Straight Back. Big Voice. No Apologies: What Posture and Vocal Power Reveal About Your Toxic Myths—and Your Executive Presence Breakthrough

How posture, voice, and the Ritual Myth shape executive presence—and how to reclaim it with Sun God-level authority.

Be seen and heard.

The conference room lights are too bright.

In fact, they're so bright that every face has turned into a jury.

I’m standing at the front of the room. I know the material cold. And still -- right before I begin -- something primeval slips a hand around the back of my neck.

My spine softens. And my shoulders move forward, ever so slightly.

Not dramatically. Not enough for anyone to consciously gasp. Just enough to shave off presence. Just enough to make the body smaller ... and the message less epic.

The voice follows. It never breaks, and never fails -- it just tilts upward at the end of sentences, as if my own authority needs permission.

Here’s what matters for every ambitious professional who wants to lead: posture and voice shape executive presence, and executive presence shapes leadership. If you want to command a room, persuade under pressure, and move people into action, your body and voice can’t behave like they’re hoping nobody notices you.

When that happens, you don't have a public-speaking problem.

You're trapped in a subtle -- but devastating -- myth.

You don't always understand why they're judging you.

The Truth Behind My Stance

If you’re reading this as a lawyer, former lawyer, executive, HR leader, or high-performing professional who’s "doing fine" -- yet sensing a ceiling above your head like an ancient archer's spear -- you already know what I mean.

You’ve done the strategy and executed the plans. You’ve earned the credentials. You’ve delivered outcomes. You’ve checked the boxes. And still your executive presence -- your true force --doesn’t arrive in the room with you.

Here’s my firm stand, the light my solar chariot is determined to share:

On paper, every professional -- those in large firms, nonprofits, or even solopreneurs -- are judged by KPIs and outputs. But, really, those whose opinions can most sharply affect your life -- such as your bosses, your clients, your peers -- don’t just measure your work. They judge who you are.

If you're not careful, over time, those judgments can train your body and voice into smaller patterns ... until what they consider "acceptable" has caused you to wake up with a career below your potential.

Your posture and voice aren’t "presentation tips." They’re physical evidence of your internal myth systems -- rituals you repeat until they feel like fate.

Some workplaces don’t manage you. They turn your power to stone.

How I Learned to Shrink

I’m six feet one. Athletic. Big voice. The kind of voice that carries. The kind that can fill a room when it’s grounded.

And I learned, early and often, that this could make the wrong people uncomfortable.

Years of sitting in office chairs, folding my posture, locked stress into my body and drained my energy. Then came the tyrannical bosses, the insecure ones, especially. The ones who interpreted strength as threat. In more than one setting, I watched leaders reward gingerliness and punish presence.

I received a 360-degree evaluation once, including written feedback from a person I knew was on track to become my next boss. The critique was very specific: my voice was too big, too loud, intimidating to people who lacked self-confidence. Another boss echoed the same theme and made her preference plain: she liked staff to speak softly -- and was unhappy that I didn't.

So I adapted.

I didn’t call it shrinking. I called it being strategic. I called it being careful. I called it reading the room.

I trained myself to round my shoulders, lean forward just a touch. To take up less space. To soften the voice. To land sentences with a slight upward inflection that signaled comfort and safety -- so others could relax, so their sensitivities wouldn’t flare, so the temperature in the room would stay nice and unobtrusive.

At first, it worked.

Then it became habit.

Then it became identity.

That’s the trap: behaviors that begin as protection can become the architecture of your life. The body starts acting out a story you never agreed to live.

Rituals can be sacred. Rituals can be cages.

The Ritual Myth

In my work, I spend a lot of time with clients discussing their Toxic Myths. Toxic Myths are internal stories and thought patterns that operate like genres of Greek myths: powerful, repetitive, and often invisible from the inside, as well as to ourselves.

The Ritual Myth is one of the most dangerous.

The Ritual Myth is what happens when you keep doing something -- physically, mentally, behaviorally -- over and over again, long after it has stopped serving you.

It comes from a category of Greek myths that existed to justify their existing social and religious rituals, such as animal sacrifices designed to cause the wind to blow.

Entire cultures repeated these rituals over and over, despite them having no discernable impact on anything that actually mattered -- even if, once upon a time, people believed that such an impact actually existed.

Similarly, someone living out the Ritual Myth today repeats their behavior because it once supposedly solved a problem. Perhaps it reduced friction. It once made a crazed boss happy. But now it runs automatically, like a prayer you no longer believe, yet still recite.

Rituals can be sacred. Rituals can also become cages.

The Ritual Myth doesn’t ask whether the old threat still exists. It only knows repetition.

And yes -- your body can live inside a Ritual Myth.

Your posture can become an incantation of self-erasure. Your voice can become a daily apology.

Your executive presence can become something you ritualistically cover.

But if you were built to be a Charismatic Olympian -- the kind of leader who can move a room, command authority, and create momentum -- covering your presence is the ultimate act of self-betrayal.

The truth forced me to confront my toxic myths

The Intervention That Woke Me Up

It was a fan of mine in Toastmasters -- someone I barely knew, but who genuinely wanted the best for me -- who pointed out what I couldn’t see from inside: the subtle shrinking. The spinal softening. The chest subtly concaved in, not bursting out.

Later, private vocal coaching raised the same uncomfortable point: my voice was capable of power ... but I had trained it to pull the gears off of full throttle.

That’s when I named it.

Not as a habit. Not as a quirk.

As a myth.

The Ritual Myth.

Once you name a myth, you can’t unsee it. The spell breaks. You finally recognize the cost.

And I'm glad that I saw beyond the myth. Because I had a message designed to help people stop living small. And I was delivering it from a posture and vocal pattern that I had trained ... to live small.

That contradiction, if unchecked, could erode executive presence at the exact moment it needs to be heard the most.

Burn the old script. Walk in as a Charismatic Olympian, bright as Helios, the Sun.

Helios and the Fire That Reveals

I’ve been fascinated by the Greek Sun God, Helios, for most of my life. He is a symbol of revelation: the Sun that exposes what’s real, the fire that burns away what’s false.

In the myths, Helios is not gentle. He illuminates. He sees. He exposes. He drives his chariot across the sky whether you’re ready or not.

If Helios touched your eyes, blindness could be erased. Not with comfort. With light.

That’s what happened for me.

When I named my toxic myth, I saw myself clearly: a powerful person performing smallness as a ritual.

So I did what any Toxic Myth demands.

⚡️ I ripped the old story up.

⚡️ I threw it into the metaphorical fires of the sun -- with a refusal to keep living a life that was "fine" but not epic.

⚡️ Then I wrote a Hero story. I began embodying the Olympian avatar I needed to become: Helios.

Tall spine. Shoulders back. Chest open. Voice resonant and decisive. Ready to be heard. To transmit truth. To give others permission to reclaim their own presence.

That’s what a Charismatic Olympian does: commands the room it with purpose.

Because if your message is meant to free others, your body and voice has to signal freedom.

Speaking with your voice isn’t arrogance. It’s responsibility.

The Breakthrough Framework: Reclaim Your Presence -- and Inner Power -- in 5 Steps

While the example we've discussed today focuses on posture and voice, the Ritual Myth plays out in ways far, far beyond mere executive presence. It literally can show up in every aspect of day-to-day leadership, as well as ordinary human interactions.

Here’s the framework I use for myself and with clients who are done living below their power and ready to let the Ritual Myth go:

⚡️Catch the Retraction

Notice the exact moment your body, your voice, your ideas, your willingness to speak to approach someone who intimidates you -- anything -- contracts, almost with a will of its own. That moment is data. You're stepping into a ritual.

⚡️Acknowledge The Origin Story

What was the old danger? A boss? A culture? A punishment for being "too much"?

Don’t relive it. Just recognize that your body is still acting as if the old problem exists, today.

⚡️Name the Toxic Myth

Say it plainly: "This is the Ritual Myth." You’re acting in outdated survival script. Write this down and rip that paper up.

⚡️Identify Your Heroic Avatar

Who is the larger-than-life, heroic version of you -- that you can imagine overcoming your Toxic Myth? For me, that was Helios: never once apologizing for his radiance, owning his larger-than-life fire.

⚡️Write a Heroic Story; Install a New Ritual

Write a new version of your myth, where you are living as your heroic Avatar, living without the Ritual Myth. What are some real-world steps your new avatar would take?

Then commit to taking one of those steps now. Your breakthrough won’t hold if it stays theoretical. Continue to take small steps until your mind -- and your body -- accepts its new reality.

And so, a new ritual begins.

Don't let the gods -- or anyone -- shrink you

You’ve Been Trained to Shrink

Let’s talk about you now.

You’ve been trained -- by bosses, institutions, peer cultures, and fear -- to treat your full presence like a problem. To treat your intensity like a liability. To treat your voice like it needs to be neutered so others can relax.

And then you wonder why you’re capped.

Too many professional spaces are filled up with loud voices saying nonsense and important words being too soft to hear. The world needs more Charismatic Olympians -- leaders whose presence isn’t aggression, isn’t performance, isn’t a petty act of domination.

It needs words of wisdom, of challenge to conventional thinking, of vision -- of pressure-proofed, authoritative, clarion-clear humanity.

It needs you.

If you recognize yourself in all this, send me a DM. Tell me where you shrink --physically, vocally, in your heart, or in your actions -- and what it costs you. If you want, we can explore the Toxic Myth underneath it, and what your Helios story looks like when it finally takes the room.

Always remember: your legacy is shaped in the moments you turn away from the rituals keeping you small.

Stop negotiating with your own power.

FAQ

Q1: What’s the core leadership lesson?

Your posture and voice two pivotal traits that reveal the myths you’re living inside. When you reclaim embodied executive presence, you reclaim authority, credibility, and impact -- especially in high-stakes environments.

Q2: What can I do in the next 24 hours?

Apply the 5-step breakthrough process above -- it's easy and of infinite value. If you want faster progress, DM me the moment you shrink and I’ll help you identify the Toxic Myth underneath it -- and figure out a Hero Story that's perfect for you.

Q3: What kinds of solos and professionals do you usually work with?

I work with high-achieving solos and professionals who know they’re meant for more: lawyers in solo or small practices, seasoned executives in “solo” roles inside organizations, solopreneurs, consultants, and creative professionals,. The common thread? They’re moderately successful -- but hungry for professional rebirth, bigger impact, and a way of working that actually feels worthy of their gifts.

Q4: How does this tie to mythic leadership?

Mythic leadership is alignment between inner story and outer action. Helios represents revelation: the light that erases blindness and forces truth into view. When you burn away the Ritual Myth, you embody the Hero who's been bursting at the seams to be free.

Q5: What if I’m not “into mythology”? Will this still work for me?

You don’t have to be a mythology nerd. You just have to be open to powerful metaphors that make your patterns impossible to ignore. Greek myths are leadership case studies in disguise. I translate them into plain, direct, highly usable tools. You’ll see yourself in these stories whether you’ve memorized the Olympian family tree or not.

Q6: How do I know if I’m a good fit to work with you one-on-one?

You’re likely a strong fit if:

• You’re ambitious and serious about your growth.

• You’re done with generic self-help and want rigorous, real-world application.

• You’re willing to be challenged, not coddled.

• You sense that your work is meant to be bigger, bolder, and more mythic than it is right now.

Q7: What’s the best next step if I’m interested in this mythic leadership work?

Simple: book a call with me. Bring your current reality — the wins, the frustrations, the stuck points — and bring your biggest vision for who you know you could be as a leader. On that call, we’ll look at where you are, where you want to go, and whether my myth-based leadership framework is the right vehicle to get you there.

Because ...

I want your future to be EPIC.

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I'm Scott Mason, The Myth Slayer. I am an attorney and former C-Suite executive, coach, speaker, podcaster, and Master of the Mythic. I graduated from Columbia Law School and have spent years drawing on the full depth of a background spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors to provide lawyers feeling stuck or stagnant in their careers or as leaders with a unique (and fun!) system to help them live a life that's epic.

Click here to discover more about me, my mission, and how it can help you.

If you've ever said, "I'm capable of more -- and I want it?" ... then download my five-minute self-assessment, and I'll show you how to experience professional rebirth, increase your inspiration, and create a bold impact NOW!

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