Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part of managing your psychology, of strengthening psychology so that you will learn English, or anything in fact, faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general categories of beliefs. Limiting empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit is something stops you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting is a belief that stops you from improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs and many English have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma 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, are they talking about? Well, trauma means some kind of injury, kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what mean is that they had some very negative, painful with English in the past. In other words, when they were in school in English classes, even adults going to other English schools, they had very experiences. And all these negative experiences have created some negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s belief. It may be true, it may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s belief that they have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me very easy, because 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 easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They fact do limit us. They stop us from
getting better. They cause a of problems for us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As I to learn Japanese, for example, I have a lot 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 beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, and fact they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have to difficult, it does not have to be compli- cated. A child, even a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, number one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing songs and games and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same with with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult in the past. And so you developed, you created these beliefs in head. English is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we have to figure out, how we get rid of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have 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 an or a memory. Sometimes it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a experience or a specific imagination, a specific moment, that the 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 past experiences. You of the time in middle school where your teacher 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, of these negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m good at English.” So to weaken these, you just to question the references.

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

English be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s also true. You can think of a lot examples for this. Some 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, need examples that prove the belief. So I’m going to you some examples and you can find 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 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, for example, that learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, languages. For him 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 and 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 that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that 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 students have. They have these same ideas. The best students, the ones who learn the fastest, the ones have the best 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 learning is natural. They believe that they should focus on the meaning, not the grammar and the little pieces of the language. if you want to be like these successful people, you to think like them. You need to have the same beliefs 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 to do is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language machine.” Maybe “English can be fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” don’t know, write down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And every you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s new word, incantation.
An incantation is a phrase or sentence you say again and again. It has almost a idea, it comes from magic. An incantation is a magical sentence. It’s sentence, you say the sentence something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But us an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat again 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 that out loud every day while you’re along and you’re doing your posture. And 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 going to “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. Say it with 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 be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can fun and effortless. And then you say it again. English can be fun effortless.

You can do this in your room and its fine. can do it outside and make everyone look at 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 if you do this. So do these incantations every day just before you do a lesson. Get your strong, peak emotional state, and then say these incantations. can be 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 main story “Beliefs.”