Albert Mehrabian's research on communication is often oversimplified but points to something important: in emotional conversations, people respond far more to how something is said than to what is said. Tone carries information that words do not. A sentence delivered with warmth says something entirely different from the same sentence delivered with irritation, even if every word is identical. Your body, your breath, your pace, your volume, the quality of your attention — all of these speak before your words do. The problem is that most people focus almost entirely on what they are going to say and almost none of the attention on the state they are going to say it from. They craft the perfect words while still being full of resentment or frustration, and then deliver those perfect words in a tone that communicates the resentment and frustration loud and clear. The other person responds to the tone. And then the person speaking cannot understand why their carefully chosen words had no effect. Before you speak, your tone is already in the room. It communicates your actual emotional state, not the one you are performing. This means that preparing to be heard begins not with what you are going to say, but with getting yourself to a place where the way you say it can match the intention behind it.