S5E23: What have you been complaining about?

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Wednesday 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 today, if you’re feeling stuck, you’re frustrated, resentful, if you’re just feeling negative about your language learning right now, this is the episode for you.

And before we start I just want to say, I know the journey is long and when we have hit a bit of a plateau, or the things that used to work for us aren’t really having the same effect any more, I know how much it can feel like we’re just dragging ourselves through the process. And I also know that feeling that we’re putting so much effort in, and yet we’re not seeing the results quickly enough. I get it. In language, in creativity, in fitness, in business, in our careers, sometimes it just feels like we are not getting out what we’re putting in and while we can run like that for a while, we can’t go on like that for the long haul.

And when we look around for support, it feels like the world is putting a lot of emphasis on positive mindsets. Make a choice to enjoy it. Commit. Be grateful. Do more self-care and then it will feel more manageable.

But sometimes, I don’t think positivity is the answer. Drowning out the negative thoughts with feigned happiness and pushing through in the name of discipline definitely isn’t the answer. It works for short sprints. It doesn’t work for a marathon and it definitely won’t work for our life’s work.

We can’t keep leaking time, or energy, and we can’t keep using up so much energy combatting resistance that we don’t have much left for the thing we were resisting in the first place.

So let’s start listening to ourselves.

What do you spend most of your time complaining about in your language learning?

Is it that you don’t like a certain task?

Are you always too tired and unfocused to study?

Maybe you’re losing sight of why you started?

Or progress feels too slow?

Listen to them! What are they telling you?

If there’s a task you have to do a lot and you hate it, promise yourself that you’ll look for alternative ways to get the same result, and you’ll start today. If there’s really nothing to be done, and you have to do it and there’s no way round it, massively up the rewards and the appreciation you give to yourself for doing them.

If you’re finding that there’s something off with your routine, don’t go straight to beating yourself up about discipline. Look into it further. There might be something you can do, whether it’s moving your day around, bringing in some specific habits that you think will help like going to bed earlier or limiting your phone use or whatever it may be, or looking at whether your expectations are fair in your current circumstances.   

And if the issue is that you feel like you’re not getting anywhere right now, let’s not go straight to blaming your mindset. There might well be a valuable message in that feeling. Is it true that your tried-and-tested techniques aren’t helping as much as they used to? Is it that you’re focusing on things that aren’t leading you efficiently to your goal? Or is it that you’re missing or dismissing the progress that you’re making?

Whatever is going on for you right now, I just want to tell you and to tell me that pushing through so often isn’t about shutting your eyes, gritting your teeth and just pretending it’s all fine. It’s about making every adjustment you can to keep you on course while minimising that friction on the wheel. So listen to yourselves, language learners. You know what’s wrong, and you know how to at least start fixing it, so give yourselves permission to make things better for yourselves. Language learning is hard sometimes, but it doesn’t need to be hard all the time, and it doesn’t need to be harder than it needs to be. Bring the fun in, bring the ease in, whenever you can.

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