Transcript - “Listening Time” Episode 137

Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and
you're listening to Episode 137 of the Listening Time podcast. I hope you're all doing
well with your English learning. I hope that these episodes have helped you improve
your listening. And I hope you can nd time in your daily life to do a little bit of listening
practice every day, or almost every day. I know that it can be hard to always stick to
your plan to practice English every day. I know it takes discipline, but you will see the
bene ts over time.
And speaking of discipline, this is the topic that I want to talk about in today's
episode. Discipline can mean a few di erent things. There are di erent usages of this
word. But when I say “discipline” in this context, I'm talking about self-discipline. A
de nition could be: the ability to pursue something, maintain something, or improve in
some way, while correcting and regulating yourself, despite the temptation to abandon
this.
That's a long de nition. But I wanted to give you a sense of what I'm talking
about when I say “discipline.” So, when I say that you want to have discipline in your
language learning, I'm talking about being able to learn a language, pursue this goal,
and continue to make yourself do it even if you don't always feel motivated, or you're
not in the mood. You want to continue on this right path, and correct yourself and
regulate your behavior so that you continue to learn this language.
So, that's what I mean when I say discipline. So, I want to talk about that today,
and we'll talk about some di erent things that require discipline in your life. So, this
should be a good and helpful topic for everyone.
And before we start, remember that if you're having trouble understanding native
speakers when they speak fast, then make sure to join my membership, so you can get
my specialized listening training, so I can help you understand those di cult sound
patterns that you hear when native speakers speak really fast and reduce their speech.
So, if you're interested in that, make sure to click on the link in the Episode Description
below this episode. That's www.patreon.com/listeningtime
And also remember to sign up for my US Conversations podcast if you feel
ready to start practicing with real conversations between native speakers. So, that
should be your ultimate goal, to be able to understand multiple people speaking with
each other. So, if you need that practice, make sure to sign up for my US
Conversations podcast. The link is also in the description below this episode. That's
www.patreon.com/USConversations
And as always, remember to share this podcast with anyone you know who
might nd it useful, and please give it a ve-star rating and write a review. Alright, let's
get started.
Okay, let's talk about discipline. I already gave you a de nition of what I mean
when I say “discipline” in this context. And now, I want to talk about some things that
require discipline. What are some areas, some things in life, that require some level of
discipline? Well, the rst one I want to talk about is waking up early. So, I know that
many people hate waking up early, and I know that for a lot of people, it's not
necessary to wake up early. And I'm not saying that you should wake up early, or that it
will change your life if you wake up early.
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 However, I do want to say that waking up early in general is a good practice. It
usually leads to good bene ts, and it can really help you organize your day better, or be
more productive than you already are. But I know it's not for everyone. So, I'm not
saying that. But I want to encourage you to consider it if you're already thinking about
it. If you think it might help you, then try it. I'm sure you'll see that there are many
bene ts.
So, why does waking up early require discipline? Well, I think it's pretty obvious:
because there is a very big temptation to go back to sleep. When you wake up early,
when your alarm goes o , it’s very tempting to just go back to sleep. By the way, when
we say the phrase “go o ” or “goes o ” in this context, we're talking about your alarm
ringing. Your alarm goes o . It rings.
So, there's always the temptation to snooze your alarm, you know, you can
press that snooze button, which gives you some extra minutes of sleep. So, there's
always that option, or there's usually that option to go back to sleep. So, it requires
discipline to actually stick with your plan to wake up early, and actually do it.
So, because of that, waking up early is an activity that will require discipline from
you. And I think it's a great way to train your discipline. I think that when you start
waking up early consistently, every day, you start to develop this good habit, and
develop the skill of being disciplined.
So, this is something that I've noticed in my life. I've noticed that because I
consistently wake up early, I feel like I've trained myself to have this discipline of not
just choosing the easy option of going back to sleep, and forcing myself to choose the
more di cult option, but the one that has more bene ts for me.
So, waking up early is a choice, and I think that this act of choosing to wake up
early, every day, despite the temptation to go back to sleep is a good thing for our
character. I think it helps us improve in our ability to make tough decisions and to delay
grati cation for the future.
Remember that the phrase “to delay grati cation” means that you don't get the
good thing now; you choose to get an even better thing later. You’re delaying
grati cation. So, I think that waking up early trains your ability to delay grati cation,
and it helps you build discipline. So, that's one example.
Another thing that requires discipline is not eating junk food, not breaking your
diet, or breaking your healthy eating habits when you don't want to. Of course, there's
always a time and a place for junk food. I think we all need a little bit of that pleasure,
of course. And so, sometimes we should choose to indulge a little bit. When we say
that you “indulge,” we're saying that you allow yourself to have some pleasure that you
wouldn't normally have or that is normally over the limit maybe. So, I think that we all
need to indulge sometimes when it comes to eating junk food.
However, I'm referring to not eating junk food when you don't want to, because
you want to maintain your healthy eating habits at that time. So, when you have a goal,
you want to eat healthy, you want to follow a certain plan with your diet, then you have
to have discipline to not eat junk food.
And this is something that I used to be really bad at, and I'm still not very good
at this. However, I'm a little bit better than I was in the past. But in the past, I had very
little discipline in this area. When I felt the craving to eat junk food, I always indulged
and just ate junk food. By the way, the word “craving” refers to an intense desire in the
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 moment for something, usually food. If I say that “I'm craving chocolate right now,” this
means that I really want chocolate right now. This is a desire I have. So, you can use it
as a verb, “to crave,” or a noun, “a craving.”
So, in the past, whenever I had a craving, it was very hard to ignore this, and I
usually just ate the junk food that I was craving. So, over time, I've become a little more
disciplined in this area. I think, as I've gotten older, I'm a little more conscious of the
fact that my decisions now in terms of food and my health will have a big e ect later on
in my life… or soon. Maybe it's not that far into the future.
So, when you're young, it can be easy to think that you're never going to have
health issues, and that you can eat whatever you want, but as you get older, you start
to realize that this isn't the case, right? Our actions have consequences. And that
includes our food, right?
So, I've gotten a little bit better at this over time, because I'm more conscious of
this. However, it can still be hard for me to be disciplined when it comes to not eating
junk food, because when we have those cravings, those temptations, it's so easy to
just ful ll them, and just open up the package of cookies and eat it.
So, because it's so easy to fall into that trap, for me, the best way to not do this
is to not have that food at home, to not have the food available to me in my house. So,
the way I become more disciplined in this area is not buying the junk food when I go
grocery shopping.
So, that's where I exercise my discipline. I see the package of cookies, it looks
tempting, but I say, “No, I'm not going to buy it.” And then, when I'm at home, I don't
have the cookies, so the desire that I have is a lot harder to ful ll, because I don't have
that junk food close to me. So, that's kind of how I help myself in this area.
And another example of when we need to have discipline is when we are saving
money. So, I know that for some of you, this might be a very hard thing to do. You
might not have the custom of saving money and not spending the money that you
earn. So, this might be an area in which you need more discipline.
So, saving money is the ultimate form, the ultimate example, of delaying
grati cation, right? You receive money. You can do anything with that money. But
instead of going out and getting things you want and feeling satis ed because you can
buy something, you decide to put it away somewhere, save that, and just almost forget
that you have that money, and then hopefully bene t later on in the future, because you
saved that money.
This is probably the best example in our day-to-day lives of delaying
grati cation, and it can be really hard, I de nitely understand that. However, I think that
it can also be fun after a while, once you get the hang of it. In English, when we say
that you “get the hang of” something, we're saying that you get accustomed to
something, you get used to it, and it becomes more natural or comfortable for you.
So, after a while, once you get the hang of it, saving money can be fun, because
you feel good about getting closer to your goal and seeing that amount grow. And you
know that you're closer to being able to a ord that car that you're saving for, or the
house, or whatever it is. By the way, the word “a ord” is used to say that you can buy
something because you have enough money for it. So, when you see that amount of
money grow, and you see that you're getting closer to your goal of being able to a ord
something, it's actually very satisfying to see yourself get closer to that goal.
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 So, I think that at the beginning, saving money can be hard for people if they
don't have this custom. But once you get the hang of it, it can start to become a lot
easier, and even fun and satisfying. So, I think that if you've never tried this before, it's
going to require discipline. However, it will get easier over time… at least that's what I
think.
And another thing that requires discipline in our lives is nishing our work before
our leisure. The word “leisure” just refers to your free time that you can use for things
that you want to do. So before we have fun, we should try to nish our work, right? So,
you don't want to not nish what you need to do, and then go have fun, because the
whole time, you'll be thinking about that work that you didn't do, right?
So, it's good to nish your work before you go have fun or relax or whatever,
and this requires discipline, too, because it's easy to put o work and to procrastinate
on things when we don't really want to do them. The phrase “put o ” in this context
means to postpone something, to procrastinate, to do it later, instead of now. It's very
easy to put o things that we don't want to do and just do something else right now.
That's probably our natural tendency. That's what people do.
So, in order to not do that, we have to exercise a little discipline. We need to
make sure that we are nishing our work, doing what we need to do, and then, after
that, we can enjoy ourselves. We don't want to procrastinate and then have all of this
stress to deal with, and all of this work that we're going to have to do later, because we
didn't do it now. So, that's something that we need discipline in order to not do.
And this is another form of delaying grati cation… you know, not having fun now
so that you can have more fun later. And I really think that when you don't
procrastinate, when you do what you need to do now, and then you relax or have fun,
you have a lot more fun, and you can relax a lot better, let's say, when you actually do
the hard work rst. I think that it will enhance your leisure time if you do it like this. The
word “enhance” means to improve or increase. So, you can enhance your leisure time,
and you can enjoy it more if you have the discipline to do your work rst. Okay? So,
that's another one.
And one last example I want to talk about… a really relevant one… is learning a
language. So, you need a lot of discipline when it comes to learning a language
because it's very easy to just stop and just quit, give up, or just put this o until later. A
lot of people want to learn a language, but they always put it o and say that they'll do
it in the future, for example.
Or many people start learning a language, and then they stop. Or they start with
a good language learning plan and schedule, and then they start to get o track and do
other things, and they stop being as regular with their language learning. I'm sure a lot
of you can identify with this.
Often, when I asked people how long they've been learning English for, they give
me a really complicated answer. They say, “Well, I learned for a year, and then I
stopped and then I started learning again. And then I stopped taking it seriously. And
then, now I'm more serious.” They give me a very complicated answer because they
haven't been disciplined over time. And so, they can't just say that they've been
learning for three years, because they haven't been learning for three years. They
started the rst year really well, and then they stopped, and then they started, and then
they stopped. So, they haven't been disciplined.
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 So, of course, if we're not disciplined in our language learning, we're not going
to see the bene ts that we want, right? We’re not going to see the progress that we're
hoping for. We won't be satis ed with our improvement. So, it doesn't take a ton of
discipline. I think it just takes a small amount of discipline to just say, “Okay, every day,
I need to do at least 20 minutes of listening, or 30 minutes of reading” or whatever it is
that you plan on doing. It just takes a little bit of discipline to put that in your schedule
and say, “Okay, before I go to bed at night, I'm going to listen to this English podcast
for 25 minutes. That's part of my schedule,” right?
It's not a really big thing, right? It sounds pretty simple, and it's not that hard. It
just takes a little discipline. However, it's very easy to abandon that little discipline, and
it's very easy to get o track. And so, even this small amount of discipline is very
important when it comes to language learning.
So, that's a big one. Learning a language is a hard process. It takes a long time.
But with discipline, you can do it. Right? That’s one of the biggest keys to being a
successful language learner, is having that amount of discipline that you need to stay
on track, practice every day, or almost every day, and to not quit or become really
irregular in your practice, etc.
Okay, that's all for today. I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I hope you're
motivated to be disciplined in your life and to do things that require discipline and to
train yourself in this regard. And of course, if you need my help to understand native
speakers, if you want more training, if you need more help with this, then make sure to
sign up for my membership so you can get my specialized listening training. The link is
down below in the Episode Description. That's www.patreon.com/listeningtime
And if you feel like you're ready to practice with real conversations, then make
sure to sign up for my US Conversations podcast. You'll really like it. I talk to di erent
people from around the country, and we talk about a lot of interesting things. We talk
about the di erent cities and states of the US. So, I think that you'll really like that.
Make sure to go down and sign up if you're interested. The link is also in the
Description. That's www.patreon.com/USConversations
And if you like this podcast, please share it. Please give it a ve-star rating and
write a review. Alright, thank you for listening to this episode, and I'll talk to you on the
next episode of Listening Time.
*Get my training and advanced episodes: www.patreon.com/listeningtime
*US Conversations Podcast: www.patreon.com/USConversations
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