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 that you will learn English, or anything in fact, much faster. And are two kinds of beliefs 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 ahead. So a limiting belief is a belief that stops from improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. And I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma I got that name from a few of my students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well because I have trauma.”
What is English trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, emotional hurt. So what they mean is that they 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 other schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these experiences have created some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s belief. It 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 me 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,” and she would “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. The problem is these beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. They stop us from
getting better. cause a lot of problems for us as students, learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, have a lot of these limiting beliefs I realize. think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, look at the writing system. It’s so different from English. And these beliefs my motivation. They lower my energy, and in fact they’re wrong.
They’re not true. does not have to be difficult, it does not have to compli- cated. A small child, even a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, easily. And the reason is, the number one reason is, they don’t have limiting 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 same with English with you. You learned in a painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, created these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never excellent English. These are just beliefs.
So how you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. we have to figure out, how can we get of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to them. You have to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience a memory. Sometimes it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a experience or a specific imagination, a specific moment, that makes the 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 you on the test or all the red marks on English papers. And you start adding more and more and more memories, more of these negative experiences, negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, you have to question the references.

You have to question experiences. Take the power away from the experiences. And easy way to do that is just to ask questions them. For example, let me ask this question. Your English schools, were they excellent? Were they just fantastic English with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you have great time every day? Well, I know for most you the answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools were excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. your English is not great because you did not go to great schools. And did those schools you went to, or the books you used, did use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they know a about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they use the best methods? Or did they just use the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, I from my experience as a teacher, most schools just use the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe boss tells them “We must use this book.” But they’re not the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe reason you believe English is difficult is because you used difficult methods in the past, or your did. Maybe you think English is boring because in the past you used boring methods. went to boring schools. You had boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t the problem. Maybe it these past experiences. Maybe it was the way you it or where you did it. Ask yourself these questions. about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your beliefs. Another question, in school did you learn deeply? example, did you take one chapter in your book and learn it for a time so that you totally mastered it, so that you 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 one in your book, boom, after one week on to the next one, and the one. Each chapter has so many new words, so much new grammar.
For example, my with Spanish in high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a of maybe two years of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we never learned deeply. just tried to make us learn as many words possible, a lot of words, a lot of words, a lot of grammar, 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 the problem.
Finally, did learn with a grammar translation method? Did you study lot of grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the school is problem, not English. So think about these questions and think about every day. Think about them a lot, especially this week as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I you to think about these questions again and again and again. And really honest about it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get rid them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is 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, positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. It means to power to another person. Or in this case, it the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is a belief that makes feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of you want and you need to choose them. You must decide beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can your old limiting 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, brain naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. It be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned your native language that way. It wasn’t was it? English was easy for me to learn, because I did it a totally natural way. And the more naturally I to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier feels. So this is a new belief and you should write it down, about it. Write down this idea, this belief “My brain a natural language learning machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose belief. Here’s another belief you might decide to choose “English can be and effortless.”

English can be fun and effortless. That’s an belief and it’s also true. You can think of a lot of examples for this. Some these mini-stories you’re listening to, right? They’re fun. They’re stupid, sometimes. They’re crazy, sometimes. But they’re not serious. English can be fun effortless. That’s an empowering belief you want to choose you want to remember it every day.

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

Another he has is that you must learn language naturally and you must focus on meaning. So other words, he 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 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 fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, the with the best speaking, they all believe these things. They all that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. They all that they should focus on the meaning, not on the grammar and the pieces of the language. So if you want to be these successful people, you need to think like them. You need to the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what I want 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 that give you power English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English can be fun effortless.” Maybe “I love 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 good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is a phrase or sentence that you say and again. It has almost a magic idea, it comes from magic. An incantation is magical sentence. It’s a sentence, you say the sentence something will happen. That’s where it from. But for us an incantation is just a belief you going to repeat again and again and again every day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For example “English 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 and you’re smiling. Well, you’re going add one more thing. As you walk, as you’re ready for the lesson, you’re going to repeat this out loud. You’re going say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to it with 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 these strong beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. You it again. English can be fun and effortless. And you say it again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in room and its fine. You can do it outside make everyone look at you and think you’re crazy. not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s better than being bored. I promise you will learn much faster if you do this. So do these incantations every just before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, emotional state, and then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be fun effortless. Now your body, your mind, your beliefs, they’re all together, strong. Then you’re ready to learn.

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