Join the Doing English Daily Newsletter ▶︎ http://bit.ly/1RwKljW   I listen to the radio a lot.   Not because listening passively to the radio all day long is going to get me fluent in Japanese. Because it won’t. But because I love the radio. But anyway. There was an advice show on. You know, you write in a letter… then they read it out and give you advice.   One of the people who came on was a guy.   He said that he'd been happily married. But his wife had cheated on him, and gotten pregnant with another man's baby. She then dumped him (the husband). They got divorced, and she went off with her boyfriend to have the baby and live happily ever after.   Unsurprisingly, though, their “happily ever after” was pretty damn short.   Because new boyfriend, and father or new baby… cheated on her and left her for another woman!   So now she's a divorced single mum.   Sure this is a tough life. But I bet it's not uncommon.   But here's the thing -    The guy who called in the (original ex-husband), is worried sick about her. He's so worried about how she'll survive... how she'll raise her baby. In fact, he's so worried that he wants to get BACK TOGETHER with her... and help her raise the kid.   Wow!   Love is blind, as they say, right?   I guess it is kind of sweet of him. Kind of.    You know what though?   If my wife cheated on me, ran away with another guy and gave birth to his baby…  there's NO WAY I'd go chasing after her, trying to get her back or "look after her".   She'd be on her own.   We all make our beds, and lie in them (meaning we have to face the consequences for our actions).   Before you think I'm a cold hearted, evil man...   I told my wife this.   And do you know what she said?   I'll tell you:   "Look, darling, if a women cheats on her husband, gets pregnant and goes off with the new boyfriend it's because she doesn't WANT to be with her husband! She wants to GET RID of him! That guy on the radio should take a hint..."   Harsh.   We men have life hard, right?   Well, my advice to him would be this -   Forget about her (she'll be fine... maybe) and go do something else with your life. Pain too much? Learn English and go live in a different country for a while.   Become a new man.   And find someone new.   And of course - the place to start for that is the Doing English Daily Newsletter ▶︎ http://bit.ly/1RwKljW   Cheers,   Julian   P.S. I'm sure someone's going to say "He's really honorable to be like that... she made a mistake, that's all."   But let me ask you -   If YOU were that woman?   And you got back together with him?   Would you respect him?   No, I didn't think so.   Join the Doing English Daily Newsletter ▶︎ http://bit.ly/1RwKljW

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Good review on this podcast recently:

The Podcast is rather a motiviation for learning English than an English course. The suggested technique to hearing English lessons during running works great for me. Listening to the podcast places a lot of thoughts and ideas about learning techniques into your brain. I like it, although some of Julians opinions are hard to accept, like that there is no tatent, but phobias are genetic. Also the pronounciation is not as good as I would prefer. Therefore I give only 4 of 5 stars.

Thank you!

I appreciate the kind words. And the honestly with some points.

Thing is though, the part about talent and genetic innateness?

Is not my opinion.

There is plenty of research that suggest phobia are genetic.

Google it.

And I never said there is NO talent. What I said was:

"The idea of talent as this innate gift, something special that we were born with that other people don't have…that idea of talent doesn't exist."

I said there is no talent in the way most people talk about it. Most people say talent is like some special, magical gift from god (which I don't believe in, either). Something amazing that you're born with. Frankly, this is rather silly.

Wolfgang Mozart is a good example.

Mozart composed his first piece when he was five. An amazing feat. Must be a talented genius, right?

Well, no. If you look and really find out what his life was like… it's not really surprising. His father was a master violinist, composer and...wait for it.... TEACHER. he literally wrote the textbook on music at the time. Meaning Wolfgang was exposed to music from a very, very young age. Not only for that, he was surrounded by people passionate about music - so learning about and practising music was a totally natural thing to do, even as a small child. Put simply, although Mozart achieved great things as a child, actually he'd done more practise as a child than most people do in their entire lives.

So yes, Mozart was talented.

But he was talented because his environment made him like that… not because he was born with some magical skill.

Another, really obvious example of talent physical traits (which yes, is genetic - this stuff is decided before we're born). I don't think I need to tell you that a midget won't get very far in professional basketball. No matter how much they practise.

… but when it comes to learning English, physical traits are irrelevant for normal people. If you speak one language... you can learn another. Simple as that.

Anyway, good review.

Even if part of it is misplaced (which is also good - because now I've got something to talk about in a future podcast).

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Because it's really great!

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Today I’m talking about running again.

Whether you're just learning English in general, looking to improve your English speaking skills, writing, pronunciation or whatever - today's lesson will help keep you motivated.

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I talked about this a lot in episodes 3 and 4 of the podcast.

If you’re reading the newsletter or have been paying attention to the podcast, you’ll know I run. I’m not amazingly good at it. I don’t run amazingly fast or amazingly far. But I love it.

This is something which happened in the summer.

But for a while, I ran almost the same course every day. Around in a loop. From my door, it’s about 5.2 km. I was doing this because I wanted to improve my speed. I was running it about 35minutes (yes, I know, it’s not amazingly fast - whatever). But I was stuck there for ages. I’d tried, but I never managed to beat that record. Every day I’d run. And I need to get faster than that. BUT then one day I ran the whole course in 31.2 minutes., and smashed my record.

Good for you Julian! Is about all you can say, I'm sure.

But so what?

The important part for you, Julian, is WHY I managed to do it. I've talked about this before, but there's an interesting 'quirk' of nature that you can use to achieve almost anything in a fraction of the time. I biological trick, as it were. A hack.

That day I was pissed off.

A few things hadn’t worked out well; and then I’d had an argument with someone. It was about something stupid and insignificant. The what doesn’t matter. Jut the fact is, I was pissed off. So I thought “I’m going to burn off some stress!!!” All the way around I’m like. ….. that BLIND RAGE filed me all the way around. I used the ager, frustration, irritation and channeled it into my running.

This is something you can and should do with your English.

If someone laughs at you because of your English, makes fun of you, if you miss some opportunity or chance, perhaps you get turned down for a job I don’t know. But use that.

Blind rage

When something pisses you off, makes you angry, ruins your day or just fills your life with negativity... use that.

Prove them wrong.

Even if they never know about it. It doesn't matter. Do it anyway. For me, it was as simply as having a bit of an argument with someone. Nothing particularly strange. But it was enough to put me in a bad mood for about an hour.

So when I went running?

The only thing running through my head was, "I'll show you... I'll run faster than you can... I'll beat that record. Then you'll see how great I am."

Of course, I never said this out loud.

But it works.

And you can use this same thing when you're learning the English language.

So REMEMBER the times you felt stupid because you messed up your English. And use this to motivate you to learn English faster.

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Disclaimer: I’m in no way qualified to give weight training advice
 
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You wouldn’t know this to look at me (I’m pretty small - 180 cm, but only 60 kg). But I life weights.

The reason I started doing that is because a few years ago I was feeling tired and had no energy, so I started running (see episodes #3 and #4 to hear the story of this) but I also thought it’d be a good idea to do some strength training.

But it went nowhere. 

Nothing. 

And for several months I did it with no results at all.

It wasn’t until one of the Doing English+ members pointed out my mistake and told me why it wasn’t working that I actually started to see results. 

My mistake? My weights were too light.

He advised me to change to heavier weights. I was using tiny, tiny weights. I could lift them all day… and they did nothing. I didn’t even get tired. But I didn’t know any better. I thought as long as I lifted the weights, I’d get stronger. 

Intensity is key.

It’s the act of lifting a heavy weight that will force your muscle to go PAST what it can do… break, and grow back bigger and better.

Recently I’ve been a bit lazy with the old weights recently.
So today I psyched myself up, and did a proper workout. Felt damn good, I can tell you.

It's also a good feeling picking up weights that are double the size of the ones I was using this time last year. Could have gone at it harder I guess, but hey, what's the rush.

Somewhat tired now.

And arms are somewhat numb. As limp as a squid washed up on the rocks. Not the best analogy, I know. Whatever. I'm going to be in pain tomorrow, I'm sure. 

And that, Julian, is a good thing.

Feeling tired and numb tells me what I did WORKED.

And sure, I don't *like* the pain.

But hey... no pain no game, as they same.
And this is very true of English too. In fact, language learning and muscle building are very, very similar.

Muscles grow through something called "progressive overload". That is, you constantly overload the muscles. Push them PAST their limits. This is what causes them to grow. So if you don't push them hard enough (by using weights that are far, far too light for example) nothing happens.
So you increase the weight
But we see EXACTLY the same thing in English.

It's why a lot of people reach the intermediate stage... then just stop improving.

You’ll never improve by doing things that are too easy (just like me lifting wrights that were too light didn’t work).
The solution?

Add intensity.

If you don't feel tired when you finish your English "workout", you just ain't doing it right.

I’m not going to give you specific excerises to do in this podcast, because that’s covered in one of my courses (and you can find out about that by joining the Doing English daily Newsletter). It’s also something  I talk about in the Book i’m about to publish.

But the point here is -

Intensity is the key. For wright lifting. For running. For learning English. And really, for just about anything else too.

If you want to know more about this topic you can (and should) go and join the Doing English Daily Newsletter. This is a topic I talk about quite a lot - so you’re definitely missing out by not joining.

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In this week’s Podcast I tell you a story about the world’s greatest telephone salesman that's going to be really helpful for your English learning.   The lesson I learned form this was huge.   Something that has made a big, big difference to my life over the years. Something that, in fact, has given me a lot of confidence. And it is something that can help you be more confident with your English.   Not only that, but this is a big mistake a lot of people make when learning English.   If you like this week's Doing English Podcast, don't forget to sign up for the free Newsletter on:   http://doingenglish.com

A while ago, JiEun (one of the Doing English+ members) was talking in the Doing English+ Community about learning a third language.  And it reminded me of something.

Something funny about languages that you might find interesting.

When you learn a second language, you experience transfer from your first language. So my Japanese is influenced by my English.

We all know this, of course. But what you might not know is this - when people learn a third language, it tends to be the SECOND language that they get transfer from. Not their first.

Meaning...

... if I learned, say, French, my French would be influenced by my Japanese.

If I then decided to learn a FOURTH language, guess what?

It'd be influenced by French. Not English or Japanese.

Actually this is something I experience a lot.

When pronouncing Indian names, and other non-English or non-Japanese names (this seems to be especially the case with Polish names) it's my JAPANESE pronunciation that influences the way I say it - not English. Sometimes this is a problem, because I put a "L" sound in where there should be an "R" sound.

Just one of the fascinating mysteries of language.   But its means that theoretically, if you were going to try and learn ALL the languages in the world, there should be a “optimal” order to learn languages in.   Intersting, eh?   And it just so happens that this is the topic of this week’s podcast.   Don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review the show.   Cheers,   Julian

Bit of a bizarre podcast this week.   Because I’m talking about a really strange dream I had, and an English learning lesson relevant to that.   We’ll discuss...

• The thing Japanese people do (without realizing) that makes Westerner’s angry (but really shouldn’t, because it’s the westerner’s who’ve got it wrong)
• Why you MUST understand culture if you want to speak English well (and the best place to learn it)
• Why English just isn’t about British and American culture any more
• And much, much more.

  Check it out here.   If you haven’t already, don’t forget to (1) subscribe on iTunes, (2) rate the show and (3) leave a review   Want more like this?   Go to: http://doingenglish.com and sign up for the Doing English Daily Newsletter.   Cheers,   Julian

In this week's tantalising episode:  

• My 'coffee shop disaster', and the lesson you get to learn from it
• Why you need to just get out there are try things, especially if it's embarrassing
• Why I will never have trouble speaking Japanese in a coffee shop again (and how you can do the same thing in English)
• And more.

  If you like this episode take the time to (1) subscribe, (2) rate the show and (3) leave a review.

What can this dog and armless mother and son teach you about learning English?

In this week's Doing English Podcast:

• Why you should learn English is your life is difficult now
• What you can learn from a dog sitting on a nail, and a mother and son who have no arms
• And something YOU may be doing right now to make learning English harder

If you liked this episode, don't forget to subscribe on iTunes... and leave a review!

In this week's exciting instalment:

- Why the modern school system is failing us (and what I think they should be teaching us)
- William Shakespeare's key to unlocking the future you want
- What majority of people do after finishing school... and why you need to be different
- Are you someone who doesn't "learn" well? (Because I was)

And more.

If you like this episode take the time to (1) subscribe, (2) rate the show and (3) leave a review.