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020 - Waking Up with Purpose!

Hey there! Kevin here, with another episode of the Feel Good English Podcast. Today I have an awesome interview with Gabby Wallace, from Go Natural English. And we’re going to talk about a book that has changed her life, that is her being more productive, get the most value out of each day. This book is called, The Miracle Morning. We’re also going to talk a little bit about how Gabby got started with her website and YouTube channel, Go Natural English, which is helping over 100,000 English learners just like you around the world become more confident and competent English speakers.

We’re also going to talk a little bit about what she’s struggling with, what causes difficulties in her life and how she’s trying to overcome these; we all have struggles we deal with and depending on where we are at in life these change. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that as well.

Let’s get into the interview. I hope you enjoy! At the end of the interview, you will hear some phrases and vocabulary that was used during the interview that you might not know. I’ll explain that a little bit to you so you can learn some new stuff.

If you want the transcript to this interview, all you have to do is go to www.feelgoodenglish.com and you will see how you can become a feelgood member. It’s a great way to boost your English skills by reading while listening to these podcast episodes. So after the interview, go to www.feelgoodenglish.com to learn more about that, without wasting more of your time, let’s get into the interview.

Hey you all! Today I have a very special guest Gabby from Go Natural English. Most of you probably know who she is. Some of you maybe not yet, but you’re soon to know who she is. So welcome Gabby, welcome to the Feel Good English podcast, how are you doing?

Gabby: Hey Kevin it’s awesome to be here, I’m really happy to be here with you, to talk with you again and to meet your podcast audience. So hello Feel Good English listeners.

Kevin: Hey, hey! So Gabby tell us, where are you right now?

Gabby: I’m actually in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. A country that you’re familiar with, I believe.

Kevin: Yes, quite, quite familiar with. As far as, what do you do these days for English education? Are you online, are you still teaching? Or tell me, what are the projects that you got going on right now?

Gabby: Yeah, so Go Natural English started out as a YouTube channel in 2011 and if you go to the YouTube channel, you’ll see a lot of my face [laughter], and I’m still making those video. But now, in the last two years, I’ve been hiring help and that’s made a huge difference. It allowed me to work on different projects like, having a podcast, doing different things with the website, creating courses that are like premium paid courses, that I can offer some teaching and feedback to students with. And there are a few different things going on. So I mean, I would say if anyone is interested in seeing what I’m all about, just go to YouTube. That’s where it all started and it’s still going strong there.

Kevin: Your site is called Go Natural English, why Go Natural English, why did you call it this?

Gabby: That’s a pretty great question, because back in 2011, I was teaching English for adults at a corporation, so they were professionals, they’ve learned English for probably an average of 10 years, but they still had trouble having conversations, or like feeling confident when they spoke English or speaking fluently. So I wanted to help them to speak more naturally, meaning without hesitating, without using vocabulary that’s kind of strange that you only find in your text book, to help them to use phrases that native speakers use, so that these English students can be understanding and feel confident with their communication. So I chose the word natural and I think naturalenglish.com was taken so I thought okay, go-natural because it’s kind of an action word. Go! Right?

Kevin: Yeah, it is. It’s almost a choice. It’s like a choice to not worry about sounding correct and what your book told you to sound like, but to be yourself to go natural, which also could be disinterested to be to go naked, right?

Gabby: Yes, Yes! I get a lot of people making fun of the name for that.

And that was actually it’s, I don’t want to say like intentional, but I don’t mind if people think that’s funny. It’s like Yeah, I think you should have naked English. Not that you should be naked or not, that I should be naked, but like the idea of Naked English is kind of cool, because it means like just be yourself, like you said. I think that’s a perfect way of explaining it, like don’t try to dress up your English with too many academic words if you just want have a simple conversation at a bar.

Kevin: Sure, to be honest, I haven’t thought of that until now, so that just came to mind. But you know, be natural, be free. Be free with your English and you know, sometimes people are free with their clothing choices.

Gabby: Yeah, I didn’t … Naked English, that would really like stick in people’s minds.

Kevin: Hey, maybe we’ll see that website pops up the minutes, a couple of minutes. It might be an 18 an up website, but…

Gabby: Oh, Gosh! Oh yeah, I don’t want to be confused with that.

Kevin: Right, so moving on, what we do here on the Feel Good English podcast is; I talk about books and videos from Ted and life skills and business skills and you know, where the idea of helping people improve their life become happier, more fulfilled people and it could also be better a business and whatever. So today, you’re on here to talk about a book that has inspired your life, that’s made you a better person. And so let’s get into that Gabby, what book are we going to talk about today?

Gabby: Yeah well, a book that was recommended to me by my good friend named Willow, the book is called “The Miracle Morning” by Hal Elrod. It’s a short book. I think it took me just a few days to read, maybe one week to read, but I’m kind of a slow reader.

Kevin: Sure, but that’s great! Short books might be easier for English learners to get through too.

Gabby: I think it’s very approachable for an intermediate to advanced English learner. So probably your listeners, but wider. So do you want me to talk a little bit about it, like to summarize it a little bit?

Kevin: Yes, summarize; what is this book about? The Miracle Morning like tell us what’s the main Idea behind this book?

Gabby: Well, it’s really about time management. If that sounds boring, I want to reassure you that it’s not boring. The author talks about how he really transformed his life. He talks about how he went through some challenges, he was in a car accident, and he had to like really rebuild his entire life from scratch and he figured out that by waking up much earlier than the normal; earlier than most people. I think he suggests 5:00 AM that he could get things done, he could prioritize the things that he wanted to get done before other things or people or requests or problems happened during the rest of the day. So I really like this idea, it’s difficult to wake up early sometimes, but I’ve experimented with this and I really like it because, when I wake up early, that time feels like it’s just for me.

Because if I’m waking up at 5:00am, nobody is texting me on the phone, nobody is calling me, nobody is sending me messages, that’s time that I can use however I want. And so actually, the author recommends to do a few specific things. So he’s not just saying wakeup earlier, that’s not it, that’s just the beginning.

Kevin: Sure!

Gabby: It’s just to meditate, to do affirmations, which are, just to explain quickly the idea of an affirmation; it’s like to say something that is positive and encouraging to yourself. Like you can do this or like, I’m a great Portuguese speaker or something like that, because I’m learning Portuguese. So it’s a kind of affirm myself and my intention to be fluent in Portuguese for example. Also to do exercise, so even if it’s just 10 minutes, you must exercise. And to read, so again, even if it’s just a short time, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 20 minutes, read. And I think that part, especially the reading part could be helpful to English language learners. You can make your own Miracle Morning. Those, I believe that was, what 5 things I said, those parts are suggested by the author. But of course, you can add an additional part or if you really don’t want to meditate, you don’t have to, you could do something else, but he suggests that meditation, affirmations and visualizations which are kind of like meditation and affirmation, exercise and reading should be the key parts of your Miracle Morning. And that you should be able to fit all those things into 1 hour, which is tricky. I can’t say I’ve ever done all of that in one hour, but by doing each one of those things for a few minutes, it makes me feel really good at the beginning of the day.

Kevin: Sure! And it almost gets, it’s like the things that are very important reports for you to do, that you might try to do throughout your whole day meditation; mediation is something that I do and exercise and reading and I might try to say okay, I’m going to wake up, I’m going to meditate and then I’m going to drink coffee and then I’m going to do some work and then I’ll exercise latter, and then after lunch, I’ll read a book for a little bit. You know, it sounds great, but throughout the day as we all know, things happen you get distracted, other people need us for certain things and it’s very hard to stay on track. Even I find myself making a schedule for the day and it looks great on paper, but it’s hard to implement. So…

Gabby: Tell me about it, I’m not laughing at you; I’m laughing because I know the feeling.

Kevin: Yeah, and the other, sometimes I find it hard go to bed early enough to wake up early enough. And I think that’s what’s really difficult for me. Any tips on that? or any thoughts on how to kind of make sure that you’re getting enough sleep and able to wake up early?

Gabby: Yeah, so in my ideal world, I would go to bed at 9:00 PM, but I can’t do that because, everything social that I want to do is happening in the evening. And if I want to have friends or if I want to you know, have a social life, I’m usually going to be staying out later at night. Not super late, but I’m not going to be going to bed at 9:00 PM. So what I’ve started you know, trying to do is just take a nap in the middle of the day. And it works out kind of well because it’s especially hot here in Brazil in the middle the day. So like after lunch I’ll try to take a little nap and that usually helps.

Kevin: Sure!

Gabby: Kind of splitting my sleep like that, so I know for some people if you have a traditional job, it might not be you know, possible to go take a half an hour or an hour of nap in the middle of the day, but for me, that’s helping quite a bit.

Kevin: So you’re just kind of really adopting this to your life. I think the main point is, as long as you have an hour, kind of an hour before you need to go about your day, as far as work and stuff like that. I think that’s kind of the main objective right?

Gabby: Totally agree, totally agree! Try to wake up a little bit earlier, give yourself,’ Me Time’, as opposed to just enough time to take a shower, get dressed and run out the door! I think that’s you know, that’s a mistake I made for many years when I was working in a classroom as a teacher, I would just give myself the minimum amount of time to get to work and you know, be there in time to like prepare my lesson and be ready to teach and, I was never late, but I didn’t give myself any ‘Me’ time to do meditation, or affirmations or even exercise or reading stuff like that and it makes a big difference. It makes me feel so much better and it makes me feel like I’m moving forward with my personal goals and that I’m developing as a person. So I highly recommend this kind of practice to your listeners.

Kevin: Listeners, try this for one day, see how it changes the rest of your day. Just taking that little bit of time could have huge, a huge impact on your day. One question I ask my guests, when they are on the show you know; we all are trying to become better, we’re all trying to learn and grow and to become better, happier people, but we all have struggles. So Gabby, what is one thing in your life that you’re struggling with right now?

Gabby: Oh, that’s a good question, one thing I’m struggling with is, my to-do list. We mentioned this, I laughed a little bit when you said this, because like. I plan my day and I’m super ambitious so you know, I write down 30 things to do in one day. And you know, I don’t usually get to all of them. So I think the key is like finding a good balance and not trying to overdo, like my to-do list, not trying to pressure myself to accomplish too much in one day, but at the same time, to challenge myself to keep getting stuff done. So finding that balance. But I think that’s sort of a quick fix, I don’t know.

Kevin: Well, and so it’s so important. I found that too, and I think what happens if you have too big of a list, that’s you know, in the morning, you’re motivated you got your coffee, running through your blood and you’re like, let’s do this, and by the end of the day, you’ve only checked off half of the items and it makes you kind of feel discouraged, oh, I wasn’t as productive I needed to be, but we create our day you know, who said, who tells us how productive we need to be? So simplifying, doing less, focusing, Focus is a big word for me this year. Focusing our energies on a few things or even one thing that’s important and being able to get through that and that makes us feel good and I think it’s very important to feel good about what we’ve done that day. And being able to find the balance of how much I need to get done versus what I actually do is important. But it takes time, it takes experimentation right?

Gabby: Yeah, I actually tried something, I tried using smaller pieces of paper to make my to-do list. But then I just wrote smaller.

Kevin: Oh sure! Writing on the side of the paper and on the back of the paper?

Gabby: Yeah! So, I’d have to make them really small like fortune cookie message size, but then I just thought okay, Gabby, you just have a problem, just you know, just stop being like so overly ambitious and just write down maybe like two or three key things, like focus on one maybe at the most three things to get done for the day. Like your advice, focus.

Kevin: Just remind the listeners, where can they find you, where they can connect with you, if they want to talk with you or know more about you, where should they go?

Gabby: www.gonaturalenglish.com .

Kevin: Alright, in there they’ll find, pictures of naked people on the beach speaking English or…?

Gabby: [Laughter] Yeah, come see them!

Kevin: [Laughter] Wow, you’re going to get a huge boost in traffic after this.

Gabby: Oh, thank you! Maybe into for the wrong reasons, but no that’s where you can find my English lessons guys, come on check it out, Go Natural English, no naked people ,sorry!

Kevin: Gabby has great English resources so go there, go to Go Natural videos and courses and a lot of very, very beneficial effective stuff for your English learning. And anything else Gabby that we need to, that you’d want to share with our listeners?

Gabby: No, just that I’m really appreciative, I’m very happy that I could talk with you guys today! you and your audience I mean, and yeah, I look forward to talking again soon sometime. So thank you!

Kevin: Thank you! Super-duper thanks for coming on the show, we’ll talk soon!

Gabby: Bye for now!

The Vocabulary

So at 1:35 you hear Gabby say, “going strong” It’s still going strong; to go strong or usually we say going strong, it’s working well. That something is being successful, it’s still in full speed, it’s still working. My business is going strong, my studies are going strong; meaning you’re doing well, your business is doing well.

Opposite of that, maybe you would say, it’s not working, it’s not going very well, “going week”, we don’t really say. Don’t say going weak. So not going well would be the opposite of going strong.

At [03:05] three minutes and five seconds; Gabby says, “making fun of” making fun of the name. So making fun of the name go natural, which we refer to as possibly being naked. But anyway to make fun of something is to kind of joke about something, sometimes in a negative way you make fun of someone, it means you criticize them, or you mock them, you say bad things about this person, you joke about them.

A phrasal verb we hear is “to dress up” Gabby says dress up your English at around [03:30] three minutes and 30 seconds. And to dress up is to make look better. To kind of enhance. If you’re going to a party or a dance, you’d say, I’m going to dress up for this party, literally means to enhance your look. To make yourself look better. So to dress up your English means to make your English “look” better.

Great expression! At [05:40] five minutes and 40 seconds, Gabby says “rebuild his life from scratch” to rebuild his life to create his like again.

But what I want to focus on here is from scratch, scratch S-C-R-A-T-C-H just like if a cat scratched your arm, scratch. But doing something from scratch means from the beginning, from zero, we’re going to rebuild from scratch, we’re going to rebuild from zero, starting over. We use this with food a lot. If we’re going to make a cake from scratch, it means you’re going to make a cake starting from zero using all of the fresh raw basic ingredients. You’re not going to buy a box with cake mix and add water, and wala! You have a cake. You’re going to by the eggs and the flour and the sugar and the salt and all of that stuff, you’re going to use from scratch to make a cake.

And last one here, Gabby uses a verb overdo to overdo it, one word overdo; at around [12:20] 12 minutes and 20 seconds, she says “overdo my to do list” to overdo is just to do too much. When you add “over” as a prefix meaning you put in front of something, it means you’re doing too much. It’s excessive, to overdo; you’ve done too much. To over plan, your plan is too much and so it adds a negative connotation. To overheat, you got too hot, your car got too hot and it exploded! It overheated.

And that’ll do it for today’s Feel Good English episode. I hope you enjoyed my interview with Gabby Wallace. And what about you? Are you going to try to wake up a little earlier get some you time in the morning before you get busy and run off to work or school? Give yourself around an hour to focus on things that can really help you create a life that you want, and also create good energy for the day? Try it out! For me personally, it’s hard sometimes to get up early if I didn’t sleep enough, but we can create a routine, you know, start small try it one day. See what happens, do things that are important to you. Get those really important things, things that you feel good about doing, get those things done first thing and see how it impacts the rest of your day. Feeling more accomplished from the very start, okay?

Again, to get a transcript to this episode, go to www.feelgoodenglish.com and learn how to become a feel-good member. I’ll see over there, any questions, feel free to send an email kevin@feelgoodenglish.com. Until next time be great.

Talk soon!