درسنامه اصلی

Self Reliance - VIP Audio

Hi, this is AJ and welcome to this month’s lesson. This topic is one of my favorite topics, something I’m quite passionate about so let’s just get started. I’m going to begin with a quote, which is also one of my favorite quotes from a guy named Jack Kerouac.

Anyway, look him up. His books might be a little tough. He uses a lot of slang and his writing style is not conventional, not normal, so I don’t know. You could try to read one of his books and see what you think.

Anyway, he’s an interesting writer but the quote that I particularly like that is related to our topic is this. Here’s the quote. He says “No shame in the dignity of your own experience.” No shame in the dignity of your own experience. So this quote comes from this little short list that he made for writers. It’s kind of his advice to other writers and so one of his pieces of advice is no shame in the dignity of your own experience.

Let me kind of explain it simply. It means do not feel ashamed of your own life and your own experience no matter what it is. So if you’re poor and you didn’t go to college then he’s saying don’t feel bad about that. There’s nothing wrong with that. If instead you grew up in a really rich family well, don’t be ashamed of that either. You don’t need to feel bad about it. So what he’s saying is that your own life, your own experience, that’s yours and that you should accept it.

You know the word ‘dignity’ kind of means like honor. It’s this idea of like you feel respect and honor for your own life and your own experiences. Anything and everything that happened to you, even if you had horrible things happen to you, you don’t need to feel bad about it. So he’s giving this advice to writers to say feel good about your own life. Respect your own experience. Respect your own life. Write about that. Use that in your writing. Be honest about your own life and other people they will accept that. Other people will respect that. Maybe not everybody, we can never please everybody, but many people.

So the reason I like this quote is the kind of deeper meaning of it, which is that you should trust yourself and feel a kind of honor and dignity for your own life no matter what it is. It doesn’t matter, rich, poor, a lot of school and education or none. It doesn’t matter what country you come from. Your English skill is low or your English skill is super high. You speak 20 languages or you speak one language. It doesn’t matter. You don’t need to feel ashamed. Never feel ashamed of your own experience of what’s happened to you. That’s your life. If you’ve learned from it and grown then it’s important and that you should trust it.

So that is the basic idea of self reliance. It means to not just rely on yourself. Not just to be independent. That’s kind of the general idea of it. If you say I’m self reliant there’s this idea of I’m independent and I never need help. That’s not really what I’m talking about. I’m really talking about trusting yourself and believing that you are the expert of your life. See, a lot of problems happen when we’re always looking for some other expert to tell us what to do and the big problem is when we trust them more than we trust ourselves.

I found another nice quote recently and I can’t remember where I read it, but anyway here’s what it says. It says “For every expert there’s an equal and opposite expert.” I think it was probably related to eating and nutrition. I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently and this is so true in eating and nutrition. You’ll read one thing and they talk about eat whole grains and eat this and eat this and then you’ll read another expert who also has a lot of scientific studies they’re quoting and they’ll say exactly no, no, no, don’t do that. Eat only protein. Then someone else has some other idea and they all sound very confident.

They all have these research studies that seem to support them. Are they all right?

None of them are right? I don’t know. The problem is what happens is that we tend to say oh, this guy is doctor so and so, therefore, they’re the expert. I must follow them instead of trusting myself. I see this in English teaching all the time, it makes me crazy.

We see these arguments on our forums sometimes where one person will say oh, you must learn English in this way and then someone else will say no, no, you can’t do that.

You must do it this way. Then someone else will say no, AJ is wrong. He said this, but that is not correct. You must do it this way!

Everyone has their expert and they believe it simply because a teacher told them and sometimes people believe stuff simply because I tell them and that’s not good. I don’t want that and I hope you realize that that is not a good way to learn or to improve or to have a good life. The problem is that out there in the world, as we probably all know, governments and corporations and many individual people really want us to be dependent on them and to put them above us and to see them as you know the experts, as better, and to feel kind of lower and weaker.

In fact, I remember some of our European members have complained to me about the name of this program, the VIP Program. So in America, I don’t know, it just means like very important person. We know everybody is important so it doesn’t matter, but in Europe there is, I guess, this idea of VIPs are these rich people, really super rich and you know government officials and they get all this special treatment and they treat other people badly.

So, anyway, that’s not what we mean by the VIP Program, but I understand the feeling of it because it’s this same idea of like putting people above, which I really want to encourage you not to do. On the other hand, I’ve often encouraged you to find coaches and to find people who are more skilled than you at something and to follow them and listen to them and learn from them. So how do we balance these two ideas?

On one hand, if we’re not good at something then we do need people who are better to help us. On the other hand, we don’t want to put people above us as experts and just accept everything they say and feel bad about ourselves. Well, the way I look at it is that I don’t think of people as experts, I just think of them as coaches. Coaches, that’s all.

Like, okay, I’ve been learning to kite surf recently in Hawaii. Could I just go out there by myself and get this huge kite and then try to ride on the waves? Yeah, I could, but I would likely get hurt, maybe even kill myself. Even if I didn’t kill myself it would take me a very long time to learn that way. It would be much more painful and difficult, so instead I take lessons. I have an instructor. He teaches me techniques and shows me how to be safe. So that’s good, but he’s a coach.

The problem is when people have a coach or instructor and they don’t just listen to them, but they put them above and they start to have an attitude of obedience. Like this person is better than me somehow or this person is above me and anything they say you know ah, ah, ah, I’m just going to accept it no matter what. That’s where the problem happens.

So, for example, maybe my coach might give me some advice that just doesn’t work for me. You know he’s a better rider than I am and he’s younger than I am. There are many things that are different. Some things that he does maybe will not be good for me so I have to, again, have dignity in my own experience so that if I try something that he told me to do and for me it doesn’t work, for me it’s bad or not helpful or too difficult, then I have to trust my own judgment and my own experience and just decide okay, well I’m not going to do that. I don’t have to follow him 100% like he’s a guru or something.

Yet, this is one of my problems with schools. You know I’m always complaining about schools. Well, my biggest problem with that kind of traditional education mentality is that often it creates a mentality in students of obedience. Just do what the teacher says and don’t really question it. Don’t think about it. Don’t pursue knowledge outside of the class.

They can create that mentality. I see it all the time on our websites this attitude comes out sometimes, so here’s what I suggest.

I suggest that from now on you think of yourself as a true scientist, a true scientist. So you want to do something. You’re trying to learn something. You’re trying to improve something or you just want to have an opinion about something and there’s all these experts giving you information. Maybe one of them you think this is the guy. This is the woman. This is the person. They’ve got the answer. Well, my advice to you is just to always think of yourself as a real scientist, meaning that you never just accept something that someone tells you. Not me, not anyone else. You always, always, always try it and experiment with it yourself.

So you take anything an expert says or that I say or that you read in a book as a hypothesis. This is a scientific word ‘hypothesis’ or ‘hypotheses’ is plural. A hypothesis is kind of like a theory. That’s all it is really. It’s kind of an educated guess. It’s not 100%.

It’s not a fact. It means I think this is the case. I think this is true, but I need to test it to really see if it is actually true, if it actually works for me and so that’s what I would like you to do in all areas of your life that you’re learning about. It doesn’t matter if it’s business, career, finance, work, relationships, English learning, whatever, is to always take anything an expert says, even if you totally agree and then test it.

You must always take these things and try them yourself in your own life. You must always test it and then see the results for yourself. Maybe what they’re saying is true for many people, but maybe it’s not true for you. This is another idea we get from school sometimes is there’s one right answer, one right answer. It’s A, B, C or D and it’s only one, but in real life there might be three right answers, 10 right answers, 100 right answers.

So maybe several experts can all be correct, but they’re only correct for certain people not for everybody, so you have to discover what works for you. Forget this idea of right and wrong. It’s not about that. It’s about what works for you, what is right for you. It doesn’t mean it’s universally right. It doesn’t mean that God from heaven has said this is the way. No, it just means what works for you. I’d especially like you to do this with me because I get uncomfortable sometimes.

Sometimes I’ve had live events where I’ve gone to other countries and I’ll teach a live event and people are really energetic and enthusiastic. It’s great and we have lots of fun, but sometimes some people will act like I’m this super expert and they want ‘the’ answer from me. AJ, how do I get a perfect score on the TOEFL exam? Tell me the way.

I’ll give my suggestions, my ideas, but I can tell sometimes no, they want the exact way.

We get this with the lessons too. People will say AJ, sometimes you say listen to each lesson set seven times at a minimum. Other times you say 10 times. Sometimes you say to listen for two weeks. Which one is it? Which one is the correct right answer?

Well, there is no one correct right answer all the time. The general principle is this, deep learning. You already know this, right? It means learn it deeply. Master it. One time is not enough.

Now, for you this month maybe it’s seven times, maybe it’s 10 times for each lesson, maybe it’s 20 times, maybe you need two months. I don’t know. You have to test that and find out and it might change month to month. Some months you might have a lot of energy and a lot of motivation and your brain is working really well and you learn things faster and easier. Other times you might be tired or the subject might be more difficult for you and you need longer. So the basic thing is to always, always, always test everything yourself and tailor things. It means customize things for your strengths, for you needs.

So that’s the true meaning of self reliance. We’ll talk about that more in the commentary and I’ll see you then. Have a great day, bye-bye.