Get the premium English lesson at www.feelgoodenglish.com  Today’s lesson might be a little shocking for some of you, especially because it’s coming from me, someone who talks a lot about personal development. Why shocking? Because today’s episode is on a book that pretty much disrupts a lot of the self-help genre.  The self-help genre covers subjects like motivation, how to be happier, how to be more productive, the importance of goal setting,  basically, self-help books teach us how to be better humans. I talk about a lot of these topics here on the podcast, and I do think there are valuable lessons to be learned.   But… like I said, the book I read for today’s episode is different. The name of the book is “The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking” by Oliver Burkeman. If you’re someone who thinks that all the self-help books on the power of thinking positively, and books like “The Secret” are garbage, well, you’d love this book. And... if you’re like me, very open to different perspectives, philosophies and different approaches to life, you’ll also find some value in this book.

#105 Expect the Worst - "The Antidote" by Oliver Burkeman

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www.feelgoodenglish.com  To start this episode, let me ask you something. Do you have a voice inside your head? Like, do you have “something” inside of you that speaks to you? As weird as that sounds, I bet you do. And I’m not talking about “hearing voices” in your head, like a crazy person might, but just that self-talk we all have that guides us, or at least tries really hard to guide us. It’s that voice inside us that starts having a conversation as soon as we open our eyes in the morning. The voice is obsessed with the past, and also obsessed with the future. So is that voice us? Is that who we are? Or is it just part of us? And is there a way to tame this voice? To not be blindly controlled by it? I recently read a book that was recommended by one of my students. The book is called “10% Happier” by Dan Harris. This book attempts to convince skeptics on the benefits of meditation, by taking a very practical approach to the science behind this mindfulness practice, and showing you how and why letting go of your ego is important for living a stress-free life. So that voice in your head, we can refer to that as the ego. E-G-O. I’ve talked about the ego before. It can get in your way, make you do dumb things, and keep you from connecting with others on a deeper level. And the author of this book talks a lot about the experiences that led him to discover the benefits of meditation, but I’ll just sum it up so we can focus more on what meditation is and how you can start doing it, if you don’t meditate that is.

#119 Shhh - I'm Meditating "10% Happier" By Dan Harris

Get the transcript at www.feelgoodenglish.com Today I’m going to teach you a lesson from a book called “A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy” by William Braxton Irvine. In this book, Irvine offers a refreshing presentation of Stoicism, showing how this ancient philosophy can still direct us toward a better life. I’m only going to share one lesson from this book, a lesson on how to get through the grocery store checkout line much faster, just kidding, but one very valuable lesson which will show you how the teachings of Stoicism can help us be little more grounded in today’s crazy world. Before I get into that, if you’re new here, or aren’t that new but still only put Feel Good English in your ears, I also have something for your eyes.  Something to read, as I send out weekly emails that contain short interesting thoughts to thousands of interested English learners. If you want to receive those weekly emails, go to feelgoodenglish.com and look for the bear. The bear will be waiting for you on my website to help you sign up. The bear works for me for free, and the email is free too! Isn’t that nice? Now enough bear talk, let’s get into the lesson.

#118 How to Actually Live a Better Life - "A Guide to the Good Life"

Get the transcript at www.feelgoodenglish.com  Today I have some ideas from a very interesting book called “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely. And the main point in this book, the overall message is that much of our behavior is misguided, irrational. Through research and study, the author has found that a lot of this irrational behavior is also predictable, which means there are very human, and natural reasons we behave this way.  

#117 The Dumb Things We All Do - "Predictably Irrational" by Dan Ariely

Get the transcript at www.feelgoodenglish.com/go To get started with today’s topic, I got a question for you. What kind of person are you? Are you motivated? Are you lazy? Are you always running late? Are you a leader or a follower? Are you good at sports? And where did those beliefs come from? A former teacher, your friends who have labeled you a certain way, or maybe simply from yourself? We all have an image of the type of person we are. Some of these images are positive, but some are detrimental to moving forward and making positive changes. We use stories to understand the world, but sometimes we can make ourselves the villain without thinking twice about the consequences of that narrative. For example, if you think of yourself as a failure, you’ll quite likely fail. Conversely, if you consider yourself successful, you’ll find ways to succeed. If you think you’re bad at learning languages, well, you might subconsciously resist becoming a great English speaker. That’s dangerous. And that’s the basic idea from the book I recently read, how our self image dictates our behavior. The book is called “Psycho-Cybernetics” by Maxwell Maltz. It was published in 1960, so it’s been around a few years, but the book is great. I read a lot, obviously, and i read a lot of regurgitated ideas. People take some basic self-help ideas and write their own book about them. Put their name on them. Nothing really special there. But this book, even though it’s from many decades ago, I found plenty of interesting ideas I hadn’t thought of or read about before. I’m going to focus on one chapter in this book; keep it simple. The ideas in this chapter stuck out to me the most and I want to share them with you because I think they’re so relevant to not just life in general, but to speaking a foreign language. Here I go again, connecting life lessons with English learning. You ready? 

#116 How to Be Yourself - "Psycho-Cybernetics" by Maxwell Maltz

Get the transcript at www.feelgoodenglish.com/go The podcast that blends, mixes, English learning with personal development. Making your time spent with English more inspiring, enlightening, and...exciting? This is the last episode of 2017, well, it’s literally the first episode of 2018, but I am still going to touch on a couple ideas from 2017, two BIG ideas I shared with you that I consider to be so important. Both of these are ideas are really simple, straight to the point, but can have a big impact on behavior. And I’m going to go into these two ideas, going to review them with you today because you can take these two concepts and apply them to your life this coming year. They can help you stay strong and help you stay focused, two things I often need help with.

#105 Expect the Worst - "The Antidote" by Oliver Burkeman

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