Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part of managing your psychology, strengthening your psychology so that you will learn English, anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general categories beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. limiting means, limit is something that stops you. It’s a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting belief is a belief that you from improving, a belief that stops you from getting better. I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. call these beliefs English trauma and I got that from a few of my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English because I have English trauma.”
What is English trauma? What that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma means some kind injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what they is that they had some very negative, painful experiences English in the past. In other words, when they were 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 limiting beliefs. example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may be true, it not be true. But it’s an opinion, it’s a belief they have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me very easy, because I’m a native speaker, just like your language for you is very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so might say “Japanese is difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. in 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. As I to learn Japanese, for example, I have a lot 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 motivation. They lower my energy, and in fact they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese not have to be difficult, it does not have to be compli- cated. small child, even a small American child, could learn very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, the one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing songs and play and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it so quickly, easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same with with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult in the past. And so you developed, you created beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m good at English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These just beliefs.
So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we have figure out, how can we get rid of the beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have 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 experience or a specific imagination, a specific moment, that the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have this “English is painful and boring.” And when you think of this belief, where it come from?

Well, you think of all these past experiences. You 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 marks your English papers. And you start adding more and more and more memories, of these negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you will a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. is 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 power away the experiences. And an easy way to do that is just to 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 you a great time every day? Well, I know for most of you the is 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 you did not go to great schools. And did those schools that you went to, or books you used, did they use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they a lot about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only use best methods? Or did they just use 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 tells them “We use this book.” But they’re not choosing the very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, best books. And so maybe the reason you believe English is difficult is because you used methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe think English is boring because in the past you boring methods. You 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 did it or where you did it. Ask these questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken your beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. Another question, in school you learn deeply? For example, did you take one in your book and learn it for a long so that you totally mastered it, so that you it completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most schools I seen and the ones I have taught in, it’s quite opposite. The teachers go very, very, very quickly. You one chapter in your book, boom, after one week to the next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many new words, so much grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish in high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I forgot all. Because we never learned deeply. They just tried to us learn as many words as possible, a lot words, a lot of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. then, of course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply your schools? If not, maybe that was one of the problems. Maybe feels difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe English is not the problem.
Finally, did you learn a grammar translation method? Did you study a lot grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe school is the problem, not English. So think about these questions think about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you to about these questions again and again and again. And really be honest about it. And to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English is difficult. English is not painful. English is not boring. It’s a belief. It’s only a past experience. You can change that now and in the future. 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. in this case, it means the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is belief that makes you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of you want and you need to choose them. You must which 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 language machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally languages. It 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 was for me to learn, because I did it in totally natural way. And the more naturally I tried learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. this is a new belief and you should write it down, think it. Write down this idea, this belief “My brain is a natural language machine.” Think about it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s another belief you decide to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

English be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s also true. You can think of a lot of for 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. English 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 examples that prove the belief. So I’m going to give some examples and you can find more. Go find people who English very well. Or maybe even that have learned another language very well. I’ll give you of 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 he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a number of times, and Steve believes, for example, that learning is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s native English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, speaks Japanese, he speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, 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 language naturally you must focus on meaning. So in other words, doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not focusing on textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening interesting things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s really interesting for me that these are the same beliefs that all of best students have. They all have these same ideas. The students, the ones who learn the fastest, the ones have the best test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they all believe things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They believe that language learning is natural. They all believe that should focus on the meaning, not on the grammar the little pieces of the language. So if you to be like these successful people, you need to think like them. You need to have the same as them.
So here’s what I want you to do. Here’s your homework. This is last thing, the last part of this lesson. What I want you do is write down two, three, four empowering 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, write down, two, three, four beliefs about English. And every day you’re going to do an incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a 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 is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, you say sentence something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But for us an incantation is just 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 fun and effortless.” You’re going to say that out 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 repeat 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 have posture and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English can fun and effortless. And then you say it again. can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in your room and fine. You can do it outside and make everyone look at you 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 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. English be fun and effortless. Now your body, your mind, beliefs, they’re all together, very strong. Then you’re ready learn.

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