Beliefs

BELIEFS

Hello, welcome to the fourth lesson. This 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, or anything 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 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 have very 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, 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 of injury, some of hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what mean is that they had some very negative, painful experiences with English in past. In other words, when they were in school in English classes, even as adults to other English schools, they had very negative experiences. all these negative experiences have created some very negative beliefs, some very limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. It may true, it may 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 belief. For me 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, 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, as learners. I have them, too. As I try learn Japanese, for example, I have a lot of these limiting I realize. I think “Oh, Japanese 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 true. Japanese does not have to be difficult, it not have to be compli- cated. A small child, even small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. the reason is, the number one reason is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They 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 the same English with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult in the past. And so you developed, you created these beliefs your head. English is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never excellent English. These are just beliefs.
So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, you know they’re helping you. But we have to figure out, how we get rid of the limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have weaken them. You have to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut down. Well beliefs get stronger from references. And reference is just 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 the belief or weaker. So, for example, you have this idea “English is painful boring.” And when you think of this belief, where does it come from?

Well, you of all these past experiences. You think of the time in middle school where your teacher corrected your and you felt terrible. And you think of maybe the bad grades you got the test or all the red marks on your English papers. And you adding more and more and more memories, more of negative experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful “English is difficult. English is painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, you have 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, were 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 answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your were not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s you. Maybe 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 proven methods? they use research-based methods? Did they know a lot the research about English learning, English teaching? Did they only use the best methods? Or did they just the textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, I know my experience as a teacher, most schools just use the textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the boss tells them “We must this book.” But they’re not choosing the very, very methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. so maybe the reason you believe English is difficult because you used difficult methods in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you think English is boring 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 you did it or where you did it. Ask yourself 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 book and 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, quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one week to the next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so many words, so much new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish high school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because we never learned deeply. just tried to make us learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, a of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? If not, maybe that was of the problems. Maybe English feels difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe English not the problem.
Finally, did you learn with a grammar translation method? Did study a lot of grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel good that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe the school is the problem, not English. So about these questions and think about them every day. Think about them lot, especially this week as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want you think about these questions again and again and again. And be honest about it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. rid of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is not painful. is not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a experience. You can change that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk about empowering beliefs, the positive side. So to empower, the verb, empower means to make stronger. It means to give power another person. Or in this case, it means the beliefs give 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. must decide which beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. can replace your old limiting belief, add this one instead. You can “My brain is a 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 good. You learned your native language that way. It wasn’t difficult it? English was easy for me to learn, because 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. Write down this idea, this “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Think about it every day. to choose that belief. Here’s another belief you might decide to choose “English be fun and effortless.”

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

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

Another belief has is that you must learn language naturally and you focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t on the grammar. He’s not focusing on boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting that he enjoys. He’s listening to interesting things that enjoys. So, for him, language learning is interesting. What’s really for me is that these are the same beliefs that 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 believe things. They all believe that English is fun, interesting and effortless. They all believe language learning is natural. They all believe that they focus on the meaning, not on the grammar and little pieces of the language. So if you want to be like these people, you need to think like them. You need have the same beliefs as them.
So here’s what I you to do. Here’s your homework. This is the last thing, the last part of lesson. What I want you to do is write down two, three, four empowering beliefs, beliefs give you power about English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Maybe “English can be and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” I don’t know, write down, two, three, four empowering beliefs English. And every day you’re going to do an incantation. That’s good word, that’s a new word, incantation.
An incantation is phrase or sentence that you say again and again. has almost a magic idea, it comes from magic. incantation is a magical sentence. It’s a sentence, you say the something will happen. That’s where it comes from. But for an incantation is just a belief you are going to repeat again and again again every day.So here’s what you’re going to do. example “English can 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 to one more thing. As you walk, as you’re getting ready for the lesson, you’re to repeat this out loud. You’re going to 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 breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you have posture and now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. can be fun and effortless. You repeat it again. English be fun and effortless. And then you say it again. English can be fun and effortless.

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

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