931. Overcoming Fears 😰 with Zdenek | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Get started at LinkedIn .com slash results terms and conditions apply You're listening to Luke's English podcast for more information visit teacher Luke go to UK Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast. Hello.

How are you doing today?

I hope you doing fine now a brand new episode and this one is another conversation episode for you to give you some more listening practise and the chance to pick up vocabulary in the context of a natural conversation.

My guest today in this one is Zdenek Lucas, back on the podcast once again.

Zdenek's been on this show a few times, but just in case you don't know him, he is an English teacher originally from the Czech Republic, currently living in Vietnam.

He was first on this podcast in episodes number 569 and 570, when he talked about his story of learning English, living in the UK, and becoming an English teacher.

He is a podcaster too.

He does Zdenek's English podcast and also more recently, his show about learning English with football called The Footglish podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts.

This conversation with Zdenek today is all about fear.

This is our topic, fear.

Things which give us fear or have given us fear in our lives and overcoming those fears.

So, yes, fear, being frightened, being scared, feeling anxious or nervous about things.

We talk about moments when we've been scared or felt very anxious, what happened, how we dealt with them and what we learned from them.

This contains anecdotes from our lives.

So little stories and descriptions of things that have happened to us.

And also, plenty of language for talking about this whole subject.

So there's definitely a lot of vocabulary for you to pick up from this.

I should say, kind of a little disclaimer, we talk about fear and overcoming fears.

But neither of us are experts in this area.

I mean, we're not psychologists or professionals in the area of cognitive behavioral therapy or anything like that.

We're just two blokes talking about our experiences.

And the aim of this episode really is just to have a natural conversation on the subject and let you notice the way that people talk about this topic in English.

So watch out for vocabulary as we go through this.

this. That's hopefully what you should always be doing when you listen to these conversations.

It should be a chance to notice and pick up bits of English.

Watch out for vocab.

That means the language we use to directly describe frightening experiences, but also other idioms and expressions around the subject.

Obviously, you've already heard me say the word fear, to have fear, to experience fear, to overcome your fear, or your fears, specific fears.

But also, we talk about things being scary or being scared of things, being afraid of things, being nervous and being anxious, or having nerves or experiencing anxiety.

Right? These are all like words relating to fear, but also lots of other things about dealing with fear and learning from it, for example being thrown in at the deep end or fight or flight responses and lots of vocab that comes up.

Now you'll hear us explaining some of that vocab as it comes up.

You know, we stop and sort of recap some of the things that we've said.

But also you can check the episode pdf for this episode which is available on the episode page on my website.

How many times did I say episode then?

Four, I think. But anyway, you can find the pdf for this which contains lots of the notes For things that we say and other details to help you build your vocabulary with this PDF on the episode page on my website link in the description We're ready to start in just a second But there's just one more thing I need to say as you listen to this conversation You might hear that my voice is not as clearly recorded as usual This is because annoyingly I had the wrong microphone selected during the conversation, which we recorded remotely.

I had the wrong microphone selected.

So I was recorded not by my normal microphone, but by my laptop's in -built microphone.

I didn't realize that was happening, and this is why my side of the conversation sounds quite roomy and it's less clear than usual.

I think it's okay. You can hear me all right, but that's why I sound a bit different this time, because I made the schoolboy error of not double checking my sound settings before I hit record. But, you know, you live and learn.

Thankfully, my laptop microphone was running and recording.

So, there was something.

Because that is certainly one of my biggest fears as a podcaster, recording an episode, and then realising that you didn't actually set it up properly and the audio was not captured.

And then when you review the the file or the recording all you have is just silence You know that's just the worst. That's the sort of thing that gives me nightmares to be honest That's the sort of thing.

I wake up in the middle of the night like in a cold sweat.

Oh god I forgot to press record or god the wrong microphone was selected.

Oh My wife's like are you okay?

It's like yeah God, it's just a dream and she's like, it's just you know It's just a dream.

It's just a dream Luke.

Are you alright the microphone soon?

Ah, so that's normally a nightmare.

Anyway, without any further ado, let's get started then with this episode and here we go.

So why have we decided to talk about being scared of things?

I suppose I suggested it to you.

We were thinking about what we could talk about and, well, I'm in Vietnam and it's absolutely a completely different culture from, let's say, Western Europe.

So, obviously, there were a few moments that I had to deal with or overcome or get used to, you could say, and fear is definitely part of what I experienced here.

But to be honest, I'm making it sound very dramatic.

Yeah, that is Vietnam is, it's a lovely place, of course, it's not it's not like a scary place.

No, not at all. I know what you mean.

When you go to a place that's totally different.

Yeah, there is that feeling of being out of your comfort zone.

But just because you don't necessarily know all of the customs and all the ways of doing things.

I know exactly how you feel when I've moved to different places.

Even moving to France when I it's not that far away from England or that different, really, but just the fact that people speak a different language.

When I first moved here, or first times I visited, and let's say when my girlfriend was at work, and I was just like knocking around, trying to find a place to eat or just, you know, go into cafes and things like that.

Yeah, there's that sense of nerves of kind of like, oh, God, I hope I'm doing this right.

You know, I don't want to sit.

I'd walk around the city looking for a place to sit and have a coffee, And I'd walk past cafes and I'd just kind of go, nah, no, I don't like the feel of that one.

Don't know why. Cause it's different.

Like in England, you go to a pub, you just go to the bar and order your drink and sit down and the waiter leaves you alone.

And in France, you can sit down at a table, the waiter comes over.

You feel like you need to have a little chat or something.

So I would often sort of avoid all those, those moments.

I'm a bit better these days.

it's like, it's like a little bit of a culture shock, basically.

Right. And, but, but for you, it must have been like not that hard considering you have lived in Japan when you were, when you were younger, right.

So you, you, you went to Japan and we know all the stories like sick in Japan on Luke's English podcast. So I just want to ask you this question, was it easier because of that?

Because for me, it was because I have lived in the UK before.

And it felt like so much easier going to Vietnam after that experience.

Even though it's a different culture, but still, it's like, I've done it in some capacity, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Like much, much easier coming to France.

In fact, it was, I was actually up for it, you know, having, when I was much younger, gone to Japan, which is obviously much farther further away and so on.

And going through that much more drastic change.

Yeah, coming to moving to France was almost kind of like Yeah, I'm I'm well up for this.

But you know, when I moved to Japan, I've told the story before, but just the, I was all I was like full of confidence and thinking this is just wonderful.

I can't wait to go and everything and every that feeling lasted all the way up until the moment when I got dropped off at the airport by my dad.

So my dad drove me to Heathrow Airport, it's like a two hour drive or something.

And I was like finding the car thinking this is going to be brilliant, you know.

And then, yeah, bags out of the car, and stuff and And I started to feel this slight feeling of nerves coming in, and you know, we rolled the bags through into the main part of the airport, you know, the, the arrivals area.

And then Dad was like, all right, then, well, looking after yourself off you go that point, I was like, yeah, my stomach sort of my dropped out of, you know, just dropped completely.

And I was like, Oh, God, oh, wow, this is real.

This is actually going to happen.

and my dad's like, Daddy's gonna go now, you know, and off he went, you know, we kind of said our goodbyes and he said, Look after yourself, keep in touch. And then I was like, Oh God, I'm on my own now.

And I just felt so unbelievably nervous in the airport.

You know, that kind of airport anxiety that you can get.

When you're just sort of like going through check in.

And there's that sense of like, oh, I'm gonna be late, I better not be late.

I'm gonna get the right gate.

And then there's the flight.

And then I've got my passport, where's my passport?

Got to make sure it's in my pocket here.

and I've got my bags and stuff like that.

Getting things out of pockets and putting them back in, opening zips in bags, there's quite a lot of anxiety around.

There's a lot that can happen at the airport.

And we haven't even mentioned the fact that we are flying itself, right?

So, you know there are a lot of people who really...

I remember my first flight.

I was really uneasy about it as well.

And whenever turbulence is, it still is a bit like, ooh, yeah, but I can't say I'm scared of flying.

For example, there was a football player, right?

His name is Dennis Bergkamp.

I don't know if you remember him, a Danish player who used to play for my favorite team Arsenal.

Hello, this is Danek, and I'm talking to you from the future.

I've just made a terrible mistake.

Dennis Birkamp isn't Danish.

He is Dutch. Apologies to all of Luke's Dutch listeners, my bad.

And yeah, he wouldn't travel to European games, because he couldn't fly.

So, he only played the domestic league, the premier league, and he was, he was a really important player for as well.

A brilliant player too.

Yeah. Amazing. And God, so Arsenal never did anything in the Champions League probably because of that.

Is that right? Uh, it's an interesting assumption.

Yeah. It could be. It could be.

I don't know. I don't know if they did, but I'm assuming that not having Dennis Bergkamp was a big disadvantage for them.

But that's interesting.

Isn't it? That people are scared of flying.

People are very nervous about it.

And it's not logical because flying is much safer than a lot of other things, driving to the airport is much more dangerous than the actual flight itself.

But yeah, that's a that's a phobia.

People have a genuine phobia of flying, yeah, which is kind of an illogical fear.

But yeah, on that flight to Japan, I was I felt awful.

I just felt so uncomfortable and nervous.

But it wasn't because of the flight, it was just because I'd been knocked out of my normal life.

And I like that you use that phrase, that feeling of being out of your comfort zone.

So I actually wrote it down.

I did my homework. Listeners, Luke gave me that homework.

He's a teacher after all, so he's just doing his job.

We said that during the episode, we could perhaps note down bits of language that we both use and point them out.

Language learners out there, we're here to help.

I said I was out of my comfort zone.

Did I? You did? Yeah.

A nice phrase, I suppose.

So out of your environment in which you were comfortable, right.

So suddenly... That's hard. Because you have to...

Just imagine you're somewhere, anywhere on a desert island and Now, the first thing you have to do is to explore the bits of islands, so sort of to demark.

Is that a verb, to demark your territory, so to speak?

Yeah. Is it demark or demarcate?

I don't know which one.

Demarcate. Demarcate, yeah.

Demarcate, set the boundaries to demarcate your territory.

Exactly. So that's sort of, because you don't know what's waiting for you out there, right?

So it's a bit scary, it can be a bit scary.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and the feeling of the foundations of your normal life that you just had never really thought about before.

Things that you just assumed as just being just normal things that were kind of gone.

So that feeling of being on the plane actually was quite symbolic in a way that I was really aware of the huge gulf beneath me.

me. That there was obviously my feet on the carpet, and then the fuselage of the plane or whatever, you know, and then below the plane, it was just so much space.

And then way, way down at the bottom was like Siberia or something.

And I remember looking out the window and just seeing this kind of, I could see the Arctic tundra or whatever, it just looked like some frozen wasteland.

Maybe it was even the canopy of the clouds.

I could see I don't know.

But I thought I could see the ground.

Um, and just, yeah, just got this feeling of like, the earth had just gone out from under my feet.

And then as soon as I arrived, as soon as I arrived in Japan and got out of the plane and walked around, I felt absolutely fine because somehow I realized, Oh, it's, it's okay.

It's just, it's not that different.

I don't know why I was expecting it to be so, um, shocking.

Yeah. But anyway, just to finish this point, um, yeah, going to coming to France was, was much easier.

Still not, not, not a walk in the park.

Hey, there's another one, but yeah.

Not a walk in the park, but easier than Japan because the first few weeks of being in Japan I also felt very sort of yeah, still out of my comfort zone there, just that feeling of like the first few days of walking down the street, trying to find something like trying to find a bank or a post office or a place to eat.

and just not just being completely unfamiliar with the way the place works.

For example, I didn't realize that you have to, I was like operating like I would do in England.

I was looking for a cafe like this, walking around looking for a cafe.

I didn't realize you have to look up that there's all these different floors.

A lot of the time, places to get to eat or cafes and stuff will be up on the fifth, sixth, seventh floor or something.

So I didn't know how to read the city, felt very, very piles.

I thought they were in Japanese as well.

So I don't know. You probably couldn't speak the language at the time.

No, not at all. So I felt very lost. Yeah.

And how about you then in, in Vietnam?

Is this a feeling? Cause you know, again, going back to the reason we're doing this episode about fears, like you talked about moving to Vietnam and um, although Vietnam is itself a lovely place, just the fact that you were in a different place, different culture, uh, that brings a lot of anxiety and fear with it.

So what kinds of things have you experienced?

Jakob Lusensky I can't say that, like, okay, it's not that bad.

I'm really making it sound overly dramatic.

But I would say one thing in particular is quite hard and that's roads.

What happens is that basically Vietnamese people, they behave in a different way on the road, and also about 90 % of them ride scooters or motorcycles.

So there are cars here as well, and trucks and everything, and bicycles, but it's like the most common means of transport for Vietnamese people, motorcycles.

So I would say that, correct me if I'm wrong, but for us Europeans, when somebody is a drive this vehicle or ride this vehicle for pleasure and for speed, and just to enjoy themselves.

But not as a transportation device.

Yeah. I was gonna say, you think of like those American movies where there's guys on motorbikes, you know, born to be wild, and they're kind of like riding along open mountain highways with the air, the wind in their hair and stuff.

And it's about speed.

So they want to be fast and enjoy it.

And I think I'm not saying it's everyone, but I think most people riding motorcycles, maybe some of your biker listeners will prove us wrong, but I will say that it's like that.

Whereas here in Vietnam, it's the most common means of transport.

Vietnam is a developing country.

It's a lovely country and it's developing bloody fast as well, but it is considered a developing country from the western point of view.

So, it's actually the cheapest vehicle they can get.

And it's convenient as well, because roads can get quite busy sometimes, quite crowded.

And when you have a car, you are actually slower, much slower than on a scooter or motorbike.

So that's one of the reasons as well.

The second one is the price.

And what this means is that everyone, like I said, 90 % of people has a scooter or there's one scooter per family, at least. And then what you see on the road is that everyone rides a scooter.

So that's why we're talking like very young children, barely legally sometimes, Then, old people as well.

And then there's me, with this irrational fear of getting one for myself.

Right. So that's probably, I think this is the main reason we were probably doing this episode.

Let me let the cat out of the bag, I think now.

Because you, you, you talked to me before about the fact that you decided, living in Vietnam it's normal to have a scooter or motorbike, and you put this off.

You put off getting one for a long, long time.

And you said you had an irrational fear.

I would almost call it irrational because I had enough time to get comfortable with it.

I even had some people who were trying to teach me how to do it and I wasn't even too bad at it.

But when it comes to getting one for myself and actually becoming independent, it's my scooter or my motorbike and I will ride it whenever I want.

There's no one else telling me what to do or being there with me in case something happens.

One of my friends was teaching me how to ride it, let's say, but that was just one day for one hour in a very quiet area without anyone there.

So that was kind of like simple.

It's almost like riding a bicycle, right?

But anyway, so I procrastinated on this a lot and ended up just using Grab, which is a very convenient taxi service, where you just jump on the motorbike, behind, behind the driver and he will take you anywhere.

There is an app. There's an app, right?

Which, which you can use and they come in within one, two minutes and it's, it's affordable as well.

So it was kind of because of that as well, there was like, no need for me to really use it, but then what it meant, what it meant was that I was not doing what what the Romans do, right?

And also, doing it like that, you feel like a tourist all the time, jumping on the back of someone else's bike.

And yeah, when in Rome, do as the Romans do.

When in Vietnam, get your own scooter.

So yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I've been to Vietnam, I went there for a of travelling experience.

And when I was in Nha Trang.

Yeah. Right. Do you know that place?

Yeah. Big tourist destination.

I rented a scooter for a day, I think it was.

And yeah, maybe I was a little bit, what's the word for it?

Blasé about it. I don't remember.

I thought, yeah, I'll rent a scooter.

I think the little hotel where I was staying was offering scooter rentals.

I get the feeling it was like, the girl who worked in reception had a scooter and when she was in reception, she wasn't using the scooter so they kind of let the guests rent it.

That's the kind of way it works sometimes.

It's not like these are scooters, which are just for rental.

These will just rent out scooters of the staff when they're not using them.

So I ended up out this girl's scooter and you know, she was like, okay, here's this good.

There you go. And I sat down on it and it got the, I think, did I wear a helmet?

I don't know. Maybe I didn't.

I think I didn't. You don't have to, you are supposed to.

Yeah, you are supposed to, or maybe I did.

But, um, and the girl was standing there and someone else from the hotel was standing there and sort of like, okay, great, put the keys in the ignition and started it.

And then just, I'd never ridden a scooter before.

And I just kind of like, because, you know, you learn to just gently, accelerate and turn and then off you go.

And I just put the case in and just accelerated the thing jumped forwards.

I nearly crashed it into a load of other scooters in front of me.

And we all kind of like giggled a bit.

And I kind of laughed nervously and they laughed as well, and I sort of like, turned the scooter around and awkwardly pushed it forwards without you know, nearly falling over and then off I went, and I went to visit a local temple and this thing and to pray, to pray for good luck and I went off down the main road near the beach and it was okay, but it was pretty the hair raising, that's a good one.

It was quite scary, right?

To the point that your hair or hairs, are we talking about hair?

We're talking about hair on your head.

The hairs on your arms. Which we could use in plural hairs, yeah.

Hairs on your arms. Right.

That's interesting.

The hairs on your arms stand up, but the hair, hair uncountable on your head sticks up.

So I think it's sort of like both things, the hair on your head and the hairs on your arms or the hairs on the back of your neck .

It depends if you have any hair, right?

There are people who don't have any hair as well.

True. True. I don't know what happens where if you are, if you don't have any hair on your body, if you shaved it off or for some other reason, what happens when you get scared?

Does your skin sort of still do that?

You have probably you have goosebumps.

Right. That's good goosebumps.

Yes. Yeah. So it was pretty hair -raising stuff because I had to like, you know, I was okay down the little narrow side streets with no other scooters on them.

But then you get to a main road and there's like a C of scooters all going in both directions and you have to blend in with them and then there you are, there's lots of scooters very close to you.

And then I got to the temple, parked the scooter, felt great.

And then looked around the temple and then, okay.

On the way home, on the way back, the sun went down and it got to a point where it was like rush hour.

The sun had gone down and I was scootering along in the dark.

Wait, I thought, I thought you were actually making that sound.

No, no. It was the scooter making.

Yeah, that's right.

No, you don't actually have to do that when you're riding your scooter.

You don't have to make the noise.

Does it help in some way, especially if you are a noob?

If you're a beginner?

It does help with the nerves.

It helps to deal with the nerves, the anxiety.

If you just go like that when you're doing a scary thing, it can actually help.

You will keep the hair raising under control as well.

Anyway, so I was going along like this, the sun had gone down and there's like, trucks on the road as well and stuff.

And it was like, terrifying, absolutely terrifying experience.

It's like, you're one second or one millisecond away from a disaster basically, and you're aware of it, right?

That's the thing that's always that thing that's making it hard for me.

But yeah, have you...

Sorry. There was actually final thing like it's terrifying but then you realize I'm going like 10 kilometers an hour the whole time you're going almost at walking speed.

You know people are jogging past you oh god this is so frightening yeah I should also say, I wanted to say this earlier, that we're talking about fears and things and you said that you're making it sound dramatic it's not really that bad and I think that we're probably, I hope that you agree that with me when I say that I think I'm very lucky that I've never really had a truly frightening experience.

I've had some and maybe we'll get to them that have really scared me.

Yeah, um, and some health related things and stuff too, but I've never, you know, luckily I've never really had like a genuinely dangerous thing in my life, which is something to mention, I suppose.

This is a difficult topic.

I saw so many different types of things that can happen to you and different types of fear.

We could get into that, but that would take us ages.

And I also want to say that we probably chose this topic because it's something that your listeners can relate to, because I think we are all scared at some point.

We have been all scared at some point in our life for one reason or another.

So, it's perfectly normal.

And also, to be honest, it's a little bit embarrassing to be scared of driving a scooter or riding a scooter.

But then again, I'm sure that our listener, why do I keep saying our listeners?

Your listeners. Well, they are listening to us.

They're listening to us.

That's why. But they are your listeners.

So, your listeners.

Some of them might be yours too.

Yeah, true, true. And I know, for a fact, some of them are my students too.

So, hello. All right.

Hello. It's the next student.

Exactly. So I'm sure they have their own fears and it's some probably something different right?

So that's why I don't feel that embarrassed because I know that yes, this is weird. A grown -up man is scared of doing this.

And yeah, there is a follow up to this.

I did take a motorbike course or enrolled in a driving school in summer.

But I still haven't got my own scooter.

Really? You need to sort that out.

I think the initial scariness of doing it, I think is quite quickly replaced by a general sense of convenience.

Because it's very convenient, isn't it having your own scooter?

I'm looking forward to that, Luke.

And also, I'm looking forward to making that sound.

Do that, yeah, it makes you feel better.

yeah. Yeah, like that.

No I almost regret not doing that when I was taking my test. When I was doing the exam.

Brace the rudders. Brace the sails.

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How was the exam, by the way, was it difficult?

It was it was all right, like I did really well.

Like, to be honest, like when I started it was tough.

that guy, my instructor, he didn't seem to be that keen on having a 40 -year -old doing the course.

He even told me at one point, zdenek, if you hadn't told me that you ride a bicycle, I wouldn't have let you in.

Well, maybe you don't need a scooter then if you've got just a normal push bike.

You just carry on with that.

I mean, it's better for you better for the environment.

The thing is though, first of all, is it's slow, which again, it's not such a big deal because I will be probably slow as you said, when I, when I get my motorbike, but I think it's, I have a feeling it's a bit more dangerous because if something happen, if something were to happen, God forbid, then the bicycle will probably be in a worse state than any other vehicle, right.

Because it's a bit like fragile, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah. At least with a scooter or motorbike, you've got a bit more weight to it.

So exactly. If someone bumps into you, you're less likely to be knocked down.

That's it. Yeah, in Paris, they have these rental bikes, these e -bikes, which are actually very sturdy.

They're like, almost like a scooter in a way.

They're very, sort of quite heavy and sturdy.

And I was I was riding the other day, turned a corner into a street and a car was there on the side of the road, and people were getting out of the car and one person opened their door onto me.

So as I rode past the car, they opened the door and it hit the bike.

I was quite lucky. It sort of glanced my hand on the handlebar, whacked my hand a little bit, but it was fine.

It wasn't her. But it was lucky that I was driving one of these heavy e -bikes, these rental e -bikes, because the door just sort of bounced back off the front of the bike.

And I kind of slammed into the door, the door went, and bounced back onto the person who was opening it.

So he backfired for him, yeah.

Yeah, I mean he obviously didn't realize because he wasn't looking because he's just like, Oh, just opened my door without looking.

Well, he realized when he got smacked by that door later on.

He realized, yeah, and I kind of, stop the bike and turned round, you know, like, waving my hand in the air, like, ow, and feeling pretty shocked because I'd just been hit by the door of this car.

But yeah, I was lucky that it was one of these heavy bites, because the door took the hit of the door, the bike took the hit of the door, if it had been a lighter bike, I might have been knocked out.

And I turned round and I was waiting for the apology.

you know. I was waiting for the, oh, sorry.

I just whacked you with the car door and no apology came.

Wait a minute. I thought you were British, Luke.

You should be the one apologizing.

Even if they do something to you, right?

If you bump into someone on the metro or something, then usually it's the person bumping into someone that should apologize.

But in the UK, it's the victim that should apologize, right?

Well, in other scenarios, maybe if it had been less serious, if it had just been bumping into someone in the street and oh, sorry, then yeah, naturally my inclination is to say sorry first, you know, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

And we carry on. But in this case, yeah, I felt like it was significant enough and dangerous enough, and careless enough on the part of the person in the car, that I went into a different mode and I went into the, I'm going to be angry with the driver mode.

But I still did it in the most British way.

Because in, in Paris, people will, you know, they'll argue and defend themselves quite confidently and aggressively.

Let's say, you know, they'll, they'll say an insult or they'll shout at the person, fair enough.

But I'm so British that I still can't quite do that.

So I was there, I stopped, waited for them to, so this is how angry I was.

I It's like, I will wait for you to apologize.

You know? And that was how, that's how aggressive I was.

I just waited angrily.

And then he, um, and the person.

Yeah. Nothing. Did he woke up to you and say, is your bike.

Okay. No, not even that.

No, no. There was a few other, there were a few other people in the car getting out and they all kind of looked at each other and didn't acknowledge me.

And I said something, again, typically British and passive aggressive.

I was like, well, excuse me.

I think I said that, you know?

Which is almost equivalent to saying, well, sorry!

You know, where you shout sorry at someone because they haven't said sorry to you.

So you sort of sarcastically and angrily shout sorry to them.

And then someone's like, Well, excuse me!

Or like something like that.

And then nothing, I've got no response.

So I just carried on and just angrily carried on and buried the feeling of the emotion.

yeah yeah until now when i can tell you until now wow that it's been ages look how long was it has it been i don't know it's been a few months it's been a few months for sure i actually i did tell my friend so i was on the way to a band practice uh with an english friend and a french friend and i told them and the french friend was like you know really angry you shouldn't you should have said something you should have gone over to them you should have done this and that and the other And I was like, no, I can't, I can't do that.

I couldn't do that.

Um, so, um, you said, letting the cat out of the bag.

Which is sort of like revealing something that we perhaps weren't going to reveal.

So not that it was a secret, but the reason why perhaps we chose to do this episode is because you were talking about your experience of riding a scooter and stuff.

So by saying when you said, Oh, Luke, I think you let the cat out of the bag.

You meant that I revealed the actual reason why we chose to do this episode because of your scooter and motorbike experience.

Hair raising, we've mentioned that already.

You said if something were to happen, God forbid, is what you said.

Meaning if when riding a bike, if something were to happen, meaning if something happened, if something bad happened, if an accident occurred, God forbid.

which is like one of those things that you had as a way of sort of saying, hopefully that won't happen.

You know, you don't want to jinx it if you didn't say that, then you would jinx it, which means you would, it would sort of bring you bad luck, basically.

Yeah. You wouldn't want to tempt fate, which is a thing, to tempt fate like mentioning something like, Oh, you know, riding a bike's totally safe.

I've never had an accident.

Don't tempt fate. Cause then, you know, the chances are that you're going to have an accident then.

So yeah, and you don't want to jinx it, which is the same thing.

It's just like we're on the ground.

Yeah. It's like superstitions.

Basically we're talking about what if your superstitious, you might think that something like that would even like a black talking about cats, you mentioned a cat out of the back.

So if there's a black cat crossing, crossing the road, like, I mean, I don't know if you have this superstition in the UK, but we have it in the Czech Republic and that shouldn't happen.

Yeah. If a black cat crosses your path, yeah, that could be bad luck.

And so you have to do something normally to kind of get rid of the bad luck, like you, you knock on, knock, touch wood or knock on wood or something like that.

Sorry, for some reason, I thought you were going to say to get rid of the cat, but thankfully, thankfully, you did not say that.

So you have to chase the cat down and put it in a bag and throw the bag into a river.

No. And then you let that get out of the bag.

Yeah, exactly. Then you finally let the cat out of the bag.

Exactly. I don't know why we're putting cats in bags.

Don't do that, everyone.

So yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we say things like, god forbid, in order to, you know, make sure we're not jinxing something or tempting fate and bringing bad luck to ourselves.

You mentioned our listeners being able to relate to the idea of just being afraid of things, even if objectively these are things that we shouldn't really be afraid of.

We should talk about learning English.

We should talk about a sort of confidence issues and the fear involved in learning a language.

What do you Again, fear.

It sounds like a very, super strong word. It's loaded, isn't it?

Like dice or something.

It's just very heavy, that word. But fear could manifest itself in all sorts of forms. So it could be anxiety or just something that makes you nervous.

But I guess there are also things that happen psychologically when you are learning a foreign language, especially because language, what's the aim of learning a foreign language, or any language for that matter is to be able to communicate with people.

So especially if it's like combined with also like you being an introverted person or having some sort of social anxiety, then, you know, it could be a deadly concoction, so to speak.

So basically it can be tough, right?

So I have to say, I'm an extrovert, but even so, it was hard when I was learning English at first to, to communicate with people in English.

change? You know, I've told this story on your podcast before.

In 2025, I went to London for the first time in my life.

What did I say? You said 2025.

What? You invented a time machine?

I wanted to say 2005.

Sorry. 2005, yeah, sorry.

Or 2005, I could say as well.

And so I remember my first day, I had been learning English, I don't know, for eight years, but it was the school English, right?

So I hadn't really used it much, other than during my tests and exams and stuff like that.

And then I was thrown in at the deep end.

And I had to communicate in that language.

And I was already at B2 level, which is upper intermediate, which is very high level.

I'm sure some of your listeners are at this level.

Some people would love to be at this level and they are still intermediate.

So I had a great level, technically.

But not in terms of my listening and speaking.

I had good vocabulary knowledge and I knew very advanced grammatical structures.

On my first day. I remember I was a witness to, actually again, we are, it's, it's interesting.

We are getting back to the, to the road because there was like an accident.

I was walking along a pedestrian cross, no, no, not crossing, sorry, pavement.

I was walking along the pavement and then like a few meters away from me and my friend, there was a, there was a little accident.

The, the, the people didn't get injured, but I think it was a cyclist or, um, rider, motorbike rider.

Yeah. What, they hit a car or something?

Yeah, they fell off the bike.

And then there was police, I remember that, very distinctly.

And they were asking me questions about who I am, what my date of birth is and what I was doing then and what I saw.

And I was like... At first, I think I kind of liked the opportunity to use English.

I sort of was kind of excited about it.

But then after I did all that, I realized that I hadn't been very good at English, yet, because I - Well, you gave them the wrong name, wrong date.

Not really. My name's William Shakespeare.

Born in 1633. No, but there was too much of, can you repeat that, please?

And I didn't get that.

And I wasn't very fluent.

moment. And that was like an eye -opening moment for me.

You know, it was a wake -up call.

And I think it's, again, a lot of people can probably relate to this because I know a lot of your listeners have lived or are living in a foreign country, perhaps in an English -speaking country.

And they are they have gone or are going through this now.

And so, yeah. It's that moment where, as you say, school English is suddenly tested by real world English, exactly.

You're having to talk to a policeman, describe what you saw, understand the questions he's firing at you and try to give your date of birth, which is something pretty simple.

But in the moment, you might be scared by it.

By the way, William Shakespeare was not born in 1633.

Just wanted to add that, just in case anyone was like, blowing the dust off their fingers to correct me on that one.

So yeah, real world English.

Yeah, that can be a pretty frightening moment because you've come face to face with it.

Especially when, especially when you, English, it depends on your relationship with English as well to an extent, doesn't it?

Because if you're coming from a context where English is like this pressured academic thing where there's a lot of pressure from different places, pressure from yourself, pressure from school, pressure from your parents to preform.

Piers as well. Peer pressure.

Exactly. You're comparing yourself to other people, and there's this awareness that English is really important because you're told all the time, right?

English is really important for your future, your career opportunities.

You've got to be good at English, and everyone seems to make it really clear how you should be improving it, then, you know, maybe you don't.

No, you do. That is true.

Everything is true.

Everything that you said is true.

It's just the pure fact that there's great proof, just the fact that I'm talking to you right now is the testament to that because like, how else would I be talking to you?

Or how else could I teach English?

I'm an English teacher too, as you know, So how else could I do it?

How else can you function like internationally?

If you go to Vietnam.

I can't speak Vietnamese, right?

They can't speak Czech. So, oh, you talked about just the importance, the simple points of having a good level of English in your life, doors.

It opens. I can't, I can't stay dead enough.

It's it's something that's true.

Like we can't play that down.

Especially for you, because you know, it's become, it's become your, your, your, your living and it's so important to your, your life, isn't it?

Exactly. Your English, it really opened huge doors for you.

You can't play that down.

I would say, a gate, not a door.

It's a gate. It's a massive gate, you know?

Really? And without English, who would I be?

No one. Yeah. A huge gate, which is like kind of a big automated gate.

AI, AI controlled. Well, yeah, everything, um, some massive AI controlled gate at a border.

somewhere. You just have to decide, are we using...

There you go, Mr. Lucas, off you go and you walk through this huge, massive gate into this whole other realm.

Bits of language. You were thrown in at the deep end.

Yeah. There's a nice expression where you're suddenly in a situation where It's a bit like being thrown in learning to swim.

You know you can spend ages in the shallow end of the pool where your feet are on the bottom and stuff like that, but maybe the best way's just to be thrown in at the deep end and you just have to sink or swim.

Right. Which is another one.

It's another one sink or swim, right?

You just have to sink or swim.

And you just got to learn.

So it's like thrown into a situation where you're struggling and you just have to learn very very quickly in that situation.

Otherwise you sink, which means you won't make it alive.

You drown. Exactly.

Don't do that, everyone.

You said, I remember that distinctly, which is a nice phrase, to remember something distinctly, meaning you remember it very clearly.

You said it was an eye opening moment.

So a moment that made you realize something.

I mean, it's sort of, it's obviously an idiom.

An eye -opening moment, something that makes you realise or see something.

Wow. And it was a wake -up call as well.

Something like, wake up, Stanek!

Your English isn't quite good enough.

Yeah. For the real world.

I faced the reality.

It was a reality check is another one.

Oh, yeah. That's right.

Reality check. Yeah.

Um, and, uh, it's, it was an important moment and it's, you know, we, we shouldn't play that down meaning we shouldn't make it seem less important than it is.

Um, yeah, so a lot of people have a lot of fears about opening their mouth and actually starting to use English.

A lot of people study English, but they don't actually use English.

And I think in a lot of people's minds, they think I'm not quite ready yet.

I just need to study a bit more.

And then when my English is, when I've mastered it, then I'll actually start using it.

Never worked like that, right?

It doesn't work like that No. And also, I was going to say, that for you, the fact that you overcame those fears, or you came face to face with those with the reality, you had that reality check, probably allowed you to make progress.

didn't it? It allowed you to get to where you are now.

Exactly. And do you know, as you know, I have the next English podcast and it was part of it because yes, yes, I graduated from university and became a teacher, but there's so much more you can learn.

And so there's so many teachers who, who are like teaching low level students, let's say somewhere at elementary school.

But when, when they are sort of put in those situations, when they have to perform in English, they struggle as well.

And I'm sure I was one of those people too.

But to be honest, you have to keep improving, you have to keep developing.

So one of the things I did was I started The Next English Podcast, inspired by your podcast, as you know, because back in the day, in one episode you said, maybe you should start your own podcast. For example, it could be called Jose's English podcast, I remember that it was like 2000, we're talking 20, 2013, it was in 2013.

You said that 12 years ago.

Time flies, right when you're having fun.

Yeah, yeah, that's true.

Yeah, so these were ways to push yourself out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself.

Yeah, you've got to ultimately you've got to come up against those difficult experiences, face those challenges, and ultimately learn from them.

Yeah, there's no pain, no gain.

Exactly. There's another, another, that's one I should explain, I guess I don't seem to be explaining anything these days.

So Okay, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead, no pain, no pain, no gain.

This one is kind of self explanatory, isn't it?

Like it is an idiom, but it's one of those transparent phrases Because you've got idioms which seem to be like, oh, it's hard to really guess what they mean unless you know what they mean.

But with this one, it's clear, right?

Because it's evident what it means.

No pain, right? So if you don't go through any pain, no gain, you don't gain anything, you don't win or you don't achieve anything.

So that one is pretty clear.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah.

Um, so we've got other scary moments that I guess we can talk about, right.

I mean, um, so obviously for me, speaking French, you know, I don't need to go into it because, uh, it's more or less the same thing as you know, what we've just talked about that, you know, opening your mouth, you're worried about making a mistake.

You're worried about making a fool of yourself and lots of other, lots of other things, but as a teacher as well.

Um, I've, I've talked about this before on, on the podcast and lots of times that my first experiences of being a teacher, um, I, uh, this is a long time ago and I was much younger and I'd never really had a lot of experience of talking in front of groups of people.

Um, so when I was training to be a teacher, uh, when I did my CELTA I didn't have any teaching experience prior to that.

Some people, they just sort of start teaching, you know, they just end up teaching for whatever reason, maybe because like you, they're in a place where people don't speak English.

And so, you know, they get to a certain good level themselves, and they realize they can start helping other people.

And they get certain amount of teaching experience.

And then they do their teaching qualification, which is like the Cambridge certificate.

And you're in a slightly better situation because you kind of hit the ground running in that context.

But for me, I came out of university, didn't know what to do with myself.

And I was a bit sort of lost and decided that I would train up to be a TEFL teacher, having the privilege of having English as my first language, you know, that's an option.

And so, you know, I went through the process and it was a training course and it was quite intensive and part of the course, you know, you learn about teaching methods, you learn about linguistics and stuff and a lot of it was new to me, you know, analyzing my own language, being able to explain my own language, and also being able to facilitate other people learning it.

All of that was a big learning curve, a very steep learning curve for me, but really, the most uncomfortable aspect of it was the teaching practice sessions and observed lessons.

So every week, we would have a certain period of time in front of a class and there would be the trainer there.

Not a football coach. You mean like a tutor?

Yeah. I like the idea of a football coach. Come on Luke!

Come on !" Shouting encouragement at me from the side of the classroom.

Alex Ferguson. Elicit!

Elicit! Instructions!

Concept checking questions.

Don't forget about the feedback.

And homework as well.

Give them homework.

Monitor! What are you doing?

Thankfully... Not that monitor, that's a screen, Luke, that's a screen.

Then you get substituted.

Still a better option than getting sent off.

This is true because you slide tackle one of the students who has used present perfect tens wrong and you just come in a bit too hard with two feet.

You do tackle their problems though.

You do try to tackle their grammatical errors.

You also have to anticipate it in the planning phase, which is very extensive when you do a CELTA or DELTA course, right?

Oh god. That's another part of it, that you'd spend ages working really hard on a lesson plan for like just 45 minutes, or even half an hour of a lesson and you, you've slaved away over a, over a hot lesson plan.

Um, try to do it, uh, studying all of the grammar and, uh, planning it down to the millisecond.

And then you're in the front of these people doing it.

And yeah, I would feel so, uh, awkward and uncomfortable.

There was anxiety, a lot of anxiety and nerves, especially in the moments preceding the lesson, the evening before I just couldn't relax.

The morning I'd feel nervous, you know, you kind of felt butterflies in your stomach. But then in the class, I found it was my anxiety was physical.

It was like a physical thing, where I felt completely trapped inside my own body.

It was incredibly frustrating.

It really, really bothered me a lot.

I felt completely trapped.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

I know exactly what you mean.

Because mentally you have to process a lot of things.

You're processing the lesson plan that you're trying to do.

You're processing the language point that you're trying to deal with, if that's the moment in the lesson that you're doing where you're having to explain certain language point.

You're processing all of the things that you've been told you should be doing.

the right ways of doing it, the wrong ways of doing it.

Not talking too much, keeping it simple, making it learner centered, making sure your board work is really clear and well organized.

This is the most absurd thing.

So making it learner centered.

You have to do all that while not talking at all, almost. Yeah.

You've almost got to be invisible.

And yet you know, because you can't be dominating the lesson, so it's almost like a tightrope walk where just one step to the left and you fall, one step to the right, you fall.

It's like this very slight thing.

Plus, all the students in front of you aren't aware of the challenge, because as far as they're concerned, it should be easy.

They're just thinking, well you just go up there and just tell us how to do it, then give us a task and we listen to us.

We've seen the likes of you before, we have been taught before.

But why this person is bright red in front of me.

I think it's even extra extra like emphasized by the fact that you are English, right, when you're British, so they expect you to just talk to them and they don't understand that there are challenges to first of all, to being able to teach but also these sort social, social blogs, like even being in front of so many people and talking to them.

I don't know if I'm sure some some of our listeners are, your, our listeners are managers or stuff like that.

And if you're a manager, you have, you know, people under you, and you have to talk to them and give, give them instructions.

And if you have never done this, maybe the only person you have instructed is your like, maybe your kids, your husband, your wife, your cat, I don't know.

that. For me, at the time, I'd never instructed anyone.

I mean, I couldn't even instruct myself.

And there I was suddenly in this position where there's a certain high status involved.

Yeah, exactly. Where you realize, I'm the high status person in this situation, but I don't feel like it.

And yeah, you've got all these teaching principles and methods rattling around in your brain that you don't even fully understand yet anyway, because you've got no frame of reference for them.

And then you know that the students in front of you who are from all these different countries, they have a preconceived idea of what the teacher looks like, and you feel like I'm not living up to what they think I should be.

And so all of this, it's like a lot of...

it's like a computer, when you've got an old computer, and you ask it to do too many things.

You've got loads of browser the windows open and you open this, that and the other.

And then the computer's just like, everything slows down, freezes at some point.

Right. And so that's, that's what's happening to your body.

As you said, as well, like your body starts failing, your body language shows it.

Right. Yeah. You don't, you know, you don't breathe properly.

so, so I would, I would lock up.

My whole body would lock up and I would just suddenly become very uncomfortable, my throat would get tight, and I wouldn't know how to stand in front of everyone and just talk to them.

And the worst thing is that you know it in that moment, right?

You know it. You're aware of what's happening to you.

I remember the first time, when I was in the UK, teaching English in 2019.

It was right before Covid, it had been my lifelong dream as a teacher.

It's just like my, my sort of thing.

I always wanted to achieve in my career, like to teach English in England.

Right. So I got that opportunity.

I got the, um, that was a demo lesson.

I had to give a demo lesson first though, as part of my, uh, as part of the recruitment process and exactly what you've just described happened to me there.

And I'd been an experienced teacher as well.

Right. I'd been teaching for eight years and I've, I thought I was all right as a teacher.

I had always had great feedback from my students.

But there in Oxford Street, the school is called Speak Up London.

Suddenly, that sort of pressure got to me.

It was a pressure that I exerted on myself.

It came from me because I knew I wanted that so badly, right?

When you want something really badly, like let's say it could be, you see, a very good looking girl, and you want to chat her up or something.

But usually, when she's really good looking, usually, you become very awkward. And you don't know what to say suddenly, because it's something you desire so much, right?

So that kind of feeling, I had that during my demo lesson, doing something that was like bread and butter stuff for me at that point.

I knew exactly what I was supposed to do, and yet my body was completely failing me.

So I remember being slouched, my shoulders, like this, like hunched, my, my, my sort of head was among between my shoulders.

And I knew I was like that.

I was like, what, what's happening to me.

I can't get out of that.

I couldn't get out of that because it wasn't observed.

That was an observer.

The, the direct, the director of studies from that school was there observing my lesson, taking notes and deciding whether, whether I was good enough, whether I was a good fit for their school, which was very prestigious.

And for some reason, she hired me even after that, but it was just one of the worst lessons I've ever taught.

But if she, if she was a good director of studies, she would know that you were under a lot of pressure in that moment.

And maybe we should put ourselves in the shoes of the observers in these situations and think they know that the person they're observing is nervous.

And so maybe they're interested in seeing how we react to the nerves.

And this is maybe if we start talking about how to deal with these sorts of things, not that we're experts in it or anything, but it's probably worth talking about it is how to deal with these things.

First thing you got to remember that it's just a totally normal response.

Yes. So what's happening is just a natural response in your body.

And, you talked about, your body language changing and your shoulders coming up and your head going down.

It's kind of like a defensive body posture that your, your body naturally assumes.

And because you're kind of going into the fight or flight mechanism, you know, when you feel a challenge, the adrenaline kicks in your heartbeat rises and you go into defensive body positions and you want to run away or something.

So that's just a normal response.

Also, you got to think about, okay, so this is happening.

How do I react to it?

The way that you react to it is perhaps the most important thing.

And the way to react is usually, try not to panic, right?

Try not to be too concerned about it.

Just remember it's a normal process and you just have to take a moment to breathe, right?

Slow down a bit. Take a breath and just keep calm and carry on knowing that what's happening to you is totally normal.

uh, it's easier said, easier said and done, right.

I have a good phrase for you.

Luke. Yeah. You have to be brave in these situations, right?

Like, and we all sorts of different, uh, moments could happen to us in our life.

Like there are all sorts of challenges of all kinds and you have to be brave in order to overcome them, to face your fears.

And basically there's a phrase that goes like this.

Bravery is not the absence of fear.

right. It's acting in spite of it, which means that it's absolutely fine to be brave, to be nervous, sorry, to be afraid.

It's absolutely fine to be afraid.

What's not fine is if you just do nothing.

So you have to do something, right?

So you will probably not be perfect, but that's not the point.

You just have to do it.

You just have to do something and that goes for everything we have talked about so far.

My motorbike fear, the flying stuff, speaking to native speakers for the first time in your life.

Like anything we've just mentioned, teaching English, standing up in front of a lot of people for the first time.

You just have to be brave in that moment.

You don't have to be perfect.

Right. Yeah. And the fear wins.

If you do nothing. Absolutely.

If you can't do this, if you give up and you do nothing.

Yes. Yeah. You have to just carry on, you have to just push through it and do it in spite of the fear knowing that next time it'll be a little bit easier because you've got to climb over this thing at some point, you know, these obstacles come in your way and you've got to climb over them at some point.

Um, so it might as well be now.

Because if it's not now, it'll be next time, you know, and once you're once you've climbed over it, once you've done that thing, despite the fear, you'll be a little bit better prepared for it the next course, and the next time, and the next time until eventually, you kind of swinging.

And you're fine, you kind of, you go with it, and you're doing fine.

So like, if we compare me, then I mean, it's over 20 years ago, know, when was it 2001?

So it's like 24 years ago.

Oh, my God. And how nervous and horrible I was, and I used to think I used to just, I was so disappointed in myself that I wasn't better at it.

And I just dreamed, wished that I could be more comfortable and confident as a teacher.

But it just came with experience that just doing it again and again and again every day.

I'd have sort of good and bad lessons and for me, a bad lesson was just a lesson where I felt out of, out of my depth or out of my comfort zone.

And you just like, you've got no choice.

You can't just like, well, that's the end of the lesson.

I don't really want to do this.

So, um, we'll leave women to stop 45 minutes early.

Um, you know, you can't do that.

So you forced to continue and you just sort of like learn.

You really develop skills in that situation.

You develop a lot of skills It's, and now these days, it's like I feel maybe.

Maybe too comfortable as a teacher in class and I'm starting to, yeah, complacent.

I'm starting to think, wait, I'm not feeling anxious enough.

Maybe there's a problem.

Now you see, you see that's interesting.

That's a good point because that can happen too, right?

When you sort of think like, you know it all.

Uh, or it's just so comfortable and it has happened to me before, I have to say that that's just that, that also is dangerous because then.

And I think it can be good to be at least a little bit nervous, because it pushes you to perform.

And keeps you sharp.

And, I mean, to explain that feeling again of I'm too comfortable in this situation, and I feel like there must be things I'm missing.

I must be being, what's the word for it?

negligent in some way about my teaching and if that observer from years ago came back to me, they might say, Yeah, you're a lot more comfortable.

This is great, but you're not doing these things that you were supposed to be doing.

But actually, having said that, I think it's I think not.

I think it's preferable to be cool and calm.

collected. it. It's it's yeah.

Cool. Calm and collected.

It's just so much nicer.

And I think I do a much better job now than when I was completely inhibited by, by nerves.

I think you've been following your rule of seven P's.

Yeah. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

I was at six. I can't remember it.

Six or five. But seven is, seven is even better as it really.

I mean, nine, nine, maybe.

Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice.

That's even better.

Yeah. Fair enough. Practice makes perfect.

Right. Yes. Any language that we could mention?

Yeah. Yeah. Basically, so you were referring to your experience of doing CELTA.

And you said that it all of this stuff you had to do there and had to learn.

It's a steep learning curve, right?

So So we are talking about graphs, I suppose, mathematics.

So what is it? And if, so it's really tough, right?

It's like, you have a lot, you have a mountain to climb to learn all of that.

So if something is a steep learning, if something is a learning curve, it's really hard. It's really hard to learn it.

Exactly that. For those of you watching this on YouTube, Luca's just showed a lovely, what is it?

Is it sinusoid? Well, I don't know, I don't know the graphs anymore.

So which one is. A line graph showing a steep learning curve, where I mean, you know, I guess it's time across the bottom and like difficulty or pro I don't know what it is.

Progress versus time challenge versus time.

X is X, X is Y, something like that.

Yeah, x and y -axes and the line is very steep, like a very steep hill that you have to climb, showing that the challenge is very steep.

Especially at the beginning.

Yeah, I also like the phrase or verb you used when you were describing about your lesson planning experience.

You said that you really have to slave away over your lesson plan, you said.

so to slave away, to really work extremely hard in order to finish your lesson plan.

Right, yeah. I'm so glad that those days are behind me, I have to say, when I used to dread those observed lessons.

You know, I really used to dread those things.

Yeah. To dread, to dread, to be really afraid of something, to be super scared.

Yeah. To have this low level feeling of nerves, anxiety or fear about something that's going to happen, to dread something.

Like I'm dreading it.

I've got a dentist appointment on Monday and I'm absolutely dreading it.

Or I've got a big presentation to do in front of the board of directors and I'm dreading it.

Yeah, exactly. It's like when you're absolutely not looking forward to something, in fact, the opposite, you're really dreading it.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Then you also said that you felt butterflies in your stomach. I think you were referring to those moments before you had to teach. I can't remember exactly, but that means that you were nervous, basically, if you have butterflies in your stomach, like That doesn't mean that your breakfast consisted of insects, right?

That's why it's just that feeling of being nervous.

Okay. Do you have any idea, was there something else?

Yes, there's one more.

You keep using this phrase flight or flight.

Flight or flight. Yeah, flight or flight.

So you said, you said like that when you, when things happen and you are in that moment where you have to do something, um, I can't remember exactly when you used it, but use it several times, I guess.

It's a mechanism. Basically it's like how our body responds when we are in danger.

Right? So we either plea, it's just a flight we flee.

We, we, we, we escape, we run away or we fight.

Right. So it's like the basic response, the two things we could do.

I think there's this one more, I think or freeze.

I think there's freeze as well or something.

Oh, it's freeze as well.

I don't know because I've got a student Helen and she knows all this stuff and I'm actually a little bit anxious about this myself now that I'm messing it up.

And she's going to tell me off during our next lesson.

I've just Googled it, actually.

and it seems that there's a few of these things.

This is from WebMD, which is like a sort of medical website.

Fight, flight, as we've said, then also freeze, also flop.

And also there's fawn as well, which I didn't know about.

So fight and flight you've explained.

Freeze is basically the inability to move or act against a threat.

Not the teaching and not that being in a class was a sense of threat, but maybe it is.

Maybe that's part of the fear that we have, naturally, of public speakings.

It's that we're in front of them.

You can apply it. I'm sure you can apply it.

Yeah, there's a lot of people.

There's a lot of people in front of you.

Maybe at a very basic elemental level, it's basically, you realize that all these people could quite easily get you, if they wanted to.

You're standing in front of all these people.

Yeah, they could easily just get you, if they all decided to.

It's like you, but you're massively outnumbered.

It sounds more like paranoia or something, Luke.

Yeah, but I'm just trying to get to the fact that maybe this is why we have an intrinsic fear of public speaking, is that it goes back to very basic instincts.

Instincts and yeah, instinct instincts of self preservation exactly, and knowing that if the attention of a large group of people is on you, and it's you versus them in any way, you're facing them, then that's a potentially very dangerous situation.

And you can imagine, you know, thousands, thousands, hundreds of thousands of years ago, you know, you can imagine, you know, you've seen it in animals where animals gang up on each other and stuff.

Um, so that, that might be, it might be an instinctive fear.

In fact, maybe a lot of these phobias, so fear of public speaking, fear of certain animals, you know, fear of heights.

They just are really basic instinctive fears that probably go back sort of a long way into our, into our sort of genetic history.

Basically be careful of spiders because they can kill you.

Be careful of rats because they call.

Some of them can, right.

So, so it makes sense in a way, right?

It's like genetic memory or whatever it is that we've just learned that we have to be careful of these things.

And if you see a slithery snake, even just like the shape of it is repellent to a lot of us, because, you know, we just add a very, uh, uh, instinctive level.

We know that we should be wary of that.

And similarly other situations being in front of a large group of people with them looking at you, there's something deep inside you which goes, Oh, be careful, because they might all get you.

So it's understandable, like flight, the response flight would be in that classroom that maybe you just want to run away?

Maybe you get nervous, your body language, what would be the fight response then?

Like, you're like, right, come on then!

You're not going to have a punch up with your students or anything, right?

No, but again, it's just an instinctive reaction.

Like, your conscious mind, as we've said before, is aware that this stuff is happening, and it's just like, these things are happening, and I don't want them to happen, I want to be relaxed, I want to control my body, I want to do the things that I intended to do in lesson plan.

But then all of these sort of like, natural body responses are coming in and mental responses too, because it affects your thinking.

These are just sort of reactions that we've learned through evolution.

So fight, flight and freeze is just where you just can't move, which is what happened to me.

My neck freezes up and I can't look.

Will become stiff. It becomes stiff.

And I turn my whole body, like, uh, what do you think?

And over here, what do you think?

You know, I'm like a robot.

And then flop is to essentially to just collapse.

Well, you flop your lesson as well.

Like it's, it's a flop, right?

Yeah. It becomes a flop.

You failed the lesson most probably.

And especially if it's an assessed, assessed lesson, this, this is an issue.

yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But, in terms of what your body wants to do, you just want to, you become a bit lifeless, and you just want to fall on the floor or something, or just sort of sit down.

Or people might even faint, which is a response that people have. They faint and they just lose consciousness, because it all gets too much. You see this in weddings, right?

Have you seen those videos on the internet of fail videos and stuff.

And sometimes you see videos of people passing out.

There's always someone at a wedding standing at the altar and you see them start to wobble.

They start to wobble and then over they go, slam!

And it's like the group.

Overwhelmed with emotions.

Let's hope it's not, let's hope it's not the priest because that wouldn't be very professional.

I think. You can imagine that in that situation, someone fainting at a wedding, it's, you know, it's very stressful.

And so that's a response, that it becomes too much and you sort of, you collapse.

And then faun, faun means that your behavior changes and you try desperately to please people in order to avoid any kind of conflict.

you, like you give your students chocolate and sweet for, for doing, doing well in their exercises.

Yeah. I've seen it in, I've seen it in stand up actually where people are on stage and they've, you know, they're supposed to be making people laugh, but the nerves get the better of them.

And you start basically kind of, talking yourself down.

Right. You know, it's that, it's that desire to be like, oh, I'm, I'm, I'm rubbish, Thank you very much, you're overly polite.

And thank you so much for coming.

This is so wonderful.

You sort of like, yeah.

Yeah, you become very sort of fawning in front of the people that you're talking to.

And exactly, you kind of start playing yourself down and being overly thankful and stuff.

So those are those are five responses, I wasn't really aware of the others, but fight or flight and fight flight freeze, I understand but then also faint and form as well as interesting stuff.

Have you got any other anecdotes to end this episode?

In terms of being scared of things?

Well, I could also mention that crossing the road here in Vietnam, especially if you do for the first time, it can be quite a tricky scene.

Because, again, it's a bit different here, because I don't know how it is in France, but in the Czech Republic, there's a rule that when you are on the pedestrian crossing, you have the right to go first. Of course, you have to look as well.

You're supposed to look, some people crossing with their phones that's also illegal, you can't do that.

In Czech Republic? Yeah, yeah.

If you're looking at your phone then you're also responsible if something happens.

Right, so it's your responsibility to look, right?

But if you're there and if the car hits you, let's say, God forbid, to use that phrase again, then it's It's their fault because you have the right to go first. Yeah.

You have the right of way.

Yeah. But here it's different.

Yeah. So nobody cares about pedestrians here basically.

And what you have to do is to just enter the road.

Like I say nobody cares about pedestrians as if they hate, they hate them and they, they, they, they, they want to kill them.

No, not like that, but like in the hierarchy, in the pecking order, pedestrians are at the low, at the bottom, right.

So when you, when you enter the road, basically the people will always go around you.

So you, you, you're fine as long as you keep, keep an eye contact and you, you don't run.

Don't try to run. Don't accelerate, just steady, steady pace and keep an eye contact.

And then people will contact with, with, with the, with the people that are approaching you on, on the vehicles, right.

As if to kind of communicate to them, I'm here, I'm here.

I'm here. You can raise your hand, make yourself bigger as well.

You can do that. It's almost the same thing you would do if you were to face a bear or something.

Just make yourself look bigger and just steady pace.

Confidence, yeah? It sounds weird, but it's exactly what you should do, yeah?

Then sometimes you have to sort of stop.

It's okay to stop, but just don't make any jerky movements or anything, right?

No, no, no. Just go slowly.

And then Ideally you get to the end of the road.

Because what you're facing there, for those people who've never actually experienced this.

What you're facing is a road, it might not even be that wide.

But it could be, it could be a four lane road.

It is sometimes as well.

Inside I go on, in Ho Chi Minh City, but not here in Da Nang.

I'm back in, I didn't say that yet.

I'm back in Da Nang now.

You're in Da Nang again.

yeah. So it could be like four lanes of road, or maybe just two lanes going this way and that way.

And you stand there.

And it's basically, as I said before, a sea of scooters, where it's just a huge, almost like a swarm of scooters.

I don't know what the right word is for it.

But a massive deluge of scooters.

Just, you know, I don't know how I could be 100 scooters all in a big group all going down the road.

And you have to somehow cross it.

Now there might not be a moment where the light changes and you get the chance to cross it might just be a continual flow of scooters.

And so yeah, what do you do?

And as you said, rather than waiting for a gap, you just have to just step in.

You do, you do, and do it slowly, and slowly, but surely, or steadily, Or, there's a second option, just join someone like someone who's local, and then you see it on their face that they know what they are doing, and just sort of attach yourself to them.

Just follow them, just shadow them.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good.

Yeah. Right. Well, yeah, it is quite a step to make, isn't it when you first have to deal with that?

Because like plucking up the courage to step into this.

That's a good expression as well to pluck up the courage, pluck up your courage, right as well.

So basically to be brave enough to do something.

Yeah. You talked about the pecking order, which is quite a nice expression.

And I've noticed that in Vietnam and similar places, also in India, that the roads are similarly seemingly chaotic, from our point of view, but there is a system at work.

Yeah, so in India, basically the pecking order, and pecking order comes from animals, it comes from birds, that if you imagine there's food, and there are various birds, there's a pecking order, meaning the birds which are bigger probably, get to peck at the food first. And then it goes down the chain, down the pecking order, where you've got the biggest, most powerful, strongest animals at the top.

And then the smaller animals at the bottom who are the last ones to be able to feed on the food.

So it's like a hierarchy of power or dominance in a system of animals.

But we can talk about pecking order in other situations, and this is a perfect example.

So observing things in India, basically, the pecking order is the larger the vehicle, the larger vehicles have the right of way.

It's the same here.

So if there's a it's the same, there's a big bust, that comes through, everyone gets out of the way, the big bus.

And it kind of goes in that order where the smallest, which would be like a person on a little scooter is basically having to get it out of the way of everyone.

Yep. This is the pecking that's it.

It seems like such as chaotic system, but it's sort of system.

It's organised chaos.

It makes sense. If everyone is doing that, it works.

So I never, for a second thought, never did I think here in Vietnam that I was the one doing it wrong.

I think it's also - They were the ones.

Yeah, sorry. Yeah, I messed it up.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

Yeah. Because I think it's also the wrong kind of attitudes to have. And if you're over confident and there's like lack of respect for the culture.

So, I'm more like, I'm aware that it's different from what I know.

And it's a challenge.

It poses a challenge to me.

I'm aware of it. I sort of respect that, but I'm not blaming them for doing something wrong because Who would I be to to tell them that they are doing it wrong?

I mean, the I'm in I'm in their country, right?

So it doesn't work like that listeners.

It's it's just different It's just a different culture different different environment different rules and it works and it Bloody works.

It's just yeah, I don't come from that culture.

So that's why there is a there's a bit of a challenge for me The culture shock.

In my experience, is always a case of where you're sort of always between two feelings.

And one feeling is like, everyone's doing it wrong.

How does this, how do these people live like this?

And I've, I do feel like that in France, even though, as I've said before, it's not drastically different, but it's just different enough for me to have those feelings in certain situations, like when I'm queuing, you know, to buy bread in the shop in the bakery, and people don't queue in exactly the way that I think they should.

And so I'm getting frustrated thinking, how do people live like this?

So you either feel like that, where you look at things being different, and you get frustrated because you think they're doing it wrong, which you shouldn't feel as a person traveling.

You should try to avoid that at all costs, because you've got to remember that when in Rome you do as the Romans did.

And you just have to be more open -minded, right?

If you're not open minded, it will be harder for you to make friends, harder for you to make progress.

And you will have all these negative, nobody wants to have negative emotions in them like that.

Doesn't help. When you're travelling, when you're somewhere new, it's really important to just relax and just go with the flow as much as you can.

And try not to get too tight.

just just let things wash over you and you just see how things are done differently and you just kind of go with it and enjoy the difference so either you're thinking how do these people live like this or on the other extreme you think oh my god I'm an idiot I'm doing it all wrong I'm a complete loser and you feel so alienated and isolated by the fact that you're the one who's sticking out like a sore thumb.

Oh, that's a good one.

Doing it all wrong, yeah, sticking out like a sore thumb.

If you've hit your thumb with a hammer, what happens to your thumb?

Don't do that, by the way, yeah?

We don't, we're not recommending it.

No, if you do it accidentally, you're hammering a nail into a wall and whack, you hit your thumb with a hammer, then the thumb will become very sore, it'll go all red and sore, and it'll probably...

It will swell up, it will swell it up.

It will look different from your other fingers.

So it will stick out it will sort of be more prominent prominent than your other fingers, Yeah, become really obvious and look different exactly.

It'll stick out like a sore thumb.

So yeah, when I was in Vietnam on my own, walking down the street on day one, thinking this, I'm like a fish out of water.

There's another one.

I stick out like a sore thumb.

I just felt like every single person in the street must be, I must be like so obvious, you know, fresh off the boat.

Not that it was a boat.

And yeah, you just feel like you don't blend in at all.

So yeah, that's the other extreme.

So yeah, you just got to try and go with the flow.

Okay. I think it's probably a good moment to bring the episode to a close, Steneck, but I think that we've talked about, I think we've achieved what we wanted to achieve with this, which was to have a chat about fears and facing fears and different types of fear.

And some, there's been bits of language that have come up and stuff like that.

And we've about the fear of speaking in English if it's not your first language.

Yeah. All right. That's been good.

I've enjoyed this. Job's done.

Job done. Job's a good one.

Tell us about what you're doing these days though.

So as well as living in Vietnam and stuff, you're still doing podcast things?

Oh, yeah, yeah, I still have the next English podcast, although I'm not as prolific as I was in the past. So that's because I'm getting distracted by my other podcast that I recently started and that is called the Footgrish Podcast, which is about football and English.

So I'm trying to teach English through football and I invite interesting guests.

And I believe in one of the episodes, we also had Luke, someone who goes by the name, Luke Thompson person on the podcast as well.

And we talked about I think when that was the Euro.

There was the Euro 2024 in Germany and we talked about the England team with you, you are that person.

Yeah, that was me. We talked about it before the euros and England's chances.

And then we talked about it afterwards.

Oh yeah, we did too, you're right, you are right.

because England amazingly, and perhaps undeservedly, that's, that's arguable, got to the final where we got beaten by Spain, fair enough, Spain, obviously with a, with a superior team.

And we talked about that as well.

Yeah. So the Footglish podcast. Yes.

An interesting concept.

And I'm teaching English online and so I do one -to -one lessons.

I have the Achiever's Chamber, by the way.

Thank you so much for mentioning it in your, what was it like the New Year's Eve episode or the New Year episode, I think you did.

Thanks for that. Yeah.

The first episode of 2025.

Yeah. I did mention the Achievers Chamber.

Just quickly tell us what it is again.

So it's a group, like a community where you can learn English.

You are surrounded by several English teachers, including myself.

And basically it's a nice group to develop your English, especially speaking, we're focusing on speaking mostly in a sort of light -hearted manner.

Don't think like lessons where you have lesson plans.

Usually there's a topic that we discuss, but there are different types of like events.

We call them events.

They are 30 minutes long and they usually happen in the evening of central European time.

That could be a problem.

We had a few people interested from Asia or South America, but they couldn't make it because they were either working or sleeping.

So that's, that's unfortunate.

Or ideally, ideally both working and sleeping because that's the, that's the dream job.

Isn't it? Literally Yeah.

Yeah. I've seen some people do that as well.

Like me too, maybe with a shouldn't have been.

It's not, it's not us.

It's not the two of us.

We can't do that. Can you imagine like sleeping in your lesson in your lesson loop?

Have you ever fallen asleep as a teacher, Denik?

Has it ever happened to you?

may have had one of those micro sleeps that you can get behind the wheel as well, you know, those like three seconds sleeps.

It has happened to me.

But that's that's the furthest I would go.

Yeah. This is maybe another episode for another time where we talk about sleeping and stuff.

But I think I might have my head might have dropped once or twice during IELTS one to one lessons.

I remember back in the day.

The dreaded IELTS, yeah.

Dreaded IELTS one -to -ones.

At the end of the day, this is when I used to teach eight, nine hours a day.

And at the end of the day, I'd be there.

The sun's gone down.

By rights, I should be at home watching telly, eating dinner, but there I am in front of someone doing some IELTS reading paper, or something.

and the head starts to drop and the eyelids start to sag and i'm like slapping myself in the face come on you gotta get through this put yourself together look yeah yeah um so it may have happened anyway the achievers chamber which can be found the link for that the details can be found on your website teaches thenic .com yeah It's called The Achiever's Chamber.

It's not for everyone.

I would say it's for high levels, especially for upper intermediates and advanced students.

We have some English teachers there too.

So if you're an English teacher who lacks speaking practice, or even like I could even let you teach there if you want.

Yeah, I would say it's also quite affordable.

I need to mention this.

It's not a free group because I had some people like wanting to join in, they expected it to be free.

It's not. Yeah, but it's not that expensive.

Okay. All right. Details teacher is Denik .com.

Yes. Okay, brilliant.

Thanks, Denik. Let's get back to normal life, then now I'll let you go back to your normal life.

Have a nice evening.

To my fears, back to my fears.

And fall, sitting there cotobias.

content yeah your fears and phobias of crossing the street and getting a motorbike just get it just get one I will do where I already had a friend like who let me drive his motorbike here I thought I did it for 10 minutes I even went into traffic for 10 minutes but still I haven't done it by myself I have to it's on the to -do list all right good wear a helmet take care yeah all right nice one and thank you very much for having me again pleasure bye for now cheers So, thank you again to Zdenek for this episode.

You can check out his podcasts, Zdenek's English podcast, The Footlish Podcast, and also that community called The Achiever's Chamber.

You'll find links in the description.

Also, you can check the PDF for this episode, because that will contain a lot of vocabulary that came up during the conversation.

You can check it all out there.

There'll be stuff there to help you remember it, to understand it, to learn it, and stuff like that.

So, I won't talk, I won't ramble too much at the end here.

I would just like to ask you to leave your comments in response to this episode.

If you made it until the end, so if you are still listening and you haven't dropped off to sleep or turned into a skeleton with headphones on, leave us a comment to prove that you're still conscious.

Perhaps you can respond to the general subject of the episode.

Do you have any… so what makes you anxious?

What scary experiences have you had and what did you learn from them?

Do you have any anxieties relating to learning English or using English?

Have you ever had to deal with specific fears and anxieties in terms So if you're learning of English, what happened and how did you deal with them?

Right, have you ever experienced culture shock living in a different place and felt like a fish out of water or feeling like you stuck out like a sore thumb?

So if you've got anything to relate, let us know in the comments and use any fear related words to show us that you're still here, you haven't dropped off to sleep and you're not a skeleton with headphones that you're a fully conscious and living human with flesh still attached to your bones and your head still attached to your head.

I don't know why your head would fall off, but who knows after however many minutes it's been.

Let us know your experiences with fear.

I think that's probably a good time to stop the episode now.

Thank you very much for listening wherever you are in podcast land and I'll speak to you next time, but I do hope you have a lovely lovely lovely morning, afternoon, evening, or night.

And I'll speak to you next time, but for now it's just time to say goodbye bye bye bye bye.

Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast. For more information visit teacherluke .co .uk.

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[Confronting Our Fears: Anecdotes and Insights]-[931. Overcoming Fears 😰 with Zdenek]

📋 Summary

Introduction: The Nature of Fear

The Psychological Impact of New Environments

Irrational Fears and Practical Challenges

Language Learning and the 'Real World' Reality Check

Professional Anxiety and Performance

Overcoming Fear: Bravery and Persistence

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript