It’s all about your attitude
It’s all about your attitude… This phrase used to drive me crazy! Upset, I didn’t understand why I had to be told how to feel about what I was already doing. ‘I am giving it my best’ I used to think, ‘so let me think about it whatever I want and leave me alone’. 😅 This was a long while back. Since then I have done a ton of work on myself and started understanding why it matters not only that I do the right things but that I also do them with the right attitude (for my own benefit rather than anyone’s else’s).
Can you relate to my initial justified frustration? I mean, if you already do all that you can for your language learning in your free time – reading articles, following all the right people on Instagram, learning vocabulary and who knows what else… so what else the heck could anyone want from you? You are absolutely right!
And yet, if you are totally honest, despite you are doing your ‘best’, you are not really improving all that much…You manage to maintain your current level but that is a far cry from being on the level of fluency that would allow you to travel comfortably without fears of situations you have no vocabulary for, to do presentations at work without worrying about every word, or to apply for a new, much better paid job where you know you will be needing English every day…
It’s a real conundrum, isn’t it? But here comes the good news… language learning, just like anything else, becomes much faster and more pleasant of a process if you can follow five simple steps (below), turning something you do out of duty and don’t enjoy much into something that you look forward to doing, making the learning process fun for yourself.
Sometimes it even happens to me that my students would love to love their language learning but they don’t believe they are very good at it.
You know what? It doesn’t matter how your learning went in the past. Don’t let your past learning experiences define your future learning success.
If I feel that my students consider their learning too much of hard work, as well as discussing a learning schedule that works for them with tasks they could enjoy, I give them this motivational picture which I designed for them to print, put on their fridge, in the bathroom (or other frequented place 😅😉) so they can see it as much as possible. The more you see it, the more you believe it and the more you start acting like it. Say it with me: I LOVE (MY) ENGLISH AND ENGLISH LOVES ME BACK! Did it feel silly? Never mind that! It always does at the beginning. But you will see that if you print it and look at it often enough, it will start making a difference in how you feel about your English learning and it will no longer feel so strange.
Now as promised, here are the ‘magical’ steps that will help you make a change in the way you learn and help you start enjoying your language learning instead of it being just a chore.
Make your learning fun – try new things! Not sure how? No worries, I’ve got your back covered with my free eBook full of ideas for you to improve your speaking, listening, reading, and writing. You can download it here . See what you haven’t tried yet and give it a go– get a language exchange partner or a study buddy, follow people in English on social media and comment on their posts, download a new app, etc.
Do you know the phrase ‘fake it until you make it’? I am a great advocate of this approach. Do you want to have a positive learning attitude but you know for fact that you are not there yet? No problem. Fake it until you make it. Repeat to yourself that you love your English and your English loves you back. The rest will come as you carry out the actions little by little. That’s a promise!
Happy learning! ❤️
PS: If you like my motivational ‘I love English’ visual and would like to print it and put in on your fridge, the bathroom mirror, around your computer, or in other frequented place, you can download it as a PDF here. Cut it out, (laminate it) and enjoy the magic of the positive affirmation in your life. Hope you like it! 🤗