S4E35: Tell yourself what you most need to hear
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Friday 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, two days ago, on an episode called “What do you most need to hear today?” I set you a challenge that if you’re feeling stuck or blocked or demotivated, to ask yourself, what do I most need to hear today, and then go and seek out people sharing their own videos, stories, advice on that topic in whatever format tends to resonate with you the most.
But today, as we round off the week, I want to take that one step further, and set you another challenge.
You know yourself better than anyone else in the world. And you know what you need to tell yourself in order to be your own best teacher, best mentor, best cheerleader and all-round investor in Future You.
So here is a challenge you might want to consider, especially if you have big projects or daunting changes coming up, or if you’ve been feeling stuck lately.
Let Present You record the messages that Future You needs to hear.
Because the thing is, you know exactly what sorts of thought patterns you have, what sorts of things derail your studies, knock your confidence, or send you off track. And nobody holds a better antidote to those things than you. And you know what motivates you and what you most value.
So it might be messages for when you’re procrastinating, reminding Future You of how much you want this. It might be a pep talk for yourself before you go into a new language exchange and mete lots of new people. It might be some encouragement for when you’re feeling frustrated, or you can’t grasp something, or keep making the same mistakes. And if you’ve got a deadline coming up, like an exam, or a dissertation to submit, swhy not end messages for Future You to read or listen to on the day before, with some last minute encouragement for the final push, and the day it’s done, to tell Future You how much you were waiting for that day, how hard you’ve worked, and how proud you are that you’ve got there.
And it doesn’t need to be a big task, and you don’t need to go deep and offer yourself full coaching sessions if you don’t want to. Recording super quick audio messages, writing a letter to yourself, or if that feels a bit much, a short note, or even just making a postit note that you’ve written for yourself for each occasion that springs to mind could help. If you use a calendar or a diary, whether it’s on paper or on your devices, leave quick messages for yourself there. And in some cases, it’ll be for a far off deadline, or supporting yourself through a really big project, but it works so well for smaller things too. If you’re feeling demotivated this morning, why not send yourself a quick 10 second or one-line message to thank yourself for doing the most important task on your to-do list today, and recognising how much effort it was, and how glad you are that you did it anyway. Or write or record a message this morning for yourself at the end of today, to thank yourself for the work you did this week.
You know what you most need to hear. So why not be the person who tells Future You?
And I have another announcement which is that my Monday co-studying and co-creating space for Patreon supporters is opening the first Monday of July! If you would like to join me and other members of the Language Confidence Project every Monday on Zoom, for three hours in the morning New York time, afternoon UK or Central European time, check out my Patreon and look for Out of the Fog. Having people around you while you work is a fantastic way to dive into the stuff that’s new or daunting, or maybe that you want a bit more accountability for, to ringfence dedicated time for your studies and projects every week where you know you can’t get distracted with other things, and I love the feeling of community it brings, and I’m so looking forward to it. I hope to see you there!
Have a wonderful day, have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you on Monday.