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Community - VIP Commentary

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to the commentary for our community lesson, our true community lesson. So, I’m sure that you agree that this is a great noble idea, I think most people do, you know have deeper connections and things like that, build a more true community, more true friends, deeper friendships, deeper connections, etc.

In the commentary I want to talk about doing this specifically with our program here. Of course, I encourage you to go do this in your own life too. If these ideas are helpful to you great, use them in your personal life, I certainly do, but let’s talk really more in a very practical way about this program. First of all, I just want to talk about my own idea about this program and what I want it to be and what I don’t want it to be.

I don’t want it to be just a network based on English. You know that our only connection I that I’m an English teacher and you’re learning English and you want to improve your speaking. I mean, honestly, there are lots and lots of websites, textbooks, CDs and other things you can get if that’s all you want. If you just want that, you just want to increase your test score in English and that’s all you care about then this is not the program for you and you probably should not continue because you’re just wasting your money really.

You could probably find something else, but if you’re wanting something deeper and I’m sure you do, most people who join this program and stay in it want something more than that. I mean that’s the reason, for example, that each month I choose topics that I hope will be inspirational or motivational or have some deeper meaning. I mean I could just talk about you know normal textbook topics – Going to a restaurant, okay. Hello, how are you? Yes, I would like the salmon.

You’ve already studied this I’m sure and if you haven’t any textbook out there will teach you that stuff. The whole point of this program is to, number one, think more deeply and to think about why you’re learning English. I mean what is the reason for it. English is just a tool. It’s just a language. Right now it happens to be the main global language, so it’s a tool for connecting to people around the world and so how I see it is as a tool for building international community.

This is always a noble idea we talk about. You know international community, the global community, you see this in the newspaper sometimes, but it’s not really a real community. They’re usually just talking about tourism or something, but I’m talking about a true, real international community. I mean true, deep friendships of people that really care about each other from different countries, different cultures and I think that’s very, very, very valuable.

I’ve found it very valuable in my own life having these connections with people because you learn a lot about yourself when you connect with people in other cultures and countries and they learn about you and they learn about themselves. It’s very powerful and positive. So that’s what I want to accomplish in this. I want, number one, us to focus on very motivational meaningful topics so that when we’re discussing things together we’re not just talking about small talk. ‘Small talk’ is like talking about the weather and little things like that. You can learn that English on your own and you don’t really need to focus on it very much. You’ve probably already learned it I’m sure.

So what I want to do is to focus on things that are deeper so that we can connect at a deeper level and also when you travel, when you meet people from other countries, you can have more serious, deep, interesting, fascinating conversations. You don’t just need to talk about well, yeah, I’m from Italy and the food is good. You can really talk about things that are a little more meaningful, deep, interesting and that will help you to connect with other people.

Then within our community here, the actual membership program, I want us to start connecting at a deeper level and to see each other not as just English learners or, in my case, English teacher, but to get to know each other more as individual people, as whole people. So that’s the first step I talked about, connecting at a whole-person level, connecting in multiple ways.

This is why I’m always pushing you to go to our member site and share your ideas, share your experiences. Number one, yes, for English it’s great. It gives you a little practice. It helps you be less shy. It helps you think about the topic for that month more deeply, but most importantly it helps you to connect with the other members. It helps us know you as a real person not just as someone who’s studying English, right?

We get to know maybe a little bit about your family. What are your dreams? What are your goals? What are your values? What’s important to you? What’s most meaningful to you in life? What are your big achievements? What are the failures you’ve had? In what ways have you suffered and struggled? In what ways have you been happy and had a great time?

See, the more we learn about that then you become a real person and we really connect. That’s how true friendships form. That’s how we create this very strong community and because it’s a community based on very positive things we make each other stronger. We help each other have more success in our life, more happiness, because we’re always encouraging and influencing each other in very positive ways.

That’s my like big dream for this group and I’m happy to say that it has happened. Not with every single member, but in certain places, in certain situations it has happened.

For example, we have a very strong group in Europe; especially I’d say Western Europe. France, Germany, Italy, Spain, I would say that’s probably the strongest region where we have some very, very, very, very active members and these are members who are really sharing and connecting at a level much deeper than just English. Some of our members have actually visited each other in other cities. They’ve gone on group trips together where they’ve traveled to another country together and gotten to know each other. They’ve hosted each other at their houses, cooked for each other and introduced their husbands and wives so they’ve really formed some very unique, positive, strong friendships.

I’ll let them tell you the benefits of that and why that has been important and meaningful to them. Get on our member site and talk to them. You probably know some of them, Gloria, Vanna. Charlie is one. Shre is one. I could go on and on and on. These are the people – Julia – that call into our teleseminars and talk to each other. They’re getting to know each other more and more deeply. So your role, the best way to do this, is to share more of who you are on our site.

Some people will kind of be a little bit safe and they’ll write on our site, but they don’t write anything personal. It’s just kind of, I don’t know, just very general information with no emotion. They’re not really talking about their own ideas or feelings or thoughts or life or anything. That’s okay if you’re just trying to practice English, but you’re not going to make many connections that way. So I really encourage you each month when I ask you to write about something, think about something, share something, I encourage you to do it because that’s how we’ll build this community stronger. You’ll have a lot of benefits by doing that. So share who you are as a person not just as a student.

Another way I’d like to encourage this is to start building a kind of group participation.

This is one of the reasons why I don’t always answer questions on our site. A lot of times I’ll wait and I let other members answer the questions because I don’t want this idea like everyone is just waiting for AJ to give answers all the time so that it’s this unequal thing. We’re a community and many of our members give better answers than I can. They’ve done it, you know. They’ve had the struggle. They’re learning English as another language. It’s easy for me I learned it as a baby.

They’ve had the struggles, they’ve had difficulties, so they can often give you better advice than I can and so that’s one reason I want to encourage a participation. So when someone asks a question, if you have an idea or a thought share it. Help them.

Encourage them. Give them your answer and, also, don’t just wait for me and look to me all the time for the answer. Realize that many of these other members have fantastic ideas, that they are very successful and ask them. Look to them for answers.

One thing I’d love to do along these same lines is to have a live event just for our members, members and friends and family. Now, we did this a little bit in Barcelona. I came and I did a demonstration lesson and I taught a mini story live. It’s much more fun live because you get to create the story with me and we’re jumping and doing lots of actions. It’s a lot more fun and we had a great time, but really when I think about that event it wasn’t really the classroom, for me at least.

That classroom part was the least important. I had a good time. It was fun, but the part I enjoyed the most was we went out to dinner a few times. We went to the seaside and went walking. Gloria who was our host in Barcelona was fantastic. I got to visit her home, meet her family, you know all those really personal connections where we were walking around, eating together. I got to meet people as real people and connect more as real people not just English teacher and English student. I started to know them as real people and they got to know me as a real person, which is great.

I want to encourage that, so in the future I would like to do more of a convention-style of event. A seminar style, that’s usually me on a stage you know doing my little thing performing and it’s kind of one way, me performing for the big group. I do that a lot. I’ll tour Asia and I’ll do that a lot. That’s good for maybe people who don’t know me so well, even people who do know me, but who aren’t in such a close group and community like this. For our community I would like to do more of a convention style, meaning that our members are the one running the activities. Our members are the ones organizing things.

So maybe we get together for a weekend and I’ll certainly do a little class or something, but also maybe Julia from Italy will do a fun social activity and Gloria will organize some kind of activity and maybe Charlie will do some kind of demonstration or activity or whoever. The different members will participate and plan so that it’s our whole group doing things together and it doesn’t always have to be focused on just English lessons.

It could be more social, more about connection.

So that’s what I would like to do and finally, of course, I would like our members to share when they’re having a tough time in their life and to help other members who are having a tough time. One example of this is when Vanna’s husband died. You never know what to say or how to help in that situation, but still we found out. Gloria told us about this information and everyone wrote some very nice things just to encourage her. There’s not much we can do, but just showing up, just saying we’re thinking about you, that’s important.

So if you’re having a tough time, whether it’s with English or life, you don’t have to keep it a secret. Tell us about it. If you’re doing great and someone else writes about having a tough time, give them encouragement. Give them support. Give them help. We can all do that for each other and in this way we really make this a strong true community not just an English club.

So that’s it, that’s our homework. I just want you to share more of who you are as a real person. Share more of your real ideas, your real emotions, your real experiences, and support each other. That’s it, very simple, very basic, very human. That’s your homework.

All right, I’ll see you on our site and I look forward to getting to know you more as a person. Hopefully, I can meet you in person some day.

All right, until then, bye-bye.