S3E3: What’s the dream?

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Wednesday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. All this week, we are going to be looking at how we can make joyful, optimisitic plans for the year, dream big, while also keeping those plans sustainable. And when I say plans, I don’t necessarily mean big, official, New year’s Resolutions or Goals with a capital G. Themes of the year, a word of the year, or just some projects coming up, in language or anything else, count too!

And today the question is, what are you actually working towards? What is the top of the mountain moment? How are you going to know that you’ve made it?

So much of the time, when we think about goals, we think about SMART Goals. This idea that goals need to be  Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. And that makes a lot of sense, we need to know exactly what the goal is, we need some metrics to know that we’re progressing towards it, we need to know it’s possible , we need it to fit in with our wider body of work and we can’t let it go on forever. But SMART goals alone are often not enough.

Why?

Because they’re often boring. They separate themselves from the motivation and the inspiration that made you make them in the first place.

So within a really short time, those SMART goals often feel clinical and sterile and removed from the super colourful, fuzzy, tingly images we have in our heads of our big goals and our big dreams.

SMART goals aren’t so smart if we stop caring about them.

So today, I want you to take a moment and really imagine that pinnacle moment in your language learning. Where are you? What are you doing? Did you just surprise your husband’s family by speaking to them in their language? Are you talking and laughing with new friends at a restaurant somewhere abroad? Did you just get accepted into a foreign university? Did you just watch a whole movie without English subtitles? Did you just secure your dream job? What is the thing that makes all of this worth it?

And when you have it, make that picture as vibrant as you can. As detailed as you can. Feel that pride and savour that moment. Because that is what you’re doing all this for. That SMART goal, all the systems and all the process and habits that you put in place to get there, they’re not the pinnacle. That image, is the pinnacle.

So hold that image in your head, language learners, and go back to it regularly. It might change as the year goes on. Imagine it every single day before you start work. Visualise it when you’re planning your week. Remind yourself as often as you can what Future You will be able to do.

This isn’t work for work’s sake. This is work for something big and exciting.

Have a wonderful day, and I will see you back here tomorrow.