Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

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

Well, you think of all past experiences. You think of the time in middle school where your teacher corrected your mistake you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the grades you got on the test or all the red on your English papers. And you start adding more more and more memories, more of these negative experiences, negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m good 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, let me ask this question. past English schools, were they excellent? Were they just 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, the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English not great because you did not go to great schools. And did those that you went to, or the books you used, they use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know lot about the research about English learning, English teaching? they only use the best methods? Or did they use the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, know from my experience as a teacher, most schools use the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re not choosing very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very books. And so maybe the reason you believe English is difficult is because you difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe think English is boring because in the past you used boring methods. You to boring schools. You had boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe it was way you did it or where you did it. yourself these questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. Another question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, you take one chapter in your book and learn it for a long time so you totally mastered it, so that you knew it completely, 100% never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have seen the ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The teachers go very, very, very quickly. learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one week on the next one, and the next one. Each chapter so many new words, so much new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I it all. Because we never learned deeply. They just tried to make learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, a lot of words, a lot of grammar, very, fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply in schools? If not, maybe that was one of the problems. English feels difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe is not the problem.
Finally, did you learn with a grammar translation method? Did you a lot of grammar rules? Did you take a of tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the is the problem, not English. So think about these questions and about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this week as listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you to think these questions again and again and again. And really honest about it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. rid of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. is not painful. English is not boring. It’s only belief. It’s only a past experience. You can change that now in the future. So let’s do that.

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

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

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

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

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

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