Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

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

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

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

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

English can fun 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 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, need examples that prove the belief. So I’m going to give some examples and you can find more. Go find who speak English very well. Or maybe even that have learned another very well. I’ll give you one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve languages now. I want you to find people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him 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 they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a strong belief he has.

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

You can do in your room and its fine. You can do outside 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 learn so much faster if you do this. So do incantations every day just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak state, and then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. can be fun and effortless. Now your body, your mind, beliefs, they’re all together, very strong. Then you’re ready to learn.

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