تفسیر درس

The Dip - Commentary

Hello my VIP, and welcome to the commentary for The Dip.

Before I begin this commentary I want to talk about the name VIP. When I traveled recently to Europe and talked to and met some of our wonderful and fantastic members there, I found out that in some countries in the world VIP has a little bit of a negative feeling. People feel that a VIP is some big super rich person or some terrible government person or somebody who flies in private jets and stuff like that.

Well, that is not the case with our program. It’s also not the case in the United States, in fact, because I’m American so this term has different cultural feelings, it depends on the culture you’re in about what this term VIP means or feels to you. Apparently, in some countries it means someone who’s very elite or something, but in the United States that’s not the case.

In America we all like to pretend that we’re equal. We’re not, but there’s a kind of cultural rule that we all feel we’re equal to each other, so we don’t really have this idea of some super VIP. For us VIP just means ‘very important person’ that’s all it means, it’s the direct meaning. And you are a very important person. You’re a VIP if you choose to be one. You choose to be important. Nobody else gives that to you.

It’s not about how much money you make. It’s not about your job. It’s not about some status of some official in the government or something, all that is bullshit. It’s about feeling deep inside yourself that you are important, that your life is important. You are as important as any rich person, as any person in any government position, as anyone else in the world. Your life is just as important. Your success is just as important.

That’s what I mean when I say VIP, my VIP program, what that means to me is that you are my most important students. Not because you have money, not because of anything else but simply because you are the most motivated, because you care the most, not just about yourselves but about each other and because you are really good people.

You are a really good person. Get on our VIP social site and it’s obvious that is the case.

Luckily, I’ve been able to meet many of you in person and it certainly confirmed that, that’s why you’re a VIP and that’s why I use the term VIP. Forget any negative ideas you might have about it and realize yes, I am an important person. I’m just as important as anyone else. My life is important to me. My friends, my family, which are a part of my life, are important. No one is more important than I am. No one is less important either.

We’re going to have this same idea of, we’re equal. We’re all human beings on this planet Earth and we all need to really take care of ourselves and to view ourselves as important. The problem is not that some rich assholes think they’re super important and more important than other people. I don’t care about them. I don’t care what they think.

The problem is that there are actually people in the world who feel they are less important. They actually feel bad because they have less money or because their job position, social status, religion, gender or race, that for some reason they’re less important. They believe that and that’s the tragedy, that’s the bad thing. Those people are VIPs too they just don’t realize it.

Think of yourself as a very important person and think of everyone else in the world as very important too.

Now we’ll start the commentary, but that’s an important commentary too, very important.

In this lesson we talked about this idea of The Dip, that there is a big challenge that stands between being good at something, at anything and being great. That when you’re going and trying to be good at something usually the pattern is that you improve very quickly in the beginning, then you have a plateau where you don’t improve but you don’t get worse its kind of the same.

Then you start improving again some more and then a plateau and then improve some more and then a plateau, until you become good. A good tennis player, a good English speaker, a good English teacher, a good whatever, any skill this is the case. It’s also true of companies.

Companies can grow and grow and grow and become good. But what happens is we all reach this good point and when we reach that point of being good we have a decision.

At that point we have to decide, do I want to just continue being good and relax or, do I want to become great at this particular skill, thing or area of my life?

It is a choice. It’s an important choice and there’s not a right or wrong answer, because in some parts of your life, good will be good enough and in other parts of your life you want to be great. It really depends on what your purpose is in life.

What is your mission in life?

What are the most important values to you?

What are the most important things in your life?

If family is the most important thing in your life then you probably want to be great at that. You probably want to create a great family and great relationships, so you probably don’t want to just be good.

But in other areas of your life you might decide good is good enough. Let’s say you are an amateur tennis player, you really enjoy tennis and you do want to be good at it, so you rise and rise and improve to the level of good. But, you might decide that to go from good to great is just too much work. You don’t care about being some super incredible tennis player. You’re not trying to get to Wimbledon or anything, so you might decide I’m good enough. I don’t need to be a great tennis player, I enjoy it its fun, I’m good and that’s enough.

That’s fine we have to do this in our life. We cannot be super great at every single thing.

At least it’s not possible for most people. I don’t want to say it’s not possible but it requires a ton of energy and we all need priorities in life. We all have to choose what’s most and what’s less important, and it’s different for everyone.

I’ll give you another example from my own life. For me general core health, that feeling of energy and vitality, that I must be great at, so I am doing difficult things I’m pushing through that Dip. I’m really going all the way to have super health. That is not the same as super fitness. See, super fitness might be, let’s say with weight lifting. That might mean I would try to lift weights and become like a big bodybuilder lifting incredibly heavy weights, building big super strong muscles.

For me, that’s not important I don’t need to be a great strong man or something. I want to be strong enough to have good super health, but I can be super healthy without lifting 1000 pounds or something. I don’t need to be a super weight lifter. I need to just have enough strength so that I have good solid muscle mass, strong energy all day long and am generally very healthy. You can see how this works, right?

The first step, which I talked about in the video and I want to emphasize again, is that you have to be clear in your life about your priorities and you really need to consciously choose what things in your life need to be great for you. It might be three, four or five things. Might be just one thing, but you need to choose what those top priorities in your life are. For me health is a top priority.

Another top priority for me is contribution and teaching. This is my mission in life and obviously, you can see I’m not just focused on being an English teacher. I enjoy being an English teacher, but what I’m really passionate about is teaching about personal growth, learning, success, contribution and all the topics we have here in the VIP program.

So that’s my mission and purpose in life, I want to be great at it. Therefore, I’m willing to endure the extra difficulty, The Dip and the big challenge to go from good to great, which I’m enduring right now. I’m having a lot of struggles and challenges as I try to push Effortless English towards greatness. We’ve been good and trying to become great means we have to change a lot of things. It’s very uncomfortable for me, as a lot of things I mentioned in the video already.

But that is the process, so that’s why you have to decide do I want goodness or greatness? What areas of my life do I want greatness? When you choose those, the next thing you need to realize is there will be a Dip. You might be in The Dip already or it might be coming, but the point is that to go from being good at something to being great, you’re going to have a big challenge in between and that’s okay.

It’s kind of like a last test if you want to think spiritually. You could think of the Universe, God or your own unconscious is providing you with a final test to see if you’re worthy of being great in that area. So you’ll be challenged with a big test or, you could just see it as a natural re-building process that needs to happen, because being good at something is quite different than being great. Being great requires a much deeper level of learning, consistency and focus.

So however you want to think of it, one reason I’m telling you this and talking about this topic is that so many people get discouraged by that Dip and quit or go backwards, saying good is good enough; I want to be great but it’s too difficult so I’m not going to do it. They think this Dip will last forever and they think the discomfort will last forever, but it won’t.

It might be a big challenge and it might last for a while, maybe even up to a year, depending on what you’re learning and doing, it could be much shorter. But it’s going to be difficult, it’s going to challenge your faith and determination, because when you become good at something, let’s say English you’re a good English speaker and that feels good. It feels good to be good. It certainly feels good when you compare it to the beginning when you were bad.

But then, when you decide I want to be great, and you start pushing towards greatness, there’ll be a point where you’ll feel like oh my God, I feel like I’m getting worse. Oh my God this is terrible I feel really uncomfortable. For example, with your English let’s say you decide that I’m good but my pronunciation is not so good and that’s why I am not great, so you decide to start focusing on pronunciation constantly.

You listen and try to imitate and copy my pronunciation and you use movies to do that, you’re going to feel really bad for a while because, for probably a few months you’ll feel like you’re not getting better. You’ll feel like well, this is really different, I used to focus on just grammar and vocabulary, stories and stuff where it was easy and now I’m focusing on the pronunciation it feels more difficult, it’s uncomfortable, I feel like I’m not good anymore and all these emotional things will come up.

That’s normal. That’s what happens in The Dip. A lot of people will quit because of those uncomfortable emotions, but if you don’t quit if you just continue focusing on that pronunciation then after maybe four, five or six months, I don’t know exactly how long but after some time period, suddenly you’ll feel it. You’ll feel a change and suddenly, your pronunciation will get much better. It tends to happen quickly in The Dip. When you’re going between good to great it tends to be very tough for a while and then suddenly, it feels like everything starts working better. Then you start improving very fast.

So, with your pronunciation if that was what you’re focusing on, for example, you would feel really bad for a while. You’d feel horrible like nothing is improving at all, and then after a few months you would suddenly feel like oh my God, it’s getting better. Then it will start getting better, better, better very fast where people start noticing and telling you wow, your pronunciation is much better.

This is also true for all parts of English. If you’re focusing on mini-story’s and answering them faster, just learning as deeply as I can and repeating these lessons every single day for one, two hours or more as much as I can really intensely, here’s what’s going to happen again.

For a while it’s going to feel really tough, because you’re going to be doing all this extra time, focus, effort and energy and it’ll feel like nothing is happening. Again, all those negative emotions will come up. The doubt will come up. Oh, maybe this isn’t working.

Maybe this doesn’t work. Maybe this system is not good, I’m going to go back and study grammar again.

Then you’ll have impatience, you’ll say why am I not getting better? All these emotions will come up during this Dip, this period and a lot of people quit at that point because it’s very uncomfortable, so they go back to what they were doing before and they never become great.

But, when you continue, keep pushing and push through that Dip, again, same thing.

Suddenly, something is going to happen and your English will start becoming more and more automatic. You’ll feel it happening suddenly and then your improvement is going to get faster, faster, faster very quickly.

This is true of anything in your life, it’s not just English. It’s true of health, of relationships and like I said it’s true of whole companies or organizations. It can be true of whole families, so the key thing here is that once you decide to become great just be ready for it.

Be ready for that Dip and when you’re really focused on trying things different, doing everything differently and everything seems uncomfortable, be ready for those negative emotions to come up, because they will, and see those negative emotions and realize.

Say to yourself okay, I’m feeling frustrated, upset, doubtful and uncomfortable, that’s okay this is normal. This is a normal part of The Dip but I’m not going to quit I’ll keep going. It’s going to get better.

Just keep listening to this commentary, to this lesson if you need to, because after a few months, whether three, six, nine or ten but after a while you will feel a sudden big change, a big improvement and once that happens, after that your improvement will be very quick.

That’s my message to you. That’s my encouragement to you as you move towards greatness in whatever area of your life you want to.

So the homework I’d like to mention is again, get on the VIP site and tell us about the areas of your life where you want to be great. It should only be a few, one to five maximum, but it’s probably helpful to focus on just one, two or three areas of your life in the beginning where you want to be great. Where you’re not great yet, but you want to be great, tell us what those areas are and tell us about the challenge you’re facing. Tell us about that Dip that you must get passed.

Have a great day, a great month and remember, you are a VIP. You are a very important person and, in fact, we all are.

I’ll see you again soon. Bye-bye.