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