Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important of managing your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you will learn English, or in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit is something that stops you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you going ahead. So a limiting belief is a belief that stops you improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma and I got that name from a few my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t English well because I have English trauma.”
What is trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means some kind of injury, kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what they mean is they had some very negative, painful 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 negative experiences have created some very negative beliefs, some very beliefs. For example, they say “I am not good English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may be true, it may not be true. But it’s opinion, it’s a belief that they have.
Another belief, a very belief, English is difficult. Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. me English very easy, because I’m a native speaker, like your native language for you is very easy. Tomoe can Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” and she would “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs 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. I try to learn Japanese, for example, I have a of these limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, is 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, and in they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have to be difficult, it does have to be compli- cated. A small child, even small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the 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 the same with English with you. You in a very painful, difficult way in the past. so you developed, you created these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English 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 have these beliefs. You they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we have to figure out, how can 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 have cut them down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. reference is just an experience or a 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 come from?

Well, you think of all these past experiences. You think the time in middle school where your teacher corrected your mistake you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the bad grades you 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 develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m good at English.” So to weaken these, you just have question the references.

You have to question the experiences. Take power away from the experiences. And an easy way to that is just to ask questions about them. For example, me ask this 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 every day? Well, I know for most of you answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great you did not go to great schools. And did those schools that went to, or the books you used, did they use proven methods? Did use research-based methods? Did they 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 from my experience as a teacher, most schools just the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the boss them “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 the reason you believe is difficult is because you used difficult methods in past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think English boring because in the past you used boring methods. You went to boring schools. You had boring teachers. English isn’t the problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe it was the way you did or where you did it. Ask yourself these questions. Think them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. Another question, in school did learn deeply? For example, did you take one chapter in your book and learn for a long time so that you totally mastered it, so that you knew completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most 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 your book, boom, after one week on to the one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many words, so much new grammar.
For example, my with Spanish in high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve a total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we learned deeply. They just tried to make us learn as 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 about you? you learn deeply in your schools? If not, maybe was one of the problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you learned deeply. Maybe English is not 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 questions and think about them every day. Think about a lot, especially this week as you listen to Lesson 4. I want you to think about these questions again again and again. And really be honest about it. And start destroy these limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is not painful. English not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a past experience. You can change that now and the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, empower means to make stronger. It means to give power another person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs give power. An empowering belief is a belief that makes feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of beliefs want and you need to choose them. You must decide beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can replace your old belief, add this one instead. You can say “My brain is a natural learning machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally learns languages. is designed to learn language. It should be easy. should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? was easy 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 is a belief and you should write it down, think about it. down this idea, this belief “My brain is a language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide choose that belief. Here’s another belief you might decide to choose “English can be fun 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. they’re not serious. English can be fun and effortless. That’s an belief you want to choose and you want to remember it every day.

And make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you references, you need examples that prove the belief. So I’m going give you some examples and you can find more. 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, I believe, languages now. I want you to find these people and at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked him a number of times, and Steve believes, for example, language learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong belief has.

Another belief he has is that you must learn language naturally you must 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, learning is interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these are the same that all of my best students have. They all these same ideas. The best students, the ones who learn fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, ones with the best speaking, they all believe these things. They all believe that is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe that language learning natural. They all believe that they should focus on the meaning, on the grammar and the little pieces of the language. if you want to be like these successful people, 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, the last of this lesson. What I want you to do write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that give you power about English. Maybe “My brain 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 day you’re going do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation a phrase or sentence that you say again and again. It almost a magic 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 from. But for us an incantation is just a belief you are going repeat again and again and again every day.So here’s what you’re to do. For example “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going say that 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 to add more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to this out loud. You’re going to say “English can fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. Say 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. can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can be and effortless. And then you say it again. English can be and effortless.

You can do this in your room and its fine. You can do it and make everyone look at you and think you’re crazy. not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s better being bored. I promise you will learn so much if you do this. So do these incantations every day just before do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. can be fun and effortless. Now 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 for “Beliefs.”