S5E59: I see your courage
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Thursday 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, if there is one message that I could give you, it would be this. What you’re doing is really brave.
So often, traditional talk around courage is the skydive moments. It’s the moments when you are there on the precipice, about to do something you are so sure you can’t do, and you close your eyes and you do it anyway. So many conversations around courage are those Big Moments with a capital B and a capital M where you do the unthinkable and you charge ahead anyway, and it changes your life.
I think for a lot of people, it’s easier to talk about courageous moments than it is to talk about courageous routines. Because for language learners, and for so many other people on similar paths, the writers, the content creators, the entrepreneurs, the budding authors, skydive moments every now and again are not enough. We have to work courage into our daily routines and do the uncomfortable things, not once, but over and over again, maybe even every day, until they start to feel comfortable. We have the conversations. We walk into the language exchanges. We start the exercises that look daunting. We press record, not once, but every day. We start things knowing that it’s not a one-time-and-done thing. We start things knowing that there won’t be an immediate result or immediate applause, and that we’re going to have to come and do it over and over again before the result comes. And that deserves so much recognition.
And we fully expect to feel exhausted after the rush of endorphins after we’ve run and charged at the walls of our comfort zone in a stunning display of a bungee jump or a speech in front of hundreds of people. But I think a lot of us forget that it’s also tiring, in a subtler, less obvious way to constantly be pushing on the edges of your comfort zone. We wonder why our bodies and our brains get fatigued and it’s because we are so in the habit of always pressing on the walls a little bit more that we barely notice we’re doing it.
Language learners, this is courage too, and it might not feel big all the time, it might not feel noteworthy all the time, but it is. It’s something to be really proud of that you keep finding things you want to do, and then going for them, even if they seem out of your reach right now. So don’t forget to tell yourself how grateful you are for the efforts you’re putting in.
And as I mentioned yesterday, I am bringing back the 100 Conversations project that I started around this time last year, where I invited listeners of the podcast to book a 30-minute call with me, just to meet you, get to know you, and to find out how your language journey is going and what carving your own path means to you. And I would absolutely love to invite you to join me and have a call, both to meet new listeners and to hear how the wonderful people I met last year are getting on. Just as last year, these calls are not going to be recorded or used for marketing material, there won’t be any sales pitches, nothing like that, it’s just a chance for us to meet each other. So if you’d like to book a call, either to speak for the first time or to update me on how things have been going for you since we spoke last year, head to my Instagram bio on @teawithemily or my website www.languageconfidenceproject.com and I hope we chat soon!