Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part of managing psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you will English, or anything in fact, much faster. And there two kinds of beliefs to general categories of beliefs. and empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit is something that you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. a limiting belief is a belief that stops you improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. And I’d say English students have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these English trauma and I got that name from a of my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well because I English 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. what 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 English schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these negative experiences have created some very beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may true, it may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a that they have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English very easy, because I’m native speaker, just like your native language for you is easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just that come from our experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. in fact do limit us. They stop us from
getting better. They cause a lot problems for us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, have a lot of these limiting beliefs I realize. I “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just at the writing system. It’s so different from English. And these beliefs hurt my motivation. They 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, 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 songs and play games and enjoy the language, and they’ll it so quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same English with you. You learned in a very painful, way in the past. And so you developed, you created these in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These just beliefs.
So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you these beliefs. You know they’re negative, you know they’re helping you. But we have to figure out, how can we get of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have to them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to 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 imagination, a specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, have this idea “English is painful and boring.” And when you of this belief, where does it come from?

Well, you 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 English papers. And you start adding more and more and memories, more of these negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m not good 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 questions them. For example, let me ask this question. Your past English schools, were they excellent? Were they fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you have a great time day? Well, I know for most of you the is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools were not excellent, maybe the school was problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great because you did not go to schools. And did those schools that you went to, or the books you used, they use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know a lot about research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only the best methods? Or did they just use the textbook that everybody uses?
Well, I know from my experience as a teacher, most just use the same textbooks. They don’t know why. the boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re not the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very books. And so maybe the reason you believe English is difficult is because you difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. you think English is boring because in the past used boring methods. You went to boring schools. You boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t the problem. Maybe it these past experiences. Maybe it was the way you did it or you did it. Ask yourself these questions. Think about them detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. Another question, school did you learn deeply? For example, did you one chapter in your book and learn it for a long time so you totally mastered it, so that 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. teachers go very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one on to the next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many new words, so new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish in high school university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I it all. Because we never learned deeply. They just tried to us learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, a lot words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. How you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? If not, that was one of the problems. Maybe English feels because you never learned deeply. Maybe English is not the problem.
Finally, did you learn with a translation method? Did you study a lot of grammar rules? Did you take a of tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the 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 to think about these questions again and again and again. And 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. English is boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a past experience. You can that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, the positive side. to empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. means to give power to another person. Or in 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 you 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.” that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally learns languages. is designed to learn language. It should be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. learned your native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? was easy for me to learn, because I did it in a totally natural way. And the naturally I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. So this is new belief and you should write it down, think it. Write down this idea, this belief “My brain is natural language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose 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. 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. can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief want to choose and you want to remember it every day.

And to make beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need examples that prove 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 give you one of my favorite examples, Steve of The Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve languages now. want you to find these people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a number of times, and believes, for example, that language learning is easy and effortless. That’s belief. He’s a native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, 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 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 things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s interesting for me is that these are the same beliefs that of my best students have. They all have these same ideas. The best students, the who learn the fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, the ones the best speaking, they all believe these things. They believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe that language learning natural. They all 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 need to think like them. You need have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what want you to do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, the 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 learning machine.” Maybe “English can be and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know, down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And every you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
incantation is a phrase or sentence that you say again again. It has almost a magic idea, it comes from magic. incantation is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, you say the something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But for an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat and again and again every day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say that loud every day while 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. you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to repeat this loud. You’re going to say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say with some emotion. Say it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you have posture and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can be and effortless. You repeat it again. English can be and effortless. And then you say it again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this your room and its fine. You can do it outside and make everyone look 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 do this. So do incantations every day just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, and then these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be fun effortless. Now your body, your mind, your beliefs, they’re all together, very strong. you’re ready to learn.

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