ده چیز درباره ی من

066 - 10 Things about Me

Hello there, Kevin here with another episode of The feel Good English podcast, the only podcast in the world that is helping you become more fluent at English and more fluent at life.

Today I have a different type of episode for you. One thing that I am realizing through this podcast is that it gives me a very good way to have conversations with you out there listening to this. So wherever you are in the car, on the bus, taking a walk at school, on your lunch break, in prison, on a boat, flying over the ocean, traveling through space, we could communicate through audio. Pretty cool, eh?

Today I am going to give you 10 interesting points about me Kevin. You have been listening to me for maybe a few months, maybe a few days or maybe this is the first episode you have ever listened to. No problem so who am I? Who is the voice behind the Feel Good English Podcast? What am i about? Maybe this will help me become a little less mysterious to you.

Alright I am going to go through ten points that might be interesting to you. If you want a transcript to this and other feel good episodes, go to feelgoodenglish.com and learn how to become a member. Members can get transcripts to all past, present and future transcripts to the Feel Good English podcast.

Not only will it help you improve your English, but it will help me improve the Feel Good English podcast. And let us get into ten things about me.

Number one. Kevin how old are you? Well I am thirty six years old, I was About your podcast host born in 1979, October 23, so actually one week from this episode recording I will have a birthday and I will be thirty seven.

Sometimes I feel old, sometimes I feel young. Why do I feel old sometimes? Well I have traveled a lot, I have experienced a lot, I have read and learned a lot and my body sometimes is starting to tell me that I am feeling a little older, that I am getting a little older.

But I feel young sometimes too; I have no kids. I haven’t followed a career, I haven’t developed a career, I don’t have a house and I definitely still consider myself discovering my own path, my own life path.

I do this on a daily basis. Where am I going? What do I want to do? How do I want to live? When do I want to have kids? All these big life questions make me feel kind of young sometimes.

So who knows? Am I old, am I young? I guess I’m right in the middle. Thirty seven is pretty young still I would imagine, plus with technology we are all going to live to be two hundred years old, right?

Number two, I love, absolutely love connecting with foreign cultures and traveling to different and new countries, meeting people from different cultures and countries fascinates me.

I really love observing the similarities and the differences amongst humans.

People come from very different backgrounds, very different cultures, very different levels of economy. First world countries, so they say, third world countries.

However, I notice similarities between people and what they desire to have in their life and in the end I think people are looking for the same basic things like connection, connecting with others, feeling validated and loved other people validating them and making them feel like they are a worthy person in this world.

And I also think people really are looking for the freedom to be able to express their true selves.

So I love traveling. I haven’t traveled in a while. After living in Brazil for eight years I came back to the US, I have been here for about a year and a half. I haven’t really had the chance to get out and travel much but it will always be something to do in my future.

Number three, I have a degree in Psychology from a University in Colorado. Human behavior has always really interested me and especially how groups interact with each other; you could call it Social Psychology.

But after graduating with my first degree in Psychology, but you have to have these higher level degrees, these graduate degrees we call them, to practice as a Counselor Therapist or a Psychologist.

But I decided that I wanted to travel and live abroad before committing to a life is as a Psychologist. So after I graduated, I thought okay let me go live somewhere in the world, experience the culture, learn a language and I chose Brazil.

Well Brazil was on the top of the list, I said okay let us go to Brazil, if that doesn’t work out let us go somewhere else. Well Brazil worked out, thinking maybe I would go there one or two years, I ended up staying eight. So yeah, I obviously really enjoyed Brazil.

So obviously eight years took me on a whole different path. Now I am back in the US and I have a different mindset about all of this training and education I have. I really think coaching and mentoring can be very effective ways in changing people’s behavior more of this positive psychology approach is how to take people that want to improve where they are and improve their behavior and improve their emotions and feelings. So I’m more in this area now as opposed to helping people with deeper psychological issues; depression and these heavier aspects that are very valid but just things that I don’t want to work with right now.

Number four I have been married for about a year to my absolutely beautiful wife. She is amazing and makes me want to be a better person.

Number five, music is my life. Since I was young music has been my life.

My father is a big music fan and he would always play music very loudly growing up. He was into groups like Pink Floyd, The Beatles, Beach Boys and me growing up in the nineties as an American, I grew up with Grunge, Rock, Hip Hop, R&B then I got a little older in my twenties started listening to Jazz, Reggae, and Hippie music. Probably more like eighteen, nineteen, twenty.

And then that kind of evolved into is love of Electronic music which became more specific and I became a true fan of House music. Deep House music, Tech House music. And I still love all different types of music.

Number six, I was a professional DJ from 2000 to 2007. Mostly House music, Tech House music, Deep House music but I also would play Lounge, Trip Hop and actually I used to play a lot of Brazilian influenced music and that was one of the reasons I chose Brazil, because a lot the music that I listen to had Brazilian roots, so why not to go to the place that produces or at least inspires this music?

So I did. It turns out you don’t hear a lot of this classic and soulful Brazilian music in Brazil you usually hear the same American pop music that you hear all around the world; but you can feel the vibe of that music there for sure.

So I DJ’d in the US, I DJ’d in Europe, I DJ’d in Brazil. But around 2007 my interest changed, I didn’t want to continue committing to DJ’ing so I chose other things to do with my life.

I still absolutely love House music and express my love of House music through the music that you hear on The Feel Good English Podcast. I create all of the music you hear on this podcast; I use a tool right now called Garage Band and I make the bass lines, the keys, the instruments and put the beats together.

I put a lot of emotion into this music and I think emotion can really help us learn certain things faster. If you connect emotion with English learning, if you are connecting emotions with what you are learning in English, you will notice how these words and expressions and these things and these grammar rules even, connect with you faster because you’re putting emotion behind it. So I hope you’re going to feel emotion behind The Feel Good English music.

Number seven, my favorite all time artist is Stevie Wonder. I think he is genius, he has lived his whole life through music since he was born basically. Imagine somebody who has never been able to see anything in this world the way that he expresses himself is through music. Imagine how much feeling and emotion he has behind the music he makes and you can feel that through his music I think.

I saw Stevie Wonder in Rio in 2011 and I think it was Rock in Rio. One of the best shows in my life people, a hundred thousand people singing [Portugese 10:16] together with Stevie was pretty tear jerking.

Number eight, I love cats. Cats are cool, they are independent, they are graceful, kind of like I would like to be in life. I had a cat in Brazil, his name was Pasoca because he had the color of pasoca. If you are Brazilian you know what pasoca is.

Pasoca was a badass, he would go out all night causing trouble in the streets, getting in fights, meeting girls, going on dates and just basically being a badass.

And then in the morning he would be waiting outside my door quietly so I could let him in and then he would have breakfast or dinner, whatever you call it and then he would sleep all day and do it again the next night.

But after two years of this intense street life he disappeared; it happens.

But I think what he did is he caught a bus, he went down to the bus station, got a bus ticket and decided to move to some beach town. I didn’t live by the beach, so I think he wanted to live by the beach, he caught the bus went down, now he lives on some beautiful beach somewhere raising his badass cat family.

Number nine, I have two brothers, one is older one is younger I am in the middle and three step siblings. Siblings means brothers and sisters, step siblings are not related to me by blood, they were the children of the wife that my father married after he was married to my mother.

So two siblings, two brothers and three step siblings makes six of us. We all currently live in Colorado; I am the only one that has ever ventured off and lived in other states and countries. Out of all of these siblings I am the only one the one that has traveled. Crazy, right? I wonder why that is?

Finally number ten, this podcast that you’re listening to now is as much for me as it is for you. I was fortunate enough to be born in a country, the US, that speaks the most important language in the world and have taken it on as my responsibility to share my language with you.

It isn’t easy, many learners get stuck with feelings of inferiority and shyness when trying to use English in their professional careers, in academic situations, taking tests, all of that lack of confidence. And these are the kind of English learners I really like to help, people that are successful in other areas of their life careers and they work hard, they’re disciplined and they strive to become better and more successful in their life, whatever that means to them.

But with English, they lack confidence, they don’t feel comfortable in high pressure situations, like academic situations and professional business situations, presentations, conference calls, interviews; these are deeper psychological factors and we all have to work on these types of feelings in our life and these obstacles and challenge ourselves and get out of our comfort zone.

So the lessons I teach based on the books that I read and the Ted Talks that I watch are just as important for me to apply to my life as they are for you to apply to your life.

And if you’re trying to grow professionally and personally through these lessons, through what I teach, you are trying to apply this to your life, we are truly growing at the same time together.

So that’s it, ten things about me. I hope you found them interesting, I hope it is not too personal, I hope I didn’t freak you out at all.

But I am very happy you are here listening to this. I hope my podcast is helping you improve your English, improve your English listening, become more fluent, become more confident. But also I hope you are reading more and you are thinking about some of the lessons and ideas that I teach on this podcast and the trying to apply them to your life and experimenting with them.

This podcast isn’t just here to make you feel good with easy answers to big problems; this podcast is here to help you re-motivate yourself to work hard, to learn things deeply, to be curious about life, to apply lessons and experiment with them in your own life, because we don’t magically improve without hard work. Also this isn’t here to make you seem that you need to change in all of the different areas in your life.

If you need to be better in this and way better in that and improve there and you don’t have enough of this, I don’t want you to think this way. This is here to also make you more grateful with what you have; being happy with what you have will help you always have more.

Thanks for listening to this podcast and if you like it please share it with your friends and family, help them become more fluent. If you want to learn about some of the vocabulary that I used in this episode, you can go to feelgoodenglish.com/kevin and I will have a post there explaining some of the vocabulary that you might not know in this episode, okay?

Before I leave you, how about a quick joke about Americans? If someone speaks two languages you call them bilingual. If they speak more than two languages you call them multi lingual. But what do you call somebody who only speaks one language? Well, you call them American.

Thanks for listening and I will see you in the next episode of The Feel Good English Podcast.