S5E55: Celebrate what you’ve kept

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Friday, and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages, and those who really don't but have to learn one anyway. And today I just wanted to send you this message so that we can all go into the weekend with a huge permission slip to own and really be grateful for the things that make us happy, rather than seeing them as distractions from our goals.

Because in the productivity space, it can feel like everyone, everywhere, is talking so much about the sacrifices they've made, and the sacrifices we should be willing to make, that sometimes it's hard to know when to stop giving things up. We start to feel guilty when we're doing other things, especially if they aren't “classically productive” or don't feed directly into another part of our life plan. And we start to feel guilty just about enjoying ourselves.

But language learners, pushing everything else to one side and going all in is not the only way. And yet so much of the time we still find ourselves apologising to other people, to ourselves, to an invisible panel of judgmental spectators that we have in our heads. But when we're doing something that doesn't feed into our goals, we don't need to be apologising. We don't need to be explaining it away or making excuses.

So many of us don't want to throw everything up in the air. We like our hobbies. We like our music. We like our friends and our personalities. And there are parts of our day-to-day routine that work just fine, exactly as they are right now, and we want to keep them that way. And more than that, we want to emerge from the pursuit of our goal as a person who still has all those things too. And that is fine. It is not a bad thing to get to the other side of your goal with your health, your friendship groups, your other skills and interests intact. The only way that that goal gets you to the life you want is if it doesn't swallow up everything else in the process. Otherwise, you get to the other side, you reach that goal, and you've lost stuff. Big stuff. Your health, your friends, your relationship, your sense of who else you are, other than just the person who had the tunnel vision for the thing.

We spend so long thinking about what we should sacrifice in pursuit of our goals. But what if we spent more time celebrating what we've kept? The things that bring us joy, creative energy, that make us feel like a whole person. The things that we've chosen to bring along for the journey. So before I go, I would love to invite you to take a moment right now just to acknowledge some of the things that you've brought along for the ride.

It could be anything. Websites. Music. Games. People. Clubs and societies. Parks. Pets. Literally anything that makes your pitstops more fun and your rest time more restful. Because those things are like healing potions on your quest, and they shouldn't be dismissed as a distraction or a guilty pleasure. They should be protected.

Enjoy your weekend, enjoy your free time, and I will see you on Monday.