Beliefs

BELIEFS

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

Beliefs are another important part managing your psychology, of strengthening your psychology so that you will learn English, anything in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds beliefs to general categories of beliefs. Limiting and empowering.
Let’s talk about limiting beliefs first. Now limiting means, limit something that stops you. It’s like a boundary. It stops you from going ahead. So a limiting belief a belief that stops you from improving, a belief that stops you getting better. And I’d say most English students have limiting beliefs and many English students very strong limiting beliefs. I call these beliefs English trauma and I got that name from a of my Japanese students. They would tell me “AJ, I can’t speak English well I have English trauma.”
What is English trauma? What is that, what are they about? Well, trauma means some kind of injury, some kind hurt. Emotional hurt, deep emotional hurt. So what they mean is that they had very negative, painful experiences with English in the past. In other words, they were in school in English classes, even as going to other English schools, they had very negative experiences. all these negative experiences have created some very negative beliefs, some limiting beliefs. For example, they say “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. may 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 difficult. Or, English is complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For English very easy, because I’m a native speaker, just your native language for you is very easy. Tomoe can speak Japanese fluently she’s Japanese, so I might say “Japanese is difficult,” and would say “No, Japanese is super easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. The problem these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. They us from
getting better. They cause a lot of problems for us students, as learners. I have them, too. As I try to learn Japanese, example, I have a lot of these limiting beliefs realize. I think “Oh, Japanese is so difficult.” Japanese is complicated, look at the writing system. It’s so different from English. these beliefs hurt my motivation. They lower my energy, and fact they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does have to be difficult, it does not have to be compli- cated. small child, even a small American child, could learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And reason is, the number one reason is, they don’t have the beliefs. They can sing songs and play games and enjoy the language, they’ll learn it 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, you these beliefs in your head. English is difficult. English boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll never speak English. These are just beliefs.
So how do you these beliefs? Okay, you have these beliefs. You know they’re negative, you know they’re not helping you. But we to figure out, how can we get rid of limiting beliefs? That’s the first step, you have to weaken them. You have to them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or a memory. Sometimes it’s just you imagine, actually. But it’s a specific experience or a imagination, a specific moment, that makes the belief stronger or weaker. So, for example, you have idea “English is painful and boring.” And when you think of this belief, where does it 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 all the red marks on your English papers. And you adding more and more and more memories, more of these experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, you develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. English painful. I’m not good at English.” So to weaken these, you just to question the references.

You have to question the experiences. Take the power from the experiences. And an easy way to do is just to ask questions about them. For example, let me ask this question. Your English schools, were they excellent? Were they just fantastic schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive English teachers? Did you have a time every day? Well, I know for most of you answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. your English is not great because you did not go to schools. And did those schools that you went to, or the books you used, they use proven methods? Did they use research-based methods? they know a lot about the research about English learning, teaching? Did they only use the best methods? Or did they just use the that everybody else uses?
Well, I know from my experience as a teacher, most schools just the same textbooks. They don’t know why. Maybe the boss them “We must use this book.” But they’re not choosing very, very best methods. They’re not choosing the very, very best books. And so the reason you believe English is difficult is because you used difficult methods in the past, your teachers 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 it was these experiences. Maybe it was the way you did it or where did it. Ask yourself these questions. Think about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your beliefs. Another question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, did you take chapter in your book and learn it for a long time 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 have in, it’s quite the opposite. The teachers go very, very, quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, after one week on to next one, and the next one. Each chapter has so new words, so much new grammar.
For example, my experience with Spanish in school and university, I took Spanish, I’ve had a total of maybe two years of Spanish, but I it all. Because we never learned deeply. They just to make us learn as many words as possible, a lot of words, lot of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, course, I forgot everything. How about you? Did you learn deeply your 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 a grammar translation method? Did you study a of grammar rules? Did you take a lot of tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the was the problem. Maybe the school is the problem, English. So think about these questions and think about them every day. Think them a lot, especially this week as you listen to Lesson 4. I want you to think about these questions again and and again. And really be honest about it. And start to destroy these beliefs. Get rid of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is not painful. English is boring. It’s only a belief. It’s only a past experience. You change that now and in the future. So let’s do that.

Let’s talk now about empowering beliefs, the side. So to empower, the verb, to empower means to make stronger. means to give power to another person. Or in this case, means the beliefs give you power. An empowering belief is a belief makes you feel powerful, that gives you power. That’s kind of beliefs you want and you need to choose them. must decide which beliefs will make you stronger. For example, here’s an empowering belief. You can your old limiting belief, add this one instead. You say “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” Because that’s all of the scientific research shows, our brain naturally learns languages. It designed to learn language. It should be easy. It should effortless. It should feel good. You learned your native that way. It wasn’t difficult was it? English was easy me to learn, because I did it in a totally natural way. the more naturally I tried to learn Japanese, for example, or Spanish, the easier it feels. So this is new belief and you should write it down, think about it. Write 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 might to choose “English can be fun and effortless.”

English can fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief and it’s true. You can 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. can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief you to choose and you want to remember it every day.

And to make these stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, you need examples prove the belief. So I’m going to give you some examples and you can find more. Go people who speak English very well. Or maybe even that have another language very well. I’ll give you one of favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, twelve now. I want you to find these people and look their beliefs. I’ll tell you some of his beliefs because he’s a friend, I’ve talked to him number of times, and Steve believes, for example, that language learning easy and effortless. That’s his belief. He’s a native speaker, he speaks Cantonese, he speaks Mandarin, he speaks Japanese, speaks Russian. These are all, supposedly, difficult languages. For him they’re difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong belief he has.

Another belief he is that you must learn language naturally and you focus on meaning. So in other words, he doesn’t focus on the grammar. He’s not on boring textbooks. He’s reading interesting things that he enjoys. He’s listening interesting things that he enjoys. So, for him, language learning interesting. What’s really interesting for me is that these are the beliefs that all of my best students have. They have these same ideas. The best students, the ones learn the fastest, the ones who have the best test scores, the ones with the speaking, they all believe these things. They all believe 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 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 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 you power English. Maybe “My brain is a natural language learning machine.” “English can be fun and effortless.” Maybe “I love English.” don’t know, write down, two, three, four empowering beliefs 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 again again. It has almost a magic idea, it comes from magic. incantation 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 a belief you are going to repeat again and again and again every day.So here’s you’re going to do. For example “English can be fun effortless.” You’re going to say that out loud every day while you’re walking along 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 be fun and effortless.” You’re going to say it with some emotion. it with feeling so you’re smiling, you’re breathing deep, you’re moving your body, you have good posture now you’re also saying these strong beliefs. English can be and effortless. You repeat it again. English can be fun effortless. And then you say it again. English can be fun effortless.

You can do this in your room and its fine. You can do outside and make everyone look at you and think you’re crazy. 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 just before you do a lesson. your body strong, peak emotional state, and then say incantations. English can be fun and effortless. English can be fun effortless. Now your body, your mind, your beliefs, they’re together, very strong. Then you’re ready to learn.

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