The DEFINITIVE Guide to Becoming a NATURAL English Speaker

The one or two people there that performed better in class

usually were people who were already living their English.

I am not what happened to me.

I am what I choose to become.

Get on the fluency train.

I'm joined here in the Global Studio

by the one and only Axel Pose, who in the last episode showed us

why he's called Axel Pose by shredding his guitar.

How's it going? Thiago.

Hey, Ethan. I'm fine. How's it going?

Today we are talking all about something that is very near and dear to our hearts.

The RealLife Way.

And the RealLife Way is our method that we help

learners from all around the world to improve their English.

We've talked about this on other podcasts and actually something that we've,

you know,

we know it at our core, but we're kind of defining

and coming up with a framework so that we can better explain

to other people, better use it to train new teachers and new team members

that are used to create content and courses and things like that.

We've been working on this a lot the last few months and we're kind

of rolling out a new iteration of this with you guys today.

So we're really excited about that.

And...

By the way, Ethan, what's iteration?

A new iteration of the RealLife Way.

What's iteration?

Another way we can say this is a new version, right?

So it's another version of the RealLife Way an iteration, we might say it's

kind of like a not only a version, but like an improvement on previous versions.

We often say here, if you've been following us for a while at real life

English, we often say, Don't just learn it, live it.

But the RealLife Way adds to extra things.

So living it, that's the first part of it.

Connect it, and the final part is activate it.

And these are kind of, you know, circular things that you're doing all the time.

You can be at different points of that at different moments,

and you're kind of like always cycling through it at a higher level.

You'll get to know all about that today and by the end.

Basically, our goal for you is for you to already

start putting these things into practice, to level up your English.

And also we're going to give you six tools.

So these components, each of them has two elements.

So that's six elements in total.

We're going to give you a tool for each one of them

that you can already start using as soon as you finish

listening this podcast or even pausing it during the podcast.

So before we get to that, if you are new here, at RealLife

English, every single week we make new lessons like this, new video

podcasts, helping you to take your interest in

next level so that you can go from feeling like a lost, insecure

English learner to being a confident and natural English speaker.

So if you haven't yet hit that, subscribe on and ballymaloe

so you don't miss a single new one and you can join our community.

And that said, let's move on to the first one.

So as we mentioned live it and this has two elements in it.

The first one is making your English fun, natural and convenient.

And actually Thiago and I recorded a podcast

just about this out How to make Your English Fun, Natural, Convenient.

It's a super important place for people to get started because a lot of people

are coming out of kind of like boring, dry, traditional methods for learning.

So this can be something that can be a total game changer.

But if you're listening to us, you might already know about that.

If you are new here, you might want to check out Episode 316

to learn more about how to make your English fun, natural and convenient.

But the tool that we are going to talk about

for making it fun, natural, convenient, is reflection.

Reflection is something actually like throughout the process, you can always

be reflecting on how to improve and it's a really important habit, right? But

when it comes to making a fun natural convenient,

this is something like at least Thiago and I have actually talked about that

with our coaching students, with individual students.

This is something that I used to do is at the beginning

in their first couple of sessions,

really getting to know them and getting to know

what are the things that you like, what you do in your free time,

what are you passionate about?

What kind of like, you know, lights you up

and finding ways that you can actually connect your English to that.

So find ways to take the things that you already love doing

and start doing them in English.

So Thiago actually

had some really great questions that he asked his students

when he's kind of like doing this with them.

And I thought, Thiago, you could go ahead and share with which these questions

are and if you're listening or if you're watching this,

I even would say like grab a piece of paper or,

you know, get out a notepad on your phone or whatever.

And after the questions, pause and actually like just take

a couple of minutes and think about think about your answers to these questions.

So take it away, Thiago.

Yeah, Ethan. And that's super important, right?

Because I think most people, most learners, they

they view English as a subject, a school subject.

They need to study only.

Yeah, but yeah.

As we study it.

Right, you study the language but it's more than that.

So what we propose here, when we say living your English

is exactly integrating English into your life.

Yeah, it's a tool.

It's something that is always there.

It's part of your life. You just do it right.

Almost like, you know, a brushing your teeth in the morning or taking a shower.

We don't we don't even think about it anymore, but we do it.

Yeah.

So the idea is for you to have English like that in our life.

Yeah.

You just consume content in English, you just do stuff in English in our day

because that's what you do. Yeah.

And the questions that we listed here

to help you guys with this reflection are,

what do I usually do in my free time?

What are my hobbies?

What topics am I interested in?

For example, technology, business, psychology.

What do I already do in my life

that could easily be done in English?

You know, just by changing the language?

And how can I make English learning convenient for me?

So these are some questions that we really encourage

you guys to ponder, to reflect on, because

the idea is to integrate English in your life

And not just be having English, be that thing that you study once

or twice a week at your language school or with a private teacher.

I have to point out there too, you used a really nice word ponder

this reminds me always this word of Winnie the Pooh,

because I remember the cartoons when I was growing up.

He would like sit under a tree and like when he was having some issue

and he'd be like sitting there being like, ponder, ponder, ponder, like thinking.

So it's it's exactly what we were saying.

Reflecting.

But ponder is kind of a more advanced way to say that.

And the second part of living it is every day.

So to live your English, you have to make it fun,

natural, convenient, and every day doing it every day.

And you shared a really nice kind of quote or this may even be considered

like a proverb right before we start recording. Do you want to share that?

Yeah. About making it every day.

I would say consistency is the key here, right?

Consistency is key.

Meaning that it's much better for you to practice your English five

or 10 minutes every day, that it may be just doing it once a week for 3 hours.

Yeah.

So it's really about showing up every day, the consistency side of it,

much better, much more effective in the long run.

You know, I've been teaching for many years now.

Yeah, I've been a teacher for 15 years now.

And in all, during all this time I have met

many types of students, many kinds of students.

And in my experience, it's amazing because I know sometimes

I would have a class of ten people, you know, and maybe

the one or two people there that performed better in class,

usually where people who were already living their English outside of the class,

you know, when I did some digging, some investigation and talk to these students,

I would discover that they had the habit already

of watching movies and series everyday in English.

They loved movies and series where they read comic books in English.

You know, it was a habit already, or they did something in English already

that was connected with their interests. Yeah.

So I saw that first hand in our students or learners

who live their English like that.

Yeah. Outside of the class.

Outside of that deliberate practice moment, they are the ones

who actually tend to be more successful at learning the language.

A lot of people

and this is actually the reason why we have this is the first component

is because a lot of people are coming out of maybe an experience where mostly

you were studying in traditional schools and everything

and maybe you were just, you know, you would go to class the two times a week

because you thought like, you know, that's what you're supposed to do.

You're supposed to sign up for classes, go off two times a week, and and that's it.

But it's much more important what you're doing between those classes.

If you're showing up every single day and doing something,

then that you're actually like going to class.

In many ways the class will be really helpful,

but only if you're already having those really good habits.

So we actually just talked.

We did a podcast talking a lot about this, talking about motivation and why

systems, why habits are much more powerful than relying on motivation.

And we had a lot of book that we really love called Atomic Habits by James Clear,

which you should totally check out if you haven't.

So check that out if you want to learn more.

We go a lot deeper,

but just wanted to give you guys kind of like a tool here that you can already use.

So one of the things, one of the, um,

I guess it's tool from atomic habits that is really powerful.

It's called habit stacking.

So if you stack things, you pile one on top of another.

So what this is basically is he says, you know,

take some habits that you already have, that you already exists.

So for most of us, we have a coffee in the morning. Right?

We have our morning.

We make our morning coffee or so we do something while we're having our coffee.

So you already have that habit established.

Why not stack on top of that some sort of beneficial English habit?

And this can be really small.

The important thing is just starting small, building this habit,

showing up every single day, even if it's just 2 minutes.

He actually calls this a two minute rule because it's much more effective

if you really lower the bar, if you make it really easy for yourself.

And then once you have that habit established, you optimize, you know,

you can make it.

You can spend more time, you can make it more effective.

But the important thing is just showing up every single day.

Ethan, what does to lower the bar means... or mean?

Yeah, that's a that's really great.

And it's something that a lot of people come into learning, right.

And they have very high expectations.

They want to already find the best teacher,

the best method, the best YouTube channel, whatever.

Instead.

But they're not doing the things to actually like show up every single day.

So until you're actually showing up every single day,

you know, the same as if like you're wanting to get in shape and everything.

You don't need to worry so much about finding like the perfect workout program

at the beginning.

You need to like actually get yourself to the gym

three times a week or four times a week or every day,

you know, depending on what your goals are.

And then once you're actually doing that, then you can, you know, find

a really great trainer who can help you to optimize, to do the exercises better.

Or you can find like a really great program

that helps you to, you know, have kind of like a method that you can follow.

But until you're actually like showing up every day, all the optimization

and stuff, you might just end up failing because you want you won't stick with it.

So it's like it's about maybe simplifying the process, right?

You lower the bar, you lower the expectations at first.

Right? Exactly.

You don't have super crazy high expectations.

You lower the bar.

Yeah, maybe 2 minutes per day, 5 minutes per day.

And then as time passes, you can raise the bar,

you can increase the the complexity or the the expectations.

Right. Exactly.

That's the opposite is like let's let's raise the bar, let's stoke the fire.

I recommend you actually, I try this right now already for yourself.

So talked about like a morning coffee.

One thing you could do is, you know, maybe studying the new words that you learned

maybe the night before you watched TV series

and you took note of like a word or two and, you know, you could actually

use these 2 minutes, 5 minutes that you're having more coffee

and just like review your list or, you know, use space repetition

to study those, which we'll talk more about

and a really great way you could do this as you're listening this podcast, right?

So we just talked about, for example, lower the bar, raise the bar.

And if you are using the the app, we give you vocabulary

flashcards for every single podcast so you never forget these new words.

So you could actually,

for example, try this tomorrow while you're having a morning coffee.

Download the app now and then while you're doing it, then study

some of the words that you learned today.

And if you start doing that every single day, you're going to find

instead of just like hearing these new expressions and then,

you know, never using them again, you can actually make them

an active part of your repertoire, your vocabulary.

So when you get a speaking opportunity, you can actually use them.

So before we move on to the next component,

I just wanted to share

one of my favorite quotes that when I was reading Atomic Habits,

so he says, everyone is consumed by the end goal,

but one pushup is better than not exercising.

One minute of guitar practice is better than none at all.

One minute of reading is better than never picking up a book.

It's better to do less than you hoped than to do nothing at all.

So this basically just points to is like, you know, maybe you had a plan

to study grammar for 30 minutes, but you're not...

Maybe you have kids.

They're like screaming in the morning.

You couldn't get them out the door and stuff

and you only have 5 minutes then so do 5 minutes of grammar exercise

just because you couldn't do the 30 minutes. Lower the bar

that said,

let's move on to the next component, which is connect it.

So the first part, first element of connect it is WHY.

So we always tell people here, I really fingers start with your WHY

you know, which means that you're really getting clear on your deep

burning purpose for learning the language

which most people never actually think about.

Why they're learning the language?

They're just, you know, doing it because of external, external reasons.

Their parents tell them they have to do it

or they're doing it because they think they need to get a job

or they're doing it because they think that it's something

that successful people do, but they're never really connected inside to like,

how is my life going to be different if I learn it?

You know, what is something that can really

this can actually be worthwhile, worth all the effort

because it really does take a lot of effort.

So this is something that's really valuable have because

when the going gets tough as we say, when things get difficult,

you know, you can go back to your WHY, you can reconnect to that

and it'll help to keep pushing you forward.

Will remind you of why you started learning in the first place.

And a way that I used to do this,

something that you can try right now

again, like pausing and just taking a few moments to note down.

It's called the Five Whys Exercise.

I just have all my students do this in the very first class, so

it's really simple.

I have to do it is you ask yourself why am I learning English?

And most people the first time they ask themselves, there's five whys.

Because the first time you do

ask yourself, you're probably you're going to say something

like, Oh, I'm learning it because I need to get a better job.

I'm learning it because my parents want me to.

I'm learning it because my boss told me or helped me get the promotion.

I'm learning it because I want to travel

and all those things. They can be good.

They can be good reasons to learn and everything.

But it's not it's not very unique.

It's not like something that's actually in turn on you that's really going to be

something that's going to light you up and get you excited

and give you purpose to put in all the hard work. So

it's five ways.

So first yourself, ask yourself, why am I doing this?

And then when you give your answer, you say, And why is that important?

You think of an answer that.

So I want to learn English to travel.

And why is that important?

Because I want to be able to travel and like talk to the locals.

And why is that important?

Because I want to have an actual cultural experience

and not just be going as a tourist.

And why is that important? And so on.

So you do this at least five times and you find by you get to the fifth time

it's going to connect and something that's like

really important to you, that's really uniquely important to you

and what actually would have my students do is once they got this, it's

put it somewhere

to, you know,

write it down again and put it somewhere where they would see it every single day.

So I had one student who made it the screensaver on his phone.

So every time he'd open up his phone, you would see his WHY for learning English.

Had other students who put it on a computer on the fridge or,

you know, somewhere else where they would see it every day. So

take a moment to do that.

It probably won't take you very long, and it can be

something that can really reinvigorate your English learning.

There is a famous saying or proverb, right, Ethan, that goes something like

If you don't know where you're going, any place will do something like that, right?

Yeah, I've heard it earlier.

It's like if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.

There you go. Yeah.

It's like if you don't define your of your purpose or why

for learning English,

Yeah.

I mean, whatever result you get, you have to accept it, right.

Because you know, there isn't a clear

defined goal. Yeah.

And I actually found a quote that I really like connect to this

and from the Buddha who is probably one of the wisest people of all time.

So he said, Your work is to discover your work

and then with all of your heart to give yourself to it.

So might be a little bit confusing.

Your work is to discover your work.

So it's in another sense saying, you know, discover what were you put here to do?

What is your purpose?

And like ultimately to you might have one.

Why now in the maybe next year or in two years?

In five years, if you were to do this exercise again, it might have changed.

You know, maybe you already got to your first WHY

or maybe you're having what happens to a lot of people.

So once they start learning English,

they connect with people from other countries.

They have new experiences and everything and it kind of like opens their,

opens their eyes to a new reality, to a new world, to a new worldview.

And so, like

an even deeper part of this, of discovering

your way is like really an ability.

It gives you the ability to connect to the world, you know,

so that you can play a role

as like a global citizen and make the world a better place to be.

So I really like this quote from the Buddha

because I feel like it kind of captures that.

It's like, you know, discovering what were you put here to do?

How is English like playing a part in that?

And, you know, give all your heart to it, like really pour yourself into that

to give all of your energy to it because, you know, it's it's

going to be a life well lived in my case, we talked about

WHY, which is kind of like, you know, your internal how

you know how you're connecting to your English for example.

But on the other side of this is of connecting.

It is Identity. Is

how does your English connect to you?

So you had like a really great quote for this in Thiago.

Yeah, yeah.

There's a quote here from Carl Jung. Right.

And he says, I am not what happened to me.

I am what I choose to become.

I really love that because I've had many students coming to me for classes and,

you know, some of them, they they carry with them

some traumas from the past when it comes to learning English.

And they say things like, Oh, I wish I had started learning English earlier.

I wish I hadn't taken so long or I wish my parents had enrolled me, you know,

in an English course or four English classes back when I was younger, you know.

But it's no use dwelling right on these thoughts.

Yeah. I mean, what happened to you? Happened to you.

That's the past.

Now what matters is what you choose to do with your life now and in the future.

So this quote here. Yeah, I am not

what happened to me,

I am what I choose to become, I think is really powerful

because you have the power, you have the autonomy to define

what kind of person you want to be in the future.

And then like the Buddha quote.

Right, give yourself to it. Yeah.

Give ourself all your energy, all your creativity, all your talent

to accomplish or to realize that vision

and still talking about identity.

I think, you know, if you can connect that with the type of person

you want to become, I think that's more powerful than just having a goal.

We were talking about this in the prep for this episode, right?

Yes. And I was reflecting on my learning.

You know, I started learning English when I was 15 years old.

Like it's been 20 years already.

And I don't remember saying to myself,

I want to learn English or I want to improve my English.

I don't ever remember using those words when talking to myself in my mind.

But what I remember saying a lot to myself was,

I want to be a bilingual person or I want to become bilingual.

The idea of being bilingual using two languages was very appealing to me,

and that's what I said to myself a lot.

I want to be I want to become a bilingual person

who expresses themselves well, in my case in Portuguese,

my native tongue, and also in English, my second language of choice.

But I think that the words we use

when talking to ourselves, our inner voice, yeah, the words are important.

They matter because, you see, if you use words like be, being or becoming,

that is deeply connected to your self,

to your identity, or how you view yourself in the future.

Instead of I want to learn English, which is a goal.

It's something you are going for.

I want to be I want to be an English speaker.

I want to become a fluent English speaker, a confident English speaker.

I think that rings more

to the core.

I think, you know, it's more powerful.

Yeah. To look at it like that.

So one recommendation is

reflect on the kinds of words you have been using.

Yeah.

With yourself when talking about your goals with English.

Yeah.

Does it have any

any connection with the type of person you want to become.

Yeah.

So it's important to think about these things as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like you're saying before shifting from

if you're having that self-talk, self-talk,

how you talk to yourself is really important.

So if you have that self-talk of like, oh, you know, I wish that

my parents had, you know, enrolled me in, of course, when I was younger.

I wish I had started earlier.

I wish I had more money so I could get whatever teacher or sign up

for whatever course, and instead, like at where you are, you know,

start from where you are and start thinking about like the future.

Like who do you want to become? Why is all the effort worth it?

And a really great exercise for this as well.

I like what Thiago was saying about actually kind of

becoming more

aware of how you're talking to yourself is starting with the end in mind.

So what this means is envisioning your future self

once you've gotten clear, I'm like, I want to be a bilingual person.

So holding that version of yourself in your mind and then thinking

about the details, you know, like actually kind of trying to visualize, okay,

so I'm going to be this bilingual person all my life, be like,

What will I be doing?

Who I spend my time with?

Where will I be working?

Where will I be living?

All these kind of things and getting like really clear in your head

that what what will your life be like once you've achieved that goal?

And then work backwards from that.

Like so we talk about a lot is fake it until you become it

so you can already start acting like that future self that you wish to be.

So what would that you start making decisions based on that?

So you know, for example, maybe instead of watching a TV series

in English with subtitles in your native language,

you start watching them with subtitles in English,

even though it's more difficult or instead of,

I don't know,

lazing about Saturday morning, maybe you spend just 10 minutes getting

your dusty grammar book off the shelf and like doing some exercises

and, you know, maybe, maybe instead of avoiding having a conversation

with someone in English, Thiago has talked about this a lot that he used

to really push himself every time in his native city of Sao Paulo.

Like actually when he heard overheard someone speaking another language

to go up to them and introduce himself and speak English.

So, you know, instead of maybe shying away from those opportunities,

putting yourself out there and saying like, oh,

you know, this is a chance to speak English,

you want to become that future self who can speak English naturally, confidently.

You have to start doing it now, even if it's difficult,

even if you're shy, even if you know you fail the first couple of times.

But you have to have those experiences

to become that future self that you want to become.

So we are going to share

the last component with you, which is activate it.

But first, we want to take a quick break just to thank some of our listeners.

So Thiago, I'll let you do the honor of sharing our first shout out.

All right.

The first shout out goes to Duulaaye, I believe.

Sorry for mispronouncing that.

The testimonial goes like this.

Thank you very much.

I do like so and sorry also if I'm butchering your name,

but if you want us to shout you out,

one way you can do that is by download the app.

We've already talked about it a few times.

It's free to download and when you do, if you enjoy the experience,

then just leave us a five star review in the Apple app or Google Play Store.

Let other learners know what your experience was like.

Just like Duulaaye did.

And that way we can find you and also shout you out.

And we have a very lovely comment that came from one of our recent episodes

from Clyde in the comments of YouTube.

So do you want to go ahead and share what he said?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

By the way, Clyde is a he's always commenting on our video.

So thank you so much for that, for watching us and

for, you know, interacting with the video by leaving our thoughts on the

the episode.

Yeah, it means a lot to us. Right.

So in this comment here, Clyde says:

Like he referred to it as a train. Yeah, yeah.

Get on the fluency train.

So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can leave us a comment down below,

letting us know what you thought about the episode and we might shot you up next.

And if you're listening to this, you can go.

If you would like to actually see us and watch the video,

then that's also an option for you.

And I did want to point out before we move on,

because he said in a nutshell, so what does it mean to say in a nutshell.

When I want to summarize what you're saying,

you can use that expression in a nutshell.

Imagine you were explaining a bunch of things like blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then for you to summarize,

to bring it to a conclusion, you can go in a nutshell, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah.

So let's move into the final component as promised, which is activate it.

So activating it, we have two more elements here.

The first one being always learning what we actually we might

change the name of this in the future.

We're still kind of figuring out exactly what to call it,

but it's something that Thiago and I, we both have talked about a lot

on past podcast,

because it's something that even once you get to very advanced

levels, it's such an important thing to keep always present.

And that's being curious, you know, it's always kind of

taking advantage of things that you're learning with,

be that watching a TV series,

watching a movie, listening to this podcast and looking for those bits

and pieces of things that are interesting to you, that stick out to you.

You know,

maybe it's a bit of pronunciation, maybe it's a new word, an expression,

maybe it's a it's grammatical structure that you're studying.

And, you know, maybe you've you pause, you go back, you

you take some notes or something like that.

So one of the really great ways to take advantage of this is really simple.

And actually we did a video all about this because it's about like activating

your English called The Secret to go from intermediate

to advance, which you can find on our real life English YouTube channel.

And we'll also link it in the description in the show notes.

The simple exercise here is just whatever you're doing.

You know, if you're listening to a podcast,

if it's convenient for you, if you're a place where you can write down

or if you're watching a TV series, grab a notepad or notepad app on your phone.

And when you see a new word or a new expression that you haven't seen before,

note it down.

Just take it. It's like really simple.

You just have to tap your phone open there

and, you know, just take a moment to take note of it.

You don't have to do anything else.

You can just sit there, enjoy watching the series,

but making sure to take note of any new word that you find.

And then

the next step, which actually could even go into the next element

of activating it, is adding it to a spaced repetition system.

So spaced repetition system is a technology that works

with how your brain, how your memory are formed

to make sure that you never forget a piece of information.

There are

some really great apps that we recommend all the time, like Anki, Memorize.

Of course,

if you're using the app, we also give you vocabulary

and we have our own spaced repetition system

so that the new words and expressions that you're learning

in the episode of today's podcast, you'll never forget them.

So that's like really amazing

is if you can actually remember them when it comes time to speak.

And if you do these two things, you know, when you're watching TV series

or listen to a podcast, you actually like taking over the new words

and then you add them to space repetition system like this,

you can ensure that you're actually expanding your active vocabulary

and there's a quote that actually I just happened upon this morning,

so I thought it would be great to share here

big part of this

of always learning is being really humble in your life.

This is actually something that Thiago and I

were talking about in a recent episode, is that a lot of times

once people get to like an upper, intermediate or advanced level,

they'll kind of, you know, they'll become a little bit arrogant

or for themselves, their ego will kind of get the better of them.

And they start thinking like, you know, I'm already to this level.

I don't need to ask about the definition of new words.

I don't need to practice mimicry.

I don't need to improve my accent or improve my pronunciation or whatever.

The case is kind of like, Oh, I've made it.

You know, I'm good.

But it's important to keep in mind to keep

to kind of keep that principle

of staying humble because there's always someone who's better than you.

There's always someone who knows more than you.

There's always someone who can teach you something.

There are always new things that you can learn.

So the quote that I was talking about this is from

we looked at the pronunciation before, but I'm still going to butcher this.

So if there's any Greek listeners in our in our audience, you can

you can correct me maybe.

But is it from Epictetus?

Epictetus, something like that Greek philosopher.

And he says it is impossible to learn that which one thinks one already knows.

So is it possible to learn that which one thinks one already knows?

Which basically means

that if you're so convinced that you already know everything, then

you know you're kind of like closing your mind off

to any new possibilities of learning new things.

Um, there's also like a lot, there's kind of like the sayings around, you know,

once the student's ready, the teacher will appear.

And, you know, if your mind is closed off, then no one can really teach you.

No one can help you.

So it's important to keep that humility, keep an open mind, stay curious.

And I think if you do that, then you're going to see you're

able to learn so much more.

And going from there, I think that it'd be perfect actually,

because Thiago is talking about a quote that has all to do about over practice,

which is the next element of activating it.

Yeah, yeah, sure.

I just want make a comment about what you were saying before.

Yeah. About the quote. Yeah.

It's about lifelong learning as well.

Yeah. Like you are learning for life.

You never stop learning.

And we can also bring up here the growth mindset versus the fixed mindset, right?

So if you have a growth mindset

and you believe that there is always something new to learn,

you are always learning and you are open

as a person, as an individual, you are open to new information,

you are open to a new way

of looking at something that maybe you have been doing for years already.

This is growth mindset.

Now, fixed mindset is that person that believes

what Ethan was describing right now, right, Ethan?

Like, Oh, I've learned all I could.

I've taken my English, you know, as as far as I could.

Now I'm done.

Yeah. This is not much of a growth mindset.

I mean, I've been doing this for years, guys.

I've been learning English for 20 years,

and I still feel like there's stuff that I have to learn and improve.

So it never ends, right?

It never stops.

And our mother tongue is even.

We never know all of the words.

So we never, you know, know how to say.

Greek philosophers, names that. Not at all, yeah.

A quote

that I got for today's episode related to

this is from Simon Sinek and from his book Start With Why.

And he says Passion alone can't cut it.

For a passion to survive, it needs structure.

A Why without How has little probability of success.

I really love this because I know

so far, you know, we have been talking about living our English right

every day, connecting it to a deeper intrinsic motivator.

Yeah. In our case, developing your why.

Why am I learning English? That's great.

If you do these two things already, that's going to take a really far.

Yeah, but as the quote here says, you also need

some sort of structure for your studies.

It's just like going to the gym.

Maybe you have already been consuming a lot of content

about workouts and diets or healthy eating, right?

You are living that world by consuming content about it

and you have a deeper reason why you want to be a healthier person.

That's cool,

but just going to the gym and not knowing what you're going to do there,

that's not the best strategy.

You need a how you need a structure in the in the case of the gym,

maybe you need to know what muscle groups are going to be working

on that day, for how long, how many sessions you're going to do.

So you can apply the same principle to your English learning?

Yes, live your English every day, consume lots of content, develop that.

Why that identity.

Yeah the future self you want to you are striving for but

also you need that moment in your week, maybe once or twice a week.

That is more deliberate, that is more structured,

maybe something like, okay, today

I'm going to sit down for 20 minutes and work on my pronunciation deliberately.

I'm going to listen when I

listen to a podcast or watch a movie and repeat what I hear

tomorrow or another day, you know, I'm going to sit down

and do some grammar work here

because I know I really struggle with this structure.

So adding structure to your learning is also really important.

And it goes with this third component yet, which is activation.

Yeah.

So that deliver practice, just like I was saying, it's super important.

I think like you were saying, it can be really good to have like

sessions, like I deliver practice session

that you have a free day or a couple of days a week, but

even just like,

you know, again, like coming back to the fun, natural, convenient every day,

you know, find ways that you can can I add like drops also deliver practice

you know maybe if you're watching I think Thiago talks a lot about like Two

and a Half Men that there are like a lot of different

moments from that that he would mimic and he still like remembers today.

Right because these these things I'll stick with you.

So you're watching TV series.

This is something I find really helpful, even though like I'm at an advanced level

in different languages

just to, you know, I'll hear something I really like the way the person said it.

Just like posit and like repeat how that person was saying it a couple of times.

Like go back, maybe listen again and, and it can just do wonders, even

just those kind of like bits and pieces of, of activation of

of mimicking can do wonders for, you know, improving.

I think if you have those kind of like little micro habits

throughout the day to those things where they add up, right?

So if you have like your sessions and you also have like these kind of bits

and pieces that you can fill

throughout your days

that's going to

even if you're already in advanced level, helps

you to get even higher, right, to raise the bar.

And then it's nice to point out here, Ethan, that,

you know, these three components, these three components we are presenting

today, live English, connect, live it connected, activated.

They go together like I described at the beginning of the episode.

It's like a circle. Yeah.

And you are always doing them.

One does not exclude the other.

Yeah.

And I think that the reason why many people fail at learning English

with traditional methods or schools or even classes is because

think about it, right?

If you have private classes with their teacher once a week or twice

a week, this is more in their lines of activating it.

Then the other components.

Yeah, I view private classes

that I have with my students as deliberate practice moments that we have.

It's that one hour that we have together

to deliberately work on a specific point of the language.

That's cool, we need that perfect.

But many people, they stop there that the issue, you know, they stop there.

They don't live their English

throughout the rest of the week or they don't have that deeper burning.

Why they are learning the language.

They think it's just because of the job or the boss is annoying them about that.

Right.

But if you bring the other two components together,

then they're going to be successful.

It's living our English, connecting it to a deeper, you know, a purpose

and having those deliberate practice moments.

You can do that with a teacher.

The activation, the deliberate practice moment.

It helps, right?

But you don't have to. You can do it alone.

I it alone.

Most of my deliberate practice was done alone.

I never had a teacher per say. Right.

So, you know, going back to that right one component does not exclude the other.

You need the three of them.

Yeah.

So maybe listening to this podcast today, guys, reflect, you know, reflect.

I mean, okay, which one of these components do I need to

develop more or have I not been developing?

Yeah, because maybe you are struggling

with your English because one of these is not really in place for you.

If you're listening to this podcast, if you're watching us, it's

because you must have goals right to improve your English.

So, you know, don't just listen to this passively actually take action.

You can activate it today by using one of the tools that we talked about.

Choose any of them or try all of them.

Think how much time you have, but we really challenge you.

Like at least choose one.

Try to make like one small change today

that's going to improve your English in some way, even if it's just 2 minutes.

So that said, before we wrap up, if you are watching this on YouTube,

let us know which component live it, connect to activate it.

Do you struggle with the most and would you like us to, you know, make another episode?

So going deeper on so why don't you let us know what down comes below?

That way we can make a lesson that's can help you with that.

And that's a great sharing all of these different ideas with you.

We would love to hear what you thought about it, what you think about

some of these new ideas with Life Way.

And we look forward to bring you more

dynamite's content next week.

One, two or three: Aaww Yeah!