Hi, my name is AJ Hoag, the author of Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native.
Join my courses at effortlessenglishclub .com.
Effortlessenglishclub .com, that's where you you join my courses, my VIP program, and also where you join our community.
A great community website, the new community website for members is up and running and going well now.
I will do a zoom call a video call with members next weekend so if you're a member get on the member website and check the events area you'll notice on the left side there's a menu you'll see events check that because I'll put information about our call there you rent community community is important community and another word that goes with community is connection connection as NLP positive psychology as they describe it there are six human needs according to them one of those key deep human needs is connection and indeed connection and love, you can put those two together, connection and love
which are not exactly the same thing it's a matter of power or degree love is I guess we would say love is the most intense the strongest form of connection connection, but as humans, as beings, of course, we are connected, and we need that connection.
And it is the reality, right?
Nobody, no being, no thing in the universe is completely independent, is separate.
separate. This is one of the key teachings of Buddhism.
They focus on this truth of connection or interdependence, as we can say.
Inter means between, between, going between, and dependence meaning connection or needing.
So while we do have a little bit of independence and free will, we need many things.
We are connected, right?
Without the sun, we wouldn't be here.
Without the sky, without the planet Earth, we can go on and on and on.
We're all connected and we all depend on each other and not just on other beings, not just on other people, but indeed on the entire world, just to be alive, just to exist. At a spiritual level, you can say that we, of course, ultimately depend on God, Brahman, whatever name you want to use, the universe, if you want to use a secular word. Secular means not religious.
Right? But everything depends on everything else.
So it's not surprising that as human beings, we have a particularly strong need, psychological need, deep psychological need, for connection, and specifically connection to other human beings.
And I would say also connection to other beings, animals, plants, nature.
One of the ways that prisoners are punished or tortured in prisons or in war, prisoners of war, is just through isolation, solitary confinement.
They stick them in a little room where they have no connection to any other person.
They're completely isolated, and this, of course, makes most people miserable.
Except for a few enlightened monks who seem to be okay with it.
But for regular people, isolation, a lack of connection, leads to great unhappiness.
And this is true not just for prisoners, but it's actually true for us as human beings in general, that, right, people we think of, people who are lonely, are usually unhappy.
And that's what loneliness is.
Loneliness is the feeling of not enough connection in your life.
feeling isolated, feeling separate from others, not enough connection and not enough love, leads to loneliness, the feeling of loneliness.
And loneliness, in most people, leads to depression.
And this can be a very, very powerful thing.
You lies you when you get older 40 50 and up you look back on your life you kind of see things differently and you you become aware more of you know what you were doing when you were young and why you did it many times in the present moment, when you're young, especially, and you're 22, you may be doing things and feeling things, but you don't really realize what's going on.
It's very common, and this was true for me.
But I look back now, and I see that this feeling of loneliness was very powerful.
That after I I left home after I went off to university on my own.
For many, many years, I had this great feeling of loneliness.
And of course, you get used to it when something is there every single day.
So I didn't really think of it in that way at that time.
But I look back now and I realize, yeah, wow, I was just quite lonely.
And I made some stupid decisions in life simply because I was lonely.
And I think this need for connection is strongly related to, is quite similar to, another human need.
According to positive psychology, another human need is the need for contribution.
It's one of our effortless English values.
Contribution. We try to contribute to other people.
Right? Which means to help, to do something positive for others, not just yourself, not just living selfishly, not just living for yourself, not just living for pleasure for yourself.
But we need to feel like we're contributing to something bigger.
So obviously, if you have no connection, it's hard to contribute.
If you have no one else in your life, let's say you're on top of a mountain all by yourself.
it's quite hard to contribute right?
who can you contribute to?
so we need both we need connection we need community and that's what community is what is community?
community are just your connections to other people the people you are connected to and when you talk about all of them they become your community and in English when we say community we're usually talking about non family so people who are not your family but the truth is it could also be family traditionally and still in many cultures and countries you know a person's community their main community was their extended family.
And for me right now, that's true.
So extended family means not just your wife or husband, not just your spouse and your children, but also includes your brothers, your sisters, your cousins, your nieces, your nephews, your grandparents who are now alive.
your uncle, your aunt.
All these people together are extended family.
And, you know, I know many countries.
I think, I believe in India this is true.
From what, just from my experience just talking to Indian people and traveling in India, that, you know, that they're very focused on family and especially extended family.
So, you know, When you include uncles, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, all your extended family, that can be quite a lot of people.
And for many people and in many cultures, that is your main community.
Not your co -workers so much, not so much friends.
It's like your strongest community, your strongest connections are to, of course, your close family.
Your own parents, brothers, sisters.
but also even cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. So, extended family.
You might hear a little more of an echo here now.
I'm coming into the garage because it's a little more cool.
There's some air -con here.
Summer. I was outside.
Hmm, excuse me. so community is our web of connections so it can include and should include family extended family but also friends but also community has a even broader even beyond friends it's even just your acquaintances right?
It's just anyone you have a connection to and that might be you know a fairly small connection or it could be a deep connection deep connection would be of course your children, your parents but even small connections are meaningful to us and important so I'll just give you an example just some random example I remember I was living in Kyoto and And I would go to a local coffee shop to do work.
I just like getting out of the house a little bit to work.
So I'd take my computer and I'd go to the same coffee shop every day.
Well, of course, you know, the workers there, there were a couple of girls that worked there at the coffee shop.
And, you know, eventually they're seeing me every day, every day.
So I learned their names and they would, I would chat.
I'd see them and they'd say, oh, hi, AJ.
And, you know, do you want another, you know, iced coffee again?
or something like that.
They knew my normal orders and I would chat with them for like a minute and then go sit down and work and that was all.
But still, that little bit of human connection, human interaction feeds us.
It feeds our souls and it's much different, much different than to go into a coffee shop where nobody knows you and they just say, Hi, can I take your order please?
and there's like no emotion, they don't ask you, they don't know your name, there's no connection at all, right?
The little bit, just, you know, a smile, knowing your name, a little just exchange of, oh, hi, how are you?
It's just something a little like that, I'll give you an example again, another example, here in Indiana, I went to the local post office, and there's a guy there, and I've gone to the post office a few times, so he kind of recognized me, and we just started chatting a little bit.
Oh, hey, how you doing today?
You know, and I always bring my, my daughter goes with me usually.
So, he was, he said, oh, yeah, your daughter's really cute.
And little things like that.
It starts, you start to feel like you're part of a community.
Those little connections.
Yes, we need the deep connections.
Yes, you need those strong, deep connections.
Of course, those are the most important.
But even the little ones are important.
And I just got to see the power of this today again.
I talked with Carol's group today, mentioned them, they're a group of VIP members and they've been meeting, oh, for years now.
They do a book club and they sometimes just meet each week and have like a, you know, Video calls and just have discussions in English.
And I've joined their group several times now.
They're great. They're great.
And they're all different countries around the world.
So, you know, just today we had someone in Los Angeles, and here in the States, of course I'm in America, someone down in Peru, right?
Carol's in France, Italy, Israel.
Argentina, India, okay?
So we have people from all over, all around the world, Asia, North America, South America, Europe, I mean, and other times, you know, Ibrahim Ali, if you guys know him, he's a long -time VIP member, he's part of their group.
He didn't join today, but he joins often, and so just, it's so fantastic.
And so they are a community.
They're friends, they've been meeting together, they have real connection, and, you know, I always feel, like, happier.
And, you know, like, I'm always in a better mood after I chat with them and connect with them again.
Even just, so even just using the video calls, in fact, that was one of the things we discussed today.
Mina from India was talking about just how the video calling really does help us create and maintain these connections with people who might be far away.
And she was talking about her own family members.
She's got kids who are living in different places.
You know, they're not in her town.
But she gets to do a video call with them every day and keeps that strong connection with them.
And then this group of effortless English members meeting every week and chatting and okay maybe in the beginning, in the beginning these groups usually start off as you know English learning groups, where the focus for most of the members is, you know, I want to improve my English I got to get better at English, I want to practice my English.
But I'll tell you after six For six months, nine months, a year of meeting together again and again and again, the group focus changes.
It's not so much about English, and the focus is much more about connection and community and friendship with, you know, these great people that they have met all around the world.
That's, I think that's the case with this carols group.
They're all very advanced.
Fantastic English speakers now, but they keep meeting.
And I know they want to practice their English, but I think it's much more than that.
They're discussing ideas and they're connecting.
They are a real community now.
That's why I started, finally got this new community site for Effortless English members now.
Because it's the same thing.
I know most people are going to join that community site in the beginning.
The first focus, first motivation is English, and that's fine.
Of course, that's why you join Effortless English.
So, oh, you want to get there, and you want to maybe, you can just write a post. You know, you can write something in English, and you can maybe practice doing some comments, leaving comments for other people in English.
It's a nice little bit of writing practice.
Practice, you can ask questions if you're struggling with motivation or struggling with any of the lessons.
I know a lot of you want to create your own or join conversation groups so you can.
Practice actually speaking English to other people around the world, with other members that you know you can trust them and you know they follow our code.
I encourage you to do that make a group, you can use Microsoft Teams you can use Zoom I don't know what other group video apps there are there's so many pick one that you all like and practice your English it usually helps if you're going to make a group I think it's good to have a focus to the group if you just say let's just get together and chat in English that works once or twice but then what happens is a lot of times people there's no topics you kind of run out of topics there's no focus so in the first once or twice you introduce yourself you talk about your daily life or your hobbies and then
you're kind of like oh now what do we talk about so that's why it is really quite good to have you could make it a book club You could make it a movie club.
That would also be cool.
So you got you could pick a movie and you say alright watch the first 20 minutes of the movie English right and then we're going to talk about the movie that 20 minutes We're going to talk about that part of the movie when we meet So it gives you a focus and then you can talk about other things, too But then you have automatic topic every time you meet there's always a topic to talk about Book clubs are great for this, right?
You choose a book each week or each meeting.
You focus on one chapter.
Everybody read chapter 1 and next week we'll discuss it.
Right? So I recommend that you have some kind of focus to your group, not just to make it a conversation group if you just call it a general conversation group I've noticed those groups don't usually last they usually meet a few times and then they kind of die out because people struggle, they don't know what to talk about after a while so the groups I've seen that do the best like Carol's group are focused on some sort of topic.
So, books work really well, movies, you know, you could do a podcast group, and each week you, everybody has to listen to and talk about a specific podcasting episode.
You could choose one podcast, if you just say we're always going to talk about Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan podcast, and we're gonna do this episode episode this week, or you could just choose a variety of different podcasts.
So that's what I recommend that you do, is choose a focus for your group.
The second thing the group needs is a leader.
The other thing I've noticed is groups that try to just form as generally, I don't know, like, oh, let's all get together and talk, and there's not a clear leader, or you could call them a facilitator or manager or whatever, those groups also usually die out because there's no one to keep them going.
You need someone, like Carol, who's going to say, all right, who's going to schedule the meetings, who's going to help to organize the topics.
It also helps to have someone, the leader, who can make sure everybody gets a a chance to talk that can be a little difficult as the groups get bigger some people are a little more shy and they're not going to just jump in so it's helpful to have a leader who is going to go and say hey you you haven't talked yet what do you think i think sometimes it's good to have at least a little structure a little bit of organization for your conversation group so for example you might say that everybody just cut out again no it didn't so you might I'm sorry I'm checking my audio now I thought my audio just
turned off but I think it's going okay 39 40 all right we're still going sorry I thought my audio cut out I got I'm nervous because my audio died on me yesterday and I'm doing this again.
All right, so what was I saying?
Oh, yeah, that having some organization, some structure.
For example, if you did a book club and every week you do one chapter, I think it's a good idea to say that everybody will talk five minutes about the chapter.
so that way you know everybody gets a chance to talk and the shy people get a little bit of encouragement a little bit of a push to go ahead and try and go ahead and talk you don't have to be perfect it doesn't matter how good or bad your English is but you just make sure everybody gets a chance so you go through and whoever's the leader of the group make sure that everybody gets their five minutes and then after that you can talk more freely and it can be more loose that's my recommendation that's what I've seen that works the best because without that the most confident people or the most outgoing
people can tend to dominate completely and then the others get discouraged and maybe they drop out so a little organization a focus, and then the final thing I would recommend when you create your own conversation groups on our site, on our community site, is to have a schedule, a regular schedule whatever that is you might meet every single week I think that's probably the best is weekly, that's very consistent, it gives people enough time to read a chapter or watch a video or something to discuss but you could do if you thought that was too much you could do it every two weeks or if you know
you got a group of super motivated people you could do it two times a week or whatever but I think as a general guideline a general suggestion once a week works quite well and make it you know on the same day Try to get consistent.
This also helps people schedule and join and keeps your group going.
So if you want to do this, you're a member, you want to make a group, I recommend step up and be the leader.
Because, you know, there's a whole lot of people get on the site and they say, I want to join a group, I want to join a group, I want to join a group, but nobody actually becomes the leader.
Nobody actually organizes the group and says, okay, I'm doing a group and we're going to meet on Sundays and it's going to be a movie club, right?
That's what's missing.
So you got like a hundred people saying, I want to join a group.
I want to join a group, but nobody creates a group.
So then everybody gets frustrated.
So we need leaders and being a positive leader is another.
Positive leadership is another one one of our values in Effortless English.
This is a great, very small way to practice that.
So, instead of just saying, I want to join a group, say, I am creating a group.
And as the leader, you decide, so you don't have to have a vote about everything.
Okay, just decide. If you're into movies, just say, I'm making a movie group.
We're going to meet every week to discuss a movie scene.
And then you choose the movie first. After that, you could let other people choose movies too, or you could vote on movies or whatever system you want to do.
But for the first, in the beginning, people want leadership.
They need it because people don't know, they're not sure.
So they're waiting for somebody to make a group, to schedule a meeting, and to choose the topic.
If you do that, you are going to find other people are going to want to join.
And it might take you a few months to grow your group.
It'll get better and better.
it'll grow slowly and get better and better and then soon you'll have a group like Carol's and you'll have international friends around the world and have these great connections and of course you will practice your English too.
So I recommend it. Be a positive leader and make your own community.
This is so important, these connections and it's such a great thing about Effortless English is this community.
Without community, it's just English lessons.
And, you know, you're learning a language.
You're learning, you know, the number one international language.
What's the purpose of a language is for communication.
In other other words, for connecting.
We use communication to connect with other people.
So this is exactly why you're learning English, is to connect with other people.
You might have business reasons and school reasons, but it's still the same.
Ultimately, it's always about communication and community and connection.
So just do it. Get on the site.
Just decide. Organize it yourself decide on a topic decide on a schedule and then puts post something on the on our community site and just make your group and get started and tell people hey if you want to join leave a comment below and then you can organize your group decide how many people you want or how many see how many you can get and then just go go go go and if your group becomes successful if you start becoming consistent if you do it for you know six months or so when you're really got a good group and you're enthusiastic invite me and I'll come chat with your group sometimes I like doing
it but I'm not going to do it in the beginning because I don't want you to depend on me you got to make your own group first and show that you have commitment get it going and then you can invite me And who knows?
Who knows where this will grow?
Again, you know, Meena is from India.
We're chatting with her today.
She talked about how she's from India.
She visited England, and then she, while she was there, she went to Italy and visited a member of her conversation group, her effortless English group.
Went to Italy, you know, to a local town, not just to Rome, the big famous place, right?
her banis, and she got to go and visit another member, her friend, and I've, you know, I've mentioned before, I've done this many times when I travel, and you can do it too, and it kind of makes it an even deeper experience, an even better experience when you get to connect face -to -face with people, and it will, I'll tell you, it'll make your travel experiences so much more powerful.
like it's one thing for me to go to barcelona spain barcelona now is a bit touristy and but it's a nice town i like it but i'll tell you for me barcelona has a different feeling and a different meaning it's not just walking up las ramblas you know and it's i i you know oscar i've got a friend there who i've known now for many many years unlimited spanish .com and by the way that's his website he makes excellent excellent excellent Spanish lessons that use the same method as I do so if you want to learn Spanish unlimited spanish .com I always like to promote Oscar's site and his lessons but anyway
so I have a friend there so I go there and Oscar and Gloria and you know I've met lots of people there so for me like Barcelona has a special feeling in in my heart that is not about any tourist site it's the people and the experiences I've had there connecting with them and of course we've had several Effortless English VIP member gatherings there where we've had these great experiences I've met so many wonderful Effortless English members from Europe and other parts of the world too it's just a deeper feeling feeling.
Vietnam is the same for me.
Like I could go as a tourist to Vietnam and just, you know, see the sites.
I have done that. My first time to Vietnam, I was a tourist. But that first time I did a meeting in a coffee shop.
In Ho Chi Minh City.
No, no, it was was, was it Ho Chi Minh?
I've forgotten now.
Anyway, I did a meeting in a coffee shop, and a lot of Effortless English fans and members came.
I was so surprised.
In fact, we had to go to a different location because we had too many people.
The coffee shop wasn't big enough.
And that started with connections.
I was so impressed by how enthusiastic they they were and then I connected with the people at Postle with Jim Hahn and you know so many great people there and that led to all these seminars so again like for me Vietnam I know I've seen a few of the famous sites but it's really nothing about sightseeing it's all about these great great people that I've met in Vietnam and these great experiences I've had with Vietnamese people so this is a wonderful kind of extra benefit of Effortless English when you join the community and become active in the community and contribute to the community you will make
these friends friends and then when you have a chance you can travel and meet other Effortless English members and have a much deeper experience personal, cultural, community experience and you will start to feel this feeling of international community start to feel like, oh I am part of a world community not just some idea not just some phrase you say the world community, the international community international because you're interested no because you actually have real friends real connections with people all around the world and all these different continents and all different kinds of cultures and nations
locations geography geography.
You know, it's wonderful.
I'm kind of a, you know, well -experienced traveler now.
I've so many years wandering around and living in different countries and traveling.
So for me, like, just seeing famous sites really is not that interesting to me anymore.
A lot of cities seem similar.
It's a similar brand, similar stores.
So for me, it's the culture and the people that make each country special and unique and exciting and alive and wonderful and give me a true feeling of international community, of being a citizen of the world, as they say, it's the people if I go to I don't know pick a country if I go to Malaysia okay yeah I can go see some of the famous sites, they've got some really nice mosques and you know there's some beaches and things but really I'd rather just go to Malaysia and then connect with local people people and then I get such a deeper feeling of connection and I have done that in Malaysia Malaysia is wonderful
I love Malaysia such a unique place with wonderful people and you know Chinese community Indian community and Malay community being the three big ones pretty large international expat like European community in KL it's what it's quite an interesting blend actually really unique and all those groups very very friendly and welcoming it's been my experience I've had such great connections with them I've done a few seminars there but it's the connection to the people This is the difference.
It's also what makes the difference for your perception, your idea of a place.
So I'll give you an example here in the United States.
You could travel to my state here, Indiana, just as a tourist or on business.
And honestly, I don't think you'd be impressed.
There's not much to see.
There's nothing famous here.
a lot of farms, but you know, you wouldn't really get any feeling for what the people or the culture is, is like.
You would just see the surface, and say, oh, that's kind of boring, right, that's true for so many places, because most people are just going to, people go to Italy, where do they go?
They go to Venice, they go to Rome, they go to Florence, right, so that's, that's kind those are impressive places no doubt but uh you're not really getting much of a connection to Italy or to Italians or to Italian culture in those places if you just go to the like say go to Rome and stay in like the center part where there's especially if you go in the summer and it's just overwhelming number of foreign tourists.
You see the surface of Italy and Rome, but you're not getting any connection to Romans or Italians or, right?
It's very different.
Same in Kyoto. Kyoto in Japan is the number one tourist spot in Japan.
And now it's overrun with tourists.
But I lived in Kyoto.
And I'll tell you, so living there was a very, very different thing.
my idea of Kyoto my connection to Kyoto is is you know deeper I love Kyoto it's one well I'd say it's my favorite city in the world Kyoto's fantastic but if you just go as a tourist I mean you probably still like it honestly because it is beautiful and it's amazing but but it's not the same And what's the difference?
The difference is connection.
Connection to people.
People. It's the connection that's important, not just the buildings.
It's the connection that's important, not just the website we have for our members.
It's not just having a website to practice some English.
That's great and all, but you can find other places on the Internet to do that.
I'm sure you can find other conversation chat areas but they're filled with spam they're filled with a bunch of garbage you never know who you're gonna get you know if you're a woman you got to worry about other guys trying to hit on you you know there's just so much garbage there you know there's none of that on our site what makes our site different what makes Effortless English different is the connection the community our code our mission our values these are all What make our community That's what the difference is That connection Not just the words of English So I know It's always a kind
of Something I have to help people Understand Understandably People are looking for the best Method for learning English Becoming a fluent, powerful Confident English speaker speaker.
You go on effortlessenglishclub .com.
That's where you buy my lessons.
It's my sales site where we sell our courses.
Of course, I'm going to talk about all that.
I do talk about all that.
I know that's what you want and need.
It's your first reason for doing English.
I understand that. I understand that you may have career goals, and English is going to help you You make more money, get better jobs.
I know that you may have academic goals.
English is going to help you get into a grad school, get the degree you want, pass the test you want.
Fine, that's all fine, but it's only the first step.
And I know that you want to just practice your English.
That's what most people say.
I want to practice my English.
I want to find a group to practice my English.
And I know when you're at that kind of intermediate level, that, you know, that's important.
It is important. You do need to do it, and it's totally fine.
But I also want you to see the bigger picture.
I want you to see the next step.
I want you to see the next higher level.
And that higher level is why you're doing this.
Connection, communication, community.
It's one of these strange things in life that sometimes when we focus on a higher goal, it's easier to achieve a lower goal.
So what do I mean by that?
I mean, people who focus too much on the English language, I've seen this with so many students, thousands of of students.
People who focus too much on the grammar and the vocab and the words and having the absolute perfect pronunciation and just the language, English, English, English and that's all they focus on.
They often burn out and they often, their final result is not as good as other people who focus on community and communication and making lots of international friends and just enjoying English and watching movies and reading books in English and they're really more focused on community, connection, culture people who focus on those things end up finally having better speaking better pronunciation better grammar more vocabulary and it's because those things are more meaningful and therefore they're more motivating, they're more enjoyable and therefore you will do them more and more and more because they
are enjoyable because they are meaningful as you connect with people around the world you'll want to talk to them in English not because you need to improve your vocabulary but because they're your friends because you love connecting with them and discussing books or movies or culture and you're just going to want to do it more and more and more it will feel effortless you don't need to force yourself when you do that it's enjoyable you love it because that's what you're really trying to do and achieve and what's great is when you do it your English still gets better you still do learn new words
you still do improve your pronunciation your listening does get better your fluency does get better you don't need to focus on those things too much so my message, especially to newer members of Effortless English newer members of our community yes, do your lessons every day, but get involved in the community, connect with people and start focusing on those higher goals and even with the lessons, focus on enjoying them.
Don't stress out. Don't get so stressed and worried about your performance.
Your performance will improve, I promise you.
The lessons are designed well.
Thousands of other people have used them to become fluent and confident.
So you can just relax about that and don't focus on it too much. Instead, focus on community, focus on connection, Focus on the higher reasons that you are using the language for.
It's no different than your own language when you really think about it.
In your own language, you're not always stressing about your vocab and grammar and did you make a mistake with saying a wrong word or something.
thing right now you're you just using your language to do things in your life to connect with people to communicate to achieve your goals well you just want to do you want to have that same mindset in english and the cool thing about english is that you can do it internationally i mean this is the advantage of english right you're learning this language that is a bit challenging uh you know that has terrible you know crazy spelling and uh for a lot of people you know some difficult pronunciation but the good thing about it is you can use it to talk to people not just english speak you know native
speakers not just americans but you can use english to talk to you can be you know from Brazil you can use English to talk to someone from China for someone from India someone from Iran someone from Portugal or from I guess in Portugal you could use Portuguese from France someone from Morocco you know someone from Nigeria someone from wherever right Japan, Korea, etc., etc., etc., Russia.
That's the great thing about English.
There's just no other language right now that has the same international reach. So take advantage of it, use it, and enjoy it.
Enjoy it, enjoy it, enjoy it.
All right, then. That is today's show.
Join my courses at EffortlessEnglishClub .com.
After you join, go to the courses website and log in.
Of course, that's where you download your lessons.
You can download your lessons, put them on your computer or whatever.
But also, you'll see a link to community.
Get on that community and connect.
And remember, positive leadership.
don't just wait for someone to do it you're going to have to do it yourself you need to organize a group pick your topic, pick how often you're going to meet and announce it just put something on there say I'm making a conversation group we're going to talk about movies we're going to meet once a week who wants to join you will find people saying yes alright then community and connection Lots of love to you.
See you next time. Bye for now.
