Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part 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 of beliefs. Limiting empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. Now limiting means, is something that stops you. It’s like a boundary. It you from going ahead. So a limiting belief is a belief that stops from improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. And I’d most English students have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call beliefs English trauma and I got that name from a few of my students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well because have English trauma.”
What is English trauma? What that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means some of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what they is 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 negative experiences. And all these negative experiences have created very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I not good 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 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 like native language for you is very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” and she say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that from our experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. stop us from
getting better. They cause a lot of problems for us students, as learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, I a lot of these limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese complicated, just look at the writing system. It’s so different from English. And these beliefs hurt motivation. They lower my energy, and in fact 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 a small American child, learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, the one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. can sing songs and play games and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn so quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same with with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, created these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. is boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are beliefs.
So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But have to figure out, how can we get rid of limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have cut them down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is an experience or a memory. Sometimes it’s just something 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 idea “English is painful and boring.” And you think of this belief, where does it come from?

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

You have to question the experiences. Take the power away from experiences. And an easy way to do that is just to ask questions them. For example, let me ask this question. Your past English schools, they excellent? Were they just fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did have a great time every day? Well, I know for most you the answer 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 schools you went to, or the books you used, did they use proven methods? Did they research-based methods? Did they know a lot about the research about learning, English teaching? Did they only use the best methods? Or did just use the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, know from my experience as a teacher, most schools just use the same textbooks. They don’t why. Maybe the boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re not the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, best books. And so 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 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. Ask yourself these questions. Think about in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. Another question, in did you learn deeply? For example, did you take one chapter in your book and it for a long time so that you totally mastered it, so you knew it completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, schools I have seen and the ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The go very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter your book, boom, after one week on to the next one, and the next one. Each has so many new words, so much new grammar.
example, my experience with Spanish in high school and university, I Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years 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 of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you deeply in your schools? If not, maybe that was of the problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe English is the problem.
Finally, did you learn with a grammar translation method? Did you study a lot 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 the problem, not English. So about these questions and think about them every day. Think about a lot, especially this week as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you think about these questions again and again and again. really be honest about it. And start to destroy limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English not difficult. English is not painful. English is not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a past experience. can change that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. It to give power to another person. Or in this case, means the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief a belief that makes you feel powerful, that gives power. That’s the kind of beliefs you want and you need choose them. You must decide which beliefs will make stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can your old limiting belief, add this one instead. You can “My brain is a natural language learning 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 your native language 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 I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. 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 choose that belief. Here’s another belief you might decide to choose “English be fun and effortless.”

English can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s also true. You think of a lot of examples for this. Some of 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 and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want to choose and you want to it every day.

And to 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 maybe even have learned another language very well. I’ll give you of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve languages now. I you to find these people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of his beliefs he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a number of times, and Steve believes, example, that language learning is easy and effortless. That’s belief. He’s a native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong he has.

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

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

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