S3E30: Self-comparison week: You have gifts too

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Friday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for those who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And every day this week, we’ve been talking about self-comparison and all the many ways it can sneak into our lives and throw us off track in our language learning. I’ve been sharing some practical tips to help us to enjoy language learning spaces and content, and to be inspired by other people’s journeys without feeling behind or out of place. And stay tuned because I have a very exciting announcement at the end of this episode, and I would love for you to be a part of it! 

And as we draw this week to a close, I have one final message for you. And that is, when we compare ourselves to others, it means the bright, shiny, newness of their gifts is obscuring our views of our own. And you have gifts too. It’s just harder for you to see them.

How many times have you received a compliment and just waved it off? How often have you dismissed your skills as “something anyone could do if they tried”. How often do we miss the subtle things in our lives that quietly make reaching our goals easier? Why do we find it so hard to see our own lives, our own strengths as they really are?

So here is a reminder today that you have gifts too.

You have gifts, but for you, they’re obscured by all the noise and chaos of the behind-the-scenes. So when other pelple tell you how fast you’re progressing in your language, you’ll think about all the times you’ve struggled and all the things you still don’t know. When people tell you how productive you are, you’ll remember all the times where you could set out to work, but you sat scrolling your phone instead. But that’s just context, and it doesn’t invalidate all the things you’re achieving. And from the outside, other people can see them bright and clear.

And you have gifts, but for you, they come so easily and so naturally that you assume, really really wrongly, that they would be easy for everyone else as well. They’re really not easy for everyone. And if you need proof of that, take something that you know is second-nature to you. Perhaps a personality trait that you cannot imagine living without. And then google “how to be more…” and see just how many have searched it because they want to be more like that. They want to be more like you. You have a gift.

And you have gifts, but for you, they don’t come easy, so you assume they aren’t gifts. Not all gifts are innate to our personality. Some of them, we have to learn and grow into. Some of them, we really have to fight for, and practise, and seek advice, and redo and revise. it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that some people would be able to do this effortlessly, and they’re the gifted ones. But it’s not true. Some gifts look a lot like hard work. But they’re still gifts, and other people can see them.  

If there is one thing that protects us the most from comparing ourselves with others, it’s teaching ourselves to be able to see the things that we have to offer. To see what we have in our own inventory that contributes to our language learning, our lives, and the people in the language spaces around us. Our skills, our personality traits, all the things we’ve done and seen and thought about that might have had nothing to do with language learning at the time, but could help us so much in our journey now if we let them.

You have so much to give, language learners. You have so many things working in your favour, even if it doesn’t always feel like it. So keep looking for those things, and celebrating those things.  

And I have a very exciting announcement for you which is that tickets go on sale on Monday for my very first online workshop, which will take place the following week on Monday, 27th February. It is called The Inventory of You and it’s designed to show you exactly the kinds of gifts we have been talking about today. We are going to be diving into all the parts of us that we can bring to our language learning, our experiences, our resources, all the tools we have around us, and looking at practical ways we can use them to guide our journey and push us forward in our language learning. So definitely check back in next week for more information, and I hope to see you there!

Have a wonderful day, have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you back here at 7am UK time on Monday.