Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part of managing your psychology, of your psychology so that you will learn English, or in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. limiting means, limit is something that stops you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. a limiting belief is a belief that stops you from improving, a that stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call 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 kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So they mean is that they had some very negative, painful experiences with English the past. In other words, when they were in school in English classes, even adults 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 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 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 very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might “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 limit us. They in fact do limit us. They us from
getting better. They cause a lot of for us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, example, I have a lot of these limiting beliefs realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just look the writing system. It’s so different from English. And these 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. A small child, even a 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 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 way 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. are just beliefs.
So how do you eliminate beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we have figure out, how can we get rid of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you to weaken them. You have to make them weaker and and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well beliefs stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or a memory. it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific experience or a specific imagination, specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, example, you have this idea “English is painful and boring.” And when think of this belief, where does it come from?

Well, think of all these past experiences. You think of the time in middle school where your teacher your mistake and you felt terrible. And you think maybe the bad grades you got on the test or all the red on your English papers. And you start adding more and more and more memories, more of these experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. is painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, you just to question the references.

You have to question the experiences. Take power away from the experiences. And an easy way to do that just to ask questions about them. For example, let me ask this question. Your past English schools, they excellent? Were they just fantastic English 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 was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe your English is not great because you not go to great schools. And did those schools that went to, or the books you used, did they proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know a lot about the research English learning, English teaching? Did they only use the methods? Or did they just use the textbook that else uses?
Well, I know from my experience as teacher, most schools just use the same textbooks. They don’t why. Maybe the boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re choosing the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so the reason you believe English is difficult is because you difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you English is boring because in the past you used methods. You went to boring schools. You had boring teachers. English isn’t the problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe was the way you did it or where you did it. Ask these questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. your limiting beliefs. Another question, in school did you deeply? For example, did you take one chapter in your book learn it for a long time so that you totally mastered it, that you knew it completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, schools I have seen and the ones I have in, it’s quite the opposite. The teachers go very, very, very quickly. You learn chapter in your book, boom, after one week on to the next one, the next one. Each chapter has so many new words, much new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years of Spanish, but forgot it all. Because we never learned deeply. They just tried to us learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, a of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? not, maybe that was one of the problems. Maybe feels difficult 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 tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was problem. Maybe the school is the problem, not English. So about these questions and think about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this week as listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you to think about these questions again and again 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 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 that.

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, to means to make stronger. It means to give power to person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs you power. An empowering belief is a belief that you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of beliefs you and you need to choose them. You must decide which beliefs will make stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can replace your old limiting belief, this one instead. You can say “My brain is a language learning machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific shows, our brain naturally learns languages. It is designed learn language. It should be easy. It should be effortless. It should good. You learned your native language that way. It wasn’t difficult it? English was easy for me to learn, because I it in a totally natural way. And the more I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier feels. So this is 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 it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s belief you might decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

English can fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s true. You can think of a lot of examples 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. can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want choose and you want to remember it every day.

And make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need examples prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some examples you can find more. Go find people who speak English very well. maybe even that have learned another language very well. I’ll give one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, believe, twelve languages now. I want you to find people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of his beliefs because he’s friend, I’ve talked to 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 speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong 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 on the grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these the same beliefs that all of my best students have. They all have same ideas. The best 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, and effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. They all believe that they should on the meaning, not on the grammar and the little pieces of language. So if you want to be like these successful people, you need think like them. You need to have the same as them.
So here’s what I want you to do. Here’s homework. This is the last thing, the last part of this lesson. What I want you do is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English be fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, four beliefs about English. And every day you’re going to 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 is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, you say the sentence something will happen. That’s it comes 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 going to do. 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 to add one more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to repeat out loud. You’re going to say “English can 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 you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. repeat it again. English can be fun and effortless. then you say it again. English can be fun effortless.

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

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