Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

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

You have to question the experiences. Take 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 they excellent? they just fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you a great time every day? Well, I know for of you the answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your were not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great because did not go to great schools. And did those schools that went to, or the books you used, did they proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know a about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did only use the best methods? Or did they just the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, I from my experience as a teacher, most schools just the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re choosing the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe the you believe English is difficult is because you used difficult methods the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think is 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. Think about in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, you take one chapter in your book and learn for a long time so that you totally mastered it, so that knew it completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have and 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 has many new words, so much new grammar.
For example, my with Spanish in high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had total of 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, lot of words, a lot of words, a lot grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you deeply in your schools? If not, maybe that was one of problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you never learned deeply. English is not the problem.
Finally, did you with a grammar translation method? Did you study a lot of rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the was the problem. Maybe the school is the problem, not English. So think about these questions think about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you to think about these questions again and and again. And really be honest about it. And start to these limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. is not difficult. English is not painful. English is 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 about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, empower means to make stronger. It means to give to another person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs give you power. An belief is a belief that makes you feel powerful, gives you power. That’s the kind of beliefs you want and need to choose them. You must decide which beliefs will you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can replace your old limiting belief, add one instead. You can say “My brain is a natural learning machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific shows, our brain naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. should be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. learned your native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was for me to learn, because I did it in totally natural way. And the more naturally I tried to Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. So this a new belief and you should write it down, think it. Write down this idea, this belief “My brain a natural language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s another you might decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

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

And to make beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need that prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some examples you can find more. Go find people who speak English very well. Or even that have learned another language very well. I’ll 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 of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him number of times, and Steve believes, for example, that learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These 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 has is you must learn language naturally and you must focus on meaning. So in words, he doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not on boring 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 have these same ideas. The best students, the ones who learn 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 should on the meaning, not on the grammar and the little pieces the language. So if you want to be like these 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 this lesson. What I want you to do is down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that give you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a language learning machine.” Maybe “English can be 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 to an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is a phrase 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. But us an incantation is just a belief you are going repeat again and again and again every day.So here’s what you’re going do. For example “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say out loud every day while you’re walking along and you’re your posture. And you’re breathing and you’re smiling. Well, you’re going add one more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for lesson, you’re going to repeat this out loud. You’re going say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it some emotion. Say it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you 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 do this in your room and its fine. You do it outside and make everyone look at you think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s better than bored. I promise you will learn so much faster if you do this. So do these every day just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be fun and effortless. Now your body, 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.”