Beliefs

BELIEFS

Hello, welcome to the 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 are two kinds of to general categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s about 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 beliefs and many English students have strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma and I got that name from few of my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, can’t speak English well because I have English trauma.”
What English trauma? What is that, what are they talking about? Well, means some kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what mean is that they had some very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. In other words, they were in school in English classes, even as adults going to other schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these negative experiences have some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It be true, it may not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a belief that have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English easy, because I’m a native speaker, just like your language for you is very easy. Tomoe can speak fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These just beliefs that 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 them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, for example, I 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. does not have to be 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 sing songs and play games enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it so quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese easy.” Well, it’s the same with English with you. learned in a very painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, you created beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
So 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 we rid of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You to cut them down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is 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 belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have this idea “English is and boring.” And when you think of this belief, where does it come from?

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

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

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. It means to give power another person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs you power. An empowering belief is a belief that makes feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind beliefs you want and you need to choose them. You must decide which 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 natural language learning machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, brain naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. should be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was for me to learn, because I did it in totally natural way. And the more naturally 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 machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s belief you might decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

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

And to make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need that prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some examples and you can more. Go find people who speak English very well. Or maybe even that have learned another very well. I’ll give you 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 a native English speaker, speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong belief has.

Another belief he has is that you must learn naturally and you must focus on meaning. So in words, he doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not focusing boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that he enjoys. He’s to interesting things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these are same beliefs that all of my best students have. They all have these same ideas. best students, the ones who learn the fastest, the who have the best test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they all these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting effortless. They all believe that language learning is natural. all believe that they should focus on the meaning, on the grammar and the little pieces of the language. So if you to be like these successful people, you need to think like them. You to have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what want you to 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 power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English can fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know, down, two, three, four empowering beliefs about English. And day you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is a phrase or sentence that say again and again. It has almost a magic idea, it from magic. An incantation is a magical sentence. It’s sentence, you say the sentence something will happen. That’s it comes from. But for us an incantation is a belief you are going to repeat again and 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 doing your posture. And you’re and 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 effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving body, you have good posture and now you’re also saying strong beliefs. English can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can fun 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 it outside and make everyone look at you and you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s than being bored. I promise you will learn so faster if you do this. So do these incantations every day just before do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, and then say incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be and effortless. Now your body, your mind, your beliefs, they’re all together, strong. Then you’re ready to learn.

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