for.

Because I am not a factory, I am not here to produce product.

There's an old, not very well known Judy Collins song called the Fallow Time.

I have learned to love the Fallow Time, which is like where you don't touch the fields, you just let them rest.

And so I was much more driven in my 30s and 40s because I had different hormones.

I've not had children, but boy, did I make a lot of stuff.

Because there is this impulse, physical impulse, to crank stuff out, whether it's people or stuff.

So that energy.

I cranked a lot of things and now I just have gotten much more gentle with just noticing.

Well, that's interesting.

Especially when I'm walking and I just got back from the pool.

I swim for 45, 50 minutes and it's boring.

And I go for walks, long walks in the beautiful woods here.

And I'm a cool.

A cold plunger.

I just finally got back in the river again, now that it's open, but I'm unplugged.

So that's the way I go about making myself available.

I like to move my body.

I like to pay attention to nature.

Notice my thoughts.

For instance, I wrote another song.

It's been a prolific time because I had my first year on Social Security and I was trying to figure out what to put in for my estimated taxes.

And I grossly underestimated.

So I wrote this huge check.

No sleep.

I'm not happy necessarily with what people are doing with my money right now.

And so I was driving to have coffee with my friend about 20 minutes away, and I started singing out of my rage.

Hey, billionaires.

I paid my taxes today, chick.

Or chunk out of my bank account.

But I had to find a way to keep you in the lap of luxury, you know?

Anyway, it was just like this.

So I took this frustration and I made it into a song.

And I finally finished it two days ago.

I finished the last verse and I'm just tickled again.

It's like anything that happens from now on is gravy.

Because it just made me laugh at my outrage.

And so I contacted a dear friend of mine, and he's this very slender guy who plays a huge accordion.

And I could just hear the.

I'd really like a tuba too, but we'll just be reasonable.

So we're gonna get together in the next couple days and go out somewhere outside.

Now that we can.

It's spring and we're going to record this field.

Record it.

Little video.

Because anyway, it just tickles the heck out of me.

So it can come out of like rage, it can come out of a poem, a few lines, it can come out of a relationship.

But I also sometimes set myself up and say, okay, I'm going to do this little church service in a couple weeks.

It's like, I think I'll write something new for that.

I work well under pressure.

So it's a mix of working well under pressure, organically listening for what am I thinking about what strikes me.

I'm gonna take us to left field because I'm a person who started a creative business and then realized I love business.

That's my favorite hobby.

And through that I've been able to help a lot of creatives who are like, I don't know, business.

Who is she?

And so I'm really interested in your journey with taking your art, your creative process, and then actually doing the business side.

I know that's probably like, what, a 40 year journey?

But talk me through some of the, like, highs and lows of your experience with the business side.

You know, I'm German and Scott's Irish and Midwestern, so I know and actually find structure really restful.

I have a jigsaw puzzle going all the time.

And so business to me just feels like a puzzle.

And for a bunch of the years when I was doing business consulting, I was, was technically self employed, but I had a colleague, really dear friend still who was really good at the marketing stuff.

So he was good at selling and getting us work.

I was really good at taking the notes and writing the contracts and doing the wordy stuff and the organizing, sorting stuff.

And then I did this pivot.

Our lives both shifted.

You know, I kind of OD'd on OD.

I realized there were a lot of people who could do that kind of work.

But what I was discovering about the voice was really unique and really needed.

And so I did this pivot and income went.

I had those times again of just like getting little side gigs to try to pay the bills and building something.

And then I've just had these, my mom would call them divine appointments.

I had these meeting, you know.

Now a dear friend who saw me speaking about this voice stuff in Georgia, where I have family and connected me to my first publisher for Full voice.

And I was like, what?

And then I also found my way into relationship with two rock star leadership authors, Margaret Wheatley and Peter Block, and did co keynoting with them, which added a huge amount of cachet to me as a person.

A lot of it was just showing up full of doubt and offering something.

And I remember when I stopped being obsessed about whoever was the most unhappy in the room room, like when I was speaking or singing or performing or something, I would look at the person who was like and like, try to win them over.

And then all of a sudden I was like, nah.

Actually, I think I had a dream about it.

I think it was one of those gifts from the dream time and what I'm doing, it can be provocative.

It can stir feeling.

As my friend Peter Block says, the thing about music is even if you hate it, it's got you.

That's why it's so powerful.

Ian Mag really helped me put a name to what I organically knew about that singing and music had a role to play, not just in a concert hall, but in work.

So all those years of doing organizational change gave me language and understanding about the workplace.

Nonprofit, public, private, it all makes sense now.

But at the time, it just looked super random.

It was like, okay, I'm a business consultant.

Oh, I'm a songwriter.

Wait, I'm a voice coach.

No, wait, I'm writing books.

Books.

I was like, make up your mind.

Only now I'm at this time in my life, I look, it's like a crop circle and I'm like, high enough and I can go like, oh, there's a pattern there.

It all makes sense now.

When I first started singing, I wasn't going to ask my tender little terrified voice to make my living.

I was a secretary, I was an administrator.

So I kept that separate and built this whole skill set that has been very helpful in running my own own show for all these years.

But I'm one of those rare people that kind of has right left brain.

So many things that you're saying.

One is that whole idea of you don't figure it out when you're in it, you look back and you can see the pattern.

That is such an important reminder for people who they can't see the pattern in the crops yet even no matter how hard you try, you can't see what the meaning of your life, the purpose of your life, you can't see it yet.

And it's okay to stop trying to.

We don't have to have it figured out.

And even at 66.

There's still so much more that you're like, okay, I can look back and see that.

But there's so much more that you won't be able to see until the next decade has gone by.

But there is a lesson that you mentioned learning that I want to really point out as well, that it's so many of us, we focus on the one person in the room that is negative looking and how many.

Even if it's a room of 10 people, those other nine people we're loving and enjoying, and that's such a lesson all of us have to learn and have to remind ourselves of is no matter what you do, somebody will be unhappy and it's 100%, has nothing to do with you.

But when we focus on that instead of the other nine people in the room, when we can flip that switch and let that person just be, and like you said, they're feeling something, that's a win and of itself.

And that lesson that you learned that you're sharing with us is one that I think I've probably learned a few times and will learn many more times.

And it is such a beautiful reminder.

Just quoting songs right and left here.

But in my 50s, I wrote a song called Grown Ass Woman because my friend Quanita talked about herself as a grown ass woman.

I was like, oh, can I write that song?

She said, sure.

But it talks about being beautifully shameless.

I'm really happy to be older because there's so many things I used to worry about.

I just don't care.

I don't care if everybody likes me.

I don't care if I'm rich and famous.

I've never cared about that.

I just want to be useful.

Juanita talks about, I just want my work to be deep, fun and easy.

It's not like always easy in every minute, but if there's times I have just pushed against the current and it's like, oh, I just don't have time for that anymore.

So there has to be some sort of flow and the clean clearer I get about what is mine to do and take great joy in doing that and trying stuff.

I tried this retreat recently called Living, Dying, Music and Mystery.

Because I've done a lot of work around death and dying too.

We have a little choir that sings for people who are in hospice or hospital or just sad.

It doesn't matter.

You call us and four or five people will volunteer for no money to just come and sing to you.

But I. I have been around a lot of death and dying and I've learned a lot.

And so I created this little retreat, and it's doing quite well.

I'm doing it in California, I'm doing it in Washington state, I'm doing it in Pennsylvania, and I'm doing it in Northern Wisconsin.

And so that was just like, huh, I wonder how that would go.

So I tried it and it worked.

Well, I don't have, like, it has to.

I'm building a brand.

I don't want to build a brand.

That is.

Is so funny that you say that, because that is actually episode one of Becoming Obsessed, season four, ish.

Came out on March 20th.

And it was literally me saying, like, my identity has been so tied to being a business owner and being great at strategy.

Can I not.

Can I just, like, create and not have to build a strategy and a system around it?

And with Becoming Obsessed, I've always known that's what I wanted to do, but I haven't fully understood it.

And so I've let myself off the hook from, like, treating it like a business in a lot of ways.

Now I finally have the language to say, like, it'll grow, how it grows, and I will share it and I will have beautiful conversations, but I'm not building systems around it just because I should.

And that, to me, is really this season and this win.

And so I love hearing you say, too.

It's like, you're just creating this thing, and it doesn't have to be this perfect, tidied up, strategic brand and business to be successful and to bring you so much joy and happiness and to impact so many people.

And frankly, almost every groovy thing that's happened to me has come out of left field.

It's like I meet Meg and Peter, and Meg says, hey, do you want to go on a women's leadership revival tour with me?

I'm going to be like the preacher in quotes and could you write the anthem and be the band?

And I was like, you better not be kidding.

And we did.

We went to 13 or 14 North American cities over a couple of years and kind of wake up women leaders to sort of, hey, you don't have to be perfect before you start.

You can just try something.

Notice what you notice.

So do make plans.

I have a vision, little picture in my kitchen every year.

I do, like, write down goals and things like that.

It's check in time because it's the end of quarter one.

But I always include mystery.

I have this little symbol on my little map, and it's called welcoming mystery.

Because I know there Is stuff that is beyond my imagination right now.

I mean, the fact that I'm living in this little valley in this cute little house.

Didn't see that coming.

And I've been so happy here.

So it's good to do both.

It's like, trust Allah and tie your camel.

Do with diligence is important.

And also, don't get too excited about.

We've all been around people who are just like, always angling.

I have a friend who's starting a coaching business and bless his heart, I've known him for years, but he's like.

It just feels sort of like being on a date with somebody who just wants to get in your pants to be crass.

But it's that feeling.

It's like, can you just be a human being with me without an agenda and just see what is emergent here?

Because getting marketed to is.

It's like going on a bad date sometimes.

Yeah, it is.

Oh, my goodness.

We could seriously probably talk forever.

Because even that I'm like, oh, my gosh.

But we're gonna get into our final questions for you because I wanna know, and I'll say one of the pillars of becoming obsessed, this, like, slowing down, rest, play, creativity.

And it's very apparent one of the ways that you play and are creative and really find joy through your voice and through singing.

I'm curious what other things really are sparking joy for you and that creativity and that play in your life?

What are you obsessed with?

Yeah, I already mentioned jumping in the cold river.

I'm a water baby.

I just love that.

And I have to say what's been really surprising in the last five and a half years I've lived in this little town.

I moved here for the nature, and I have a couple friends who are nearby as well.

But it really felt like the river called me home.

Then after Covid started to subside, I stuck my head out the door and I mean, my neighbors, my community is so wonderful here.

I've made such great new friends.

And I just came home from 17 days in Mexico leading a singing retreat.

I do there for women.

And then I had a little time before and a little time after, and I'm driving home and I'm single.

I love living alone.

Very happy to be living alone.

But I came into town and I happened to know that some friends were playing music at the theater at the bottom of the hill here in the little lounge there.

I had groceries, I had dirty clothes, I had everything came rolling about an hour from the airport.

And on my drive I was like, you know what?

I'm going to just stop in at Pepper's Lounge.

So I stop in, I walk in the door, and there's one of the women who was on the retreat with me, and she comes running over and her husband says, what did you do to my wife?

She's so happy.

And then, you know, there's Charlie and Dwayne and sue and Norm and Paul.

And my friends are playing and they say, hey, you want to sit in?

So I sing a song with this guitarist and piano player, and I just feel obsessed with and joyfully surprised because a lot of people, especially in this part of the world, they don't make new friends at my time of life.

And I have.

My old friends are still gold.

People who I've known for decades, and we've watched each other go through our changes.

That's irreplaceable.

And that I have found my way into this community in such a joyful way blows my mind.

Long story.

Oh, but I love every second of it.

I have one final question, which is when it comes to whether it's educational or entertainment, are you watching, reading, listening to anything that you're obsessed with?

I am watching very joyfully.

Three artists who are quite famous.

Brandi Carlisle, Jon Batiste and Jacob Collier.

And I am watching them be musically brilliant.

I mean, wow.

Incredibly brilliant.

Deeply good human beings.

Generous.

I mean, Brandi Carlisle came to Minneapolis and helped raise $600,000 to help people with legal costs that have been abducted by ice.

And she brought out my friends to sing with her.

And Jacob Collier, have you come across him yet?

I'm gonna look right after this because I'm so bad with names too, that I'm not sure.

He's a Grammy winning young British guy who has a voice that goes every incredible composer.

And he is one of my obsessions.

How he talks about creativity, how he lives his creativity.

Irrepressible joy, delight, he talked about in an interview.

He came up in some of the jazz world and he's like, everybody's trying to be cool.

This one guy said, what if you were going to be warm?

I was like, yeah, exactly.

So I'm watching probably Bruce Springsteen too.

How they have taken their genius and connected it to their love of humanity, their goodness and generosity.

So I'm not in that field.

I don't want to be that big ever.

No danger, I don't think.

But in my own sphere, I want to walk in the world in that way of honoring my creativity, being generous and inviting people into their own Playfulness and joy in being alive.

Well, I feel like you're doing that, that very well.

Thank you.

Even through just this one hour with you.

What a joy.

So it's always funny.

This is where I'm like, okay, my production mask voice is going to come out, but everyone who is still listening, Barbara, how can they get into your world, connect with you, and just come say hi?

The easiest way is my website, Barbara McAfee.com.

There's a ton of music videos there.

There's practice videos.

There's stuff about my books.

I do little online classes called Full Voice Fundamentals.

It's a five week dance through the five elements framework.

I teach one on one.

And stuff about my retreats is on there as well.

So that's the best way to get in touch.

And I would encourage anybody that has a story to tell me about anything, their story about their voice or a question or anything, just to reach out.

I'm always happy to hear from you.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much for coming on Becoming Obsessed.

And for everyone who is still listening, it is time to use your voice.

Like Barbara said.

Come say hi to her to me.

You can find me on Instagram at Teresa A Jean or at Becoming Obsessed Pod.

Either one.

Send me a dm.

I always say send me a voice note because I love yapping and talking.

And then send this to a friend who could maybe use the reminder that their voice is so impactful and important and beautiful.

Rate and review Becoming Obsessed.

Wherever you listen, it helps get the word out.

And as you know, we are on a mission to help more people build a life they really love.

Okay, y', all, let's go get obsessed.

You're still listening, which means this episode connected with you.

And I want to know how.

Send me a DM on Instagram at Becoming Obsessed Pod.

Then send this episode to a friend.

If you know someone who is building a life that they love or they're feeling a little stuck and might just need another nudge, send this to them.

Then rate and review because it also helps us get the word out.

And as you know, we're on a mission for more people to live a life they truly love.

All right, let's go get obsessed.