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You’re listening to episode number 121 of the Feel Good English podcast, an interview with Cara from Leo Listening, part 2.

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of the Feel Good English podcast. Hope you’re doing well out there in the world.

Today I have brought Part 2 of the episode I had with Cara Leopold to you.

In this Part, we’re going to talk about personal development. If you’ve listened to my show before you know that’s what I do; teach English based on personal development. And Cara wanted to ask me about that.

She wanted to know if I was a personal development junkie. What’s a junkie? Well, listen to the episode to find out.

We also talk about how to choose the right personal development books to read, and I share how I use podcasts to learn about things I want, often need, to learn.

So slow down, or speed up, and enjoy Part 2 of this interview.

Do you think it’s fair to describe you – would you describe yourself rather as a personal development junkie?

So as someone who’s addicted to this kind of thing or?

that’s a great question! Erm, yeah junkie… You think of a – I guess junkie is like an addict, literally like

literally an addict, yeah!

you can say that!

I guess you could be a video game junkie, or a music junkie.

Could be a good thing too, right?

like passionate about it

passionate about it, yeah

And I would, I would say no. I mean I can stop whenever I want… that’s the first sign of an addict, right? Erm..

You know, I don’t think so and not that it could be a bad thing but –

I’ll explain what the difference might be. So maybe I used to be..

Erm.. And I know that it exists, and people can get just kind of lost in reading personal development books, and I think there’s a specific issue if somebody is reading personal development, listening to personal development, or even following my podcast for certain reasons, and that’s if they’re looking for easy answers, and easy answers to life.

Answers that will make them happy all the time and fulfilled all the time Kevin: If they’re looking for ways to fill something inside of them or to get over their problems quickly without work, that’s kind of a trap and that’s what you can get lost.

Erm, so a junkie, and maybe I might have been like this a little a bit before unintentionally or unknowingly, just kind of whatever I see if it’s a book that looks interesting, a cool title, and it’s about how to happy all the time or, you know, how to have the best friends in the world or I don’t know like just picking it up and read it and say “Oh! Let’s figure this out”, “here’s the answer?”

here’s the answer I’ve been looking for? and kind of just searching all through these. And that’s a very good thing and I think there’s a big market and it’s based on a lot of that, like we have the answer to your happiness.

So, what I do… Personal development for me is similar to having a very good deep conversation with somebody. (And if you’re) sitting –

Right!

sitting at a table having coffee and they have some very interesting views on life: it’s interesting, inspiring, and educating. You say: “Wow!

This person knows what they’re talking about!”

So, a good book could be like that, you’re reading their views on life, and you’re taking things –

Right!

their lives that you can add to yours, and I think we do this anyway with people we respect and admire, we take what they do and kind of try to integrate it into our lives.

So that’s what I like about it and what I do is… Well, I have the podcast now of course, so I’m always having to find good things to talk about and there’s a plethora of very large range of books out there, but what I do now is that I look for tools for specific areas, like how do I do this in this area, how do I communicate better in general like not a foreign language, how do I communicate better, how do I speak better, how do I get my point across more clearly.

Yeah

Which can be used for English learners or not, that’s an example, or how do I deal with marriage better?

How do I deal with – yeah

a relationship… Erm, what are some ways that I can avoid being stressed in a relationship?

Or how can I better serve the person I’m in a relationship with? So, there’s books (inaudible) all types of books on that specific topic.

So I think it’s tools, tools for life – skills that you can use and that’s just erm.. And I think if you can kind of approach it that way… What do you want to learn about?

What do you need to improve your life at the moment?

Yeah

You can avoid this junkie trap or –

Yeah

Just kind of looking for answers that might not be there – Does that make sense to you?

yeah that totally makes sense! Maybe, yeah… Maybe it’s that kind of whole thing (inaudible) shiny object, so like you know the latest book, it promises whatever “Oh, oh – gimme, gimme!”

but yeah, I like the idea if you come at it with a question and then you’re gonna be more discerning because you will choose according to what you really need rather than sort of getting distracted by all of the promises out there.

Yeah, and that’s a great point to the shiny object and even buying books, if you’re constantly buying books creating a library at home, books you’re going to read one day that’s not very good and I’ve done it, believe me, I have books here.

That’s actually why I got into the library with, the local library I never thought was interesting after you know, 6th grad but erm… it’s wonderful!

It’s a wonderful, it’s amazing and they have almost everything you’re looking for

Right!

they have digital versions, erm.. so you can go online and literally erm check out, check out a book, put it in your Kindle and have it for 3 weeks which is pretty amazing!

So, so you don’t have to be buying all these and be kind of do a little research and learn about what’s the best way to do this. The library’s a great way, you get a book, read it…

If it’s not interesting to you, just return it, and so don’t buy all the books that you see – don’t buy all the shiny cover new books just cause it’s the newest, coolest thing… Erm, for example, this book, erm… This book is a book that I’m going to do (erm) an episode on – yeah

I don’t know if it’s backwards in the video Cara: No! we’ll see in the finished video .

Yeah, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F, right, and erm… So, I’ve wanted to read that for awhile, I’ve read some summaries… Erm, I could do a podcast probably on it already

Yeah

Right, I also have seen how many people enjoy the book and I’ve really liked the concepts in it, it’s different, it’s different from what I’ve read so I went on Amazon and found the used version of it’s almost brand new, paid less…

Looking forward to reading that book, erm even though it’s shiny on purpose so they made it bright orange so you don’t miss it .

Yeah, there’s been quite a lot of hype I think around that one, I’ve seen it in bookshops, in France with the French translations so I think… It’s a book that’s gone kind of big if you like.

Yeah, I’m the same as you know if you try to be discerning because I really like, I prefer to read my personal development books, or non-fiction books, business books – whatever, in English because I don’t like reading translations…

Anyway, a lot of the time, not all the books I want are translated into French, so I can’t get them anyways so yeah, it costs me quite a lot to like order them on Amazon in English so I try to be really discerning and only pick books that I know are really gonna…

I’m gonna write all over the pages, I’m gonna bookmark the pages because I know that I’m gonna come back to this book and above all, I’m gonna implement what’s in the book.

So now I’m kind of working on

Right, right

I’m reading less and I’m trying to implement more because I think it’s so easy –

To accumulate knowledge and go “Oh, that’s interesting!” or “I knew, I kind of knew that!” or – but if you don’t implement, you know, to me, it’s kind of what’s the point: you’re just accumulating knowledge but you’re not actually moving forward.

Yeah, that’s a great point and I’ve read somewhere like a percentage of how much you, you should be careful how much you consume versus how much you produce.

Erm, if you’re just consuming, consuming not producing anything, you know, it doesn’t really get you anywhere, and by produce, I mean, putting into action.

Implementing something like you said, and even if it’s one thing from a book that you can implement into your life then great. Yeah.

Yeah, you don’t always need everything, you take what you need and then leave the rest. Okay, sorry, were you going to add - ?

Yeah, just that … The last thing on that, I guess – I have read things before and that’s what keeps me interested and keeps me going.

I’ve read things before that have instantly given my life a benefit simple tactics that you read and like “Wow! That works!”

Erm… I’m trying to think of an example here … Erm, I read once in a book, this seems kind of strange but as soon as I read it, “That makes sense!”

so, making eye contact, making eye contact with somebody so, sometimes it’s kind of uncomfortable, and I used to be like “So, this is a maybe funny”, maybe other people feel this – when you’re looking in somebody’s eyes, it’s like: “What do I look at?” “

Do I look in their eyes?” Where do I look?

(You) bounce back between each eye. How do I – I’m trying to be more, I’m trying to make more eye contact, but where do I look?

So I read in this book, the importance of eye contact, and if you don’t know, if you struggle with it –

Just choose one eye and look at one eye. That’s it, since that’s the point, several years ago that’s exactly what I do, works out wonderfully, nobody ever thinks it’s weird, and if you’re looking at one eye, believe it or not you are making eye contact and, so that’s a very good point.

Very simple basic thing of how you read something once and it impacts your life forever.

Yeah, straight away. Yeah… That is a good example, that is a really good tip! Thanks! That’s another book we don’t need to read! Perfect – we have a

Yeah, I don’t really remember, so that’s –

there’s the lesson. Thanks for listening to the Feel Good English Podcast, remember when you’re making eye contact with somebody, choose one way and look at that way. See you next time – Cara: Yeah, great!

Maybe I should make a mini episode on that, good Cara: Yeah, it’s like a bite-sized, you know –

Sure

practical, erm… Tip, yeah!

That would be good. It’s good that you – we came back to the podcast there because I wanted to kind of tie in with the listening theme,

it’s kind of, it’s kind of a passion of mine, So do you, yeah how do you, yeah… Obviously you read books, but do you any particular personal development resources that you like listening to?

Yeah, I listen to things a lot more than I read… Cara: Mhmm

Absolutely

makes sense!

and it’s just so much easier, less time consuming, you know, adding these things into your day, we stay busy, yeah I love podcasts, and audiobooks sometimes. One thing I love to do is when you’re on a roadtrip, driving for a few hours –

Oh yeah

Or listening to an audio book, especially fiction, you know that’s fun

Yeah

(I’m a) big fan of fiction as well, I don’t read it as much as I’d like to but erm, so yeah, I listen to a lot like business and marketing podcasts, erm…

Tim Farris podcast, it’s a good one, TED Talks, they have podcasts, I don’t listen to them as much as I used too but TED Talks are great for learners because they have all those tools, transcripts, all of these things that you need, and I try to limit my podcast library to just a few handful because, like we’re talking earlier,

you know you get that shiny object syndrome and you end up with 30 podcasts, 30 different shows that you can listen to when you end up not really listening to any of them so, kind of tying it back in, to what I was talking about earlier, it’s just looking for what you want to learn about and going there, focusing on that.

I’ll even go into podcasts libraries, podcasts and search topics, specific topics, or a specific person, if I wanna, maybe I read a book and I want to learn more about the author so I’ll type in the author and he’ll be on a bunch of different shows so I’ll listen to him from different perspectives, different shows using podcasts as a library is to search for different subjects

That’s a, that’s a really good tip actually! I haven’t thought of that, and in fact, in iTunes, it does kind of, it knows like which ones you’re listening to because I’ll go in and I’ll see that it hasn’t updated a podcast and iTunes is like: “Well, you haven’t listened to this podcast for weeks so we stopped.”

“We stopped updating it” so it’s kinda like you’re computer and internet is telling you like: “Look, you’re not listening to it so we’re not gonna update it for y

particular, erm recently, I’ve actually listened to it twice in the last couple of weeks which sounds a bit strange but -

Whoa! You have?

I want the lessons to go in so I’ve actually been focusing more on that particular book and it’s actually part of a course I was doing so I’ve been focusing more on listening to the course materials, so I’ve kind of taken a pause from podcasts to focus more on that cause again, you can’t do everything unfortunately, you have to choose – Yeah

Right

Yeah, but I like the idea of kind of reinforcing things, things that maybe you’ve read them, like cause I have read the physical books that I, in question…

So now I’m listening to it, and I’m getting different insights from it like every time I do that cause I kind of notice things that I didn’t notice while reading, and but while listening, they sort of, I don’t know, stand out more or –

Sure, yeah, and I think… I mean yeah, I’m a huge fan of listening and learning but what I think is important, one thing with audiobooks that I’ve noticed is, it’s easy to get distracted just like reading a book.

But it’s easier to just, you know, you’re reading, I’ve read – you’re reading the page of a book and then you turn the page and you’re like “Wait a minute, I didn’t even take in one word of that last page” So you go back and it’s the same thing with the audiobooks, podcasts…

You get distracted. Repeat that and listen again and then there’s no problem with that; and that’s the benefit too of audiobooks and podcasts.

Erm, is that you can just listen to them again while you’re working out or on the train, bus, whatever and I think that’s also something that’s hard to do because you will get distracted.

Audiobooks, you know, it’s hard to follow along all the time you see things when you’re out and about, you’re not just sitting at a desk, listening to the audiobook with your eyes closed you know.

Well, maybe – I don’t know! Well maybe that’s how you do it but erm, that’s not how I do it, so you know I deal, I like them – I do think they need to be repeated, I think that’s very important.

Yeah, no

Absolutely!

Yeah, I’ve been listening to while I’m cooking but then sometimes like, I’ll forget to kind of like look at my pots are like boiling over cause I’m like really focused on the audiobook so I, yeah, it’s true that, yeah but it’s definitely easier than standing in my kitchen with an actual book and you know

Some people do that, I don’t know, you see them in cars, buses, trains just reading in busy areas, I’ve never been able to do that

Okay, so yeah – at least with audio you kind of shut out all the sounds around you so maybe you’re more focused on what you’re listening to but it’s true that I really like,

I really like taking notes and writing stuff down so sometimes if it’s an audiobook it’s hard because I’m like: “Oh! I should, I need to write that!” – Right!

But I don’t have a pen because, you know I’m cooking, I’ve got like something else in my hand and yeah, so

So, that’s why I also like the physical book.

Do you use Audible or do you use a certain audiobook? App?

I’m considering getting a subscription to Audible but I’m not, it seems (whispers) expensive

it is pricey and I’m surprised they charge that much, like $15 a month. Basically, $15 a month gives you one book so you’re basically buying a book a month which I guess in a scheme of things, it isn’t that terrible.

They give you bonuses and stuff like that but yeah, I’ve done it before then cancelled. You know, they’ll give you benefits if you sign up for a 30-day and then you cancel, say : “Oh, try it for another month!”.

But the cool thing about it and you can do this on your phone anyways, you can stop the audio, put in a little quick note on that point audio and then it keeps track of your notes, so that that’s important you know, that’s important to do and that’s a good feature.

Oh, I need to erm… I think I need to try it, try it out and just see, just see how I go. I mean there was this other audiobook I was listening to, they were a bonus to a course I bought so I kind of got them for free essentially so yeah, but it’s better, there are also lots of free audiobooks, but I find it tends to be literature that’s erm, you know like, and its people reading.

People that are passionate about reading like not necessarily trained voice actors who are like gonna read out Jane Austen or something

So I’m not too sure, so that tends to be the free audiobooks, I’m not sure what the quality is like but – Kevin: Yeah, sure.

Well, they can be the Classics, there’s a term for those books, like I don’t know when they’re old classic books that are just open to the public that nobody needs to pay for legal term for that but yeah, that’s not.

What’s funny is, in Brazil, in Portuguese I used to – there was a couple of times where I bought a book in a bookstore or somebody gave me a book and said:

“Hey, read this” and it was, the book was set in the 1800s or something like that in Brazil and the language was very archaic and old. So then I would start asking questions: “How do you – what is this word here and how do you use this? Nobody said that in a hundred years!”

So then I put those away and I’m gonna stop wasting my time with classic literature if I’m trying to learn a language, those are not gonna help much

No, I think that’s a great way to kind of like double up – double up? And if you’re listening to a podcast, especially if it’s an interview podcast, you’re gonna really hear how people actually speak, how they interact…

Your English is really gonna develop a lot and you’re also gonna get the information that you’re looking for on the topic of interest, so for me that’s – double whammy of being, you know, real English plus information that’s useful so

Yeah, the mistakes we make, I make mistakes in English only maybe because I’m a teacher maybe I’ll be embarrassed about that but you know, who cares?

Nobody’s stopping me, saying: “Oh, you said that wrong., “You didn’t use the Past Perfect, or you didn’t use Present Perfect there…

“ Nobody ever says that and yes, sometimes I do say, erm … I do make grammar mistakes with verb tenses and stuff like that, that’s just normal and then your listeners second language happens as well –

Exactly, again – another reason not to stress about English

And that will do it for today. Did you learn anything new? Are you excited to keep learning about life, and how to become a better version of yourself? Awesome! Keep it up!

And about English, remember, confidence is key when trying to speak a foreign language fluently

If you think you need to boost your vocab, or perfect your grammar before you’ll become confident, you’re wrong! Reverse that. Work on confidence, and watch your English improve naturally.

Thanks so much for listening! Bye bye.