Innate Courage, Learned Confidence

   
Many people want to learn a foreign language. Some perhaps want to travel and interact with people of other places and cultures while others desperately need the language for competitiveness in the work environment. Some people love learning foreign languages yet for others this task can be daunting. Many give up before ever beginning. Some start and stop as their courage ebbs and flows. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about courage and where it comes from. Courage is the symbol of the lion in the animal kingdom and Leo in astrology. When you see a lion proudly shake his mane and point his noise slightly skyward you can feel the power of his courage. The lion loves fearlessly and his courage gives him a regal presence. A brave heart is the source of courage.  

Defeat is the absence of heart. 

I saw that quote on a t-shirt tonight as I ran out to the store on a writing break. The universe has an uncanny way of delivering the answers we are looking for, even when we don’t realize we are asking the questions. 

My teacher and astrologer, Christopher Witecki, taught me that whatever you are going to manifest in life, you must first and foremost love it. When you love it, your heart is in it.   

Courage is an innate resource. The English word courage comes from the Latin, cor, meaning heart. Courage is, “the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear.” (Dictionary.com) 

Courage allows us to jump into the unknown. Think about a time in your life when you bravely jumped into a brand new experience. You had no idea what to expect or what was going to happen. You fearlessly decided you wanted to do something so much that you were just going to do it. Surely it may have been challenging at some point, but the love of what you were doing gave you the courage to face it. You came out of that experience empowered by your results because you found out what you are capable of. Challenges give you the opportunity to grow and develop confidence. That confidence now allows you to face more life challenges as you continue to learn and evolve. 

Confidence is a learned skill. The English word confidence comes from the Latin, confidere, meaning with trust or faith. To have confidence means you know you are capable of meeting the challenge. You believe in yourself when you’ve proven to yourself in the past that your efforts and skills produced positive results. So essentially confidence comes from experience. 

Scott Sonnon, one of my inspirations in martial arts and mind/body training, says that courage comes first and confidence comes after the proof of past success. "Be brave. The confidence will come."

Know that you have had the courage to rise to many challenges in your past and those experiences have given you the confidence of knowing that you can accomplish what you set out to do. When your goal is to speak a foreign language, it first requires the courage to just start speaking. Of course you’ll make mistakes. You will need to look up words you don’t know, try to explain them in other terms, or even ask for help. You’ll listen to native speakers and catch only a few words or phrases here and there. Little by little, more and more comes together, and you start building confidence in your ability to use the knowledge and skills you already have and to find that which you seek.  

Of course there is that little voice in the inner dialogue that sometimes says things like, “you’re too old to learn another language,” “you’re not good at learning languages,” “you tried and gave it up before, so why bother now...” Just tell that voice in your mind to be quiet. Begin to replace your negative self-talk with positive thoughts based on courage instead of fear of defeat. Remind yourself of the successes you have had in your life, the skills you developed and the inner resources that you tapped into as a result of your struggle. Those successes are the source of your confidence to keep moving forward. 

By courageously facing new experiences in life, you learn and grow. As you develop greater confidence in yourself, you continue to reach out for new opportunities when they present themselves. New experiences lead to expanded perceptions of yourself and life. 

Finding Creative Ways to Practice English

When learning languages, I find it's very important to observe and speak with natives as much as possible in an immersion environment. Think about how a baby learns the language of his or her parents. At the beginning they observe and listen to their parents. Then they begin to imitate the repeated sounds they hear. At first their sounds are awkward and difficult to understand. Eventually they become natural speakers of the language. 

Initially it can be overwhelming if you are immersed in a group of natives speaking among themselves! But it’s also fascinating because you witness the natural patterns of a language as it’s spoken. It’s exciting to recognize the sounds and patterns of questions and responses, and it’s challenging to hear unfamiliar sounds. You can pick up all sorts of valuable phrases and vocabulary this way. Be sure to write down the new words and phrases the same day that you learn them so that you can go back later to review. Otherwise it may pass through your mind like the clouds in the sky. We refer to this kind of repetition as "neuronal touches." The more the human nervous system comes in contact with an experience, the more familiar it becomes. Long-term memory is formed by repetitively exposing the nervous system to a certain stimulus over time. Becoming adept at any skill requires practice and repetition.   

Make the best of what you’ve got! If you are learning English and you have friends nearby who are native English speakers, then you’re quite fortunate to have the opportunity to interact with them. Maybe you can take some lessons with a private teacher. If it’s not possible to practice with native speakers, then you can use your imagination to come up with creative ways to speak English more.  

Here are some ideas:

Start a weekly conversation hour at a bar or coffeehouse with friends who want to practice English. Here in the USA, friends and colleagues often meet for “happy hour” after work. Sometimes Fridays are the best days of the week for happy hour because it’s the end of the work week and the start of the weekend. Of course you could arrange to meet at a cafe or anywhere else that locals would go in your area. If you’re looking for a way to let go of your inhibitions about speaking English, sometimes having a drink is conductive to that. You can write an email to some of your friends and colleagues who speak English to invite them to the English happy hour. Don’t worry about the different levels of each person. People can have the opportunity to chat with others at various levels. It’s still great practice for the people who have more advanced language skills because they have the opportunity to test their own knowledge by offering some guidance to others and leading with examples. Those at a lower level of English proficiency gain the experience of listening to a more advanced conversation, and while they may not understand everything, they will learn from example. I know it's awkward at first to speak a foreign language with people who speak your native language, but the key to this experience is to have fun! 

If you’re into TV series and movies, watch something you enjoy in English and make time each week for this listening comprehension practice. TED.com is an excellent resource for anyone interested in science, medicine, technology and related fields. You can even listen to many free Podcasts from iTunes in English about subjects that you are interested in. Nowadays there is so much available online at our fingertips. If you don’t have time to actively watch something, at least find some audio media that you can play in the background or on headphones while you are doing other tasks. For example, try it while driving, washing dishes, editing spreadsheets, playing on Facebook, cleaning the house, folding laundry and so on.  Even if your conscious mind is focused elsewhere, the sounds of the language will become more familiar to the subconscious mind, allowing you to access the knowledge of the language more effortlessly in conversation.   

You can practice your reading comprehension with online news. The USA Today, CNN and Yahoo News are less formal and more basic in vocabulary and sentence structure. The BBC and NY Times are more formal and advanced. Read the articles that most interest you. If you prefer to read books, find some books in English on topics that you enjoy and take your time reading them. In addition, you can do some online searches in English for topics you are interested in and look into some of the search results. Remember to write down new vocabulary words and idiomatic phrases as you come across them so you can look them up in the dictionary and review your lists later. Reviewing your list over and over is how you will be able to transfer the new words and phrases from your passive memory to active memory. 

You can also do some online researching to see if you can find any local groups who meet up to speak English. Social media, like Facebook and Twitter, is a great way for people to connect these days. Here in the USA we also use Craigslist.org and Meetup.com for this purpose. Livemocha.com offers a chat capability where you can meet people all over the world who want to practice English, right from your computer and the comforts of your home.  

It’s important to teach yourself how to think in English too. Practice your inner dialogue in English instead of your native language sometimes. It’s funny how speaking another language helps you learn your own better. The things that you take for granted through automatic speech in your own language are necessary to understand in order to figure out how to express the same thing in another language. It also makes you question why things are the way the are. Guaranteed you’ll learn interesting things about your native language that you never knew before!  

The classroom, both in person and online, is great for building a foundation in language skills and grammar. Yet to truly be fluent in a language, you’ve got to live it as much as possible. If you don’t have the opportunity to travel frequently or to socialize with a group of native English speakers in your area, there are other ways to gain greater fluency. The question is how to do that from where you are with the unique opportunities around you. Feel free to post any comments below regarding helpful ways you use to practice English!

Where You Are

 
Don't worry about where you are with your English right now compared to where you’d like to be or where you think you should be. The important thing is to see your goals clearly, and accept where you are right now, because this is your starting point.

I once heard a yoga instructor tell the class, “Don’t look around the room to see where everyone else is. That’s not your path. In order to change you must accept where you are right now. That is your point of reference.”

Maybe you would like to be fluent in English. First, notice where you are on that trajectory. Now that you have your point of reference, envision your goal. For example, you can focus your mind on speaking and understanding English fluently and writing proficiently. Imagine yourself effortlessly having a conversation in English with native speakers, and visualize yourself corresponding in English easily via email at work and however you see it fit in your life.

You can apply that strategy to just about any aspect of your life. Maybe you would like to be healthier. Perhaps you're feeling uncomfortable in your body, either regarding body image or physiological health issues. You can do a self-observation exercise and take note of where you are right now and what you are not happy with. Then you can envision yourself as you'd like to be... how you want to look, how you want to feel, and be specific about the results you want to see. Imagine yourself already there... but really feel what it's like when you have met your goals. Now bring that same feeling back to your reference point. The step-by-step goals over time that you need to accomplish your overall vision become clearer. Make a plan of action for yourself and create specific, measurable goals so you can celebrate the small successes along the way.

By knowing where you are right now, and clearly focusing on your goals as you take steps to work toward them, you can have great success. Of course, dedication and repetition are integral to the time period it takes to reach your goals. Increased time and energy investment in your plan of action produces faster results. So actually, it comes down to how much you really want to accomplish your vision and how much time and energy you have to put into it. Your effort will yield the fruition of your work.

Sometimes it’s difficult, I know. It’s frustrating when you want to express yourself but feel blocked by your lack of precision with vocabulary or the amount of time it takes to retrieve the words you’re searching for in your mind. It’s actually much easier to just let go of that block by releasing your fear of making a mistake. It doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. In fact, that’s what learning is about. We make mistakes and we learn from them, when we have the courage to just do it. 

Think of your private instruction time with your English coach as a safe haven. You can make all the mistakes you want and you’ll never be judged by them. It’s the perfect time to practice letting go of your inhibitions and letting your English flow. If you make a mistake, you can receive the guidance of a compassionate and knowledgeable coach. Eventually, with practice and repetition, you won’t be making those mistakes any more and your English will be more fluent. You will notice that you feel confident enough to talk to anyone. Remember that you are in the environment of someone who understands that the process of learning a language is much like the journey through life. We stumble and fall... and we get back up stronger than before. 
   

My Language Connection

Languages have always been a fascination of mine. As a native speaker of English, I never really had to speak another language, but I have always wanted to speak and understand all languages. Perhaps that has to do with my love of human connection. The more languages I speak, the more opportunity I have to connect with other people and understand more about who they are.

I started with Spanish in high school, and after traveling to Costa Rica my senior year, I decided to declare Spanish as my major for my undergraduate degree. In college I made some friends who were students from Spanish-speaking countries and I traveled to Spain and studied abroad in Mexico for a semester. 

Later I met a group of Brazilians in Philadelphia where I lived at the time, and through immersion I started learning Portuguese. After a few months of hanging out with my Brazilian friends and listening to Portuguese, I began to speak the language quickly and native speakers would often think I was Brazilian. Surely, knowing Spanish gave me an advantage in learning Portuguese, but I noticed something important in my process of language learning. It took me years to learn Spanish in school, but my Spanish improved drastically after spending time in Spanish-speaking countries. Even though I was in Philadelphia where the native language is English, by surrounding myself with native speakers of Portuguese, it was much more effortless to learn the language.  Eventually I signed up for some classes in Portuguese to learn how to read and write. But then life happened and I didn't really practice the language for years until I discovered Livemocha.com in 2008.   


At the university, I took a year of intensive Italian classes with a wonderful professor who believed in teaching by immersion, so he spoke only in Italian during class. He became my inspiration when I began teaching Spanish after graduation. At first the immersion approach was quite daunting, but eventually it became easier. His technique was to repeat over and over the phrases of the lesson. He went around the room having each of the students respond to his prompt. Then he had the students practice the same type of dialog in pairs. At the end of that year I went to Italy. While I felt fairly prepared to interact in the target language in nearly any sort of conversation, I realized that all the hours spent in the classroom paled in comparison to just a few days completely immersed in a country or culture where the “real” language is used.  

A year later, I met a French guy who I ended up being married to for a few years. I had taken a year of French my first year in college but it seemed so difficult, that I gave up, almost resenting the language. After a few months with my ex-husband, I realized that I needed to learn the language to communicate with his family and to travel with him to France and Senegal. His parents came to visit, and after several weeks of hearing them interact in French, I was able to speak better than I ever could after a year of French classes. I began to love the language once it became familiar and comfortable to me. After traveling to French-speaking countries a few times with him, I was able to navigate the language almost like a native. Of course, after the divorce I never really practiced my French anymore, and now that 8 years have passed, I’ve forgotten so much. That’s not to say it isn’t still there, somewhere in my brain for me to access. If I want to resuscitate my French skills (just like my rusty Portuguese skills), I would need to do some review with a software learning program or language classes and travel to a country where the language is spoken, or hang out with a group of native speakers here in California.    

I have realized that the key to learning languages is immersion. In order to learn a language well, it’s necessary to spend time speaking with natives and observing them speaking amongst themselves. Learning languages in schools and with software programs is fantastic for learning the foundation of a language and for reinforcing vocabulary and grammatical structures. It’s very important to have this didactic practice to develop proficiency, as well as live speaking practice with natives to develop fluency and the natural patterns of the language.

After I graduated college, I started teaching Spanish in a high school. Well, I had a brief job in between as Content Manager for a start-up online Spanish bookstore. But as was the destiny of many of the internet start-ups in the early 2000s, that particular one didn’t have the funds to make ends meet, so by chance I ended up in teaching. As it turned out, I loved teaching and I was a natural at it. What I most enjoyed was the human connection with my students and feeling their happiness as things were starting to click for them with the language.  

As many Americans do, I found a second job a couple years later. I started teaching private English classes in the evenings to foreign adults working in the Philadelphia area. I discovered how much I enjoyed this work as another layer of connection with others opened up. I’ve met people from all over the world and through them I’ve learned new perspectives about life and our human existence. It has also been very satisfying to watch my students progress on their journey of language learning. They know that speaking English puts them at the top of their respective industries, given that English is the international language and it also opens them up to entirely new life opportunities such as connection with others.  

I feel honored to help my students in this process of learning the language of the culture I was born into. Growing up fascinated with foreign languages, I never realized how fortunate I was to speak English as my native language until recently. To this day, I really don’t know how it turned out that English is the international standard, but it is. If I can be of service to others by helping them improve their English while sharing my patience, compassion and knowledge of learning languages and combining that with my personal development coaching, then I feel that I am contributing to greater global awareness and connectedness. I believe that the world is becoming more and more connected and interdependent. Or perhaps our new technology is simply allowing us to realize that it always was that way, that we never really were separate from one another. We are all here at this time, sharing the human experience on this beautiful planet. Teaching English is a bridge that I use to contribute to the expansion of human connection and self-awareness. 

Inspiration & Mission

I am an English Language Instructor for Livemocha, the world’s largest online language learning community with more than 11 million members and growing. Livemocha’s coaching program launched in April 2011, and since then I’ve been giving online private instruction sessions to people living all over the world. 

It’s amazing that our technology has reached the point where we are able to have live video conversations via the internet, opening the walls of the virtual classroom to the entire planet. I am grateful to have access to this technology because it has opened up a whole new dimension for online learning and human connection across borders.    

I have heard a lot of students say that they are timid to speak English, or afraid to speak with natives because they feel their English is not good enough. These students who have courageously shared their vulnerability with me, have inspired me to write this blog as a motivational guide for my students in their process of learning English. It may also be valuable for anyone who is learning another language. 

In this blog I write about some universal issues in learning languages and some interesting things about the English language and the American culture. You will find personal development topics and life perceptions interwoven here in order to motivate students to know themselves better, take action toward their goals and build confidence in their abilities.  

My life philosophy has a lot to do with the concept of fluidity and flowing through life, as I learned from my teacher, don Américo Yábar, in the Andes Mountains of Peru as well as my studies in Oriental medicine. There is a certain flow of the universe, and when we are aligned with it, we move effortlessly through life. When we get caught up in the struggle of resisting or fighting against the current, life is difficult. But as soon as we let go and align ourselves life begins to flow again. I strive to align myself with the flow to optimize my life experience and it is my intent to help my students get into the flow with their English studies and life outlook. 

My private instruction sessions are student-directed and have the element of fluidity. I use a spontaneous approach to the topics of conversation and practice in order to be in alignment with what is coming up for each student at any moment. Everyone is working on certain things in their work and personal life, and basing our topics of conversation on those things allows the session to be relevant for each student. And so this blog is entitled, Flowing in English.  


Meredith Miller
English Language Coach

Livemocha 

Personal Development Coach
Metamorphosis of Being