11 Important English Collocations to Improve your English Mind (set)

Hey there I'm Emma from mmmEnglish!

Today I've got some

cool vocabulary to share with you about wellbeing.

Now this is the noun that we use to talk about

a state of being comfortable, happy, healthy

in a physical way, emotional way and a mental way.

Something that is, well for me at least,

an ongoing challenge in life

maintaining the balance between all of those things.

Many of the words and the phrases that I'm sharing

in this lesson are interconnected.

They're all linked to this topic

and I want to go into a bit more detail around

how to use these words accurately to talk about

your wellbeing

and the wellbeing of your friends and family.

Maybe your staff, your team at work.

So I want you to take a long deep breath in

and get ready to ease on into our lesson with me.

Let's go.

So with health and feeling good about yourself,

we can talk about physical things like exercise

and eating well, getting enough sleep, all of that stuff.

But we're also talking about emotional aspects

of life, of work,

of relationships.

All of these things can be tricky

but as you start to learn more about the

English-speaking version of you and

your mental and emotional state as an English learner,

this becomes increasingly important.

So let's start with mindset.

And actually

when we say this word, we drop that D sound

or it becomes very quiet.

You almost can't hear it.

Mindset.

And this is your mental attitude or your mood,

your way of thinking

and there are some really specific verbs and adjectives

that we often use with this noun, with the noun mindset

and we call these collocations.

And as you're building your vocabulary and you're

learning new words, it is a really good idea

to learn common collocations with that word.

So you're learning that new word but you're also learning

words that are often used together with it in sentences.

So what other words do we use with mindset?

You might already have some ideas about this

but we often use

positive and negative to describe our mindset.

It is useful to keep in mind that our mindset

is not fixed.

Just because we have a negative mindset

about one thing

doesn't mean that we have a negative mindset

about everything right? It's a state

that can change and regularly change.

We should always be working towards a more positive

mindset right?

Though it's not easy.

Think of COVID right, we've all been through this

in one way or another this year so we can all

relate to it. I'm going to talk about a couple of examples.

When lockdown was announced, Sarah was

really frustrated because she didn't have

high-speed internet at home,

her kids were driving her crazy,

she didn't have enough time to look after them

and get all of her work done as well.

Usually, her parents come around to look after them

after school but they couldn't during lockdown right

so, of course, this is a tough situation.

But we could say that it's unhelpful to be

feeling like this.

The situation can't change.

Sarah has the wrong mindset

not because it's wrong to feel frustrated

but because if she keeps thinking

about all of the negative things and complaining

and talking about how bad it is,

she's going to become really unhappy.

Now Maria on the other hand,

knows this is a negative situation

but she chooses to appreciate the extra time that she

has with her family. She gets to spend time with her kids

She tells her boss that she's doing everything she can

to meet her deadlines

and helps her to understand what's going on at home.

She's cooking lots of home-cooked meals

instead of getting takeaway like she usually does

and she loves feeling like she's taking good care of

her family during a difficult period.

So Maria is adopting a positive mindset.

That is a great verb.

We often hear to have a mindset but to

adopt a mindset is even better.

You might know this verb because it's used when you

legally take responsibility or ownership

of a child or a pet right? You might adopt a puppy.

But adopt can also mean to take up or to

follow or to use something.

So adopt is especially useful when you are deliberately

trying to change the way that you

think about a situation.

Usually we have to do a little bit of work

to change the way that we think right, we can't just

make it happen like that.

It's always a process and using adopt

as our verb helps to explain that it's a process.

Other verbs that you'll often hear with mindset are

change and shift.

They're both talking about the same thing,

about that transition from one mindset to another.

So now you've got a few awesome collocations to use

with the word mindset.

I want you to put them into practice

so just hit pause for a moment on the video,

write me a sentence using two or three of these words

that you've just learnt

and add them into the comments below.

Has there been a time in the past where you

really had to focus on changing the way that you think

or you feel about something or someone?

For me, I'm going through some significant changes

in my business. As my team grows,

I'm having to shift my mindset around the role that

I play in the business and the type of work that I do

and that's been really challenging for me.

I'm still working on it. It's a process, right?

Anyway, share an example about you.

I'll pop down into the comments to correct

the way that you're using these words if you need it.

Dealing with problems and challenging situations is

life right? It's obviously tricky.

It can be quite stressful actually.

So I want to share some language that will help to

express your feelings and your needs

when times are difficult.

Starting with stress relief or to relieve stress.

What do you do to relieve stress?

Or what do you do for stress relief?

As you're thinking about your answer,

I want to talk a little bit about the structure

of these two questions right because

stress relief and to relieve stress,

they're both expressing the same idea

about taking stress away or removing it from life.

However, stress relief is a noun phrase.

We treat it as a noun in our sentence,

an uncountable noun. It can't be plural.

But with relieve stress, we have a really useful

collocation to note and remember.

We have the verb relieve and the noun stress.

So what helps you to relieve stress?

What makes you feel better? What do you do

for stress relief?

Taking a walk outside is always one of the best ways

to relieve stress and tension.

To get up, to move around,

to get blood flowing through my body.

You know movement always provides

stress relief for me, anyway.

I also practise mindfulness

or I try to be mindful.

So again you can see that there are similar ways

to express the same idea here

and this idea is about being conscious

or being aware of something. It's about focusing on the

present moment, being here right now.

Not thinking about all the things that you need to do

in the future or worrying about

whatever happened earlier.

Now this is definitely something that

I've been trying to focus on throughout lockdown

and throughout all of the changes that we've been

experiencing this year.

If any of you have tried meditating or you've tried yoga

then these are types of activities that help you

to practise mindfulness.

So when it comes to managing difficult relationships

in our lives, whether it's at work or in our family,

mindfulness

can help you to observe the behaviour of others

and change your attitude, your mood or your behaviour

to respond to them in the best way possible

which also happens to be a really useful tool

as you are learning a language and building confidence

to speak in that language.

Many of my students have had a moment that

burns in their mind, you know a time when they went

to talk to someone in English

and it didn't go as well as they'd hoped.

Whether they'd made the mistake themselves

and they'd lost confidence

or they had a really bad experience.

Maybe the person was rude to them

or unhelpful in some way.

As a language learner, I really encourage you to spend

some time practising mindfulness,

reflecting on those fears and being kind to yourself

or observing other people's behaviour

from a different perspective, you know.

Maybe that rude guy had actually just

broken up with his girlfriend or he lost his job.

You don't let his actions or his poor response

define you and who you are as an English speaker.

This is actually something that I talk about inside

my online community quite a lot, The Ladies' Project.

It's a space for women who are learning English

to connect, to build skills and to build confidence,

especially in English conversation.

I've added a little link in the description down below

so that you can find out a bit more about what we do,

read our blog but also watch some of our

member testimonials.

So I know that this was a slightly different lesson today

but I really hope that by focusing on a few

important aspects of self-care and of mindfulness,

you've been able to broaden your English vocabulary

but also to consider some of the different

tools that you have

to help you improve your English life.

Thank you so much for joining me

and when you're in the mood to practise

some grammar with me,

then check out this entire playlist right here.

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different grammar lessons in there for you.

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