Sunday 30 October 2016

There's nothing that you need to DO

You want another language. Okay. But then immediately you think to yourself, "In that case, what do I need to do?"

Right away, you are heading off-track.

Obviously you need to do something. I don't deny that. But it's more along the lines of allowing something to be done to you. It's arranging the condition and setting up systems and habits, after which you allow the process to happen to you.

You're not to put words into your head. You are not the one who must learn rules and apply them. You are not the one who must push through the nervousness barrier and force yourself to speak. 

No, no no . . . None of that!

You're not the doer, you're the do-ee.

You're not responsible for the results, either. And that's good to realize, because this removes any pressure of possible failure. 

You're not to measure your achievements either. You aren't achieving in the sense that you've been trained to expect. It won't go neatly and tidily. 

You'll get better imperfectly, messily, sloppily, randomly, magically, and unfathomably. You'll learn the language without knowing how you did it! 

Don't put pressure on yourself to remember vocabulary, to spell correctly, to pronounce correctly, to understand the rule, to comprehend, to treat language learning as a serious business, or to study in any way.

Put yourself in the right environment, and get your brain into the right state. That's all that's required of you. The rest will happen automatically.

Don't consciously try to learn a language. You can't. No one can. The most that you'll achieve is to learn a few things about it.

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