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Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher,
AJ Hoag, where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English
once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills.
Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English
effortlessly. I'm AJ Hoag, author of Effortless English. Learn to speak English
like a native. You speak English. fluently and powerfully, confidently and
effortlessly. When you join my VIP program at effo all my courses at effo go to
that website. Succeed now. Today we're talking about, you know, the topic today,
the easiest way to succeed and improve. So a very, very simple and easy way to
improve really in anything. Money, making money, English for sure. What else?
Health. losing weight, social, confidence, any and all of these things. How can we
do it? When you say hello, everyone joining us live, we are live on YouTube right
now. Welcome, welcome, welcome everybody joining live. Greetings from India,
greetings from Peru, Haiti, Myanmar, Colombia, Brazil, all over the world. Welcome,
welcome, welcome. All right. In my most recent show, I talked about a persuasion
and I discussed some of the techniques that media, advertisers, politicians, other
people and others use to persuade us. And one of the most powerful techniques or
methods is called social proof. Social proof. And this is basically peer pressure,
but it's really the appearance of peer pressure. So in other words, if they want
you to vote for someone, they will do polls, fake polls usually, and they will say
in the media that one politician is getting the most, is the most popular. Oh, we
did a poll. 60% say they will vote for this guy, right? That's social proof. You
think, oh wow, most people support this guy and this will persuade some people to
want to vote for him. Right, social proof. Or they'll say everybody's using this
product so you should also. Everybody's wearing a mask, so wear a mask. Everybody's
getting the vaccine, so get one also. It's a very, very simple technique and it's
very powerful. It works, right? And like I said, this is basically the same idea as
high school, going back to high school or middle school for most people, right?
Where the... kids would, you know, the so-called cool kids would be doing something
and then everybody else starts doing it and there would be all this pressure then
to do the same thing, right? Because all the other kids are doing it, so don't,
it's basically don't be different. It's the fear of being different is what the,
the reason this works is it. creates or brings up in most people the fear of being
different than everyone else. And most people are afraid to be different. And more
specifically, most people are afraid to be criticized by other people, especially
by a lot of other people, a majority of people, right? So, you know, this is how a
lot of kids, for example, get into drinking alcohol a lot. at a fairly young age
when they're teenagers. It's because they get in, they get in with a group of
friends, a group of people, and then these friends start going to parties and
drinking a lot. And what do they do? They pressure everyone else to do it, right?
So if there's one kid who doesn't wanna drink for whatever reason. though, hey,
what's wrong with you? Come on, right? This is social pressure. We call it peer
pressure, social pressure, social proof. Right? It's, and then many, I'd say
probably most kids that age will do it because they don't wanna be teased. They
don't wanna be criticized. They don't wanna be seen as different. They don't wanna
be kicked out of the group. These are the fears they have. And so they will start
drinking, not because they really want to, but because they are part of the group,
right? This can happen with drugs, it can happen with all kinds of things. So I
think we're all familiar with this. Please don't spam the comments. Put your
comment one time only. All right, whoops. So here's the good news. The bad's the
bad news, right? We all know that the negative effects of peer pressure. We've seen
it recently with the whole scamdemic that people still doing it here in Japan
doing, following this crazy stuff. I don't even think they even hardly believe it
anymore or they don't even think about it really. They don't know what he thinks
deeply about anything. They just do what everybody else is doing. It's just peer
pressure, that's all it is. Social proof, peer pressure. And so lots of terrible
things. People do lots of terrible things simply to fit in. Right, to fit in with
the majority, with most people. Or what they think is the majority. And that's kind
of where we're gonna, what we're gonna talk about today with our topic. Because
it's not really the majority. How do you know what the majority, most people
actually think? In most cases you don't, right? And the media, it's very easy for
them to lie to you and tell you, you know, some poll. Like so we did a poll, P-O-L-
L, poll. Right, it means, oh, we talked to 100 people and 60% say this, right?
These polls are mostly fake, you know? They're mostly fake. They can make up any
numbers they want. They can ask the questions in a way. They get the numbers they
want to get. So in most cases, we don't really know what most people think. So what
it really means is most people in your social group, right? It's your social group,
whatever that means. That might mean your family, your friends, co-workers, people
you are around every day, right? The people we say you associate with, right? The
people you see and hear and talk to and are around every day. That's your social
group or your associations. So that's the bad news. Here's the good news. The good
news is that we can use this to program ourselves in good ways. We can actually use
this to create positive change in ourselves. And in fact, this is one of the
easiest, laziest ways to improve your life. is through the power of association,
the power of social proof. Because this works very powerfully on all of us,
unconsciously, right? We're not really even thinking about it. So what do I mean by
this? It means this. if you want to be more healthy. One of the easiest ways, let's
say you just wanna exercise more, one of the simplest and easiest ways to be more
healthy is to hang out with healthy people. That's all. Just join a group that has
lots of healthy people in it. You know, go to social events that have lots of
healthy people. Make friends with people who are healthy. and create a social group
of healthy people. And you say, well, how does that help? This will help you
tremendously because by just by being in this group, they will influence you. Their
way of thinking, their actions, their habits will influence you and actually put
psychological pressure on you because you want to fit in. We all have this sort of
desire to fit in with the group. So if you are around a group of unhealthy, lazy
people, it will be very easy to be unhealthy and lazy. be like them. On the other
hand, just by changing your social group, you will start to build motivation in
yourself to become healthier. You will start to copy the habits of these healthy
people. Unconsciously, you'll just start to do it. Just by being around them all
the time, they will create a very positive influence on you and you will indeed get
healthier. Will you become super, super healthy? I don't know, maybe not, but you
will improve. You will move in the right direction just by being around the right
kind of people. Choosing your social group to program yourself. And again, it's
always interesting when we say this, program ourselves, because it's a little, if
you think about the words, you're like, well, who is programming and who is being
programmed? If I program myself, how's that possible? And then you have to realize
that when we say ourselves, we're actually talking about two different things. What
I would call our highest self, Atman, soul, spirit, that's the programmer. At the
highest level, that's our best and highest self, our true self. And then... what we
might call our lower self, which is our ego, our everyday personality and habits,
right, which can change quite a lot over the years, and of course when we die it
disappears completely. So what I'm really talking about is our highest, using our
highest self, right, what we know is best for ourselves, to program our habits, to
program our unconscious, to program our lower self, right, our psychology. This is
why. Some people I think have called this like, you know, meta-psychology or
something like that. So this is such a simple, simple thing to do. I think it's a
great easy step, especially if you feel lazy, right? If you want to be a better
person, like a more spiritual person, for example, you want to be more spiritual,
more pious is a word, then the easiest thing you could do, for example, is just
start going to the temple. as much as you can and be around other people who are
very, very religious or spiritual or pious, right? Very sincere. And just by being
around them, they will start to have a very strong influence on you over time and
you will make positive changes in that direction. And this is why, you know, most
religious traditions, for example, will encourage... their followers, the devotees,
to be around other devotees and to come to the mosque or the church or the temple
as much as you can. Just the association will help you tremendously. And of course
then eventually you will take some actions. Right? But this is very, very simple
and powerful, right? If you're a smoker and you wanna stop smoking, Of course there
are lots of psychological little methods and tricks to try to stop smoking, but a
really simple thing to help would be to don't be friends with smokers, don't hang
out with smokers, don't do things socially with smokers. Just
make friends with non-smokers, or you probably already have some friends who are
non-smokers, and maybe people in your family who are non-smokers. Only hang out
with non-smokers. Only socialize with non-smokers. go to restaurants with non-
smokers. If you do something, if you're just doing hobbies, only with non-smokers.
And you'll find that you'll start to feel a little weird about smoking, right? Like
nobody else is smoking in your social group and so you need to get up and go smoke.
Oh, I need to go smoke. You know, even if they're nice, they say nothing to you.
Nobody says anything negative. but you'll feel a social pressure like, I'm the only
one who's smoking. And you know, you already have decided that you don't wanna do
it. You've already decided that smoking cigarettes is not healthy. So this will
create a very subtle... social pressure on you or psychological pressure, because
in many ways you're doing it to yourself, because like I said, even if no one else
says anything to you, you'll still feel a psychological pressure. And this will
help you tremendously to stop smoking. Just stop hanging out with other smokers.
Don't hang out with smokers. Hang out only with non-smokers, right? If you're kind
of overweight and fat, hang out with thin people. Just do things with thin people,
with active people. And you'll start to feel a little weird about being lazy and
sitting on your butt all the time, right? This is also true, you'll see this,
people talk about this all the time with money. If you wanna be more successful
financially, hang out with people who are financially successful, more successful
than you are, who have more money than you do, who are better at business than you
are. Now sometimes this is tricky because of course the problem is maybe they don't
want to hang out with you. Especially like people with lots of money. Everybody
wants to hang out with them. So sometimes they're very careful and they don't want
to just hang out with everybody and give financial advice. It's not about getting
advice by the way. When you hang out with these people don't ask them for advice.
Don't bother them and annoy them. You know, like if you're trying to lose weight,
you don't need to talk to all your thin friends. How do you do it, da da? Maybe
they don't even know. It's just their normal way of life, okay? Just hang around
them and you can watch them and listen to them. But you don't need to ask them for
advice. You don't need to ask them for help at all. Just be their friend and hang
out with them and do things with them and you will be influenced. You will improve.
Like I said, it's kind of the... in many ways a lazy way to make some improvements.
It's a lazy way to get more motivation to improve. So I would recommend this
especially again, if you're focused on money, if you're gonna hang around people
with more money who are more successful, don't talk to them about money and don't
talk to them about success because then they'll think you're trying to get
something from them and they probably don't wanna hang out with you. The way to do
it would be if you wanna meet people who have more money than you is join something
else that's not, join some group, like maybe some exercise group or some hobby that
has lots of successful people in it, financially successful, but it's not focused
on money. And then you just hang out with them. You never even need to talk about
money, but you will get influenced in the right direction. You know, like for
example, like if you're trying to meet entrepreneurs and successful people, you
might, you could just join like a public speaking group or some leadership group or
some sales group or something like that where this kind of group is going to
attract people who are already successful or even better an investing, some kind of
investing group or class, right? And then don't bother the other people, don't
bother the successful people, just hang out with them. That's all. You can just
talk to them about sports or something. It doesn't matter. So this is very, very
powerful. It's also true for relationships, by the way. So let's say you hope to be
married. Maybe you're already married. And you wanna have a successful marriage.
How do you learn how to have a successful marriage? Like where do you, you can read
all these different books and none of them agree on what to do. But here's a simple
way to do it. try to meet lots and lots and lots of happily married couples and
hang out with them and make friends with them and just notice what they're doing.
Right, and you probably will begin to notice things. And just by being in a social
group, if you're in a social group, if you're married and you're in a social group
with other people who are married and who have been married for a long time
successfully, then you will have this automatic social pressure. to stay married
and have a successful marriage. On the other hand, if you are married but you hang
out with single people or you hang out with people who have divorced three times,
this creates kind of a negative social pressure or social expectations, right?
Social rules, because every social group has a kind of set of rules, expectations,
and they're not said out loud, they're not. Sometimes they're mostly unsaid, right?
But they're still powerful. So this, and again, it's true for English by the way,
if you're wanting to improve your English a lot, well, hang out with people who
have already improved their English a lot. Right, you can meet them. You can do
this online also. Of course, face-to-face is the best, but you can also just do it
online. But hang out with successful English learners. and you don't need to ask
them for advice, you don't need to bother them about anything. Just hang out with
them, just chat with them socially, just be a nice friend and just have fun with
them, that's all. But if you have a group, if you join a group of 10 very
successful English speakers, right? People who were not good at English and then
they learned to speak English very fluently, like my VIP group, for example. If you
just join this group, and maybe your English is only like intermediate level. And
you just start and become friends with them and do things with them socially,
online, chatting with them, or even offline, just hanging out with them and having
fun. You will get influenced by them and you will start to feel this psychological
pressure to get better because it's like, oh, I'm the one, I'm the only one who's
terrible. I'm the only one who's bad. They're all so good. You just, you wanna be
like them. I noticed this in Jujitsu. I'll give you. again from my own life. So as
a jiu-jitsu fighter, I'm not very good. I'm a very so-so blue belt, right? Not so
good. But I feel constant pressure to get better. Why? Because every week I go to
the gym and I spar, I fight with, practice fighting, with the other guys. And a lot
of them are better than I am, right? Much better than I am. And it's not just being
beat, it's not really so much about being beat. You know, I don't mind tapping and
it's part of jujitsu is you lose, right? Even those guys, you know, they lose.
You're always gonna, they're always gonna make people better than you. It's more
just that it's the overall social expectation that everyone's trying to improve.
Everyone's getting better. Everyone's working hard and improving. Even guys that
are like newer than I am and they're not as good as I am. I can beat them now, but
they're still always trying to improve. And I can see they're getting better after
a few months. Oh wow, this guy's a lot tougher now. Right? So it creates this
situation where everybody is working and getting better and trying hard and trying
to do their best and everyone's trying to improve. Automatically I just feel this
psychological pressure to get better and improve. Right? I mean, I don't, I don't
need to be super great at jiu-jitsu. I don't need to be a master jiu-jitsu. I'm
good enough now to basically protect myself at a decent level, but still, I feel
the social pressure constantly. So I'm still constantly, I'm always watching videos
at night and trying new techniques and trying to get better. I'm still always
trying to do it. So it's quite interesting. And it's just that social pressure of
the group that. creates that very positive, in this case, very positive motivation
to keep improving, keep improving, keep getting better. So use this, you can use
this for yourself by just choosing your social groups carefully or changing your
social groups, change them. Your parents were right. I don't know if your parents
ever said this, but as a kid, you know, A lot of parents will say, you know, like,
they don't want you to hang out with bad kids. Don't, I don't like you hanging out
with that guy. He's, you know, these kids are not good. Hang out, they wanted you
to hang out with, you know, the good kids. Well, they were right. They were right,
our parents were right. Because you hang out with good kids, good people, you hang
out with good people, you'll become more good. You hang out with bad people, you
know, people who are, have bad habits or do unhealthy things or bad things, then
you will get pulled into that direction. All right, let's get into our comments and
questions. All right, live, here we are. Y'all hit the like button please, give AJC
some support. Thank you. Okay, let's see... Yeah, well exactly. Azar says, Azar
Bilal says, it depends on the environment. Our mind is driven by our surroundings.
Indeed, highly influenced by our surroundings and especially our social
surroundings, especially socially. Hey, Saracha, nice to see you as always. She
says, I've got it. I try to change my programming by programming my own brain. I
try to speak English everywhere. Last week, I had a, I dreamt in English, so she
had a dream in English. Awesome, that's
great. Okay, let's see. Yeah, like David says, David Vandom says, this is my
influential environment for improving my English. Exactly, and this is why I, like
I talk about the effortless English community and I encourage you all to, you know,
connect with each other. It's why we have our Gab group, our social group on gab,
gab.com, is exactly this reason to... have a place where you can connect so that
you can connect with very motivated, very enthusiastic, successful English learners
and creating that positive social influence for your English. That's exactly what
Effortless English is. That's why I call my website Effortless English Club. Why
club? That's why, to create a social, this very positive, strong social
environment, social culture for you. interesting book behind me. I'd like to know
its name. Is it for children? Let me look. I'll have to look at my video and see.
Oh, this is just a photo. This is a photo of Krishna and Angruda. So it's not
actually a book, it's a picture. And then I've got a bunch of other books back
there. Lots of books. Yeah, Fernando Diaz, great quote here says, AJ, in Spanish we
have a saying, tell me who you spend time with and I'll tell you who you are. My
parents were right. Yeah, our parents were right. We don't like it when we're kids
when they said that. I didn't always got mad at them because I remember in high
school at one time, it was kind of early high school, we'd moved to a different
state. So my parents, my family moved a lot when I was a kid. It was terrible,
right? because I had to leave all my old friends and come and I'm in a totally new
place again. And in my first year or two of high school, kind of the beginning I
didn't really know anybody and I started hanging out with this group of people.
They weren't that terrible, they weren't like drug addicts or anything. But you
know, kind of losers in a way, you know, just not very good positive kids. Right?
And I was starting to hang out with them and I remember my, I specifically remember
my mom basically saying, you know, I don't want you going over to their house. I
don't want you hanging out with those guys. Don't really like them. And they're not
a good influence. And you know, of course at the time I was kind of lonely. We'd
moved and I didn't have any other friends and I was very, very angry and upset
about it. And eventually, you know, through this kind of pressure, my parents
wouldn't let me. I would still of course see them at school, but they wouldn't let
me go hang out with them. And I was very, very angry and upset, but you know,
looking back, they were right. I eventually ended up meeting a much better group of
friends and being much happier and a much more positive group of people. As part of
being a parent is that you have to make decisions sometimes that your kids really
don't like because they don't fully understand. They don't really understand,
right? They don't have the life experience yet enough. Even as teenagers, they
don't have enough life experience to really understand and to see what's happening.
And sometimes they start going down a path in a direction that's not good for them
and they don't really understand it. I didn't understand it. These guys seem nice
enough. They seemed okay. And, you know, as a parent, you have to sometimes say no
or make these decisions and your kids are gonna be very unhappy at the time. But
hopefully they grow up and they look back and hopefully you're alive when they
realize it and they can say, oh mom and dad, you were right. Sorry. But it might
take 20 years. So I gotta be patient. And they might never say it, who knows. But
it doesn't matter, we gotta do it anyway. Alright, let's see... Mohammed Elakari
says, do you think only listening to your podcast is enough to become like a native
speaker or to be a very good speaker? Well, we've had a lot of people who have just
used the podcast, my podcast and others to make big improvements. I think, you
know, the students and the learners I've noticed may have made the fastest and best
progress. Do you use my courses? You know, yes, of course I'm. promoting my
courses, but that's the point of the courses is to help you make faster progress by
making everything more clear and organized and simple. But on the other hand, it's
yes, just doing tons and tons and tons of listening, depending on your level, you
can make actually very good progress if you're motivated and you have the time. I
see Jonas says here in Brazil, we say tell me who your friends are, I will tell you
who you are. Yep, that's right, Tony Robbins has some phrase, something like that
too. Show me your 10 closest friends or the 10 people you hang out with the most
and that's who you are. So I think a lot of people in a lot of cultures, we have
this idea, maybe we say it in different ways. And so understanding this, we can use
it. I think that's my message today, is that sometimes we just get in with groups
almost accidentally, right? It's just like, well, you know, they're my coworkers.
I'm at this job, so I hang out with these people all the time. Oh, I just happened
to meet these people, now I hang out with them, now they're my friends, or now
that, you know, they're my social group. So what I'm saying is that we can be more
careful and conscious, right? choose our groups more carefully. And sometimes,
sometimes we have to be like our parents, right, like we have to do this for
ourselves sometimes. What do I mean by that? Like I talked about how my mom did
this for me in high school, but as adults, our parents aren't gonna do this, but
sometimes we have to do it for ourselves. What that means is sometimes we have to
be, take a really tough look at our social groups. And we have to make some tough
decisions sometimes, meaning we have to sometimes cut social ties, cut friends, cut
people out of our social groups who are not positive. We may like them, we may have
fun with them, we may have some history with them, but. If we're honest, we look
and we say this person, it's just they're not a good person, they're not a positive
person, they're influencing me in very negative ways, they're constantly pulling me
in this, I'm trying to improve and become better and they're constantly pulling me
and influencing me and encouraging me in negative ways. And you gotta cut them. You
don't need to be mean, you don't need to say anything mean to them, you just stop
doing things with them so much, little by little and maybe completely. Some people
you have to cut completely. And of course on the other side is finding positive
people and getting out there and trying to meet them and make friends with them and
do things with them. So it's choosing your groups carefully. Not letting it just
happen accidentally only, but actually doing this consciously, carefully. Choosing.
Yeah, like Michael says, there's a similar quote in English. You're the average of
the five people. You're around every day. Yeah, right. Same, similar idea, right.
These are all kind of expressing the same basic idea. And it is hard because
sometimes it's just habit. And the other thing is we change. So sometimes, you
know, we have a social group and it's fine, but then we've decided we want to go a
different direction in our life, right? And it can be hard then because you don't
have any bad feelings about your old social group. And maybe they're not bad
people, but they're just not, you know, like for example, I'll just use a simple
example would be health, right? So let's say you start getting older and you start
getting quite worried about your health and you realize this is important. And you
realize like, oh, all my friends, they're pretty unhealthy, they eat badly. They
don't exercise, their health is getting worse and worse. I'm just around all these
unhealthy people all the time. You know, they're not evil people or anything, but
you realize, God, you know, I'm with them, I'm trying to be very strict with my
eating, and then I'm hanging out with them, and they're eating junk food, and
they're always pressuring me to eat it with them and go out to restaurants that are
eating junk and just sitting around instead of getting out and being active. You
might have to decide, ah, you know, this group's just not good for me anymore. I
don't hate them, they're not bad people, but I need to make a more healthy social
group. I need to connect with a healthier social group. Group of people who are
passionate about health and being active and exercising, eating good food and
taking care of themselves, right? So it's not always a moral thing. Give me
something simple like that. Yeah, okay, Carlos Augusto gives an example. What about
hanging out with friends who have no vision? They don't talk about goals or plans.
They're not bad people, but they can influence us to live without getting better.
This is a perfect example. This is another great example of what I'm talking about.
Exactly, exactly. And you know, I've done this in my life several times already,
and like I said, they're not bad people. I can look back at, you know, some of
these old friends that people, my old social groups. And it's just you can just
kind of outgrow them. You're growing and they're not, okay? So you don't do it, you
don't need to do it in a harsh way, in a mean way. But yeah, you gotta leave them
behind. If they're not growing and you are, or they're not growing and you want to
grow, then yeah, you gotta leave them off and you will have to leave them behind.
This is a good example. You know, some people, they have no vision, they have no
goals, they have no plans, they have no... purpose or meaning in their life and
they just kind of go along with whatever's you know popular and whatever's common
and you may have you want to live a very different kind of life so yeah you're
probably gonna have to change your social group in
that case right? You can still see them occasionally I guess but you know just
chat with them be nice to them but yeah your overall regular social group is will
have to change This is different from family, with family, family's family forever,
and that has other benefits. But we're talking more about your chosen social group.
And even family, if you have someone who's really toxic, really terrible in your
family, you might have to avoid them, you might love them, but you might have to
not spend time with them if they're truly terrible. Um, let's see, Bilal says,
should we sacrifice our sleep time for studying? No. Sleep's important. Get your
sleep. Amina, good to see you, says, the most important thing is to schedule your
time, that whatever you want to do in life, you'll make successful. Yeah, having,
you know, doing little things like that, to scheduling the things that are
important, this also helps. Like Sriracha says, I try to make friends with good
people, indeed. Michael Kyle says, I remember when I was learning English with your
courses 10 years ago, you mentioned that you had to live with your dog in a small
car. Well, I didn't have to, I chose to. In a small hot car. Now look at you,
you're the number one English teacher. Indeed, although right now I'm hot. Okay,
nevermind. One second, open my door. Mmm. This room has no air con, so I'm baking
in my room here. I've closed the door. Tell me if the fan noise is too much right
now. If it's, because I've got a fan blowing on me and I can move the fan up and
try to get it away from the microphone, but sweating. Yeah, I did, but you're
right. Yes, your point is well taken. And indeed, I chose to live in my car with my
dog in a hot car. It was, for me, it was an adventure. It was an experiment. So I
wasn't forced into it. It was something I wanted to do. Okay, I'll take a couple
more. Oh, that feels better. I hope that, is this loud? Is this making noise in the
mic? Let me know guys in the comments if this is, if there's a wind sound in the
microphone and I'll change it. No noises at all. Oh, good, good. I'll keep the mic
close to me. Ah, no noise. Oh, very good, clear, great. Ah, good. So yeah, in our
apartment, we live in a pretty small apartment. It's kind of long, but we have only
one little aircon unit and it's at the, I mean, I guess it's actually the back of
the apartment and I'm here way at the front of the apartment. And so I often close
the door to make it more quiet in here. but then none of the Archon comes in and
this room just gets hotter and hotter as I'm doing the show. Ah, it's kinda hard to
do in the summer. All right, I'll take a couple more questions and comments and
then time to go. By the way, those of you who only watch on YouTube, I recommend
get my audio podcast, right? How do you do that? You just get any audio podcast
app. There's so many apps, I can't count them, okay? iTunes and Apple, that's one.
I remember there's so many of them now. But anyway, most of them are free. Just get
a podcasting app and in your app just search for Effortless English Podcast, AJ
Hoag. You'll find it and subscribe. This is audio only. The reason is that
sometimes I do shows, I do audio only shows. So you won't get them on YouTube. Most
of the shows are both, I do both. I will do YouTube and then I put the audio on the
podcast. But occasionally I do bonus shows, like kind of Podbean is a good one,
yep. Okay, occasionally I do bonus shows, which are only audio, audio only, no
video. And some people like those, and they're kind of different topics sometimes.
Usually a little more casual and relaxed and I just chatting about whatever's in my
head. So, might give you a little bit different style of English too, so I
definitely recommend that you do both and subscribe to the audio podcast as well.
Yeah, Fernando Diaz says, from Gab, I have created a very strong friendship with
eight friends. We talk weekly. In addition, we motivate each other to get better in
English. You're right, it's good to be with supportive people. Exactly, and you
will find this is a very common comment or experience that a lot of the people who
really have a high level of success with effortless English are. they create or
join a group like this, you know, often VIP members and they'll get together and
they'll make a group of five or eight or 12 or 20 people and they will regularly
talk just online using Skype or Zoom or something like that and they become real
friends and they motivate each other and encourage each other and they create this
incredible social group that. helps motivation so much because all by ourselves, if
you're all alone, it is hard to stay motivated doing anything, anything difficult.
Not just English, anything like jujitsu, um, you know, praying and chanting,
working out, lifting weights, you know, anything like that. We're always gonna have
times in our life when we're alone, when our energy drops, we're tired, we're busy,
maybe other things are happening in our life, we're discouraged, we're bored, it's
all normal, it happens. So at those times, if you're just alone, you're just doing
it by yourself all the time, then it's easy to quit, or at least to quit for a
while. your motivation drops, your energy drops, and you stop doing whatever you're
trying to do. Like jujitsu, I'll use jujitsu, because it's a good example, because
there are times when I'm very highly motivated with jujitsu, right? Ah, I'm just
loving jujitsu, I'm improving. You know, like a year ago, one year ago, last
summer, I was like super motivated for about six months or so. Because I was
improving a lot, and I was trying some new things that really helped my, helped me
enjoy jujitsu more. And it was great. But then, the last couple months it's sort of
been the opposite. The last couple months, like my energy's dropped, it's so hot
this summer, and I feel like I'm not improving at all. In fact, some ways I feel
like I'm going backwards a little bit. And, you know, so kind of frustrated and my
motivation just dropping, just kind of, ugh, right? So, If I was just trying to
learn Jiu Jitsu all by myself, maybe I won't say I would quit, but I might not, I
would maybe stop going for a while and take a long break. But, you know, because
I'm part of the group, you know, I just still enjoy going to the gym and meeting
the other guys and fighting. And even though I'm personally individually frustrated
and realizing my limitations, I still feel that positive energy of the group. And
it keeps me going, it keeps me going, it keeps me going. Which at the very least,
keeps me in good physical shape, right, where I'm still physically in pretty good
fitness. So, that's the advantage of having these positive social groups. It helps
you get through those points where your own individual motivation or energy drops.
And you always have that time, it will always happen to you. So, it's good to have
that support. Ummm, let's see... How to handle rude people when they act like they
don't understand you but they do when I speak English with them. I don't know why
would they do that. I don't know who they are. Maybe don't talk to them. If they
don't want to talk to you. I'm not sure why they would be doing that. how many
Russians are here. We've got lots of Russians and we've got people from everywhere,
guys. Everywhere. How many times to listen to the mini stories? Ask Obadee da
Silva. As many times as you can, you know, listen. You just follow the plan I give,
you know, in the welcome guides, depending which course you have. Lots of people
from Brazil at the moment. Depends on what time I do the show, right? So different
time zones, it's convenient right now, and other time zones, it's not convenient.
Like I'll ask, how did I meet my wife? First we were pen pals. So just online pen
pals, not a dating site, just pen pals, just, and then I came to Japan and we met
and started dating and you know, eventually got married. So I came here to Japan
for work. Oh, it's happy, happy Father's Day. It's Brazilian Father's Day today.
Nice, happy Father's Day to all you Brazilian dads. Sid says hello, love from
India. Namaste and hello to you too. Love to India. Ah, Independence Day! Is it
Independence Day today in India? Ooh. And next week is Krishna Janmashtami, which
is awesome. I'll be celebrating that myself. So is today Indian Independence Day?
If you're Indian, let me know. I didn't know that. Ha ha ha. Independence from the
British, right? Um, wow I don't really understand this comment. How can I give you
a super striker? Why can't, I'm not sure what that means. Sorry, Adi, could you
explain your comment a little more, like without the abbreviations? With full
words, because I don't really understand what you're talking about. I'm Dan from
Bangkok. Hello Dan in Bangkok. Felipe says hi from Brazil. Love from Brazil. You've
changed my life. Peace to you and your family. Thanks. Ah, thank you. Yes. Ah yes,
independence from the British of course, yes. Ah nice. All right, I think we're
about done then on the comments. So, you'll notice if you're watching on video,
you'll see that I've got this gab.com link at the top of my screen, gab.com slash
ajhoge. So that is a good, follow me there and that's where you'll find. If you go
to my profile page, you'll see there's a link to the social, our group, it's the
Effortless English Group on GAB. And that's where you can start meeting other
people, maybe you can make your own conversation groups and as others have talked
about, you can create and organize your own little group of friends and make
friends with other people who are motivated and enthusiastic and positive about
learning English and improving their English. It's really such a great thing to do.
And anything else in your life you're trying to do. any other positive thing you're
trying to do. This is a really easy first
step, it's a really simple first step in the sense it's kind of lazy, like you
don't need to do much other than just meet people or just find a group, you can
just get online, find some groups and join them and go hang out with them, that's
all. You're not, you know, just by doing that, but you're just creating these new
social circles, these new social groups will start to influence you in a certain
direction, so. Anything you're trying to do that's positive, positive changes in
your life, growth, meet other people who are already doing that and hang out with
them. It is really, in some ways, kind of a, almost a lazy way to make improvements
and increase your motivation. All right, lots of love to you all. Go to effo Join
my VIP. program or other courses. I'll see you next time. Bye for now.