How To Stop Negative Thoughts And Become A Fluent English Speaker

Hi there, I am Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com, and I wanted to make a

different kind of video today. If you've learned with me for a while or especially if you're

new, something I always make very important to students is that the words you know are

important, but really how you think is even more important than that. And the reason is

because often people will have lots of vocabulary, if you can understand the words I'm saying

right now, you probably know quite a bit of English already. But if you're still watching

this it's because maybe you're either just trying to learn more, or you really just feel

quite nervous about speaking. So, I wanted to make a video about this specifically

because I get lots of emails from learners every day about specific problems they have.

And most people, occasionally I'll get a mail from someone that says they need to learn

more vocabulary or they need to know more of kind of the things that natives are actually

talking about, but most of the mails I get from people are talking about the struggles

that they have going on inside their mind. And so I wanted to talk about that in this

video. So this is something I also struggled with when I was getting fluent in Japanese.

And if you don't know my story already, I began learning languages when I was in elementary

school. So I had to learn Latin in elementary school, I still think that's funny, but I

failed at doing that. I failed to learn French in high school, Spanish in college, and then

even when I was in Japan I thought, "Wow, okay, I'm in a native country, I'm surrounded

by Japanese speakers. I'm going to become a fluent speaker." But it didn't happen that

way. So I can speak fluently now, but not because

of me being in Japan. That was certainly helpful, but it wasn't necessary. But a lot of the

things that changed for me for being finally fluent in Japanese happened internally, just

the way I was thinking about learning languages, and so I want to talk about that today. So,

I often just go back and read even older emails that I get from students, I spend a lot of

time thinking about this because it's really important just to understand students completely.

Even as a language learner myself, I really want to understand the specific problems people

have, and that helps me do my, I can't speak English, it helps me do my job better. So

for thinking about this, I get mails, as I mentioned before, about people, they in English,

kind of native English, we say we beat ourselves up. So, you're kind of hitting yourself, and

a lot of people they have, we call this self-talk. So it's the things that you say to yourself

about what your progress is or what you think you might do in the future, or who you are

as a person. So if you think to yourself, "Well, I'm stupid,

I can't express myself. I keep making all these different grammar mistakes." So it's

usually, there's the before self-talk. So these are, these are the things that you'd

say to yourself before a conversation. And then maybe you have the during self-talk,

so when you're in a conversation, when you're speaking with someone, you might be trying

to think and you're frustrated, "Why can't I say this properly?" You're supposed to be

listening to the other person, but you can't stay out of your own head and you're beating

yourself up about that. And then, so you've got some people that have the same self-talk

after the conversation is finished. I got a really painful email from a guy a while

ago and he was talking about how he would be finishing with a conversation and then

after that, so the conversation was finished, he would still be in his car an hour later

still thinking about the mistakes that he made.

And so I want to talk about this very specifically and how to stop that, because it was really

important to me as I was starting to get fluent in Japanese and thinking about how I can express

myself. And I felt really nervous too, especially just being an adult, you're in a foreign country

and if you can't speak, you're really almost like a child. You're basically helpless and

you need someone there who either speaks the language and can translate for you, or can

teach you how to do something. But it's like being almost a child in an adult body. And

so I spent a lot of time thinking about that and how I have to be careful not to create

that negative self-talk in my own mind. So I would try to think about things, if I made

a mistake, I would try not to think about it so much at the time. But after the conversation

was finished, I might think about something, I maybe used something incorrectly or maybe

I should have said some different word. But I didn't really think, I wasn't so hard

on myself about it. And the reason I wasn't, I didn't... another great expression here

is to fall into a trap. So I didn't fall into the trap of beating myself up so much because

I would think about all the times that I have been successful at doing something. So when

you're learning to do something new, especially if it's something difficult like learning

a new language, and you want to be able to express yourself fluently and confidently,

you still have to think about, "Okay, I have to deal with these failures and I'm making

lots of mistakes here, but I have had lots of success in other things I've done." So,

try to think about that because usually what people do is they get into this self-talk,

this negative self-talk, and they talk about certain mistakes they make and they say, "Well,

I'm a bad speaker," or, "I'm stupid," or something like that. Or, "Why can't I get this right?

Why am I," and they'll even get angry about thinking about getting angry, if that makes

sense. So you're making mistakes and then after the

conversation, you're frustrated because you've made mistakes, and then you're frustrated

because you're frustrated. So it can be really difficult and really, well, just frustrating

for people. But if you stop and just think, there have been times, maybe even many times

in your life where you've probably done something new and you've done it successfully. Maybe

you already have a career and you're doing something very well. So I have learners who

are doctors or lawyers or engineers or even presidents of companies, learning with my

lessons, and it's because everyone's still trying to learn and they want to get better.

But they have obviously been successful, and so you can't say that they're not able to

learn because clearly they work, so they learned how to be an engineer or how to code software

or how to write books or do something else like that. So I'm always really proud of my

students and all the things that they've accomplished, but they're often getting stuck about language

learning specifically because of this self-talk. So if you ever have that problem where you're

thinking about, "These are the things that... I made this mistake," or you're worried about

how you might express yourself, something like that, I want you to remind yourself about

the positive things that you have done so that you don't think you are stupid or you

always will make a mistake because there are plenty of times in your life where that's

not true. So, try to remind yourself of these things when you're in these situations and

you just think, "Okay, maybe I've made a mistake, but other times I've made mistakes and I've

learned from those and I've gotten better." So remember these things as you go through

in your conversations, and be careful of the self-talk because it's not true. And this

is something it's really important to remember, so I'm going to say it a few times here, but

the not being true part is really important. Is it really true that you're not an intelligent

person because you can't express yourself in English? And this is maybe someone who

is a doctor or a lawyer or it doesn't really matter, but if you're able to express yourself

in your native language and you can talk and you can explain things, well really it's actually

the education system and traditional language learning lessons that have made language learning

difficult for people. It's what made language learning difficult for me, and as soon as

I stopped learning that way, I started to become a good speaker.

But part of that was me also reminding myself that I can do it. So I'm not stupid even though

sometimes I may say something stupid or make a mistake, something like that. That instance

of making a mistake does not mean you're stupid. Now, this is again really important, that's

why I keep repeating myself here, but I really want you to think about these things as you

learn, the self-talk and what's better, an actual better idea is to project the kind

of person that you want to be if you're going to have some kind of self-talk. So if you

are having self-talk, you can have positive self-talk instead. So you might begin, even

if you maybe don't think you're such a great speaker, you can visualize yourself actually

having a conversation with someone. If you know you're going to be on the phone or you

have to communicate with somebody in a business or just casual situation, just take time to

calm yourself, just breathe a little bit, relax and you can visualize that.

And you can actually see in your mind, like you're having kind of a movie in your mind

that you're watching, that's showing you the positive view, that's something that's actually

going to happen. So the image that we create in our mind is the thing that we can make

happen in reality. And I know this sounds a little bit funny for a language lesson,

but the person that you are right now and the speaker you are right now, is a result

of how you were thinking in the past. So if you began or you have been thinking for a

while that you can't express yourself or you're having these troubles or you've got certain

mistakes or something like that, you're creating a much bigger problem in your mind and that

actually makes you create more nervousness and problems and causes more difficulty for

you in conversations. So remember that the person you are now, even just as a speaker

of English, is the person because of how you thought in the past.

So who we are now, all the things that we do, the things that we think, they were created

in our mind first and now that we're using them in everyday conversations or we see people

and we try to express ourselves, if we are thinking that we're not going to do that well

then we will not do that well. But if we think we will do that well, we will have a good

experience. Even if something does not go right, we will still look at it and be positive

about it, and we will continue to move forward. So that was really one of the things that

made it possible for me to become a much more confident speaker of Japanese, not because

I was just studying a whole bunch of words, but because I stopped, I kind of protected

myself from the negative self-talk that a lot of people suffer from.

So remember this is all something that you can decide to do and it's also in the same

way that you can change how you learn. So, you can learn with videos like mine here on

YouTube or any other way. Basically I tell people to learn like native English speakers,

if you want to speak like native English speakers. It's a really simple idea and it's the same

kind of thing that you would get if you, for example, you want to be a baker, you should

go work with a baker. So learn the skills from that person, the actual professional

who's that thing. And if you want to learn how to speak like a native watch, natives

speak, it's pretty simple. So now that you're an adult, you don't have to sit in a classroom

if you don't want to, and now you're free. So even though that conditioning, the ideas

that maybe teachers put in your head, especially if you have some cultures, like here I am

in Japan where making mistakes is a really difficult thing for people to do, they're

really stressed out about that. But for me, being an American, we have a little bit of

a different culture where making mistakes is a little bit of a good thing. And often

you will try something and the result might not be what you want it, but maybe you discover

something, you learn some new information that can help you as a result of that. So

remember these ideas, I don't want to give you too much information, but really the most

important thing is the person you are now, especially just as an English speaker is the

person you are because of how you thought in the past. So the ideas you had about how

you are as a speaker, now that's how you think, and you start again creating these thoughts.

So if you want to change that, if you have a lot of negative thinking right now and you're

frustrated with yourself, if you're beating yourself up, if it's before conversation,

during a conversation or after a conversation, remember to relax. It's not true that you're

a bad speaker, you just had a bad experience about learning the traditional way, and you've

got some conditioning that's telling you maybe that mistakes are really bad when these are

just opportunities to learn. So I don't want you to just tell yourself not to be worried

about that, it's more you have to really have your mind believe it's true that you're not

a bad speaker or that you're stupid or something like that. So create that person in your mind.

Even just talking to yourself a little bit, or just even if you don't say anything, just

visualize, so see it in your mind, you're having a conversation with me or somebody

else. If you have to speak to a boss or someone on the phone, any situation like that where

you can have a good conversation and visualize it in your mind, but just really relax.

So imagine yourself being relaxed, feeling relaxed in that conversation. And even if

you make a mistake, really, it's okay because you're going to have a chance to learn something

from that. Well, I don't want to give you too much information, but I know as I get

more information from students, I've been doing this for many years now and always the

same few problems come up again and again. But usually your biggest problem is not going

to be that you don't know enough words. I should stop using double negatives in my lessons

here, but the most important thing is how you think, and if you think you're going to

create problems in your speech and that mistakes are a really big deal when they're actually

not that big of a deal and they can actually teach you something about how to improve,

then you're really going to feel a lot more confident about speaking.

So take some time, visualize the person you want to be, the speaker you will want to be,

and then slowly you will see your mind creating that reality for you. It really is a magical

thing to see and you can start doing that right now just by feeling more confident,

taking some time and trying to give yourself some positive self-talk instead of negative

self-talk. Well again, I'm Drew Badger, the founder of EnglishAnyone.com. If you'd like

to learn more about what I do, we have the fluency course and we have the visual guide

to phrasal verbs, lots of great programs you can learn. One in particular I'd like you

to check out, that's the fluency course and you can click on the link in the upper right

of this video or on the link in the description below this video to learn more about that.

This is where I not only teach you the actual words and phrases you should be using as an

English learner to sound more like a native English speaker, but how to pronounce them,

how to use grammar, and we give you lots of quick wins. So that means as soon as you join

the program, you start improving right away, you start learning lots of impressive vocabulary,

but we also have kind of a longer term strategy where we're actually changing the way you

think in the program. So instead of having habits like getting to translate or think

about things in your head or the self-talk that's stopping you from communicating, we

get you feeling positive, excited to speak, and that's how you start building real fluency.

So if you'd like to learn more about that, click on the link in the upper right. And

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