Beliefs

BELIEFS

Hello, welcome to the fourth lesson. This 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, or in fact, much faster. And there are two kinds of beliefs to general of 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 is a belief that stops you from improving, a belief stops you from getting better. And I’d say most students have limiting beliefs and many English students have very strong limiting beliefs. I these beliefs English trauma and I got that name from a few of my Japanese students. 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, deep emotional hurt. So what they is that they had some very negative, painful experiences with English in past. In other words, when they were in school in classes, even as adults going 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 “I am not good at English.” Well, that’s a belief. may be true, it may not be true. But it’s opinion, it’s a belief that they have.
Another belief, a very common belief, English is difficult. Or, English complicated. Well, that’s just a belief. For me English very easy, because I’m a native speaker, like your native language for you is very easy. Tomoe speak Japanese fluently because she’s Japanese, so I might “Japanese is difficult,” and she would say “No, Japanese is easy.” These are just beliefs that come from our experiences. problem is these limiting beliefs limit us. They in fact do limit us. They stop 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 lot of these limiting I 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 in they’re wrong.
They’re not true. Japanese does not have to be difficult, it not have to be compli- cated. A small child, even a small American child, learn Japanese very effortlessly, very easily. And the reason is, the number one is, they don’t have the limiting beliefs. They can sing and play games and enjoy the language, and they’ll learn it quickly, so easily, they’ll say “Japanese is easy.” Well, it’s the same English with you. You learned in a very painful, difficult way in past. And so you developed, you created these beliefs in your head. is difficult. English is boring. English is painful. I’m not good at English. I’ll speak excellent English. These are just beliefs.
So how do you eliminate these beliefs? Okay, you these beliefs. You 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 to make them weaker and weaker and weaker. You have to cut them down. Well get stronger from references. And reference is just an experience or 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 stronger or weaker. So, example, you have this idea “English is painful and boring.” And 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 you terrible. And you think of maybe the bad grades you got on the test all the red marks on your English papers. And you start more and more and more memories, more of these experiences, these negative references. And if you get enough, will develop a very, strong, deep, powerful belief “English is difficult. is painful. I’m not good at English.” So to these, you just have to question the references.

You have question the experiences. Take the power away from the experiences. And easy way to do that is just to ask about them. For example, let me ask this question. past English schools, were they excellent? Were they just fantastic English schools with fantastic, amazing, fun, positive teachers? Did you have a great time every day? Well, know for most of you the answer is no. So that’s interesting, so if your schools not excellent, maybe the school was the problem. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe English is not great because you did not go great schools. And did those schools that you went to, the books you used, did they use proven methods? they use research-based methods? Did they know a lot about the research about English learning, teaching? Did they only use the best methods? Or did they just use textbook that everybody else uses?
Well, I know my experience as a teacher, most schools just use same 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 is because you used difficult in the past, or your teachers did. Maybe you English is boring because in the past you used boring methods. You went to schools. You had boring teachers. Maybe English isn’t the problem. Maybe it was these past experiences. Maybe was the way you did it or where you did it. Ask yourself these questions. about them in detail. Weaken your limiting beliefs. Challenge your beliefs. Another question, in school did you learn deeply? For example, did you take one chapter in book and learn it for a long time so that you totally mastered it, so that you knew completely, 100% and never forgot it? Probably not, most I have seen and the ones I have taught in, it’s quite the opposite. The go very, very, very quickly. You learn one chapter in your book, boom, one week on to the next one, and the next one. Each has so many 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 years of Spanish, but I forgot it all. Because never learned deeply. They just tried to make us learn many words as possible, a lot of words, a of words, a lot of grammar, very, very fast. And then, of course, I forgot everything. about you? Did you learn deeply in your schools? not, maybe that was one of the problems. Maybe English difficult because you never learned deeply. Maybe English is the problem.
Finally, did you learn with a grammar translation method? Did you study lot of grammar rules? Did you take a lot tests? Did you feel good about that? Again, maybe the method was the problem. Maybe school is the problem, not English. So think about these questions and about them every day. Think about them a lot, especially this as you listen to Lesson Number 4. I want to think about these questions again and again and again. And really honest about it. And start to destroy these limiting beliefs. Get of them. They’re wrong. English is not difficult. English is painful. English is not boring. It’s only a belief. It’s a past experience. You can change that now and in the future. let’s do that.

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

English can be fun and effortless. That’s an belief and it’s also true. You can think of a lot of examples for this. Some these mini-stories you’re listening to, right? They’re fun. They’re stupid, sometimes. They’re crazy, sometimes. But they’re serious. English can be fun and effortless. That’s an empowering belief want to choose and you want to remember it day.

And to make these beliefs stronger, you need experiences. Remember, you need references, need examples 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 even that have learned another language very well. I’ll you one of my favorite examples, Steve Kaufman of The Linguist speaks, I believe, languages now. I want you to 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 learning is easy 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. For him they’re difficult. They’re easy and effortless. That’s a very strong he has.

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

You can do in your room and its fine. You can do it outside and make look at you and think you’re crazy. Why not? It’s better than powerless, right? It’s better than being bored. I promise you will learn so faster if you do this. So do these incantations every day just you do a lesson. Get your body strong, peak emotional state, then say these incantations. English can be fun and effortless. can be fun 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.”