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, faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting first. Now limiting means, limit is something that stops you. It’s like boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting is a belief that stops 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 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 I have English trauma.”
What is English trauma? is that, what are they talking about? Well, trauma some kind of injury, some kind of hurt. Emotional hurt, emotional hurt. So what they mean is that they had very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. other words, when they were in school in English classes, as adults going to other English schools, they had very negative experiences. And all these negative have created some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they “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 that they have.
Another belief, a common belief, English is difficult. Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. me English 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 I might “Japanese is difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just that come from our experiences. The problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do us. They stop us from
getting better. They cause a lot of for us as students, as learners. I have them, too. As try to learn Japanese, for example, I have a of these limiting beliefs I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, just look 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 true. Japanese does not have to be difficult, it does not have be 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, don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing songs and play and 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. You learned in a painful, difficult way in the past. And so you developed, you created these in your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you have beliefs. You 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 weaken them. You have to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. have to cut them down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is just an or a memory. Sometimes it’s just something you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific experience or specific imagination, a specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have this “English is painful and boring.” And when you think of belief, where does it come from?

Well, you think 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. And you start more and more and more memories, more of these negative experiences, these negative references. if you get enough, you will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English difficult. English is painful. I’m not good at English.” to weaken these, you just have to question the references.

You to question the experiences. Take the 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 schools, were 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 of you the answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools were not excellent, 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 you went to, or the books you used, did they proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? Did they a lot about the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only 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 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 choosing the very, very best books. And so maybe reason you believe English is difficult is because you difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe think English is boring because in the past you used boring methods. You went boring schools. You had boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe it was the way did it or where you did it. Ask yourself these questions. Think about in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your limiting beliefs. question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, did you one chapter in your book and learn it for a long time so you totally mastered it, so that you knew it completely, 100% and forgot it? Probably not, most schools I have seen and ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The teachers very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one week on the next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many new words, so new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish in school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total maybe two years of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we never learned deeply. just tried to make us learn as many words as possible, lot of words, a lot of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, 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 difficult because never learned deeply. Maybe English is not the problem.
Finally, did learn with a grammar translation method? Did you study a lot grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the school is problem, not English. So think about these questions and about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this week as you listen Lesson Number 4. I want you to think about questions again and again and again. And really be honest it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get of them. They’re wrong. English is not 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 future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, positive side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means make stronger. It means to give power to another person. Or this case, it means the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is a belief that makes you powerful, that gives you power. That’s the kind of 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 replace your old limiting belief, add one instead. You can say “My brain is a natural language machine.” Because that’s what all of the scientific research shows, our naturally learns languages. It is designed to learn language. It be easy. It should be effortless. It should feel good. You learned native language that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was easy for to learn, because I did it in a 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 natural language learning machine.” Think it every day. Decide to choose that belief. Here’s another belief 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 think of a lot of examples for this. Some of 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 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 to give you some examples and you can find more. Go find who speak English very well. Or maybe even that have learned language very well. I’ll give you one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The speaks, I believe, twelve languages now. I want you find these people and look at their beliefs. I’ll tell you of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him a of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language is easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a English speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re not difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s very strong belief he has.

Another belief he has is that you must language naturally and you must focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t focus on grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening to things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s really interesting me is 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 who have the test scores, the ones with the best speaking, they believe these things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. all 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 to have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what I want you do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, the part of this lesson. What I want you to is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs that you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural learning machine.” Maybe “English can be fun and effortless.” “I love English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, four empowering about English. And every day you’re going to do incantation. That’s a good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is a phrase or sentence that you again and again. It has 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 are going to repeat again and again and again day.So here’s what you’re going to do. For example “English can be and effortless.” You’re going to say that out loud 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. As you walk, you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re going to repeat this out loud. You’re to say “English can be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with emotion. Say it 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. English can be fun and effortless. You it again. English can be fun and effortless. And then you say again. English can be fun and effortless.

You can do this in room and its fine. You can do it outside and make everyone look at and think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than feeling powerless, right? It’s better being bored. I promise you will learn so much faster you do this. So do these incantations every day before you do a lesson. Get your body strong, emotional state, and then say these incantations. English can 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 the end of the main story for “Beliefs.”