This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 49, The Power of Thought on Your English Skills.
Welcome to the All Ears English podcast where you'll finally get real native English conversation and fluency for business and life.
We believe in connection, not perfection, when it comes to learning English.
Now here are your hosts Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
Hey.
Your thoughts are powerful.
Will they help you be successful in English or will they hold you back?
Today, hear Michelle's story about moving to New York City and learn how to take an action that will guide your thoughts in the right direction.
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Maybe you know what you want to say. but you can't always say it naturally.
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Hey, Michelle.
How you doing this morning?
Hey, Lindsay.
I'm good.
I'm good.
Happy to be recording with you.
How's it going?
I know.
What'd you have for breakfast today?
Have you already had your breakfast?
Have you had your morning coffee?
Tell us.
I have.
I had an English muffin with cream cheese. and I had coffee and that was about it.
Power breakfast.
That's my routine breakfast, my regular everyday breakfast.
Okay, got it.
How about you?
Yeah, I had a nice bowl of oatmeal and I'm still sipping on my coffee here.
I like to drink coffee throughout the day.
But I just want to let our listeners know guys, if you have not hit follow on this show yet, you want to do it, because in the next couple episodes we're actually going to be talking about diet and nutrition and how to make sure that you stay healthy, especially if you're living in the US.
Very interesting.
Yeah, guys, look out for that one coming soon.
Yeah, so good.
But today, Michelle, it's all about the power of thought.
What comes to mind when you think about the power of thought?
I feel like the power of thought is not easy to really... I feel like...
People don't give their own brains enough credit for what it can do.
Does that make sense?
No, tell me more.
I mean, it does.
But tell me more what you mean.
I mean, I mean, I think that I think for me I don't realize like, how powerful I my mind is that I can like, like if there's a problem or something, and you know, get anxious about something.
And it's hard to realize like, no, I'm in control here.
I can actually control this with my mind.
I can control how I feel about something.
And just having this feeling of realizing that you are actually in control because the mind is so powerful.
I get it.
I get it.
So kind of like we have a choice of how we look at something, how we distill it, how we think about it.
And also the story we tell about what just happened.
Right.
Right.
That's true.
That's a good point.
Yeah.
It makes me think of when I was learning Spanish and I was traveling around South America.
There were multiple times when I felt very silly, because I just didn't understand what people were saying.
And then I walked away from that moment and I had a choice of how to think about what just happened.
I could say, oh, I'm learning.
I'm getting better.
I did understand.
I could focus on what I did catch or I could just focus on the bad stuff, what I missed.
And that changes everything.
Exactly, exactly.
It has a lot to do then with our confidence, how we see ourselves.
And it's like a cycle then, right?
If you have that confidence, you're going to push that out into the world.
And if you let your thoughts and the worries get ahead of you, then you're going to push out something different.
It's so true.
And this makes me think of a quote that I'd like to share with our listeners for today.
Having some deep thoughts here by the Buddha.
The Buddha.
I do study meditation and I think a lot about the mind and about how to find that sense of inner peace and calm.
And we bring that a lot into this show, guys.
But here's the quote.
All that we are is a result of what we have thought.
The mind is everything, what we think we become.
Ooh, I love it.
Yeah, it's profound, isn't it, Michelle?
It is.
I especially love that last part, what we think we become.
Oh, it's almost like you need to have a sense of mental hygiene.
Right.
Just like dental hygiene.
You need to have mental hygiene.
Mental and dental hygiene.
That's right.
Yeah, that's what I think of.
I mean, not everyone needs to meditate, but I do.
And it helps me for sure.
That's my mental hygiene, just to clean things up in there, keep things steady and calm.
And to, you know, because the brain is wired to focus on, that's the problem.
It's wired to focus on bad things and mistakes, right?
That's our lizard brain, right?
Yeah.
That's so sad.
It's the survival instinct.
Our brain is still stuck in the caveman days trying to keep us alive.
Like, oh, here comes the tiger.
Oh, I got to run.
You focus on the tiger.
Right, right, right.
And so that's why we can tend to focus on the negative things.
I guess because we're constantly looking for how we can improve or protect ourselves.
Exactly.
Do you have any examples Michelle, of ways that you've been able to kind of change the way you think about something, maybe when you were performing or something in life that you struggled with, but then you were able to change the way you thought about it?
For our listeners?
I mean?
The first thing that comes to mind is I mean and I'll talk about this more on the show is when I first moved to New York.
Okay, tell us about that.
And I was... I remember I was very upset.
Okay.
I was thinking this was a huge mistake and I don't really know many people and what was I doing and everything.
And...
You know, then over time, you know I'll tell my story more, but I started to feel like I got a job, I got an apartment and I started to build that confidence.
And I did start to change my mindset of like Okay, I'm actually here like, I have a job, I have an apartment, like instead of having one foot in, one foot out.
Once I accepted like okay, this is, you know, this is what it is for now.
And I'm not changing it right now.
And, you know, for at least a year, you know, this is my life.
And once I I think with a lot of things in life once I kind of accepted OK, this is the situation, I was able to say OK, now let's see how I feel about it, instead of like I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Should I stay?
Should I leave?
And then it's like, OK, let's just stay and see what happens.
And now I mean, and then when my mindset did change, everything changed.
I love that.
How did you approach that?
Was it that you got the job and then you said, okay, I'll stay for a year?
Or did you say, I'm going to stay for a year and then you got the job?
What was the order of things?
I was going to stay for a summer.
So that's very temporary.
And I was doing temp jobs and things like that.
And then I was looking for a more permanent job.
And the truth of it is when I got a about an interview for a job I had applied to.
I didn't even want to go on the interview.
I was like, I don't want to go.
I want to go home.
This was a mistake.
But I said, okay, let me just go on the interview.
And then I got the job.
And I kind of got like put into that situation.
And I had to find an apartment.
And then, you know, you have to sign a year lease.
It's like, here I am.
And but then once I was like, okay, no, I'm here.
Like, I have to actually.
Yeah.
Like do something with this situation.
I can't be upset about it.
I have to just see how things go.
And like because when it's a summer, it's like a very different amount of time.
Yeah.
And I thought, oh, if I don't like it at the end of the summer, but a year is a is a longer length.
And, you know, so you start to take things a little more like, OK, well.
I have a whole year to see.
So I'm going to have ups and downs in the year, but I have a whole year and I can then evaluate that.
And then I look, I'm at like 10 years.
And 10 years later, you've been in New York for that long.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah.
See, guys, I mean, maybe that lease was the best.
Signing that lease was the best thing that ever happened, because then all sorts of other things happened as a result of that.
My life.
Yeah, your life happened, right?
Your life in New York City.
So this is it, guys.
I mean, it's a matter of not letting your thoughts take over in that negative way.
Instead, I think take an action that will lead you in the right direction.
Yeah.
So if we take that action, we sign the lease, we commit to something, we sign up for a class, we agree to do something, then it's more about the action, right?
Right, right, right.
I love it.
Yeah, I think that's good advice.
Yeah, that is such good advice, guys.
The power of thought.
It is huge, but the way to combat that is to take the right action and then you'll be thinking in the right way, to feel more strong with your English.
I love it.
So good.
Michelle, any final thoughts for our listeners before we finish up?
Go do it.
You can do it.
Go do it.
I love it.
All right, cool.
Guys, in the next episode we are going to be talking, like I said before, about how to choose the right foods for breakfast.
Oh my gosh, we are flipping over to nutrition and how to talk about it in English, of course.
So let's get into it, Michelle.
I'll see you in the next one.
Okay.
All right.
Bye, Lindsay.
Bye.
Thanks for listening to All Ears English and if you believe in connection, not perfection, follow our show wherever you listen to podcasts to make sure you don't miss anything.
See you next time.
