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Today I have an episode based on two words. That’s it, two English words. But these two words affect our lives so much. One of these words is responsible for our loneliness, depression, our feelings of never having enough. It causes hate, and fights, and divorce. It makes us want to put our heads in the sand.

And the other word is the solution to the first word. The second word makes us feel more connected to others, more fulfilled, more courageous, and you’ll be happy to know this word, or applying this word to your life, will also help you become a badass confident English speaker. It’s kind of the secret to success with learning a foreign language.

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Today I’m going to get a bit personal. I’m going to tell you something that recently happened in my life that could have ended pretty terribly, but instead, the situation turned into a huge life-lesson for me! Thank God.  

I recently had a realization that ended months of conflict that I was dealing with. Yes, I too suffer at times, and there is nothing wrong with that. Suffering can show exactly where we need to change. And what happened to me was definitely life-changing.

I’m going to share with you what was happening in my life that led to this realization, with the hopes of not just giving you something to listen to and to learn new English from, but also to show you how and why you might fall into the same situation that I did, and how to get out of it, or even avoid it.

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We as humans love the stories of incredible successes. Stories of people doing things that seem impossible.

But I got to thinking, “you know when something terrible happens to someone, this person becomes limited to just what’s in front of them. Their options have been taken away from them. And it seems that it’s exactly because their life becomes limited that their life is transformed.

 It’s as if going through something traumatic is the fuel, or you could say the catalyst, that leads to great transformation.

Now I’m not saying we should try to seek out tragedies, don’t do that, please. But what if we could tap into, meaning “utilize”, tap into what these people feel when they are faced with such limitations. These limitations have forced them to be extremely creative, inspired them, and have helped them find a whole new level of motivation.

What can we learn from these stories? And how can we apply what they discovered to our lives without having to go through such a tragic event? Is it even possible?

That’s what I’m going to talk about today, and I found a Ted Talk that I think is very relevant to these questions.

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In January, with a pen, paper, and a lot of motivation, I plan out my whole year and what I want to see happen.

Well, you know what, my year hasn’t ever really fallen nicely in line with my goals. Can you believe that? Things change. Goals change. Life happens. Opportunities you weren’t expecting come into your life, and often opportunities you were expecting don’t come. It can be frustrating.

But there’s gotta be a better way! And I think I found one. A better way.

I looked for a better approach. One that doesn’t make me feel disappointed in myself when I remember that I haven’t reached my original, yearly goals because I often don’t reach the original goals I set for myself. I’m realizing more and more how hard it is, especially in business, to plan far in the future when not knowing what will come your way.

Today I am going to talk about goals. But not an inspirational lesson on how to reach every goal you set, but why you shouldn’t live a life focused on goals. It’s unhealthy. And possibly even less productive than another approach.

What’s that other approach? I’m not going to tell you. Well, not yet. Keep listening! 

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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.

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When you have an idea about doing something, something you know would be valuable to your life, do you often stop and think about it, then end up not doing that “something”? This happens a lot! It happens to me, a lot! There’s a voice inside my head that keeps me from doing what’s important.

Does this happen to you?

According to the author of a book called “The 5 Second Rule”, the author’s name is Mel Robbins, the secret to being more confident and successful comes down to making the right decision in the 5 seconds after you have an idea.

You can’t let those 5 seconds kill your dreams!

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Today we are going to talk about happiness.

We all like feeling happy, right? Well, if you don't like feeling happy, well then you either need some professional help, which I hope you get, or you're a freak!

But why do we always focus on the negative? Well, our brains evolved this way. It's an ancient survival mechanism, actually. We needed to learn quickly from bad experiences.

This obsession with the negative continues even until today, though we don't need this as a survival mechanism anymore.

In the book, "Hardwiring Happiness" by Rick Hanson, we learn why we are prone to, (have the tendency to, inclined to) worry about the past, focus on fears, and past hurts, and quite often, ignore positive experiences.

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Let me help you correct some of the most common advanced grammar mistakes. 

There are two different phrases that often get mixed up. One is easy, and one is complex. But even the easy one needs to be explained, and the complex one, well, that one too.

The first is about past habits, or something that existed or was true in the past, but doesn’t exist or isn’t true anymore.

The second is about a feeling you have about something. 

A – past habit or truth

B – a feeling (present, past, future)

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Does it ever feel like you give up pretty quickly after deciding to do something positive for your life? You want to make a big change or add a big skill to start strong but only a few days or sometimes a few weeks later you give up, and we feel bad when this happens. Or do you constantly notice yourself doing things that you know aren't good for you, aren't healthy, aren't positive, aren't helping you get closer to the life that you ideally would like to live? Well, I'm going to talk about a book today called “The Compound Effect” by Deron Hardy and it's going to tackle these issues. Most of us struggle at times with reaching our goals, and according to the book “The Compound Effect” this comes down to, this is all based on our daily habits, the choices we make from moment to moment. If this sounds stressful, like “

Well, I'm going to talk about a book today called “The Compound Effect” by Deron Hardy and it's going to tackle these issues. Most of us struggle at times with reaching our goals, and according to the book “The Compound Effect” this comes down to, this is all based on our daily habits, the choices we make from moment to moment. If this sounds stressful, like “

If this sounds stressful, like “Uh oh, Kevin I don't want to think about my choices every moment!” it shouldn't. There are tactics and strategies from the book that we can start applying to our life to help us create daily routines based on our goals. Getting clarity on what we should be doing and what we should not be doing, and also some tips on how to start adding positive habits into our life. So I'm going to talk about some key principles from this book, I hope it's helpful.

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Learn some behind-the-scenes info about the podcast after 100 episodes.

I'll share some listener numbers, how the podcast has changed, and what's coming in the future.