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The Code VIP – Audio

Hello VIP and welcome to this month’s lesson. Now, this month’s lesson is very important and it’s central to our special program, this special group of people to which you belong, the VIP Program, the Effortless English VIPs. The topic this month is ‘The Code’, the code of the VIP Program.

Now, I did a little bit of a talk about this in another video when I was trying to promote the program, but I want to talk about it in more detail because this code is really about more than just our program. It’s really a great way to approach life and it’s really a great way to run any organization. So let’s review our VIP Code, talk about each piece of it in detail and then talk about how you can use it in all parts of your life not just our VIP Program.

So our code, what’s our code again? What’s the code that we all live by in the VIP Program? Our code is:

We do our best.

We do the right thing.

We show each other we care; we show other people that we care.

That’s it. Those are our big rules. That’s it, just three. So it’s a very powerful code and I want to talk about each piece of it, why each piece is the way it is, why the whole thing is important and why it works so powerfully.

So let’s talk about number one, we do our best. What does that mean? Well, a lot of people have different ideas about this so I want to be straight and clear about it. When I say we do our best, most of all it means we do not sweat the mistakes. Now, ‘to sweat’ something, it’s a little bit of an idiom. When you sweat something it means that you worry about it. You’re worrying and it causes you to sweat because you’re so nervous about it. We don’t do that. We don’t worry about mistakes.

We’re all going to make mistakes, no problem. This is especially true of our English writing or speaking and this includes me. Sometimes I write a post on our VIP Site and I’m writing it very quickly and I’ll have a mistake. If I see it I’ll correct it. If I don’t see it and I publish it sometimes I leave it because I just want you to see that hey, AJ makes mistakes too when he writes. We all do, so we’re not going to sweat mistakes. We’re not going to focus on mistakes. We’re not going to get all nervous and worried about them.

We’re just going to do our best and doing our best means we focus on constantly and never-endingly improving.

I’ve talked about this in other lessons; constant and never-ending improvement, improvement not perfection. We’ll never be perfect, but we can all improve. So the whole focus of our program is improvement not perfection. So if you make a mistake okay, fine. Oh, I made a mistake. Learn from it. Keep going. Part of this means we never correct other people’s mistakes and I never do it. If I see an English mistake in something you’ve written I will never correct it. I’ll never correct spelling or grammar or anything like that.

There’s research that shows that doesn’t work anyway. It doesn’t really help. You’ll hear it and then you forget and it doesn’t really change the way you write or speak, but also it just gets you into a very negative focus which I don’t like. Instead, what I will do is I will model correctness.

So when I write you get to see standard correct English. Yeah, I might make a mistake every once in a while, but most of the time when I’m writing something it’s very standard correct English. So I’m modeling what’s positive. I’m modeling what’s correct rather than focusing on correcting your mistakes or pointing them out. We don’t want to point out mistakes. We don’t do that with each other. Instead, model correctness, model improvement. Show other people. That’s how you lead. That’s how we lead in the program.

Then, finally, maybe the biggest one is that we’re going to focus on our positive dreams and goals. That’s part of doing our best too. We’re not going to focus on complaining about all the things that are wrong in our life. Yes, I know we all have problems. Some people have very big problems. Some people have tragedies happening in their life and I’m sure that most of their friends and in most parts of their life they can talk about those endlessly and everybody will be very sympathetic.

Well, this is not the place for that. There are other places for that. Here we’re going to focus on our positive dreams and our positive goals because we don’t get enough of that in our lives. Most people are happy to hear you complain and complain about all the problems in your life, but when you start talking about your big dreams and your big ideas and your big goals a lot of people don’t want to hear it and they oh, ah, or they’re negative and they say oh, you’ll never do that. That’s crazy. So we want to be the opposite and part of doing our best is focusing on our positive goals, our positive dreams and sharing those with each other.

Part number two of the code is we do the right thing. Now, again, people have different ideas about that so let me tell you what that means for our VIP Program. Number one, it means we do not insult each other. We do not insult and blame each other. We don’t attack each other. Especially because we’re an international extremely diverse group, this means we do not promote nationalism. We do not criticize other people’s countries or cultures or societies or promote ours as somehow better or the best.

We do not do that with gender. So that means we recognize that men and women are equal, not the same but equal. If you can’t handle that you’re in the wrong place, go join another group. That’s the same for sexual orientation. If you’re a homophobic and you can’t handle being around gay people then you’re in the wrong group, sorry, because we tolerate that and we’re open to that completely.

It’s the same with religion. It means we’re not promoting our own religion as superior and we’re not attacking or criticizing or putting down or saying bad things about other people’s religion or about non-religion. Some people aren’t religious at all. Some people are agnostic, meaning they’re kind of I’m not sure, they don’t know. Some people are atheists, there’s not a God, no, no, no. You know fine, whatever. We’re not a religious group, so this is not the place to be attacking other religions or promoting your own.

That’s part of doing the right thing. It means making sure that everyone feels welcome.

Part of doing the right thing too is just being honest and good and kind and friendly to everybody and respecting everyone else in the group. Very important; do the right thing.

Number three, we show each other that we care. We show other people that we care.

Now, part of that means we are not trying to be devil’s advocates because I see this on so many online forums, online groups. A ‘devil’s advocate’ is someone who just always argues the opposite point. It doesn’t matter what you say they will argue the opposite point. They just like arguing because they get attention from it or it makes them feel like they’re intellectual. I don’t know why they do it. I don’t like that behavior and we don’t tolerate that behavior in our VIP Program. That does not show other people we care, it’s quite the opposite.

So a lot of arguing and trying to be argumentative all the time, some people seem to think that means they’re really intellectual. Well, sorry, we don’t do that. Do that with other people, do that in other groups if you want to, this is not the place for it. Instead, what we do is we give positive sincere compliments and we encourage each other, a lot of positive communication, a lot of complimenting. This can be summed up with the phrase ‘catch other people doing something right’.

Most people are trying to find what other people are doing wrong or what they disagree with or what they don’t like. I want you to do the opposite. Focus on what you do like.

Focus on what you agree with. Focus on what people are doing that’s great and wonderful and tell them oh, that’s great. That’s wonderful. Encourage them so that they continue growing. We want to help each other feel more confident. If someone is feeling a little down, a little tired, a little discourage, we’re going to give them more energy and more encouragement and build up their confidence.

So, part three, we show other people that we care. We show each other that we care. It means we’re trying to make each other stronger not weaker. We’re trying to make each other feel better, happier, more confident. If you want to do other things do it in other groups, but here that’s our purpose and that’s what we’re going to do.

All right, why? Why just these three? Well, unfortunately, in most organizations they have these long lists of rules. You remember school? The teacher had all these rules.

You know don’t chew gum. Don’t talk when other people are talking. You know raise your hand to do this. There was like 100 different rules and so the kids are always breaking the rules, there are just so many. In companies there are so many. They have all manuals, like hundreds of pages of standard procedures.

Here’s a kind of basic principle, basic rule. The more rules there are the less likely people are to follow them, right? The less likely they are to be followed. Every time you add another rule it’s less likely people will actually remember it and follow it. Also, the more limiting and specific the rule is the more likely it is to be broken. So I don’t like rules really at all. I like principles and this code is really a set of three principles.

Here’s what happens in most organizations and this includes families, this includes schools, classes, everything, is that the teachers, the parent or whoever, they’re always trying to make a new rule for every specific possible situation. So if somebody is chewing gum, oh, you cannot chew gum and then if someone does something else that they don’t like, oh, now that’s another rule.

These rules just keep being added endlessly and then the people start feeling like they’re being controlled. They don’t even remember all the rules and then the teacher or the parent or the leader of the organization gets stressed out trying to enforce all these rules and the whole tone, the whole focus of the organization becomes very negative.

Don’t do this. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.

Here you’ll notice that these are positive, first of all, they’re not negative, right? We do our best. We do the right thing. We show each other we care. This is what you should do, the positive things we want you to do not the negative things to avoid. By doing only three everybody can remember them, it’s very clear and it creates a whole culture in our organization that’s super positive, super powerful and you’ve noticed that if you’ve been on our social site, because it’s an amazing group of people and it’s an amazing organization and I love it.

So let me just summarize all of this. We do our best. We do the right thing. We show each other that we care. That’s a code you can use in any group. Why not make this your family code. Teach it to your kids. Why not do it at your job. Why not do it in your own company, if you have your own company, any organization.

Just three basic things, I think you’ll find it’s very powerful. Go ahead, use it. Steal it. I stole it. I didn’t make this up. I got it from a guy named Keith Cunningham. You can use it now too. Use it in your family. Use it in your life, anywhere. Get rid of all of the tons of rules and just have these three and then tell us about your experience.

All right, that’s it. That is the code of the VIP Program. I’ll see you again soon, bye-bye.