درسنامه اصلی

Faith Gap – Main Lesson

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to this month’s lesson. This month’s lesson is the Faith Gap.

What is the Faith Gap? What are we talking about? Well, how do you achieve great long-term results? I know you have some really big long-term goals. For example, I know you want to master English. That’s a big goal, it takes a long time. And to master English at a very high level is a very long-term process, it takes years.

You’ve probably already had the experience of the Faith Gap. What is that? What do I mean? What I’m talking about is that when you decide to go for, try to achieve a long-term goal, you start working, you’re really excited.

And maybe you make a big effort, a big change for a few days, for a week, for two weeks, for a month and you’ll notice that, usually, you’ll see almost no result. So you’ve got this big goal, you’re making a big effort and nothing seems to happen.

Now, this gap, this Faith Gap I’m calling it, can vary in length. You might go for weeks and weeks and weeks without noticing any improvement, without noticing any positive result at all.

Now, with some skills or with some people, this could last a month or many months and for some very difficult skills you might even need to keep making an effort, keep working, keep practicing for a year or more before you see or feel any kind of positive result.

So why am I calling this the Faith Gap? I’m calling it the Faith Gap because to get from that beginning point, where you’re noticing no improvement at all, to a point where you finally feel something happening, takes time and you need faith to keep going.

When I was teaching in schools, when I was teaching in universities, the biggest problem I saw, the simplest reason for failure with English, was that people quit. It seems obvious, but it’s true.

People would just quit. They would lose their faith because they were making some effort. Again, many of my students I saw that came into my class already for years had been studying, memorizing grammar and memorizing vocabulary, doing all of these tough, difficult things for months and years and yet they were not noticing much change.

But eventually they lost their faith. They lost faith that they could do it. They lost the faith that it was possible for them and they quit and. And of course, if you quit, it’s done. You’re not going to improve at all. You’re finished and, in fact, you’ll start losing what you have already.

So we need some kind of faith, some belief that yes, something will happen, yes, I will achieve my goal, even though right now I feel like nothing is happening. That’s our big challenge. English is one example, but there are many examples.

Health is another. For example, if you are in bad shape, you’re not fit right now and you suddenly decide I will run a marathon. What’s the first thing you do? You’ll go out and you’ll start jogging. And after one week of jogging a few days, probably you’ll notice zero improvement.

In fact, you’ll probably feel worse. Your muscles will be sore, you’ll be tired. You’ll feel terrible for the first few days. So not only will you not get better, you’ll get worse.

So how do you keep going? What makes you continue exercising even though you feel bad, even though nothing is improving, even though nothing seems to be happening?

Faith. You have this faith I know I can I do it. I know if I keep exercising that eventually I will get better. Eventually, my body will get stronger. Eventually, I’ll be able to run 26 miles or 40 kilometers, whatever it is in kilometers.

You have no evidence in your own life that this is going to happen. It’s all in your mind just believing that it will.

So this is the big challenge, the very tough challenge with any kind of long-term goal and the bigger the change for you, the harder it is.

So to achieve something like that, whether it’s English, something with your health, maybe it’s financial or in business, whatever it is, we need something to get us through this period so that we can keep going during this very tough time when nothing seems to be happening.

So we need something to carry us through this period. What do we do? How can we keep going during this tough time in the beginning especially, when noting seems to be happening, when it’s easy to get discouraged, when it’s easy to want to quit?

Well, there are a few things we can focus on, a few things we can do, some psychological tricks if you want to call them that, that will help get us through that Faith Gap; until, finally, we start seeing some kind of results.

For most people when they actually start feeling improvement, when they see that they’re getting better; well then, it’s easy to stay motivated.

So how can you keep going during those other times when you’re not improving, when nothing seems to be happening?

Well, first, you can focus on just enjoying the process. This is a big one. I’ve had to learn this myself in many different parts of my own life trying to achieve some big goal.

Goals are great, but sometimes we get so focused on that goal looking at the future, looking to the future, that we forget to just enjoy what’s happening now.

So focus on just enjoying the process of learning, just enjoying the process of practicing. It’s very important. Because it gets you through the time. Even if you’re not improving, even if you’re not seeing much improvement, you can still enjoy what you’re doing.

For example, again, with English. You can just enjoy reading interesting books in English. You can enjoy listening to interesting audios, interesting audio books, maybe watching some TV shows or movies in English.

You can just enjoy the process, enjoy the content, enjoy the topics and not worry so much about how many new words you’re learning, about whether or not you’re speaking has improved this week or this month. If you just relax a little bit and just have a good time, you actually will get through this Faith Gap faster and you’re more likely to keep going.

Related to this point is mindfulness within the process; in other words, focusing on this moment now. Not thinking and worrying about the past and how bad you were or the mistakes you made in the past.

Not obsessing about the future and oh, when will I get better? When will I finally speak like a native speaker? When will I get the success, when, when, when?

Just focusing on right now, what you’re doing today, on the audio you’re listening to right now, on the book you’re reading right now, focusing on this moment only, today. That also will get you through that Faith Gap. It also makes the process more enjoyable.

Another way to get through this difficult period is to find role models and mentors. So a role model or a mentor is someone who has already done what you want to do.

If you are not a native speaker of English and you want to speak English like a native speaker, well then find someone who’s already done that, someone who is not a native speaker of English, but somehow, they’ve taught themselves to speak very well.

You can get online; there are so many people out there who have done this. Read their blogs. Read their websites. If you can, contact them. Find out what they did. Find out the struggles they had because I guarantee they also had times when they were frustrated, when they thought they couldn’t do it, but then they did.

This gives you more faith when you realize other people have done this. Other people have gone through what I want and they got there. They got what I want. They achieved the result that I want. They struggled as I’m struggling now, but they kept going.

The more you read these kinds of stories, the more you connect with these people, the more faith you will have. That will get you through these very tough times when nothing seems to be working.

Another great way to keep going, to bolster your motivation during these tough times is to think about your past successful experiences. We’ve all had some kind of success in the past. Maybe it’s not with the same goal, probably not, but with some other goal.

We’ve all done something that seemed difficult at the time and yet we achieve it. We’ve all had times where we wanted to quit, but then we kept going and we finally succeeded. Maybe in a relationship, maybe something physical, maybe something with your job or your family; whatever it is, you’ve got it in your history somewhere.

The secret is instead of focusing on all the struggles you’re having now and the difficulties, instead is to remember your past successes, to remember that you have done this before and to remember how you did it.

So in the past when you overcame struggle, when you were frustrated, when you felt like you needed to quit, that you would never succeeded and then you did, what did you do? How did you do that? Well, use those same ideas, same strategies, same psychology for your current goal.

See, it’s counterproductive to constantly worry about your short and medium-term goals.

Again, if you have this goal of speaking English like a native speaker, that’s a great goal, that’s fantastic, but it does not help you every month to be worried whether you’re one step closer or not to that goal, to be constantly fretting and worrying. Oh, my God, this month is my pronunciation any better? I didn’t learn enough new words.

I hear this all the time, people constantly worried and upset and they get really emotional about it. And the problem is they kill their motivation because they’re so worried about what’s happening this week or this month and whether they have made enough progress or not that they destroy their enjoyment of just learning.

When you do this enough over time, your motivation will go down. You’ll start getting depressed. You’ll start telling yourself things like, “I’ll never do it, it will never happen.” That’s what causes people to quit. It will certainly cause you to make slower progress.

Now, related to this is this idea of valuing the goal, focusing on the goal more than the process. This is another big mistake people make.

As I mentioned before, people who have a big goal, which is good, that’s like a compass directing you towards where you want to go, but when you focus so much on that that you ignore the day-to-day process of learning and practicing; or when you just hate the process of practicing and learning, you’re never going to achieve the goal. You’re just going to be so stressed about the future that you never focus on the present and that makes you impatient.

This is the number one thing, the number one mistake I see with most people, they’re just so impatient. A big goal requires time. We may do some things to make that time pass faster.

We can achieve that goal somewhat faster if we use good methods, if we’re very motivated, if we work really hard. But there’s no way to eliminate the time. There’s no way to completely cut out the time.

You can’t instantly be an excellent English speaker in one or two months. It’s not going to happen. No one has ever done that to my knowledge and you’re probably not going to do that, too. It’s going to take months and months and months, even though you’re already fairly advanced. This is a long process.

I have this problem, too. I’m a super impatient person. I get very impatient all the time. I always want things to happen faster, so I’m always having to remind myself of this same thing, to just relax.

Let me end with a story, my own story about starting my business. So now I have this business Effortless English. It’s doing well, fantastic, that’s great. It took many, many years to get here.

But back in the past when I first started, I had a good amount of failure and I struggled with all these same things that I’ve already mentioned. I was impatient. I hated my job at that time.

And I was just frustrated with never having enough money, never having enough time to live my life, having to work under very difficult bosses and I was always focused on this goal of oh, I’m going to become financially free someday. I was focusing on the goal all the time and not on the present.

It took me years and years to finally learn how to start a business and be successful at it. And what finally changed for me is that I stopped obsessing about this goal and I started focusing just on the process.

I just started enjoying it. I started enjoying reading business books. Whereas before I didn’t really like it, now I like it.

I started to find mentors and role models, people who had started off with nothing and built a successful business. That gave me faith and motivation.

And, most of all, I developed some patience and I decided I will do this. It may take time, but I’m just going to enjoy it. I’m going to enjoy the process. It will take as long as it will take. And, eventually, I was successful and I enjoyed the process much more.

You can do the same with whatever it is you want, certainly with English, with your finances, with your business or career, with your relationships, health, anything.

Just find ways to keep that faith and have the faith that with the effort, with the work, eventually, you will succeed. And in the meantime, enjoy the process.

All right, I will see you next month.