(Part 1) Why do some language learners succeed and others fail?
Micheal Jordan became one of the world’s greatest basketball players . . . during his holidays.
Jordan was famous for his work ethic during the season. However, it was the off season where he accelerated his skill building. On his holidays, Jordan spent 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, analyzing and fixing his weaknesses. The holidays (not the regular season) were his secret to becoming a truly elite athlete.
Low-level language learners who become excellent language learners have a secret, too.
Confidence - confidence in their ability to succeed.
Not talent? That’s right, not talent.
Everyone has enough talent. Regardless of age or gender, you can learn a complex skill like language, and you can learn it well.
There is, though, an irritating emotional reality to language learning. You must fail . . . in public, a lot. Having a “Yes, I can” confidence despite failures gives us the energy to get through that long, messy middle part of language mastery. Without the confidence, we eventually stumble into, “Actually, no I can’t”.
Have you lost your confidence? If so, how do we get it back?
Have you never had confidence? How do we build it?
And the first thing we need to understand is, where does confidence comes from?
Thought is actually part of a ballroom dance team.
Thought is the lead ballroom dancer and its partner is Feeling. Thought holds Feeling close in its arms, and wherever Thought leads on the dance floor of life, Feeling dutifully follows. If Thought focuses on that vacation, Feeling is happy. If Thought focuses on deadlines next week, Feeling is stressed.
Don’t believe me? Try making yourself really angry --> Go for it.
Pause . . .
How did it go? I succeeded. I thought about the guy (true story by the way) at the train station who horrified all of us by punching an unsuspecting woman in the face. And, the key phrase is, ". . . I thought about . . ”. I would not have been able to get angry unless I thought about this horrific event. And I suspect you couldn’t either.
Sometimes, though, thinking is buried deep, and we only see the feeling. But, even if we don’t see the thought, rest assured, it is somewhere, looping in the background, just out of our awareness.
However, there are also times when Feeling does a solo dance. For example, people with clinical depression or people responding to involuntary reactions (think of a snake attacking you) are clearly times when Feeling is dancing all by itself.
But, in the course of an average day, first we think, then we feel.
Confidence is a feeling, and it's dancing with a thought.
If you don’t have confidence to learn a second language, or rather, if you think you can’t learn a second language (I’m to old, I’m not good with languages, etc.), guess what? You end with with a general feeling of “I can’t”. The Feeling makes you think more about it, the Thought makes you feel more about it. And, the ballroom pair of Thought and Feeling continue their dance.
This is why thinking, or mindset, is important.
Thinking - mindset - is the lens we look through to see the reality in front of us. People whose mindset wants to grow through their failures are setting themselves up for wonderful achievements. People whose mindset despises persona failure, as if somehow the failure reflects a deficiency in their character. will give up. No wonder religions and wise men and woman for thousands years have taught us about the power of thought.
Self-confidence is the secret ingredient that will allow you to persist through the long messy middle part of language mastery. You will fail - many times - and this is excellent. Because each failure is a step to greater mastery - if you have the confidence to persist.
(In the next blog, I will discuss a remarkably simple way of building this confidence).
