S4E16: It doesn’t take much to turn your day around

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Monday, and welcome to the LCP, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway.

So, in Friday’s episode, we talked about how a small thing that went wrong could almost spread and contaminate our memory of how the rest of the day, or how the rest of the week, had been for us. And on Friday, I got a message from my friend and fellow linguist Lisa Lyons, who very sensibly pointed out that the same is absolutely true for good things.

One thing I’ve noticed is that when I’m having a bad day, especially in terms of productivity, I have a particularly unhelpful habit of telling myself that I need to do something amazing to turn it around. That reversing a bad day means not just getting back on track with your to-do list, but doubling it. That you need to have a proper breakthrough to make up for the time I’ve wasted.

And so today, I just want to offer that reminder to you, and to me as well, because one thing is sure in this podcast and that’s that so much of the time, I’m speaking to myself just as much as I’m speaking to you, you do not have to pull out all the stops and achieve the incredible to end today happy. In the face of a lack of motivation, or feeling really slow, or just having one of those frustrating days where nothing really works, you do not need to ramp up your expectations. It’s only going to pile more pressure on. It’s only going to give your inner critic more to work with.

Focus on the tiny things. What are the smallest steps you could take today to feel like you’ve moved the needle forward? What are the tiniest, easiest steps, the steps with the least resistance attached, that you could take to make the day feel okay again? 

On Friday, I said that a single negative thought or a negative event really can feel like putting one tiny drop of dye in a whole cup of water and watching it infuse through the entire glassful, and then suddenly all the water is blue. But what Lisa reminded me, and now I’m passing that reminder onto you too, is that one tiny drop of good dye can tint the whole glass just the same. 

I know some days it can all feel like an uphill struggle, language learners, but that’s because you are moving, and what you’re doing is hard. It’s normal that some days it’s going to feel like it’s all fighting against you, it’s normal that doing your best will look different every day and some days, you won’t be thrilled at what your best looks like. But your effort on those days still counts. You still get to celebrate your wins. You still get to be proud that tired, frustrated, or just generally confused, you still showed up, you still put the work in, and you will see that effort pay off down the line.

It's worth it, language learners, I promise you.

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