Beliefs

BELIEFS

Hello, to the fourth lesson. This one is called “Beliefs.” Let’s get started.

Beliefs are another important part of your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you will English, or anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of to general categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk limiting beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit is something that you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting is a belief that stops you from improving, a belief stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English students have beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. call these beliefs English trauma and I got that name a few of my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t English well because I have English trauma.”
What is trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, emotional hurt. So what they mean is that they had very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. In other words, when they in school in English classes, even as adults going to other schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these negative experiences have some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I am not at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may be true, it may be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a belief that have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English difficult. Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English easy, because I’m a native speaker, just like your native language you is very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in do limit us. They stop us from
getting better. They a lot of problems for us as students, as learners. have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, have a lot of these limiting beliefs I realize. think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just look the writing system. It’s so different from English. And beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, and in they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have to be difficult, it not have to be compli- cated. A small child, a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, number one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing songs and play and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it so quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese easy.” Well, it’s the same with English with you. You learned in very painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, you created these beliefs in your head. is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, know they’re not helping you. But we have to figure out, how can we get rid of limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have to make them weaker weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or a memory. Sometimes it’s something you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific experience or a specific imagination, specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have this idea “English is painful boring.” And when you think of this belief, where it come from?

Well, you think of all these past experiences. You think of the time middle school where your teacher corrected your mistake and you felt terrible. And you think maybe the bad grades you got on the test or all the red marks on your English papers. you start adding more and more and more memories, more of these experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m not at English.” So to weaken these, you just have to the references.

You have to question the experiences. Take the power away from the experiences. And an way to do that is just to ask questions about them. For example, me ask this question. Your past English schools, were they excellent? Were just fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you have a great time day? Well, I know for most of you the is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools were not excellent, maybe the was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not because you did not go to great schools. And did those that you went to, or the books you used, did they proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know lot about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only use the best methods? did they just use the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, know from my experience as a teacher, most schools just use same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the boss tells them “We must this book.” But they’re not choosing the very, very methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe the reason believe English is difficult is because you used difficult in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think English is boring because in past you used boring methods. You went to boring schools. You had boring teachers. English isn’t the problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe it was the you did it or where you did it. Ask yourself questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge limiting beliefs. Another question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, did you one chapter in your book and learn it for a long time that you totally mastered it, so that you knew it completely, 100% never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have seen and ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The go very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after week on to the next one, and the next one. Each has so many new words, so much new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we learned deeply. They just tried to make us learn many words as possible, a lot of words, a lot of words, a of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? not, maybe that was one of the problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you learned deeply. Maybe English is not the problem.
Finally, did you learn with grammar translation method? Did you study a lot of rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. the school is the problem, not English. So think about questions and think about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this week as you to Lesson Number 4. I want you to think about these questions and again and again. And really be honest about it. start to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English is difficult. English is not painful. English is not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a experience. You can change that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means to stronger. It means to give power to another person. Or in this case, it means the give you power. An empowering belief is a belief makes you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the of beliefs you want and you need to choose them. You must decide which beliefs will make you stronger. example, here’s an empowering belief. You can replace your old limiting belief, add one instead. You can say “My brain is a natural language machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, brain naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. should be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was easy me to learn, because I did it in a totally natural way. And the naturally I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, easier it feels. So this is a new belief and you should write it down, think about it. down this idea, this belief “My brain is a language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s another belief might decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

English can fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s also true. can think of a lot of examples for this. Some these mini-stories you’re listening to, right? They’re fun. They’re stupid, sometimes. They’re crazy, sometimes. But they’re not serious. English can fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want choose and you want to remember it every day.

And make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need that prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some and you can find more. Go find people who speak English very well. Or even that have learned another language very well. I’ll give one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, languages now. I want you to find these people look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language learning easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a native English speaker, speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong he has.

Another belief he has is that you must learn naturally and you must focus on meaning. So in other words, doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s interesting for me is that these are the same beliefs that all my best students have. They all have these same ideas. The best students, the ones who learn fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they believe these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. They all believe that should focus on the meaning, not on the grammar the little pieces of the language. So if you to be like these successful people, you need to think like them. You to have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what I want you to do. Here’s homework. This is the last thing, the last part of this lesson. What want you to do is write down two, three, empowering beliefs, beliefs that give you power about English. “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English can fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know, down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And every day you’re going do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is phrase or sentence that you say again and again. It almost a magic idea, it comes from magic. An incantation is a magical sentence. It’s sentence, you say the sentence something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But for an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat again and and again every day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say that loud every day while you’re walking along and you’re doing your posture. And you’re and you’re smiling. Well, you’re going to add one more thing. As walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re to repeat this out loud. You’re going to say “English be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. Say with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, have good posture and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can be fun and effortless. And then you it again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in room and its fine. You can do it outside and make look at you and think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than powerless, right? It’s better than being bored. I promise will learn so much faster if you do this. So do these incantations every just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, and then say these incantations. English be fun and effortless. English can be fun and effortless. Now your body, your mind, beliefs, they’re all together, very strong. Then you’re ready learn.

Okay, that is the end of the main for “Beliefs.”