Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

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

Well, you think of all these experiences. You think of the time in middle school your teacher corrected your mistake and you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the bad grades 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 negative experiences, these references. And if you get enough, you will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English difficult. English is painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, just have to question the references.

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

Let’s talk now about beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower to make stronger. It means to give power to another person. Or in this case, it the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is a belief makes you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of beliefs want and you need to choose them. You must which beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s empowering belief. You can replace your old limiting belief, add this instead. You can say “My brain is a natural language machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally languages. It 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, 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 write it down, think about it. Write down idea, this belief “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Think it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s another belief you might 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. of 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 be fun effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want to 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 examples 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 you of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, believe, twelve languages 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 him a number of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language learning easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. him 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 language 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 interesting things he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these are same beliefs that all of my best students have. They all have these same ideas. The students, the ones who learn the fastest, the ones who have the test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they all believe these things. They believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe that language is natural. They all believe that they should focus on the meaning, not on grammar and the little pieces of the language. So if want to be like these successful people, you need to think like them. You need to have the beliefs as them.
So here’s what I want you to do. Here’s your homework. This the last thing, the last part of this lesson. What I want you to is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs give you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural learning machine.” Maybe “English can be fun and effortless.” “I love English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And every day you’re to do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is a or sentence that you say again and again. It has almost magic idea, it comes from magic. An incantation is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, say the sentence something will happen. That’s where it comes from. for us an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat again and again and again day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For example “English be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say that loud every day 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 thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to this out loud. You’re going to say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to it with some emotion. Say it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you have good and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. can be fun and effortless. And then you say it again. English can fun and effortless.

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

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