یک هدف گذاری ۳۰ روزه برای یادگیری انگلیسی

049 - A 30 Day English Goal

Hello there.

Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. The only podcast on the planet that is not only helping you improve your English, but helping you improve your life all at the same time.

Today is a TED Tuesday lesson, where I talk about TED talks from the website TED.com, and I will discuss some of the ideas from the talk as well as some of the English used in the talk that you might not know to help you learn some new stuff.

Is there anything you’d like to add to your day? Is there any routine or habit that you think would help you be happier, be more productive, become a better English speaker?

I’m sure there is something that you think about occasionally that you would like to start doing on a daily basis, and this week’s Ted Tuesday lesson is on just that. It’s called “Try Something New for 30 Days” by Matt Cutts. He is “an” employee at Google, or at least he was when he gave this talk. And in the talk, Matt talks about trying something new for 30 days to make it a habit. If there’s something you’ve been thinking about doing in your life, but you just haven’t started, make a commitment to do it for 30 days.

The talk is very short and easy to follow. So after the episode, you can go over to TED.com and watch the talk “Try Something New for 30 Days.” And now, without further delay, let’s get into today’s TED Tuesday lesson.

“A few years ago, I felt like I was stuck in a rut. So I decided to follow in the footsteps of the great American philosopher, Morgan Spurlock, and try something new for 30 days.”

So in the beginning of the talk, Matt says “A few years ago, I was stuck in a rut. So I decided to follow the footsteps of the great American philosopher Morgan Spurlock and try something new for 30 days.” So, Morgan Spurlock, he has done some documentary films, he did one about eating McDonald’s for 30 days, and he watched how that affected his body. And so, the speaker, Matt, he wanted to try something new for 30 days, and he was going to follow along with this plan.

There has been some research done that it takes up to 30 days to form new habits. So there’s some science behind doing something for 30 days.

Personally, I think you should do something for two weeks first. I think that’s easier to digest. Say, “I’m going to do something for two weeks.” And then, go from there. But anyway, 30 days is a good plan to start a new habit.

So, stuck in a rut means to be stuck in a hole. A rut is like a hole. So if you’re stuck in a rut, it means you’re kind of trapped, so you can’t get out of that. So if you’re stuck in a rut, you’re not progressing. An example would be “Oh God! I’ve been on this job for ten years. I really feel like I’m stuck in a rut.” And this speaker, Matt, he really felt like he was stuck in a rut. And so, what challenge did he decide to do? Well, he started out by doing something easy, and he wanted to take a picture every day for a month. So, he took a picture every day for a month. Then, he started to level-up his challenges. He started to do more challenging 30-day challenges.

“My self–confidence grew. I went from a desk–dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work.”

And he went from a desk–dwelling computer nerd to the kind of guy who bikes to work. Desk–dwelling. To dwell is to live. So if you dwell somewhere, it’s kind of “you live somewhere.” Desk–dwelling means he lived at his desk. He was a computer nerd, who didn’t get away from his desk. Dwell can also mean “to keep your attention directed on something to,” “to dwell on,” “dwell on the past.” He always dwells on the past. He always thinks about the past. His attention is always on the past.

Then, he talks about all of the other challenges that he did, he climbed the highest mountain in Africa, he started biking to work every day, and he figured out and this is what he says in the talk: “If you want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days.” I also figured out that if you really want something badly enough, you can do anything for 30 days.

This is an expression here: if you want something badly enough, if you want it bad enough, or use both. “I want something bad…” or “I want something badly…” It’s kind of a weird structure here. You want something bad or if you want something badly, but that just means you want it a lot. “I really want a beer badly right now.” It’s just a strange structure, but we use that. “I want to go to the beach so bad ri going to be an excellent, new boss at our company; but as it turns out, he is just a complete asshole.” In actuality, he’s just a complete asshole.” “Now, is my book the next great American novel? No! I wrote it in a month. It’s awful.”

At the end, he says the book’s not great. It’s awful, A-W-F-U-L. It means horrible, really bad. An awful novel, but he got it done. And for the rest of his life, he could say he wrote a novel.

“So here’s one last thing I’d like to mention: I learned that when I made small, sustainable changes, things I could keep doing, they were more likely to stick. There’s nothing wrong with big, crazy challenges. In fact, they’re a ton of fun, but they are less likely to stick.” And in the last point, a very important point in this talk is about starting small to make sustainable changes. Sustainable means changes that last; changes that continue. So you make small changes, not large changes.

I’ve talked about this a lot in my podcast. When you want to start something new, a new habit, start small. Let’s say you really need to get focused on English, you need to improve your English. You have something coming in the next couple of months, an interview or a test, say “Huh! I have to get serious. It’s really hard to start studying two hours a day for a month.” You will do it for a day, and then two days, and the third day, you will do it for an hour, the fourth day, you’ll skip the day, you will miss that day, the fifth day, maybe ten minutes, and then you’ll lose motivation, and you have to start small with like ten minutes a day, and do that for four or five days, then twenty minutes a day, then thirty minutes a day. Build your habits incrementally, meaning step–by–step.

Start small, and increase the amount of time you’re doing something.

And I agree with Matt fully here: “If you want something to stick…” stick, meaning a habit that sticks. It means it stays, it continues, it is permanent. If something sticks, it means it’s permanent. You have to start small. And even to start small for 30 days. If you have enough time, especially if this is just something you choose to do, and you want to add it to your life, start small and do small: Just do small habits for 30 days at a time.

“So here’s my question to you: What are you waiting for? I guarantee you, the next 30 days are going to pass whether you like it or not. So, why not think about something you have always wanted to try and give it a shot for the next 30 days? Thanks.”

So then, he asked “What are you going to do? What are you going to do for 30 days?” And he says, “…give it a shot.” “Give it a shot” is an expression in English that we use that means “give it a try,” “try it out.” “Give it a shot,” it means, “Try something.” You want your friend to do something new, say “Hey! Have you checked out the Feel Good English podcast? It’s really cool. I suggest you give it a shot.” That’s some good advice.

So, summarizing this talk, if there’s something in your life that you’ve always meant to do that you’ve always wanted to try, could be exercising, speaking a new language, improving your English, learning a new skill like computer programming, whatever that maybe, if you want to start something new, start small and just focus on doing it for 30 days. If you do something for 30 days and you start small, these habits will and can stick. Simplifying things and getting clarity on what you want in your life can really help you change things. And these could be serious big life – changing things, this could be small little changes that you want in your life. Maybe you want to lose a little weight, so take one thing out of your diet for 30 days like Coca–Cola. That’s kind of hard for some people, but if you weigh a little bit too much these days, if you have a few extra pounds on you, commit to 30 days without Coca–Cola and see what happens.

You know what else might happen after those 30 days? You might not desire, or you might not have a strong desire for Coca–Cola anymore.

So, that’s it for today’s lesson. I hope it gave you some inspiration on starting something new for 30 days.

Again, if you want to read the transcript to this episode, to learn more of this English deeply, go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn how you can become a member for free and get transcripts for free. This is a limited time deal, this won’t be around forever so go over there, click on the button, and join us to learn more.

And, keeping on the theme of being overweight and drinking too much Coca–Cola, here’s a fat joke for you:

Relationships are like fat people. Most of them don’t work out.

If you don’t understand it, you can always go to my website, find this episode, and I will explain it to you. Until next time, don’t be afraid to start something new. Try it for 30 days, and watch your life change.

See you in the next episode.