S4E25: Sometimes, momentum is quiet

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Friday 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 just wanted to end this week with a message that when you’re building momentum in your language learning, in your career, in your big project it doesn’t always feel like it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.

I think so many of us, we know what it feels like when we know in the moment that we’re building momentum. It really does feel like we’re in the aeroplane, on the runway. We can literally feel the speed and the intensity building. Things are palpably coming together, opportunities are springing up, we’re getting results or recognition more and more often and it feels amazing. It’s such a strong feeling. It’s such a powerful feeling.

But today, I just want to remind you that another kind of momentum exists. It’s smaller, it’s quieter, but it’s no less important. And that’s the momentum that comes from building a foundation even when you’re not 100% sure what your mission is. It’s the momentum that comes when you’re feeling lost, you’re feeling like nothing much is happening or that you’re just throwing all this effort into a black hole, but then, weeks or months or even years later, you look back, and you can see that everything you did during that time, even if you didn’t know it, was making a difference. It was leading you to the next big breakthrough. It was giving you all the information that would lead you to the next moments of clarity. It was bringing you all the people that would support you and walk with you as you grew into your next phase.

The first kind of momentum, the really loud one, tends to come when you know exactly what you’re doing, how to do it, and when to do it by. But the second kind of momentum happens when you feel lost, you feel confused, but you try stuff anyway. It goes back to that quote by Steve Jobs:

“You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” 

You don’t know exactly what’s going to stick, but you keep experimenting anyway, with even the tiniest glimmer of belief powering you that something eventually will lead to the right kind of progress. You know that even if you don’t really understand how any of this is going to pan out, you still need to cover the basics, you still need to find people to bring into your life, and you know you can make a quiet kind of progress even without that clarity about exactly what you’re doing or exactly where you’re going. It’s treading water but in the best possible way.

I know this road is confusing, language learners, but it’s normal to not know your next steps all the time. It’s normal to have peaks and troughs and I just want to remind you to trust that everything you do, even if it doesn’t seem to be the most relevant next thing, the optimal next thing, can teach you something. Even when you feel stuck, you might not actually be as stuck as you think you are.

Have a wonderful day, have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you on Monday.