بزرگ ترین درس های 2017

114 - Biggest Lessons of 2017

Hello there, Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. A podcast that is helping English learners become confident speakers through lessons based on personal development. Growth. Lifeskills, business-skills, leadership-skills, relationship-skills. Skills!

I have a lesson for you today that will be good for speaking practice. I want you to speak today, either out loud so people think you talk to yourself like a crazy person, or in your head, so you can create voices in your head that speak English. So you’ll either be crazy and talk to yourself or you’ll have voices in your English that speak English. Got it?

It’s almost the end of the year, so I wanted to do a bit of a yearly review.

Review some of the biggest, most popular, and also what I consider to be the most important lessons I learned with you this year.

But I want you to get involved today, so I am going to bring you in on the conversation. I’m going to ask you some questions about what I talk about, and you should answer them. If you ever hear me say the word, “blank”, that means you need to fill in the “blank” with a word. So if I said, “I really like “blank”, you would say, “Kevin, I really like…clowns” Make sense?

So review with me some great lessons from this year , use you mouth a bit, or use your internal mouth, whatever the hell that is, and feel good!

If you like feeling good and haven’t connected with me yet, after the lesson go over to FeelGoodEnglish.com and download a free course that’ll help you become a better English speaker. Why? Because it’ll feel good, that’s why!

Now let’s get into the biggest lessons learned this year.

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I’m going to ask you a word. This word is a feeling we have. We experience this. And we have this feeling when we think about the past in a certain way. We can only use this word when considering the past.

And more specifically, it’s when we wish, or we would like that what we did, or what happened in the past didn’t happen. So if you did something in the past, or let’s say you said something in the past to someone, but you wish you hadn’t said that something. Maybe you said something that hurt that person. You let your emotions get the best of you, and you blurted out something you shouldn’t have.

When you feel bad about something in the past, what do you feel? This is the word I am looking for: the thing you feel when you want actions in the past to be different than they happened.

What’s this word….

Need a hint? It begins with an “R”.

Re——

Regre———

Regret! (game show ding)

Yes, the word I was looking for is regret.

Regret means to feel sad or disappointed about something that did or didn’t happen in the past. Often it’s about a missed opportunity.

You could say, “ oh, man, I regret not going to that concert last night. The band killed it!”

Or maybe, “I really regret calling her the “B” word. She’ll never forgive me for that.

Is there anything you regret? Tell me what you regret….

Now make sure you use the ING form after regret. (regret not going, regret calling, regret missing)

So tell me again, what do you regret?

How do you feel after saying that, after thinking about regret?

Not good, right? You feel a little down, maybe?

And here lies the lesson to be learned. We waste a lot of energy and time on regret. We get stuck in thinking about the past, and that’s not good.

But there’s a cure. It’s all about living in the Now. In episode #91 of my podcast I talked about a book called “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.

The lessons in this book are powerful. But one of the best ones is about not letting regret ruin, ruin your mood.

We can often get stuck in our head, stuck in the middle of our thoughts.

Worrying about what you did or didn’t do in the past, worrying about the future, thinking about every possible outcome except what’s happening to us right now.

So let me stop you for a minute. What have you been worrying about recently? Have you been worrying about something that happened, or maybe you’ve been worrying about something that might or might not happen in the future.

Again, what have you been worrying about? Answer now.

Don’t forget to use the same form here, have been worrying about….

Now stop a minute, think about how that makes you feel…

Now do this: look up, notice everything around you. Look at everything around you. Listen to the sounds around you, and pay attention to the details you see….

Also, how does your body feel? Fast heart rate? Are you tired? Anxious?

Relaxed?…

Guess what, that’s a quick cure for worry and regret. Pay attention to the world around you, and your body. The goal is to get out of your head, where all the repetitive thoughts and worries hang out.

Do that again real quick; look around and pay attention to everything around you….

How do you feel?…

It’s all about awareness. Awareness of your body, your surroundings.

Being aware of the Now. The power, power meaning peace, calm, happiness, is right here, in the Now. Such an easy little action you can do throughout your day or when you’re full of regret, worry.

But don’t get me wrong, I think a little bit of regret and worry can be good.

Do you agree? Tell me, can regret and worry be good? Why?…

Sometimes we need some guidance on how to correct past behavior, regret, and also some motivation to make sure we do what we can, to make sure we are prepared for the future, worry.

So don’t take this idea, or the book “The Power of Now” to an extreme. We need a bit of balance, and a little bit of regret and worry can be totally OK.

Think of it as the salt you put on your food. Not too much! That could be bad for your heart, but just enough to enhance the experience.

Remember, when stuck in your head, look up and around you, see the details, hear the sounds, and become aware all the life, beautiful life, that is happening around you at this very moment. It’s powerful!

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You’re special, aren’t you? More special than anyone else at work, right?

You deserve the best, just because you’re special. Other people spent 10 years working hard to get to the manager level at work, but you’re so smart and clever that you should already be manager after only a year at your job, right?

Well, at least that’s what you think. And your mom think that way too.

Ok, ok, I’m being sarcastic here. But the idea I am going to touch on now is one of the best I’ve learned all year.

But before moving on, let me ask you a quick question… What’s the best lesson you have learned this year? Say, “the best lesson I have learned this year is”……

Nice!

Continuing… in the book, “The Ego is the Enemy” Ryan Holiday teaches us why the Ego is so dangerous, and what we can do to avoid being harmed by the Ego.

First off, what’s the Ego?…

Kind of hard to explain, right? The ego is a person’s thoughts about themselves, more importantly how important one sees himself.

If someone has a big ego, it means they think they are really important. Can you think of an American with a big ego? Actually, an ego so large it might make this person’s huge head explode?…

Are you thinking of the same person I’m thinking of? His name rhymes with assho…. I mean, his names rhymes with “dump”.

Anyway, here’s the deal. And it can be summarized, summed up, with this statement I took from Ryan’s book…I’m paraphrasing, but the idea is you should be okay with being the least important person at work, or at school, until you change that position with results.

Repeating, you should be okay with being the least important person at work, or at school, until you change that position with results.

Do you think you’re special? Prove it. Do you think you’d make a great supervisor? Show them then.

Often we want things to happen without actually making it happen. And I’m not saying you’ll always get what you want even if you try hard, You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, well you might find, you get what you need! Sorry, I can’t say “you can’t always get” without going into the lyrics of that song. Do you know that song?

But for real, even if you try really hard, you might not get what you want.

However, don’t think that just by being special, like your mother always told you you are, you’ll get everything that you want. You have to earn it!

But the ego doesn’t want you to earn it. It wants you to just magically get it.

According to the book, “The Ego is the Enemy”, Ryan says we are here on earth to serve, and it’s ridiculous to think otherwise.

But we kind of live in a ridiculous moment right now. With social media changing everything. Nowadays we want to look successful, feed our ego, without putting in the work.

Think Instagram or FB posts. Pictures on the beach, on vacation, with a new car, new house, new boobs.

And we all do it, or most of us do it. I’m not innocent. Let me ask, when you want people to see the good stuff in your life, what do you show them?….

There’s a phrasal verb we can use here, it has the verb “show” in it. When we want to show people our special stuff we…show off! Correct! And someone that’s always trying to look cool is a showoff.

Stop being a showoff, and show them what you can do. And here’s a question you can ask yourself…

“Are you doing something to be, or are you doing something to do?” What does that mean to you? That quote? “Are you doing something to be, or are you doing something to do?” ——–

Well I think it means that when you choose to do something, you can do it with two very different intentions; are you doing it because you think others’ will see you as being special if you do do it, or is your intention to make a difference, to actually do something important?

Are you learning English so that when you become a fluent speaker, people will think you are special, or are you learning English to make a difference in your life, in other people’s lives?

Answer that question now; why are you learning English?…

In your answer you’ll see how much the ego is involved. But be careful, the ego is the enemy!

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So a very popular episode from this year, was # 81 on a book called “Essentialism”. In this book we learn how to simplify our lives. Simplify the space around us at home, at work, and also how to free up time in our day so we can focus on what’s most important.

So let me ask you a question; what area in your life, this could be a physical area, like your bedroom, office, car, etc, is full of stuff, is unorganized?

When you think of that area, how do you feel?…. Say, Kevin, I feel…. when I think of my…..

When we don’t keep our lives organized, when we have too much stuff or too many tasks, we can often feel overwhelmed. And feeling overwhelmed leads to frustration, stress, exhaustion.

But the main idea in episode #81 is that we can feel better, be more productive and more efficient with our time if we learn how to declutter our lives.

To declutter. This word comes from clutter. Clutter, c-l-u-t-t-e-r. Clutter is stuff, things. It’s when a space, like a room, a desk, a car, has a lot of stuff in it which makes the area messy, unorganized.

When we add the prefix, “de”, to a word, it means to reverse something, remove something, make it the opposite of how it is. So when using de with clutter in de-clutter, we are removing the clutter, organizing the area, making it not cluttered.

Another example would be decriminalize. To decriminalize is when you take something that is criminalized, meaning illegal, and make it legal.

Marijuana, for example, used to be illegal in the state of Colorado, where I live. If you were caught with marijuana by the police, you were considered a criminal, engaged in an illegal activity. However, in the last few years Colorado has decriminalized marijuana, making it legal. Now if you are caught with marijuana by a police officer all they can say is, “whoa, that’s some good marijuana, dude!”

Some more examples: decompose, deconstruct, dehydrate.

But back to the main idea, decluttering our lives, living a more minimalist lifestyle. What area in your life is cluttered?…

And do you smoke marijuana?…just kidding, you don’t have to answer that.

So the book “Essentialism” teaches us a trick.

And the trick goes like this: When you are trying to declutter an area, like let’s say the closet in your bedroom, go through your clothes and ask yourself this one question, “Is there a 90% chance I am going to wear this article of clothing?” If there’s isn’t a 90% chance, then you should find a way to get rid of that piece of clothing. To get rid of, to remove. So is there a 90% chance you are going to wear that shirt? Not 80% chance, a 90% chance. And if the answer is no, then get rid of it.

So, could you tell me how this trick works? What do you ask yourself if you are trying to decide whether to keep an article of clothing?….

Right, is there a 90% chance I’ll wear this?…Repeat.

Boom!

But don’t just throw your clothes away, don’t just throw them in the trash?

What could you do with clothes that you don’t want? What are some options? I am going to let you think about that, and you can say the answer to yourself out loud, or in your head. Both work. So what are some things you could do with clothes that you are not going to wear, or there’s less than a 90% chance you’ll wear them? Give me some options. Start your sentence with “I could”….

Here are a few ideas. You could donate them. Give them away. To donate is to give away for free, give to charity, pass them onto people that need clothes.

What does to give away mean?…

To give someone something for free.

You could also sell them. In the US we have second-hand stores, stores that sell used items like clothing, or electronics, furniture, at much lower prices. Do you have second-hand stores where you live?…

These days we also have several places online where we can sell our stuff.

People have been making tons of money by actually buying people’s old stuff and selling it to someone else. This is called flipping.

To flip means to buy something and sell if for a higher price. Sometimes all it takes is to find the right person to buy what you have, and other times you have to put in some work to make what you have nicer, newer looking.

Like a house. Here in the US we have what are called house flippers. These people find old, broken down houses, buy them at a low price, and then spend some time fixing them up, making them look nice. After they put in some work, they can sell the house for a higher price and make a profit.

House flippers.

In this context, what does “flip” mean?…

Did you say it’s when we buy something for a low price and sell it for a higher price? You did, well you are correct! (game show ding) What about you? Do you own anything you could sell? Or are you someone who could get into flipping things? Buying things and then selling them for a profit? What possession of yours could you sell?….

So if you were going to flip something, what could you buy, fix up, then sell?…

That’s a very entrepreneurial thing to do.

But what about the original idea I was talking about? Simplifying your spaces. Getting rid of unnecessary clutter. Decluttering.

What area in your house, or your office do you need to declutter?…

And what’s the question you can ask yourself when deciding if you should get rid of something?…

Is there a 90% chance! Correct!

We can also use this on other areas of our lives. Like English learning. You might be wasting your time on a lot of English activities, words, expressions, that are not necessary. They wouldn’t fit into that 90% rule.

They could be wasting your time and energy. Think about that for a minute.

I have a feeling you know the most important things you should be doing to become a better English speaker.

What are the most important things you should be doing to improve your English. Tell me!

Well, there you go. Do those things more often, and the other things less.

Only the essential.

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And that will do it for today’s episode. Did you enjoy it? If you did, please let me know you liked it and why you liked it. You can always reach me at kevin@feelgoodenglish.com I’m on the other side of your email, just a click away.

And be looking for part two of the biggest lessons learned this year, coming in the next episode. I’ll get you speaking again. Don’t miss it!

If you want the premium lesson for this episode you can get it by becoming a Feel Good Premium Member. Members get access to all Premium Lessons, plus transcripts to every episode I’ve ever done. Tons of stuff to learn! But only the essential stuff.

Just go to feelgoodenglish.com/go to learn all about the Premium Lessons.

And finally, it’s the end of the year, I’m feeling festive, in the holiday spirit, so I am going to leave you with a joke. And here it goes…

Why did the tomato turn red? Because he saw the salad dressing!

Talk to you soon, bye bye!