S6E18: Let go of the pressure to look good

Full transcript:

Good morning, happy Wednesday, 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 you are struggling with self-consciousness in your language learning, I wanted to share a message from Julia Cameron, the poet, playwright, fiction writer and essayist who also wrote very famous book on the creative process called The Artist’s Way, which I hope you’ll find as helpful as I did.

And she says,

It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time.

Give yourself permission to be a beginner.

By being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.

There is so much we as linguists can learn from that.

How many times have we stopped ourselves doing that thing we wanted to do, having a conversation, because we’re afraid we aren’t ready yet?

How many times have we stopped ourselves asking questions that would really help us, because we’re afraid of how people will think of us if we do?

How many times have we defaulted to well-worn phrases and basic opinions in our language, one sentence answers, just because we think that by taking the time to actually express what we really want to say, we’ll undermine our perceived language competence?

How many of us, when we have put ourselves out there, instead of celebrating, our effort, bravery, our achievement that day, beat ourselves up afterwards and tell ourselves all kinds of stories about how many mistakes we made and what people must think of us now?

Today, let’s give ourselves permission to know we’re beginners, and enjoy it anyway.

To know we’re not doing it perfectly, and dive right in anyway.

Good luck, and I will see you tomorrow.