166. How to step into the right mindset in English [Q&A session]

Welcome to the Influency Podcast. I'm Hadar, your host and today we are going to listen to a Q and A session about mindset. Hey. Hey everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Influency Podcast. I hope you are well. I'm very excited about today because we're gonna do something special slightly different. As you may or may not know, we are in the middle of the English Fluency Festival, a week long event with trainings and workshops and practice groups and conversations. And on day three, we had an entire training session about mindset and language and how to avoid a fixed mindset and lean more towards a growth mindset when it comes to language learning. At the end of the session I received a bunch of really great questions and answer them of course, because I love answering questions and I decided to share that part of the training with you. So we are going to listen to it. Remember, it's a live broadcast so sometimes I interact with the audience and I ask questions and I drink water. So it's not going to be like a usual podcast episode, but I'm sure you're going to enjoy it either way. This is now one more thing I want to tell you and it's actually something really exciting. For the upcoming week until October 20th, I'm offering a sneak peek into New Sound, my signature program. We're offering access to the platform so you can see the entire curriculum and how we outline what we believe is needed to reach a real transformation in English. And we also give access to a few of my personal favorite lessons so you can actually also learn and get a lot of value and practice your THS and learn about pitch and learn more about mindset. It's absolutely free. I'm going to put a link in the description so if you want to see what my program looks like and maybe even, you know, you've wondered in the past whether or not this program is for you. So you now are going to have a great opportunity to check it out yourself to see how I teach and to see if you like it and if we're a good fit.

So check it out.

Limited access, so make sure you grab it before we close the sneak peek. Sneak peek. I love saying sneak peek. Anyway, all right, so let's talk about mindset. Let's listen.

And now it's time for questions. Luis is asking how to change our mindset to stay consistent under any circumstances. I've been learning English for a long time, but I don't feel like I've made such made much progress. So I Guess it has to do with a lot of things, Luis. One is definitely the mindset part. And I think that, you know, I've made. I. I don't feel like I've made much progress. I would say. Okay, what progress have you made? First of all, let's start with that. Let's start with. It's not just like, look at the glass half full. But in a way it is, right? Like, let's try to see your experience as something that was positive and good so you don't start associating, you know, lack of results to the work that you put in. So how to change our mindset to stay consistent? I think here it's not about the mindset about staying consistent. It's about asking yourself three things. One is, are you in integrity with yourself? Do you keep a promise to yourself or not? Because if you say that you're going to do something and you're not doing it right, and at the same time, I think I mentioned it previous, like, two days ago, at the same time, if you make a promise to someone else, even a stranger, and you're like, no, I feel like I have to keep a promise because I said I'm going to do it, then they are more important than you, right? So it's like a question that you want to ask yourself. Why is it that this is not important enough for you? Why is it that it's not important enough for you to say what you're going to do, what you're going to say, to do what you say you're going to do? Right. So this is the first thing that you want to pay attention to. The second thing is make sure that you have habits in place. This is technical, right? It's like the mindset is around. I need to have. I have good habits. I need to have good habits. And we're going to talk more about habits tomorrow. Okay. How to build good learning and speaking habits. But it's just like, also, you need to have the infrastructure to put in the work. Now you're saying I can't stay consistent. And I haven't seen much progress, of course, because you haven't been consistent. If you haven't been consistent, you wouldn't be seeing a lot of improvement if you're not consistent. So you got to be consistent to see an improvement. It's math, right? So the question is, how do I become consistent so I can see the results that I want to see? And the last thing, and I said that at the beginning, I'm just reiterating it, you know, focus on the things that you have achieved and that are working for you and show some appreciation to the language that you already speak and to the journey that you've taken up until today, because don't undermine it. And the fact that you're here, communicating, even writing this clearly to me, means that you have done a lot of work and you have achieved a lot of things. So maybe you haven't broken through. But let me tell you this. A lot of times the change happens underneath the ground, right? Like, you know, when there is a flower that blooms in the spring and then wilts in the winter, when you can't see the flower above ground, it doesn't mean that there are no roots anymore. The roots are growing and getting stronger so that when spring comes, the flower can bloom again, but it's not starting to bloom. It's all the work that happened throughout the winter that allows it to bloom instantaneously, Right? All of a sudden it's ready, but it's not ready just because it was ready and that just because, you know, it started. No, there was history behind it, things that were below the surface. So sometimes when we're learning and trying to progress, we are not aware that a lot of the things that we do are below the surface. And then all of a sudden, there is going to be a breakthrough. We're going to bloom. And we'd be like, oh, that. Now I see it. Here is the breakthrough. But it's not the breakthrough now. The breakthrough is this and all your past work. I have a podcast episode about the compound effect. We're going to link to it as well. It's how small choices that you make daily or small actions that you take daily, they don't. They lead to massive results. But you don't see it immediately. You only see it in hindsight. Only in hindsight you're able to see it. So sometimes when you're in the middle of the process, when we're consistent, we're unable to see the progress. So this is why it's always good to compare yourself not to one month ago, not to two months ago. Again, if you're consistent and you're doing the work but do two years ago, are you able to do things now that you weren't able to do a year ago or two years ago? If the answer is yes, then you have made progress. And if you want to see more progress, keep a promise to yourself and stay consistent. Build strong habits. How long do I need to practice daily to practice speaking, like I said, and I think I mentioned it before, I don't want to put a time limit or, you know, like to say you have to speak for 1500 minutes to become fluent. I don't believe in that. I think that you need to find what's working for you. I think it's better to work with what you have and do your best. Gonna sit? I think it's best to work and do your best with what you have. So if you only have 15 minutes a day, like, you know, because whatever I'm going to say, it might be good for you and bad for someone else. And then they would think, oh, so I need to practice X amount of minutes. It's too much, it's too little. You have your own experience, you know best, you know how much time you have. I'm a fan of not overdoing it. Okay? So for me, in my opinion, don't go over an hour or two hours a day. That would be too much. And I'm saying that for some of you, they're like two hours. I can't even do 15 minutes. But I know of a lot of people that spend hours and hours every day and they get burnt, they get burnt out really quickly. That's it. Now I'm, I'm sat, they get burnt out really quickly and then they quit. So it's not, it's not ideal too.

Right?

So think of, look at your schedule, decide how much time you actually have, and use the fluency wheel and the pronunciation confidence method to start structuring your practice. And we're going to talk more about creating your success journey tomorrow. If I'm not exposed to the community that communicates in English, how could I start to practice? So, Escher, first of all, we have the influencing community on Facebook. It's absolutely free. And you, you can gain a lot of speaking time. Practice. We have weekly videos, we have conversation groups, and we have the same thing here in the fluency festival. And you have a lot of platforms of people who are just seeking to practice with other people. So just use Google and look for these places because there are plenty of them. Because you're not alone in this situation and you'll be surprised how many people are in the same boat as you. What about mispronunciations? I feel sad when I speak, but the person who doesn't speak, but the person who I speak to doesn't understand what I say and get lost. I hesitate a lot before speaking because of pronunciation. What can I do to change it? So first of all, this is a Good question. I mean, on one hand, focus on the fact that you're speaking. And when you don't interpret their reaction as they're lost, or I'm wasting their time or they don't want to speak with me, even though that might be a legit experience, if you've experienced it once with someone who wasn't patient, who gave you this feeling, again, I'm not going to say that that doesn't exist, but try to not impose this perception and instead try to think if maybe they're really wanting to communicate with you and to understand you, and at the same time, be proactive. Go back to what we talked about yesterday. Figure out the sounds that make you sound unclear and prevent you from communicating clearly. And follow the method that I shared with you to be able to work on that. And if you want to go a little deeper, I definitely can help. And I will tell you at the end of this event how we can help you even more if you want to continue with me and if you want to go deeper, and if you want me to hold you by the hand and take you through this outline and through this journey. But I have given you enough to be able to understand what it is that you need and to do it on your own. So it's a great question because it's both about mindset and interpretation of situations, but it's also about, okay, but you can't just sit and imagine like you know everything is great. You also have to be proactive. And this is why we shared in the previous two days our strategies. I understand almost everything when I listen, but I still feel stuck while speaking. What should I do? Speak more. Speak more. Speak more, more. And try to identify where you get stuck. Is it because of a grammar challenge? Go practice that challenge, that tense, that you know, condition. Is it because you're losing words? I shared with you yesterday the system that can help you, but speak more so you can get stuck and then recognize the things that you need to work on. Gloria, same thing. I can understand 85%, but I don't know why I cannot speak. Well, because you're not speaking enough. Without knowing how much you speak, I can tell you you're not speaking enough, right? And if you think you are, you're probably not, because you maybe are usually listening because you're afraid to speak. So even if you engage yourself in conversations, you're probably the listener more than the speaker. So being an active listener doesn't help you speak better. Speak more. What do my fears keep me from your Goals, the person you want to be achieving, the things that you want to achieve in life, you're the one to tell me what they keep you from. But I think, you know, and if, you know, we were talking about what I talked about, what does it keep me from? It keeps you from getting hurt, from feeling like a failure, from judgment, from criticism. So that fear, don't do this, don't do that. Is keeping you away from this. In your head, it's danger. In real life, it's life. It's experience. It's how you get things done by being criticized, being judged, and all of that. You know, when I opened my YouTube channel, this was one of the biggest fears that I had, what people are going to say. And, you know, I talk a lot about it, but, like, at first I remember that I would really speak like a robot because I was so careful about how I speak, because I did not want to make mistakes, because I did not want people to write in the comments. Who does she think she is now? I don't care about it now. I. I love it when I get criticism because I like to answer back or just to ignore or just make fun of this comment because it doesn't hit me in a place that is a place of fear. It hit me, hits me in the place of power. But I had to go through a very long journey from five years ago till today to be in this place. But it's constant work committed to the person that I want to be. I did not want to be a person who is fearful and not doing things because of the fear of criticism. And I had to make a conscious choice that, you know, I block it. I block that moment where I, you know, I want to go into this victim mentality and saying, poor me. Why is she saying things? I literally remember such a horrible experience. I made this really cute video about, I think, five words you mispronounce or something. It was edited really well, and there was a typo. I think I wrote American without the E or something like that. And I posted it on YouTube and it has gotten great responses and became really viral. And then I shared it in a group of English teachers here in Israel. And I was like, I wanted to share it with them because I wanted them to share it with their students. And of course, I wanted to get more views and all of that. And I shared with them the group and, God, I need to come back to this group and see if this post is still there to show you the comments that I've received mean negative comments. Well, first spell correctly and then tell me how to pronounce it. Or actually, the word salmon does have an L in it, right? Because I said there is no L because I was talking about the pronunciation, but I did not say the L sound. And a lot of other negative comments and someone even commented, oh, my God, we're like really nitpicky here, right? And I felt so embarrassed. Now, on one hand, I wanted to delete this video, but then on the other hand, I felt like if I delete this video, that would show that it affected me. So. So I'm not going to do it. And I was really. I think I can't remember if it was this video or another video, but I might have even deleted that video on YouTube and reposted it after correcting it because I felt so embarrassed and self conscious. Now, today, this would never happen. First of all, if I make. If I have typos, I don't care. People know my worth, even though, you know, I have typos and they know that I probably know how to spell. And this is a mistake. And it doesn't mean that I'm not, you know, worthy of teaching them. So it wouldn't happen today, but it would also not happen because there isn't this insecure place in me today that needs this validation. Of course I need validation, but I need validation from my students, not from strangers. I need validation from people who appreciate my work and would give me honest feedback and not from people who are there just to be mean to other people on the Internet. So I'm telling you this to show you that you see me now. And a lot of you have mentioned I want to be like you and I want to speak like you. And I get that all the time. I worked hard to get here, and I'm teaching you everything that I've done along the way here in this festival and in my programs. I'm outlining everything that I have done to get to where I am today so I can make this road a little shorter for you. Because I've been doing this for 20 years. I know how to simplify this and shorten the path for you. But you need to take action. You need to stay committed and you need to believe that it is possible for you. When you compare yourself to me, know that it's possible. You just need to do the things that will get you there. And one of the things is to really work on recognizing the imposter syndrome. I'm not enough and managing it, knowing that it's going to be there. But it doesn't mean that you're really not good enough. One, two. When you are judged to decide that, it doesn't mean shit, right? Doesn't mean shit when people say bad things about you. It doesn't mean shit about you and about who you are and about your worth. On the contrary, I get super competitive when people judge me and they tell me that I can't do it inside. Not to them, but inside I'm like, I'm going to prove them wrong. I'm going to show them that it's the exact opposite. So I use it as fuel to get to where I want to get. It's not going to stop. It used to stop me, but again, like, I think that a lot of work and a lot of conscious work and mindset work, deliberate mindset work, has helped. And this is why this is such an important part of this process. And this is why I dedicated an entire day to mindset. And this is why in New Sound there is an entire module of 10 of eight lessons about mindset, okay? Because it's an inherent part of the work. And when you own that fluent mindset, you are on your path to become the new speaker of English rather than the non native speaker who is just consumed with the technicalities and the holistic process of owning a language. Okay, last remark, because it's good. Vince. I attended several Toastmasters classes during the start of the pandemic. One of the musicians said that motivation is a feeling that comes and goes. He said that habits are stronger. What is your stance, dar? I agree 100%. I think that we have to bring that motivation. So motivation is the fuel. But if we want the infrastructure, we have to build strong habits. We can't just sit there and wait to be inspired to create or inspired to speak. Speak. It happens sometimes. But also building habits around getting yourself inspired is key because you can't feel creative or inspired or motivated to work without doing some kind of process of getting there. When I need to create videos and I don't feel inspired and I have a deadline, you know, I do things to get me in that state and those things are part of my work habits. Of the things that I do as part of me being an entrepreneur, me being a content creator, me being someone who is my passion is to serve and to make a difference and to make an impact. But to do that, I cannot sit and wait for the motivation to strike because a lot of times it does not happen. So strong habits in place and also habits around getting yourself motivated, like dancing. Okay, so, yes, habits. Know your why. In the first module of my program, it's exactly that we learn what. Why do we want to do what we do? Right? Like, what is your why? And not in a cheesy kind of way, like, what's your purpose? No, like what, what's. What is it really about English that makes you tick and makes you feel like you want to improve yourself and at the same time, how to build consistent, strong habits so you can combine these two together? Because I think these two are really important, that then they go together and then you'll be able to get things done and do the things that you say you're going to do. There are all these things that go into it. And like, again, thinking of the old way of learning English, we only saw such a small part of the entire process, and then we were surprised why we're not seeing results. And then, you know, once you recognize all of these other things that you have to take care of if you want to improve your communication skills, it all makes sense, right? It all makes sense and it gets your results. Sam.