درسنامه اصلی

The Dip - Audio

Hello VIPs, this is A.J. and it’s time for our lesson this month. This one is very interesting it’s called The Dip, which I’ll explain in a minute. It’s an idea I got from Seth Godin, one of my favorite business writers. He’s a real creative guy, not a normal boring business guy.

Let me just talk about the vocabulary first…A Dip is a drop. This is the normal meaning of the word, there are some other meanings, but a Dip is let’s just imagine something is going steady and then there’s a sudden drop that we call a Dip. It’s also a verb with other meanings, but that’s what we’re focusing on in this lesson a Dip, which is a drop.

What the hell are we talking about? What I’m talking about is this. Set Godin talks about this idea of The Dip and, in fact, I think he has a book called The Dip. Here’s the idea.

The idea is that between good and great there is a Dip, that this is normal. This is the normal situation, the normal way that businesses, people and everything progress.

Let’s imagine, if we can have a graph that you’re starting something new, let’s say English. In the beginning you’re terrible and you don’t know anything and then you start getting better, better, better, better especially if you’re using Learn Real English or Effortless English. So you keep going and going and eventually what happens is you’re gradually improving and you have plateau’s which we’ve talked about where it seems like nothing is happening. Then you go up again and eventually you reach a point where you’re good, maybe even very good.

Maybe you’re at that point now. But, a lot of people reach that point of very good. Some people just stop there and that’s okay if you don’t care about becoming great at something it’s fine, we don’t have to be great at everything we do. Let’s say you do want to be great.

Here’s what Seth Godin is talking about. He says that to go from this point, good, up to great, first you have to go through a Dip where you actually will feel like you’re getting worse. In fact, you actually will get worse. Your abilities will go down. Your confidence will go down. Everything will get worse for a while and then if you don’t quit you’ll shoot back up and then you will become great, a master at whatever it is.

I knew about this idea for a while and didn’t really think much about it, but recently in my life I’ve realized that this is absolutely true. I can look at parts of my life and especially recently in my life where I’m trying to go from good or very good up to great and guess what’s happening? I seem to be getting worse. Everything seems to be getting worse.

This Dip is happening and a lot of you may face this now or in the future with your English or with other parts of your life. So I want to talk about this and talk about why it happens and how you can get through that Dip and get to great.

Let’s first talk about this idea of why it happens. What typically happens is, to go from nothing up to good or very good, it may take us some time, we might have plateaus where we’re kind of flat and then go up again, but generally it’s fairly clear. When you’re a beginner it’s easy to get better because you’re already terrible, but here’s what happens.

Eventually you reach a point where you hit a limit where, if you keep doing the same things that made you good they’re not going to take you any farther, you’re just not going to get farther. Let’s imagine, for example, English. You use traditional methods of English; grammar, textbooks, conversation partners, all that stuff you’ve probably tried many times. Maybe after years and years and years of doing that, it was painful and difficult but maybe you became good at English.

I mean, you could certainly read English fairly well. Just to sign up for Effortless English you had to read my website and understand it. You had to watch my videos and understand them, so you were okay, maybe a little bit good. I know maybe you felt like your speaking wasn’t great or maybe even not good, but you did get better from zero up to a certain point but then what happened?

You seemed like you couldn’t go any farther. It doesn’t matter, how much more you studied grammar rules your grammar never seemed to improve when you were speaking. It didn’t seem to matter. You could keep studying more and more vocabulary lists yet, when you’re actually speaking in conversations you’d forget them and you could never use them.

You felt stuck. You’re like ah what do I do I’m not getting better, I’m trying these methods my teacher’s told me to use and I’m stuck, they’re not working. Then you made a decision. I know, because you’re a VIP member that you made this decision, you said I want to be great not just good or mediocre or so-so. You decided, I’m going to try this crazy Effortless English thing.

Now, in the beginning you may have felt like you got worse, because suddenly you had to change everything. No more grammar books. No more vocabulary lists. Suddenly, you’re learning things in a very different and strange way, totally different, focusing on listening. Listening to all these crazy stories and probably in the beginning it felt very uncomfortable and strange. You may have even felt that your ability or at least your confidence actually went down.

Because suddenly you’re changing everything and your brains is having to learn all this new stuff and while it’s learning all this new stuff you’re going to get some hesitation.

Maybe it’s going to cause some difficulty and that’s The Dip.

But then if you stick with it, three months, five months, six months, eight months, ten months, twelve months– somewhere in that range– everyone’s different. What you found is that there was a moment where it started to work. Suddenly, all this new stuff you’re doing started to work, you started to get better and then your ability started going up. Now you’re on your way to greatness.

This happens in golf. A lot of golfers, professional high level golfers do this. They get very good and they want to be great. They’re swinging, they have a certain way that they swing their golf club, but they reach a point where they’re not getting any better and their coach will tell them. They will realize I have to change my swing to become great. To go from where I am now, which is very good, and to become great I have to change everything because I can’t go any farther like this.

So, they’ll start changing the way they stand, the way they hold the golf club, the way they swing it and guess what happens? For a while they get worse. Their scores get worse. They feel really uncomfortable and strange. Everything seems to get worse, they’re not even good anymore and sometimes they become bad. This happens in so many areas, but here’s the danger.

A lot of people quit at that point. They say oh, this is terrible. I’m worse than I was before and they quit and just go back to the old way of doing things. They stay stuck forever.

They never become great. A lot of people do this with English, as you know right, they get stuck and maybe they try something new, maybe even Effortless English, this does happen with some people.

They tried for a month, they feel oh this is strange, these stories are weird or oh, I’m not comfortable and then they just say no and they go back and start studying grammar rules again. Those people probably don’t ever get much better. They’re probably stuck forever. This happens to so many people and this is the BIG danger.

The other danger, the other thing people do is they become very good or even just a little bit good and they’re kind of just comfortable. They don’t want to take a chance anymore, because when you become good it feels comfortable, you don’t feel like a beginner anymore. When you’re a beginner you feel kind of uncomfortable, it’s not a great feeling sometimes, but when you become good or okay, then you feel more comfortable and suddenly, you can lose your motivation to keep improving.

This also happens to a lot of people. They don’t want to go through that Dip. They don’t even try it. They see and realize that if they change things it could get worse there’s a risk, so they just don’t take the risk. So they stay stuck forever.

So, what I want you to do is think about this in your own life.

For one thing, what I would like you to do is identify the parts of your life where you do want to be great. It’s not necessary to be great at everything. I like lifting weights a little bit just for health and fitness, but I don’t care to become super great with huge muscles like some big bodybuilder. I’m just not interested in that. I don’t care about it, so I don’t care about being a great power lifter or something.

It’s not important to me and that’s fine; however, there are areas of my life where I do want to be great and in those areas one is general health, energy and vitality. I want to be great I don’t want good health. I want great health. I want super health. So, in fact, just recently in my life I went through this Dip, because last year I decided okay my health is good, it’s pretty good compared to most Americans but it’s not great and I want great, so I had to change everything.

Change all the foods I was eating. Change the way I exercised. Change it all, and for a while it was really difficult it was a struggle to not go back to the old way. It felt strange, I’m eating all these new things and I’m not quite sure, is this helping me? One thing that happens when you become really healthy, especially when you start eating really healthy is that your body can detoxify.

This means it starts to get the poisons out of your body that have been there a long time and it will start to release them. That feels like you’re getting sick, so you’re like I’m eating better right, I’m thinking I’m eating better, I’m doing better but I feel like I’m getting sick and getting worse, what’s happening?

That’s the danger point where a lot of people will go back, it’s not working, and they’ll go back to the old way and just be okay or a little bit good.

So I went through some of that, Tamoi did too, and still going through some of that, but now I’m starting to feel like I’m going towards super health, going towards something really-really great a high level. I’ve gone through that Dip and now I’m on the way back up and I feel fantastic and it’s great. But, it was tough going through that Dip point and not easy.

Another area happening in my own life is with Effortless English. I feel that Effortless English has been quite good, very good for the last several years. However, I want Effortless English to be great and when I say great I mean I want us to change education, to change the whole idea of education and learning around the world. Right now people have this idea that education is something that happens when you’re young, which is bullshit, not true!

My best learning in life has all come as an adult after I left school, outside of school and yet, a lot of people are stuck with this idea that learning happens in school, where in fact, the best learning happens outside of school. Also, it was part of our mission to be great with Effortless English, I want to get this idea out and to change the way people think about learning.

When you’re a little kid learning is fantastic! You’re curious, you’re fun it’s amazing, kids love to learn and they’re so excited and passionate about it. What happens as older children? In school, people begin to think that learning is something that’s boring, something that’s passive where you sit at a desk while you do it and that’s not really learning in my opinion, but that’s the idea of education.

I want to change all of that. To change all of that and have a big affect all over the world, we have to make Effortless English great. So just recently, and right at this moment we’re changing everything. We’re re-designing our website. We’re changing our emails.

We’re doing different videos. We’re changing everything and it’s caused some problems.

Our sales are down, we’re having all kinds of other problems, the website has been crashing and it’s been stressing me out. I’ve been really stressed and it’s not comfortable, whereas I was really comfortable before. We had our whole system going everything was very smooth with no problems. It was pretty easy and simple. Now that we’re changing everything all kinds of problems are happening. We’re in The Dip. We’re not coming up yet though, we’re in the part where we’re going down and it’s very stressful and difficult.

So again though, I’m not going to quit. I know I have to get through this so that we can get back to going up again and eventually we’ll shoot up and become great.

So all you need to do, this is your homework for this month and I’ll talk more about it in the commentary, but I want you to think about this in your life.

Where do you want to become great?

I also want you to think about where in your life are you good and comfortable?

Your relationships

Health

Job/career

English, whatever

Think about that.

Where are you good and comfortable?

And because you’re comfortable you’re not really trying much anymore. You’re not taking chances. You’re not pushing. In which of those areas do you truly want to be great? What do you need to do to go into that Dip? What do you totally need to change?

Because to go from good to great you have to change everything and everything you thought was right you have to change and rethink it again.

That’s what I want you to do is identify one or two areas in your life that you want to be great in and I want you to really think about totally changing everything in that part of your life to make it better. And, to realize that when you do that, when you start that, it is going to feel really uncomfortable. It is going to feel like you’re getting worse and you probably will get worse for a while, but be persistent and don’t stop, because eventually you will make that turn and you’ll shoot up to greatness.

When you do, share your experiences on our site of course. If you’re struggling, if you’re in The Dip and having problems, share that on our site and we’ll cheer you up and encourage you so you keep going.

That’s the idea of The Dip, I’ll talk more about it in the commentary but I want you to think about this, it’s a serious subject and it’s something that just naturally happens.

Don’t get discouraged when it happens, you can see it as a sign of progress. Just keep going, keep going and you will make that turn and you will achieve greatness I promise you.

Have a great month. I’ll see you again soon. Bye-bye.