Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part of managing your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so you will learn English, or anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of to general categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk 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 belief is belief that stops you from improving, a belief that stops from getting better. And I’d say most English students have limiting and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs trauma and I got that name from a few my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English because I have English trauma.”
What is English trauma? What is that, what are they about? Well, trauma means some kind 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, they were in school in English classes, even as going to other English schools, they had very negative experiences. all these negative experiences have created some very negative beliefs, very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I am not good English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may be true, may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s belief that they have.
Another belief, a very belief, English is difficult. Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For English 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 might say “Japanese is difficult,” she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. The is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. They stop from
getting better. They cause a lot of problems us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As I to learn Japanese, for example, I have a lot of limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese complicated, just look at the writing system. It’s so different English. And these beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, and in they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have be difficult, it does not have to be compli- cated. small child, even a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And reason is, the number one reason is, they don’t have the beliefs. They can sing songs and play games and enjoy language, and they’ll learn it so quickly, so easily, they’ll “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same with English with you. You in a very painful, difficult way in the past. And so developed, you created these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
So how do you these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, know they’re not helping you. But we have to out, how can we get rid of the limiting beliefs? That’s first step, you have to weaken them. You have to them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or memory. Sometimes it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific or a specific imagination, a specific moment, that makes the belief or weaker. So, for example, you have this idea “English painful and boring.” And when you think of this belief, where does it come from?

Well, you of all these past experiences. You think of the time in school where your teacher corrected your mistake and you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the grades you got on the test or all the red on your English papers. And you start adding more and and more memories, more of these negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you develop a 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 the references.

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

English can be 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. they’re not serious. English can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you to choose and you want to remember it every day.

And to make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, need references, you need examples that prove the belief. I’m going to give you some examples and you find more. Go find people who speak English very well. Or maybe even that learned another language very well. I’ll give you one my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, believe, twelve languages now. I want you to find these and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a native speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks 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 and must focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t focus on grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s reading things that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that he enjoys. So, 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 the fastest, the ones who have best test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they believe these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe language learning is natural. They all believe that they should focus the meaning, not on the grammar and the little pieces of language. So if you want to be like these successful people, you need to think them. You need to have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what I you to do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, last part of this lesson. What I want you 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.” “I love English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, empowering beliefs about English. And every day you’re going do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a 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 sentence. It’s a sentence, you say the sentence something happen. That’s where it comes from. But for us an is just a belief you are going to repeat again and again and every day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For example “English can be fun 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 you’re smiling. Well, you’re going to add one more thing. As walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re to repeat this out loud. You’re going to say “English be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it some emotion. Say it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re deep, you’re moving your body, you 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 again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in your room and fine. You can do it outside and make everyone at you and think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than powerless, right? It’s better than being bored. I promise you will so much faster if you do this. So do these every day just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak state, and then say these incantations. English 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 ready to learn.

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