441. How can I build confidence in English? You ask, I answer.

Hey everyone, it's Hadar. Thank you so much for tuning in to the Influency podcast. Today I have a really fun episode for you because I'm going to be sharing a Q A session that I did inside my program Beyond. In the session I collected questions from my students and answered them live. We talked about feeling more comfortable in your voice in English, building confidence and improving speaking. I have no doubt that if you're a speaker of English as a second language, you are going to relate and to many of the things that we discussed. Now I wanted to let you know that if you have questions for me and you're not inside of my programs, then you can still ask me those questions. On my website there is a section called Ask Hadar. You can click on it and then send me a message, whether it's a text message, audio message or video message. And I will answer those questions in the next Q and A episode on my podcast. I'm going to link to the Ask Hadar section in the show notes. Alright, so I hope you enjoy the Q and A. Let's go ahead and listen.

You're listening to the Influency podcast. I'm Hadar, your host, a pronunciation expert, fluency coach and a proud non native speaker. With over 16 years of experience teaching. I am here to share with you all my secrets. I on how to show up in English clearly with confidence and freedom. On this podcast I'll provide step by step strategies, lessons, stories and practical tips to keep you inspired and motivated on your English journey.

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Let's do it.

Okay. Marianne says I need to find my voice in English. Any tests? So my question to you because it's not clear to me 100%. Do you mean your physical voice or do you mean like your metaphorical voice? If it's your physical voice, which I think this is what you meant, then I have two videos about how to find your voice in English. One with exercises and one with understanding how your voice works. And I think this is going to be the best because it's very elaborate and it's going to answer this question in particular. And if anyone else is trying to understand how to find their voice, please watch those videos. In general, your voice in English should be like your voice in your first language. The most important thing is that you feel comfortable, is that you feel like you're not too high, too low, pushing your voice being too soft. If you recognize that your voice is different from how it is in your first language and you don't feel comfortable I'm going to highlight it because sometimes it's okay. My voice in English is different than my voice in Hebrew is different than my voice in Spanish. In all three languages, they sound slightly different, but it's okay. It's kind of like I kind of like picked up on the frequency that works for me for the language. But if you don't feel comfortable and then I would recommend to bring it to your voice. Okay. And try to understand what it is that you're doing to manipulate your voice or to modify your voice that makes you feel uncomfortable and I'm assuming makes your voice a little less optimal. Okay. Aline says how to learn business rules, like how to lead a meeting or a workshop with confidence. When you never experienced working in an English speaking environment and feel confident the first time. The truth is, Aline, is that a lot of it is just experience and building the confidence ahead of time, telling yourself it's just like, you know, it's just like going on a zoom call and I have to organize it. Like, the most important thing is that you are clear, is that you communicate what you need and what you want and what's coming up to everyone. Okay. And that you end it in a way that everyone knows what they need to do. Okay. So when you lead a meeting, it's really important that you open, you set the agenda really quickly and then, you know, every meeting is a little different, but you set expectations at the beginning together. Right. Communication is really, really important. And then at the end, you summarize what was discussed. You talk about the key takeaways or the action items that were decided in the meeting. So it's important to keep track on everything that is decided and, and then to make sure that everyone's on the same page at the end. This is usually how we lead our meetings. But you also don't want to be too dominant or to control too much the situation. Right. You just want to create the right foundation for people to have a good conversation, discussion, argument even. Right. So that is it at the end of the day, preparing well before what you're going to talk about, writing bullet points, saying out loud what you're intending to say is also really important to prepare well. Okay. I hope this helps. Aisha is saying, how do I become more confident every time I think about doing something, I imagine a scary situation that makes me hesitate. This doesn't just happen with speaking. It also happens when I'm driving, like I'm on the highway and something goes wrong. What can I do in this situation? Well, Anxious thoughts were, or kind of like worst case scenario thoughts is something very common for human beings because it's kind of like we're always in survival mode when things go well, right? All of a sudden the brain is like, okay, I'm safe, You know, like, how do I stay safe? Let's imagine the worst thing that could happen so that I'll know how to prepare for it. Now, that thought you imagining a scenario that could be scary or, or like you might feel judged or you might feel rejected, or whatever it is creates an emotion. That emotion is usually anxiety or stress. And there are two things I can say about this. One is that you have to remember that it's your brain thinking those thoughts. And just like it's producing those thoughts. Okay? Just like it's producing those thoughts, you can produce different thoughts or you can control those thoughts, or you can understand I'm the one thinking those thoughts. The reason why I'm thinking it is because it's my habit. Your brain habitually goes into those places when maybe it's in a calm situation or in a challenging situation. Whatever it is for you, okay? Understanding that and creating awareness, remembering that thoughts create feelings, feelings create actions, and actions lead to results. Okay? Thoughts create feelings. So I thought, let's say. What did you say here? I imagine a scary situation, right? I imagine. So let's say you want to go into a call and then you imagine yourself starting to speak and then no words come out and everyone's looking at you, right? Let's say that's the scary situation. So you're imagining the situation and then that creates anxiety, probably. And when it creates anxiety, then you're less likely to actually join that session or to open your mouth to speak because you're already afraid of the situation that is going to happen while all of this just happened in your brain. Okay. And the result is that you're not improving, you're not participating, you're not making friends, you're not showing up. Now, here's something I need you to know about your brain. And I'm actually reading a book by Joe Dispenza, highly recommend him called Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Joe Dispenza. First of all, he explains elaborately why the brain doesn't distinguish between a real life experience and an imagined experience. Your brain perceives it as the same. So research shows, like people did MRIs and asked people to visualize something or imagine something. The connections that were created in the brain of the people who were visualizing it, in this case it was practicing piano. They took two groups. A group of people who actually practiced piano scales and a group who just visualized one hour a day practicing scales. And the connections that were created in the brain were absolutely the same. The new connections in the brain were absolutely the same, whether they imagined it or. Or they practiced it. Now imagine. There's always this metaphor. I want you guys to close your eyes for a second. Imagine yourself walking into the refrigerator, grabbing a juicy lemon out of the refrigerator, cutting it in the middle. And like, the juice of the lemon is dripping. And you take that half lemon full of juice and you take one big gigantic bite into the lemon, right? Imagine yourself taking that bite. Let me ask you this. What happened in your mouth just now? Did you feel like the saliva was coming up, right? Created the mouth is a little more watery? How is that possible? We just visualize. I just walked you through an imagined situation, but your body reacted to it as if it were true. The body doesn't distinguish between a real life experience and an imagined experience. And when we keep imagining horrific situations, scary situations, you know, situations where we are criticized or rejected or whatnot, we live an experience as if it actually happened. Even though we know it didn't happen. Our body feels it as if it has. We respond to it as if we have. Okay, I'm saying all of that for you to understand how important it is to manage what's going on in your brain. Because you are living a life as if these things are constantly happening and your body is in, you know, like almost in survival mode when it's constantly thinking about all those scary situations or anxious producing situations. And one more thing I learned, right? And this is why, like, when you go into that imagination, remember that it's the habit of the brain to do that, right? If you're driving on the highway and all of a sudden you're imagining a terrible accident or you not getting off the right place, your body responds as if it has already happened, right? And then you're in a state of survival. Then you're in a state of just like trying to manage those feelings instead of just being present with what's happening here and now. Okay? So when you go into that, it's really important to cut it, to say no, like, I'm not going to go into this. I know that my brain wants to go there. I know it's the habit, but I'm not going to go there because I know what's going to happen after. And the next thing I wanted to say is that the body is almost addicted to those emotions. So in a way, when you have a feeling over and over and over again created by a certain thought, at some point, the body creates neurotransmitters that are receptive to that emotion. Okay? He explains that much better in the book, but I'm trying to simplify it. And in a way, the body needs this emotion. So some of you might know it when you feel, like when you're addicted to stress or to guilt, right? Or to social media or something like that, that addiction, what happens is like, the body needs it. The body needs this emotion because you're addicted to this feeling. And sometimes the feeling could be stress or anxiety. I used to be addicted to stress. Still am. Okay, so, like, I know it, I manage it. I don't give my body what it wants, in a way. And that's how you start changing it, by understanding that because your body now says, oh, no, no, I have to feel this feeling. It's just because it has gotten used to feeling those feelings, and now it feels like that's the normal. Okay, understanding that is the only way to change. It's really hard to change a habit, especially a habit like you're describing. Okay. It's really hard to change a habit without understanding how the brain works, how the body works. Okay, good. Annetta, can you explain the science behind why we improve speaking through speaking? Well, I think it's not just speaking through speaking. If you want to improve in something, you need to do more of that something, right? If you want to improve your cooking, you need to do more cooking. Now, there is a caveat, right? Like, it's not just that it's intentional repetition. So repetition helps you develop a skill, helps you develop a habit. Okay? Speaking is a habit. Think about it. A habit is something that you do automatically, without thinking about it. Drinking coffee, driving, doing other things while driving, patting your shoes. You don't think about what to do with the lace, with the shoelace when you tie your shoes. So you want to turn words into a habit. You want to turn grammatical structures into a habit and even sounds just like it is in your first language. How do you build a habit? Right. You don't think of the most words in your first language. And in English, you don't think of the basic words. You don't have to kind of like, retrieve the word home. It's usually automatic, but maybe the word remarkable is not that automatic because it's not a habit. You haven't used it enough. So repetition creates a habit. The more you speak the more you build habits, right? You kind of like establish a habit. Now, if you want to really improve, you need to intentionally repeat it. Intentional repetition, that means that you're not repeating a mistake. So there is value in just speaking because you're building a habit. You're also building confidence because the more you speak, you're basically telling your brain, I can do this. You're building the possibility of you speaking confidently so that you're creating that possibility so that if there is fear or concern that might come up, you're already solving it ahead of time by just creating that experience over and over again.

Okay?

So it's both habits and also building confidence in doing something. Now, if you want to improve that, you want to also be intentional about what you want to improve each time. Okay, so let's say you learn a new word and say to yourself, okay, I just want to make sure that I implement it in the next conversation, right? That is, you're not just speaking, but you're being intentional about your speaking. You're starting to incorporate your new things that you want to add into your speaking, like words or grammatical structures or even sounds when you start learning pronunciation. Laura, do you have any role models that you can recommend for imitating the way they communicate? I'm trying to think because that changes. There are different people that I listen to. I think the most important thing for you is to find good content, right? Like content that inspires you. I used to love listening to Marie Forleo. You guys know it. When I first started out, she was my mentor, and I learned with her, like, how to build an online business and all those different things. That was years ago. And I highly recommend her. I think she's great because she's very expressive and her intonation is always interesting. So Marie Forleo is a good role model. Who else? I'm going to think about it because I think that as a woman, you should follow other women, right? Like in terms of the voice. And there are a lot of people that I follow, but I don't necessarily know if they'd be good for you to follow it. Like, they would be good model in terms of English. But any influencer, speaker, singer, actor that you like. Usually we like people who are, you know, we want to be a little bit like them or we admire some things, a quality, and look for an interview with them. I think that would be really useful. How do I feel more confident? For me, knowledge is confidence. Well, I would say that you might have a limiting belief here, because knowledge is confidence. Sure, but can you imagine kids that have never went to school or studied anything, but like, they're very confident they would speak up to an adult, they would go and take what they want, right? So confidence is not founded in knowledge. And if this is a belief that you have, it's great when it comes to areas where you're knowledgeable in, but to areas that you're not, what is the outcome?

Right.

If I know if I've learned this, if I have a degree in something, then I'm confident. If I don't, then that means no confidence. Which means that you're setting yourself up for failure. Because in order for you to dive into something or to take up on opportunities or to even start studying something or to explore if you want to study something sometimes because you don't feel confident, because you don't already have the knowledge, you're not even starting. And if you're not starting, then how will you ever build the confidence? Recently I talked about the difference between confidence and self confidence. Confidence is based on things that we've done in the past. I'm confident that if I take this cup and I drink it, then coffee is going to pour into my body. I'm confident because I've done it many, many times. Self confidence is having confidence when it comes to things that you haven't done before. So now you need to understand that, yes, if you feel confident around knowledge, then you're really just talking about only things that you have done in the past. But then you're just kind of like, you keep doing the same thing. How do you do new things? You can only do new things, right? If you build self confidence, that means confidence that you will know how to do something even if you don't have experience in it, even if you don't have all the knowledge, even if you need to learn or to teach yourself. Or maybe there isn't a guidebook that will tell you what you need to do, but you have to figure it out on your own because it's your journey, right? So self confidence is built through thinking and through actions that you take, okay? And decisions. That's it. Not based on the past. So once you understand that, you can say to yourself, okay, so I recognize that I feel confident in those areas because I have the knowledge, but I don't have the knowledge in other areas. But I trust that I will know how to do it, that I'm capable of doing it, that I'm capable of succeeding in it. And by doing that, you're building self confidence. Which the result would be the same as having confidence, that sense that you got this. Okay, so it's something to think about.