S4E14: When doubts are derailing your studies

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Thursday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the only daily podcast to get unstuck us in our language learning and enjoy the process just a little bit more. And today, I want to talk about all the doubts that come in when you study, hang around and just throw you off course.

My God, they can be so persuasive.

You’re doing this wrong.

You’re so behind.

You have no idea what you’re doing.

You’re wasting your time.   

And then they get more personal. They remind you of all the other times that you tried something and failed, or that you quit something within a couple of weeks. And they replay for you, in epic detail, the time you felt embarrassed.

And it is so hard to push through all that noise. It’s so hard to tune it out, and just, carry on regardless.

 So I wanted to share something that someone said to me last year thar has really helped me to deal with this. It’s so simple, but this advice gave me permission to separate my doubts from the rest of myself a bit, and I wanted to tell you about it today. 

And what they taught me was, you have to think about your thoughts, especially negative ones, as invitations into a conversation. When those thoughts come, it’s like they’ve picked up the phone and they’re calling you. You’re working or you’re studying, and the phone is ringing.

But here’s the thing. You don’t have to pick up. And even once you have picked up, you don’t have to engage. You don’t have to enter into an hourlong back and forth about whether you’re good enough or whether you deserve this or whether your fellow students are steaming ahead of you. You don’t. You can leave the conversation at any time.

So when you recognise those thoughts, you can say out loud “Sorry, I can’t take this call right now.” When you have been worrying for a while and you’re getting sick of it and it’s making you feel awful, you can literally imagine yourself putting the phone down. Because you don’t have to be there.

And finally, I’m sure some of you will be thinking, but what if they’re right? so I want to address that What if you have got this completely wrong? What if you are wasting your time? What if they’re desperately trying to get through to warn you that you’re going completely off course? 

And to you, I would say, is the doubt specific? Is it saying, we’re focusing on chapter 10 which you already know back to front but we should be focusing on 11 which you’re clearly neglecting on purpose and I don’t like it? Is it saying, we’re running behind schedule on the assignment so we need to take a quick ten minutes to make a plan to ensure we can finish the ? Or is it, as I suspect, spinning a narrative of hopelessness in which the main message is “this is pointless, you’re never going to succeed, burn it to the ground”?

If it’s specific and helpful, yes, maybe it is worth listening. If it’s not, if it’s going to make you feel worse without offering any real solutions, remember, you don’t have to pick up the phone. Because you’re busy.

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