Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another part of managing your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you learn English, or anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit is something that stops you. It’s like boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a belief is a belief that stops you from improving, a that stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs and many students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma and got that name from a few of my Japanese students. would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well because I have English trauma.”
is English trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means some of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep hurt. So what they mean is that they had very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. In other words, when they were in in English classes, even as adults going to other English schools, had very negative experiences. And all these negative experiences created some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. may be true, it may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a belief they have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, English complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English very easy, because I’m a native speaker, like your native language for you is very easy. can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These just beliefs that come from our experiences. The problem is limiting 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, for example, I have a of these limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just look at the system. It’s so different from English. And these beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, in fact they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have to 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 reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing 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 in the past. 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 have to figure out, how can we get rid of limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You to make them weaker and weaker and 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, specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have this “English is painful and boring.” And when you think of this belief, does it come from?

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

You have to question the experiences. Take the power away from the experiences. an easy way to do that is just to ask about them. For example, let me ask this question. Your English schools, were they excellent? Were they just fantastic schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did have a great time every 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 the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great you did not go to great schools. And did schools that you went to, or the books you used, they use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know lot about the research 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 boss tells “We must use this book.” But they’re not choosing the very, very best methods. They’re choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe reason you believe English is difficult is because you difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think English is because in the past you used boring methods. You went to schools. You 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 your limiting beliefs. Another question, in school you learn deeply? For example, did you take one in your book and learn it for a long time that you totally mastered it, so that you knew completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have and the ones I have taught in, it’s quite opposite. The teachers go very, very, very quickly. You 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, experience with Spanish in high school and university, I Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we never deeply. They just tried to make us learn as many words possible, a lot of words, a lot of words, a of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn in your 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 translation method? Did you study lot of grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe school is the problem, not English. So think about these questions think about them every day. Think about them a lot, this week as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you to think about questions again and again and again. And really be about it. And start to destroy these 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. You change that 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. in 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 you need to 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 say “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Because that’s what of the scientific research 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 easy for to learn, because I did it in a 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 about it. Write down idea, this belief “My brain is a 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 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. they’re not serious. English can be fun and effortless. That’s empowering belief you want to choose and you want remember it every day.

And to make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you references, you need examples that prove the belief. So I’m to give you some examples and you can find more. find people who speak English very well. Or maybe that have learned another language very well. I’ll give you of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve now. I want you to find these people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell some of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve to him a number of times, and Steve believes, example, that language learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s very strong belief he has.

Another belief he has is that you must learn language naturally and you focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s focusing on boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these are the same beliefs that 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 these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. They believe that they should focus on the meaning, not on the and the little pieces of the language. So if you want to be like these people, you need to think like them. You need to have the same as them.
So here’s what I want you do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, 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 language machine.” Maybe “English can be fun and effortless.” Maybe “I English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, four beliefs about English. And every day you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation a phrase or sentence that you say again and again. has 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. But us an incantation is just a belief you are to 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 that out loud every day you’re walking along and you’re doing your posture. And you’re breathing you’re smiling. Well, you’re going to add one more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for lesson, you’re going to repeat this out loud. You’re to say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re to say it with some emotion. Say it with feeling you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, have good posture and now you’re also saying these beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. can be fun and effortless. And then you say it again. can be fun and effortless.

You can do this your room and its fine. You can do it and make 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 if you do this. So do these incantations every day just you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, and 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 learn.

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