تفسیر درس

Personal Vision VIP – Commentary

Hi, this is AJ. Welcome to the VIP Program and welcome to the commentary for this month’s lesson. So in the commentary I just talk a little bit more about this month’s topic, just some extra ideas, some extra English input for you.

Now, this is an interesting topic, this idea of a personal vision and you shouldn’t take it too seriously. See, one problem we have sometimes is we take these things a little too seriously, which is great. Some of our members are very gung-ho. Now, “gung-ho” means to be super enthusiastic, super motivated, and usually it’s a positive phrase, a positive word it’s “gung-ho”. It’s a little bit of an idiom or slang. It’s very casual. But to be gung-ho means to be super excited, super, super, super passionate about something and that’s great. It’s a great trait, but we don’t need to be so serious. We can relax a little bit.

So with this topic, personal vision, I want you to have fun with it and really with all of our topics each month. While some of them may seem quite serious and some of them may be less so, all of them should be fun. You should approach them with an attitude of enjoyment and fun. That is the whole point of Effortless English, to make English interesting and fun for you because when it’s interesting, when it’s fun, your brain just remembers more and you learn faster. You actually improve your English listening and speaking much faster if you’re engaged, meaning you’re focused, if you’re interested, if you’re enjoying what you’re doing.

So in this month’s topic, personal vision, we talked a lot about thinking of a kind of mission statement for yourself, for your own personal life. It could be very general. It could be very specific. You could even create several personal vision statements if you wanted to. You could create one for your career, for example, and really think about in your career, in your work life, what do you want to accomplish and not just money, especially beyond money.

So this isn’t about goal setting this month. We’re not talking about deciding I want to make $100,000 a month or something. Not that. I’m talking about something a little deeper. It means really emotionally and mentally what do you want to accomplish. What do you want to experience? What do you want to learn? What do you want to be in your personal life or in different parts of your personal life?

So let’s imagine you decide to create a few of these and that you decide to first focus on your career. So you could make a personal vision statement for your career, whatever it is, and you just decide what kind of person and what kind of life do you want to have in this aspect of your life. So, for example, I’ll just give you an example from my own life again. So as a teacher what do I want to experience or be as an English teacher and I decided this quite a while ago. That I wanted to be fun and passionate and I wanted to focus on getting great results.

I didn’t have an exact personal vision statement at that time back when I started this system and when I started Effortless English and when I started really developing as a teacher, but I did have an informal vision for my career and I decided I didn’t want to be just a normal English teacher teaching from textbooks. You know now open your page to page two and let’s do exercise four. I didn’t like that and I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to be fun, energetic and passionate and I also wanted to be more of a coach.

So my personal vision statement was to be an English coach, so the way you might be a soccer coach or, as they say in Europe, a football manager. It’s somebody who focuses on motivation and getting results for the team, for the players. That’s the kind of English teacher I wanted to be. That’s how I wanted to approach my career, how I wanted to view my career, and so that became my personal vision for my career.

So you can do this to. Whatever you are, it doesn’t matter. If you’re a graphic designer, if you’re a computer programmer, if you’re a secretary, if you’re a teacher, it doesn’t matter, but just think about your personality, your values, the kind of person you are and the kind of person you want to be and also think about what you enjoy most. What kind of activities, what kind of feelings and what kind of attitudes do you enjoy.

So you don’t have to be super high energy. I can be really high energy sometimes and that’s maybe my personality, but you don’t have to be that way. You might prefer a more relaxed approach. Whatever it is, what I’d like you to do though is just think about your career, your work life.

If you’re a stay-at-home mom then that is certainly a big job, you could focus on that, if you’re an artist. It doesn’t really matter what it is, but I would like you to think about it and maybe write down some ideas, some statements about what is your vision, your imagination, your dream, your perfect ideal for your career that’s personally for you, something that will be true in any job you have. So it shouldn’t matter. It’s not dependent on this job you have right now or on your next job. It’s something that you want to focus on and be in every single job you have.

And, of course, now you can take this and do this in other parts of your life if you like.

You could have a physical personal vision statement where you focus on your physical body, your health, your energy, your vitality, your fitness. Really think about that and think about what is your vision, your personal vision for your physical body. This might even involve other people too. This is true even with your career. It could be your own personal vision statement, but it could also involve how you want to influence of impact other people.

So, for example, in my career again, I was really focused on getting results for my students. I didn’t just want to teach English, I wanted to get results for the students. So it’s the same for you. Maybe physically you want to be strong and healthy, but maybe it goes beyond just you. Maybe part of your vision is to help other people be healthier or happier or to do better in their career, whatever it is. It doesn’t matter, but just really think of these different aspects of your life in your career. Think about your physical body and your health and your fitness and your vitality and write down some ideas about who you want to be, who you are in that area of your life, what kind of life you want to live in that aspect of your life.

And, of course, you could continue this and you could do this in the area of your family and, again, you would write down what kind of father or mother or brother or sister or daughter or son do you want to be. This, again, should be a very big, large, general vision. Don’t be too specific. This is not goal setting and this is the difference. You know goals are things that are very specific. So a goal, for example, might be I want to make $600 this month. It’s very specific. It’s very measurable.

We have talked about goals in the past and we will again in the future, but this is really quite different than that. This is much bigger and more general. This is really more about emotions and experiences. It’s not so measurable. It’s really deeper inside you. It’s more about who you are and who you want to be and the kind of life you want to live.

And the personal vision statement or statements, they’re really about just that. It’s about communicating that to yourself, maybe to others also, but at least to yourself. You know this is the kind of life I want to live and the kind of person I want to be and the path I want to follow. So you’ll do this in the area of family and you could choose a couple other areas of your life that are important to you.

The next step after you’ve done that, after you’ve done that with these different parts of your life, these different pieces or aspects of your life, the next step is to go back and to look at all of these categories and look what you’ve written down and try to identify common themes, common ideas. You may find that there are similarities. That even though you’re talking about your career in one list and your physical body in another list and then your family in another list and then maybe your financial life in another list that you start to see a pattern. You start to see certain themes or general ideas in all of them and those similarities will give you an idea of what you should put in your big, general personal vision statement.

So for me, for example, when I looked at this in my life and all these different categories I started noticing a pattern, certain things that I wanted in all aspects of my life and one of those was learning and growth and improvement. That category, that theme, I saw that again and again, that I was really focused on that. I kind of knew that, but when I really saw that in every part of my life that was something I wanted I realized wow that’s much bigger, much deeper, a much more general vision for me, so this idea of constant growth and learning. So I wrote that down and that became part of that big, general personal mission statement that I shared with you in the video. Then I found other themes as well and you can do this too.

First, do this in all different categories and, again, you’re not focusing on specific goals.

You’re not focusing on I want to lose 10 pounds of fat this month or this year, no, no, no.

What I want you to focus on is a more general statement, like I want to look like a Greek god or goddess, something like that. You know I want to be vibrant and alive and super healthy and full of energy for all of my life. That’s a much more general vision. So find this in all these aspects and then pull out, identify the similarities in all the different categories and see if you can come up with, if you can create, one big personal vision statement.

Now, again, don’t be too serious about this because this is not something you need to do perfectly. You can change this. You can change it next week. You can change it next month. It’s just an exercise to help you get a little bit more in touch with what’s most important to you. Now, to be “in touch” with something means to realize it more deeply.

So if you’re in touch with your feelings it means you understand your feelings well. You know your feelings well. So I want you to be in touch with your own personal vision.

The problem is a lot of people don’t think about these kinds of things. We get busy with our jobs and our families and all these other things. We’re going in our career, we’re going along in our lives and we don’t really think deeply about what kind of life do I really want to be leading, what kind of person do I really want to be, and we kind of forget about some of the bigger things and the deeper things because we’re so focused on the day-to-day details and tasks and activities.

So in the VIP Program what I try to do each month is remind you of some of the more important things, the deeper things, and help you think about them so that you can put your life on the path you want it to be on and it’s up to you to choose what that is. So, again, the personal vision statement can be very relaxed, it can be fun, it can be playful and you can change it from month to month, year to year if you need to. Just find something that fits well for you.

Really, this falls into the more general category of choosing your life consciously and that’s what a lot of our topics in the VIP Program are about is choosing a conscious life.

It means really thinking about your life and deciding what kind of life you want, not just being influenced by family, friends, bosses, TV, advertising, all of that. That happens of course, but it’s important to actually choose. What kind of life do I want, what direction do I want to go, what kind of things do I want, what kind of person do I want to be and then to keep reminding yourself again and again and again because there are so many distractions.

It’s so easy to get distracted and to forget about the really important things and then five years later you realize oh, my God, for the past five years I’ve totally been off track. To be “off track” means you’re not on the path you want to be on. It means you’ve gotten distracted. So I don’t want you to be off track. Each month instead I want to help you get back on track and to get “on track” means to be on the correct path, on your chosen path. So I want you to get on track for your life, whatever that is for you.

And, of course, the final part of your assignment, your homework, your focus this month, is to share your vision statement or statements with us on our social site. At this point we have a lot of really fantastic VIP members. They are so friendly, so supportive, so helpful. They are a really fantastic group and each month they share their ideas and they talk about the lesson topic for this month and they comment on other people’s comments.

It’s just a really great community and in that community no one will care if you make mistakes. No one cares what your English level is. It doesn’t matter to them. It doesn’t matter to me. They just want to meet you and connect with you and hear your ideas and share their ideas with you. So, please, go to that social site, that Ning site, the VIP site that we have and write about your own personal vision statement that you created this month, just share with us. What is yours? What are your ideas? Then we can know you better and you can start to make connections and friends in our community and then you can start practicing your English with other members.

You can start by just writing simply on our social site and then, eventually, you could join a Skype group. We have Skype groups. Skype is just free online telephone, basically.

You can call with your computer to someone anywhere in the world and you can chat with them like on a phone.

In fact, it even has video if you want to use that.

We have several Skype groups where are members will get together and chat with each other, maybe once a week or maybe once a month, so that’s also possible. So, please, join our social site, share your ideas about this month’s topic or any ideas at all and, please, let us get to know you.

I will see you next month. Have a great day, bye-bye.