🚨 Fix This NOW - Small Change Equals Big Impact 🔧 British English Podcast

The English Like A Native Podcast is a free listening resource for intermediate

and advanced English learners.

Bonus episodes and transcripts are available to Plus Members and

English courses can be found on my website www.englishlikeanative.co.uk.

Hello, there you are listening to the English Like a Native podcast,

the podcast that is designed for lovers and learners of English.

I'm your host, Anna, and today we are putting on our hard

hats and finally fixing things.

When was the last time you fixed something?

And I'm not just talking about gluing a broken vase or

changing the fuse in a plug.

I'm actually referring to fixing a problem, a niggle, an issue, a

thorn in your side, something that negatively impacts your daily life.

It could be a problem in a relationship like with your sister.

Maybe you haven't spoken to your sister for a very long time after a

silly argument, and that bothers you.

It could be a bad habit that you've fallen into that really bothers you but

you still continue to do it regardless.

Or perhaps it's something small like the lack of a mirror in your

bathroom that makes it really hard to brush your teeth properly.

Or an ill-fitting pair of trousers that have been torturing you for years, digging

into your side chafing your private parts and creating unsightly muffin tops that

only serve to lower your self-esteem.

Or maybe it's the setup of your front room furniture that just isn't Feng Shui enough

and you are desperate to rearrange it.

I'm smirking.

Many of you can't see my face if you are just listening on Spotify

or Apple Podcasts or wherever...

but right now I have a little smirk on my face.

The last line about rearranging furniture made me smirk because it

reminds me of my own guilty pleasure.

Is guilty pleasure the right word?

It's more of a bad habit though.

It's not necessarily a bad thing.

Maybe I should just share with you what it is that I do and you can decide

which label best fits this behaviour.

Okay, I am going to make my confession.

I am a serial reorganiser.

It's true.

It's almost become an obsession.

So after a short amount of time passes, I develop an itch, a deep

desire to rearrange the furniture, and I'm just unable to sit on my hands.

Now to sit on your hands means to take no action.

To stop yourself from doing something.

It's different from the saying my hands are tied, which means that you're

unable to take action even if you want to because your hands are tied.

Something is preventing you from acting.

Well, my partner, and my childminder, they think I'm absolutely batty,

always moving things and rearranging the furniture every few weeks.

But in my defence, this compulsion often leads to positive discoveries

and outcomes that impact everyone.

For me, when I feel like I am losing control of different aspects of my

life, which is most of the time, I like to exercise some control

over the things that I can affect.

I rearrange and reorganise my environment, firstly because

it's nice to have a change.

And secondly, because my house, my home isn't perfect.

The furniture doesn't match and nothing quite fits in the space that's available.

And there are lots of little things that bother me.

Not just aesthetically, oh, I like that word.

Aesthetically.

Aesthetically means how something looks.

So the look of something.

For example, upon viewing a beautiful manor house, I might say, "Oh, this

house is aesthetically pleasing" meaning the look of this house pleases me.

I like it.

Okay, back to my house.

It's not simply the aesthetics that frustrate me, but the layout and

the routines that come with it that aren't as easy as they should be.

Let me give you an example.

Our tumble dryer sits on top of our washing machine, so they're stacked and

they're both in the corner of our garage.

Now the door of the washing machine, which is on the bottom.

The door of the washing machine opens towards the wall, which is fine.

That's perfectly reasonable.

It works very well.

But the dryer door opens in the opposite direction into the room.

So the washing machine door opens that way and the dryer door opens

that way, and they don't fully open.

They just go to kind of a 45 degree angle and stick out.

Which means that I'm often banging my head on the dryer door as I go from

the washing machine standing up to put things into the dryer, like, "oh,

oh, there's that dryer door again".

And I wish I could just change the door to open in the opposite direction.

So you see, by rearranging my furniture and where everything is placed

within a room, I'm experimenting to see if there's a better option.

A better way of doing things.

Now, you might argue that this constant reorganising is a huge waste

of time and energy, but through this constant reorganising, I have found

solutions to some of the problems, things that have plagued me for ages.

For example, in our kitchen next to the hob, we used to have all of our

cooking tools, you know, like spatulas and wooden spoons and whisks, all

stored upright in pots next to the hob for easy access while cooking.

Sounds good.

Right?

Well, for me, this posed two problems.

Number one, some of the tools that were used less frequently than

others, would just gather dust if you didn't kind of keep an eye on them

and check them every now and again.

They just get covered in a layer of dust, which isn't very hygienic.

And sometimes you'd be cooking and you wouldn't think to double check.

You just grab your dust-covered ladle and plunge it into your stew

or your soup giving your culinary masterpiece a dusty seasoning.

Yuck.

Now the second problem with these utensils, standing in pots next

to the hob was having lots of stuff on the kitchen countertop.

Made it harder to clean the surfaces properly.

Now for four years...

four years, I allowed this to quietly irritate me.

I mean, it's not a big deal.

It didn't keep me awake at night, but it irritated me.

And recently I had an epiphany.

Directly below the hob we have three drawers.

The middle drawer, as you are standing in front of the hob, the middle drawer is

full of our cutlery, which makes sense.

It's a nice wide draw, and it works perfectly for our cutlery.

The draw to the left is full of bits and bobs.

Random things like an orange juicer.

And, uh, um,...

when I say orange juicer, I don't mean one of those big machines that

you stick loads of oranges in and then press a button and then it's

spits out juice at the other end.

I don't mean one of those.

Uh, this is like a little circular plastic tool that bores into the orange.

It's a boring tool.

And when I say boring, I don't mean it's dull.

I don't mean it puts you to sleep.

"Oh, this is boring".

Um, to boar can also mean to cut a hole into something.

So it's a boring tool.

It's a tool that cuts a hole into an orange.

It's an orange, an orange juicer.

So you stick this in, the juice all collects and pours out of the orange.

So it has one of those in this drawer full of things, and it has things like

chopsticks and straws and medic...

medicine, syringes.

Just a random collection, really.

Clutter, I think we could call it.

The kind of things that you rarely use, but you are convinced

will come in handy one day.

Okay, so that's the left draw, right?

The right hand side of the cutlery drawer.

We have a drawer that is full of tea towels.

And the tea towels didn't really fit very well into the drawer.

It was a bit of a squash and a squeeze, to be honest.

The drawer wasn't big enough for all the tea towels because, well, you could

never have enough tea towels can you?

And gifting tea towels is a thing here in the UK.

Whenever we go on holiday, we think to ourselves.

"Oh, we do miss our loved ones back home.

We should buy them something to show them that we were thinking

of them while we were here.

I know.

Let's buy them a tea towel so they can think of us while

they're drying their dishes".

Anyway, tea towels aside, I had this epiphany.

I decided to address my beef.

Ah, do you remember that word?

That's a slang term to have beef with something.

I, I mentioned it in a much earlier podcast episode.

Um, it means that you are annoyed with something if you have beef with something.

So I decided to address my beef with the countertop pots full of kitchen utensils

by moving the tea towels into a drawer on the other side of the kitchen that

is in fact more suitable, freeing up the right side drawer for my cooking utensils.

I quickly rinsed all of the utensils and placed them into the drawer.

And as soon as I made this change, I thought, "why didn't I do this ages ago?"

It felt like the perfect ergonomic solution where everything

was just in the right place.

Everything was to hand easy to grab, making my kitchen routines more efficient.

So this got me thinking about all the other little things that bother us, but

we tend to ignore and become blind to.

We carry on with our lives enduring these constant irritations, these

little stabs, like thorns in our sides.

And we seem oblivious to the fact that these little problems only

require a small amount of focus and effort to fix in most cases.

And then the positive impact of giving a little focus and effort is overwhelming.

So I want you to think about what bothers you.

What's really bothering you, but that you keep putting on a back burner?

What's constantly plaguing your thoughts and experiences?

Are you perhaps lacking confidence to speak to others?

This is a complaint that I hear from listeners regularly.

How could you tackle that head-on?

Well, you build your vocabulary so that you feel better equipped

when facing a speaking opportunity.

You listen to, like, podcasts to help with that.

One, to build your vocabulary.

This one certainly gives you lots of vocabulary, and then you find a way

to adjust your routine to include more speaking opportunities, and you

work on building your confidence.

You could join a speaking club like My Conversation Club, for example.

My conversations are arranged and facilitated, so you have a topic

to discuss with other students who also feel passionate about improving

they're speaking confidence.

But beyond learning English, what little things in your life bother you?

Now, I'm on a mission to address the things that irritate me, and I think

you should join me in this challenge.

Let's seek out the issues, the daily nuisances.

Try to think daily...

so every day of the next week, try to think, how can I improve my life?

Where could I make things a little easier, a little better?

It could be as simple as organising your kitchen with glass jars for

better access to healthy snacks, which is something I recently did.

I had all my healthy snacks, like nuts and um, fruit and seeds, all in packets

in Tupperware, locked away in cupboards.

And I often either forgot that I had them or it would just seem like a

lot of effort to go and grab them.

And now I've got them all out on the kitchen countertop, even though

I was trying to keep those clear.

But they're all in glass jars so I can see them.

So when I go to the kitchen and think I need a snack, I can see

them and I go, ah, I'm going to have some nuts and seeds and fruit.

That's much better.

So fixing these bothersome things brings a renewed sense

of energy and accomplishment.

It's like taking that uncomfortable chair that you've been sitting on

for years and finally getting a super duper ergonomic sitting solution,

or better still a standing desk.

Suddenly everything feels right and in its proper place.

Now the key is to acknowledge those nagging issues and take

action and experience the positive transformation that comes with it.

Now, the reason I started thinking about all of this in the first

place was our garden wall.

So about three years ago maybe, four years ago, we had a new wall

built at the front of our house.

This was for security reasons.

We removed some very large hedges and put in a garden wall, and we decided to

have the wall rendered and painted white with some wooden fence panels above it.

It looked lovely in the first few months.

But unfortunately we were trying to be budget friendly and we

hired some cowboy builders.

They didn't do a very good job, as you've probably gathered.

They rushed the render, they rushed the paint work.

They didn't seal and weatherproof the wood.

And so what happened was over a period of a few months, the wall

began to show some terrible stains.

We think the stains may have come from the wood.

So we think that when it rains, the rain water soaks the wood and then

moves through the wood, seeping out kind of a brown water or a wood

stained water, which then drizzles down the wall, staining the white wall.

We think that's what's happening 'cause we've just got these long brown

streaks down our beautiful white wall.

So we've had these brown streaks staining our wall for years and it looks horrible.

And considering we'd only just had the thing built, it

was just very disappointing.

And I kept saying, I've got to sort this out.

I've got to sort this out.

But at the time, I'd just had my first son, so we had a baby.

And then not long after that, we had another baby, so I just didn't have

the time, or the energy really to go outside, leaving the baby in the house

so that I could clean and paint a wall.

I just didn't get the chance.

And years went by and every single time we left the house and came back

to the house, I'd look at the wall and I'd have this feeling of almost shame.

I felt ashamed.

Now it's silly because no one ever said anything to me.

No one looked at me and gave me a shameful look like, "oh, you should

be ashamed of yourself for allowing your wall to be stained for so long".

I didn't get a..., an angry letter from the neighbour or a knock at the

door from a neighbour saying, you really should deal with this wall.

And I never got that impression from anyone, but I felt it.

I felt that anyone walking past our house must be looking at our wall

and thinking to themselves, "I wish they'd do something about that wall".

"I can't believe they haven't bothered to paint it.

It can't take that long", and I know this is all in my head, but this is how I felt.

I felt ashamed and it's bothered me for years.

So then one afternoon, it was very hot.

This was not that long ago.

It was very hot, and I thought, do you know what?

The children are occupied, they're watching a Disney film.

They're quite happy.

My partner is in the house, so they're not alone.

So I thought, do you know what?

I'm gonna go into the garage and see if there's any paint.

And sure enough, there was a big pot of white masonry paint.

So I dug out a roller and a paintbrush.

I found some old cardboard to, uh, put my paintbrush on and kind of protect

the, the floor from paint splatters.

And I went outside and, uh, you know, cleaned part of the wall

because I was quite disorganised.

I cleaned the parts that I could see the front and the inside, so the very front

wall and the inside of the front wall.

And I just threw on some paint, just started throwing the paint

around and oh my goodness me.

What a difference!

What a difference!

Within an hour, I'd managed to paint the entire front of the wall

and the back of that front wall.

All the bits that you can see when you exit the house and enter the house.

I didn't do the side walls.

I didn't have the time nor the energy, but I will come back to them one day.

But the effect of taking an hour, the effect that that had, don't get

me wrong, this was very hard work.

I was sweating.

I was hunched over.

My back was hurting, my knees were hurting, my shoulders were hurting.

It was very, very hot.

The sun was beating down on me, but the effect was incredible.

I already knew that I would be happy with the wall once it was painted.

But I suddenly had this overwhelming burst of positivity.

I felt really productive and it inspired me to start looking at other

things around the house to improve.

I must have had like a rush of endorphins or some sort of positive hormones

that just made me feel great, and I started to feel proud of my house

again, and it reminded me of how I'd felt when the wall first went up.

When those hedges came down to reveal the house, and you know, I first drove

up to the house, seeing my nice house with my nice wall, and everything

just looked lovely and I felt proud.

That didn't last long, but having painted the wall, now I have a renewed

sense of pride and that was lovely.

This is my home.

I should feel proud of my home.

And all it took was a little lick of paint and an hour of my time.

Now, this whole idea of tackling those little, those little niggles,

this is not just my experience.

There are facts to back up what I'm saying here.

There is research that shows that dec...

decluttering...

put my teeth back in.

There's Isha.

I've really got my faults teeth in today.

There is research to show that decluttering and rearranging your living

and working space can reduce stress, increase productivity, and promote a

sense of control and order in your life.

I certainly like that.

I like to feel in control.

So the next time that you feel overwhelmed or like you are stuck with

something or you are a bit stressed, try giving your surroundings a makeover.

Just tidy things up and see how that affects your mood and your mindset.

Additionally, addressing the things that bother you is not

limited to physical aspects.

It can also apply to emotional and interpersonal matters.

When we ignore problems or suppress our feelings...

which we all tend to do, don't we?

We tend to push down our feelings and.

Think that they're not important.

Well, they don't go away, those feelings, they tend to linger, and that can have

an effect on us in different ways.

In some cases, it can really affect our health, but by facing these issues

head on, we can find resolution, improve our relationships, and enhance

our overall emotional wellbeing.

Think of it this way, just like you wouldn't ignore a leaking tap in your

bathroom, you shouldn't ignore little things that bother you internally.

Like the leak, a leaky tap can cause much more damage over time

if it's been left unattended.

But by dealing with it, you take control of your own happiness and you

create a harmonious environment for yourself and for those around you.

So what will you fix?

What comes to mind for you?

Take a moment to reflect on the things that bother you and consider

the positive impact that addressing them could have on your life.

Remember whether it's reorganising your physical space, working on personal

challenges or improving relationships taking action and addressing the

things that bother you can lead to a happier, more fulfilling life.

Full of beautiful white walls.

Thank you for lending me your ear.

If you would like to tackle your speaking confidence, then you are

welcome to join my Conversation Club.

I promise we'll look after you.

The link is in the show notes.

Until next time, take care and goodbye.