Intro
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| Becky: Welcome to a special Inner Circle Audio Lesson! I'm Becky and I'll be your host. My co-host today is the founder of InnovativeLanguage.com... Peter Galante! |
| Peter: Hi everyone! Peter here. |
| Becky: In this Inner Circle, we’re talking about Pressing Reset: |
| Peter: ...or the Problem with Failing Language Learning Goals. |
| Becky: You’ll learn... |
| Peter: ...One: The Stressful Problem of Failing Language Goals |
| Becky: Two: What To Do When You’re Failing Or Getting Stuck |
| Peter: ...and Three: How To Apply These Tactics to Your Learning Routine this Month. |
| Becky: ...All so you can master your target language and finally reach your goals! |
| Body |
| Peter: Listeners, welcome back. |
| Becky: Last time, you learned all about the 7 tested, timeless ways to learn language. |
| Peter: In other words, quality over quantity... |
| Becky: You learned how our learning technology meets time-tested learning techniques – all of which you can apply on our website to learn faster. |
| Peter: There were tons of responses to this one. |
| Becky: Yeah, It's great to hear how some of you are learning. |
| Peter: What was the most favorite technique? Do you remember? |
| Becky: It was definitely mastering speaking and listening with the line-by-line audio. |
| Peter: The other popular one was learning 1-on-1 with a teacher with Premium PLUS. |
| Becky: For me, the most surprising one was the Word Bank. |
| Peter: Really, Becky? Why? |
| Becky: Well, I didn’t know you could save your word and phrase lists as PDFs and print them out. I didn’t know people actually did that. |
| Peter: I think a lot of learners enjoy having physical study material, Becky. |
| Becky: I know that now! |
| Peter: But listeners, in today’s Inner Circle, we’re talking about a very popular topic. Tons of listeners requested this one. |
| Becky: It’s failure. Or failing language goals. Speaking of which... so you... |
| Peter: Yes, Becky. I failed this past month. |
| Becky: Ah, great timing for this Inner Circle lesson then! |
| Peter: Listeners, this is the topic of today’s Inner Circle. |
| Becky: Pressing Reset... |
| Peter: OR the Problem with Failing Language Learning Goals |
| Becky: You’ll learn... |
| Peter: ...One: The Stressful Problem of Failing Language Goals |
| Becky: Two: What To Do When You’re Failing... Or Getting Stuck |
| Peter: ...and Three: How I’m Applying These Tactics to my Learning Routine Next Month. |
| Becky: Alright, let’s hear it. Why’s failure such a popular topic? And why did you fail? |
| Peter: Listeners, feel free to leave us your thoughts too. Why do you think failure is such a popular topic, Becky? Personally, I think it’s very relatable. A lot of us have goals. |
| Becky: ...and sometimes we don’t hit them. |
| Peter: Exactly. And a lot of learners want to know why it happens... |
| Becky: ... and how to keep going despite failure. |
| Peter: Exactly, Becky. |
| Becky: So, what happened in your case? |
| Peter: Well, I promised 8 minutes of conversation by the end of May. And as usual, life kind of got in the way. And I think maybe I set the bar too high. With all the work I have, this year, language has kind of takes a back seat. |
| Becky: Yeah, I can relate... it’s really interesting how life gets in the way and we stray away from the goals we set. |
| Peter: Well, the point is to try not to stray too far away, right Becky? |
| Becky: Yeah, that’s right! |
| Peter: Any successful learner keeps on going despite failure... and no matter the circumstances that pop up. |
| Becky: But even that’s tough. |
| Peter: You’re right. It’s easy to say but this is where our first point comes in. |
| Becky: Which is Number One: The Stressful Problem of Failing Language Goals. |
| Peter: Before we jump into it, I want to share how I started setting life goals long ago. Not language learning ones. Just daily goals. I used to write down what I wanted to do on 1 page... |
| Becky: Like a checklist, right? |
| Peter Exactly. And at the end of each day, I’d check and see how much I had done. |
| Becky: How’d it go? |
| Peter: Not very well, Becky. My goals were big and vague. |
| Becky: Ah, what did you have on there, anyway? |
| Peter: I had goals like ‘get muscles, ‘save money’... Actually, that's when I started re-calibrating and setting these smaller, more measurable goals.. |
| Becky: Kind of like the small monthly measurable goals we recommend to the listeners? |
| Peter: Exactly. But the point was, for a while. I was failing left and right. I had too many goals. I basically took my goals for half of a year, and wrote them all on a piece of paper. So at the end of the day, I would’ve only checked off one or two things. And it kind of failure. Much like I’m failing now. And there’s a big problem with failing a goals. Becky, what do you think it is? |
| Becky: Well, if people don’t quit... I think people often beat themselves up for failing these goals and try to make up for the failure. And they try to work even more. |
| Peter: Actually, you’re right! They add STRESS... |
| Becky: ..and they make reaching the goal even harder for themselves. |
| Peter: Right. So, failing alone is pretty stressful. But more than that, when you fail, the goal suddenly seems much bigger than it was before! Because... you’re adding MORE work to make up for it. Because instead of recalibrating, you’re looking at the next goal and in doing so, you’re adding more work to the immediate goal right in front of you. |
| Becky: Right. |
| Peter: Think of it like this. If you have a hard time reaching 3 minutes of conversation... like I did... |
| Becky: ...yeah? |
| Peter: ...and you want to make up for your failure... you’d aim for... |
| Becky: 6 minutes, probably. I would want to make up for lost time. |
| Peter: Exactly. And that’s what I was doing. I couldn’t hit 3 minutes well and now could I really, realistically aim for 6? |
| Becky: Yeah, you make a good point. |
| Peter: And in half the time! So adding more work won’t help you get back on track. |
| Becky: You’re just making it even harder and more stressful. So how can someone bounce back, Peter? |
| Peter: Let’s get into the second point. |
| Becky: Number Two: The 2-Step Process for What To Do When You’re Failing. |
| Peter: So, failing goals is stressful. |
| Becky: Things don’t go as planned. |
| Peter: Life happens. Health. Work. Money. You might have other goals as well. So failure is quite common... if you think about it... If you think of all aspects of your life. It’s so hard to win on every front. But, it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. |
| Becky: How do you mean? |
| Peter: I’ll give you a great example. This is actually a person I admire. Do you know Tim Tebow? |
| Becky: I think I’ve heard of the name. Who is he? |
| Peter: Tim Tebow was a professional football player and he received criticism. |
| Becky: You mean American football? Or soccer? |
| Peter: Tim Tebow was a professional American football and he received a lot of criticism that he couldn’t throw the ball properly. His technique was awful. And you’d watch him play almost the whole game: struggle, struggle, struggle. But when it came to crunch time, he would come out and perform. The amazing thing about Tim Tebow is the ability to forget what JUST HAPPENED even one minute ago or five minutes ago, hit the reset button, show up ready to play, and keep going. |
| Becky: Wow, that’s pretty powerful. |
| Peter: Exactly. It was amazing to watch! Now imagine how useful such a trait would be for you with your goals. You fail. Instead of focusing on that failure, You let it go... forget all the stress....and move on with the goal. And in this case, language learning. |
| Becky: Like it never happened! |
| Peter: Exactly. But listeners, we’ll give you my 2-step process for how to approach failure. |
| Becky: Step One: |
| Peter: Realize it’s okay to fail. If everyone reached every goal they ever had... |
| Becky: ...there’d be a lot of billionaires, huh? |
| Peter: ...on top of Mt. Everest! But things don’t often go as planned and you come up short. |
| Becky: And it’s almost always because of the scope of the goal: it’s too unrealistic for your current situation in life. |
| Peter: Well said, Becky. So, what you don’t do....You don’t quit... |
| Becky: Step Two: You Hit the Reset Button. Go back to where you started. |
| Peter: So if finishing 20 lessons is too much for the month, drop it down to 5. |
| Becky: if you can’t reach 6 minutes of conversation, drop it down to 3. |
| Peter: And similarly, if you can’t learn 100 words in a month... aim for 20. |
| Becky: That way, you make it easier on yourself, you make your goals more realistic... |
| Peter: ...and you keep going despite failure. You can always scale your goals back up later. |
| Becky: How are you applying this, Peter? |
| Peter: Let’s get to the 3rd point. |
| Becky: How Peter’s Applying These Tactics to his Learning Routine. |
| Peter: Listeners, it’s actually quite simple. My last goal was to hit 8 minutes. Before that was 3 minutes. And I failed both. |
| Becky: So there’s no point in aiming higher again, right? |
| Peter: Exactly. The best way to keep going is to make it easy for yourself... so I’m aiming for 2 minutes. |
| Becky: And the deadline? |
| Peter: The deadline is... June 30th. |
| Becky: And what about your long term goals? |
| Peter: That’s a great question, Becky. And, it kind of relates to what we were talking about earlier. In the beginning of the year, I set a goal for 30 minutes, right? |
| Becky: Right. |
| Peter: And I’m at 2 minutes... hopefully, at the end of June. |
| Becky: Yea, so we’re going for 4 minutes for the year? I don’t know, I’m just doing some math here. |
| Peter: You’re not incorrect. So. I think what I’m going to do is I’m not going to let that 30 minutes be my guide. I can feel free to adjust that longer term goal. In the meantime, I’m going to start with 2 minutes and take it from there. In the back of my mind, 30 minutes is there, but let’s see how things play out. I’m not going to put the extra pressure and stress on myself. |
| Becky: You could plan a trip to Germany. Hey... motivation! |
| Peter: We’ll talk about that next month. That’s a great idea but for now, let’s focus on the immediate goal right in front of me without adding a trip to Germany! |
| Becky: True! True! Great! And listeners, let us know how you deal with failure as well. |
| Peter: Email us and tell us at inner dot circle at innovativelanguage dot com. |
| Becky: And stay tuned for the next Inner Circle. |
Outro
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| Becky: Well, that’s going to do it for this special Inner Circle lesson! |
| Peter: Bye everyone! |
| Becky: Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time. |
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