Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A .J.
Hogue, where A .J.'s more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills.
Here's A .J. with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.
I am A .J. Hogue, author of Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native.
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No worries. Hi, everybody.
It's been a long, long, long time.
I've had a long break.
I'll explain why in a minute.
But today's topic, first of all, is how to handle crisis, fear, loss, great, great, great, big difficulty in your life.
Like really, really tough situations.
I don't mean just normal, kind of smaller problems that we all have all the time.
I mean, very, very big, scary things that happens, you know, very tough things.
That's what we're going to talk about.
And specifically, I'm going to talk about a new book that I have been reading, actually, that I already read that I finished.
It's called The Battle Plan for Prayer.
The Battle Plan for Prayer.
And the writers are Stefan and Alex Kendrick.
Stefan and Alex Kendrick, The Battle Plan for Prayer.
And I'll be talking about chapter six today from that book.
If you like today's topic, then I recommend you know, get the whole book because it's a very good book.
So why have I been gone so long?
You might guess from today's topic, that in my own life, I've had a lot of crisis and big scary difficulties for the last several months.
And specifically, it's one of my children has a very serious health problem.
And we found out that that he's going to need some probably surgery again, and just a lot of big scary stuff, right?
You know, for me, probably for a lot, most parents, you know, we can handle difficulties and pain in our own life better, easier than if our children are having difficulties or pain or anything, you know, that's much scarier, right?
I know for myself that I'd rather face much more tough, difficult situations for me, but not my children, right?
So it's very tough.
And one of the problems, you know, one of the very big difficulties I had is, and still have, is that, you know, there's many things in life we can't control.
There are big scary things that can happen.
Very large problems that are not in our control.
These are the most difficult ones.
The most stressful, right?
The most terrifying, right?
People, for example, maybe they stress about their health.
And maybe they're, you know, fat or overweight, or they have health problems.
But that is in your control largely, right?
You have a big influence over your own health, you can eat better, you can exercise, you can take herbs and supplements, you can do Ayurveda or Chinese medicine, or, you know, there are many, many things you can do to improve your own health.
In most cases, not always, but most of the time, normal problems like being overweight, that kind of thing.
Money problems. You're not always in control.
Like many times people lose jobs, right?
But it's a big surprise, you lose your job, and then it's hard to get another job.
And maybe the economy has changed.
And your your skills, what you do, is not needed so much anymore.
That's scary. That is scary and is big.
But you do have some influence over that, right?
Because you can change careers, you can study, you can go back to school, or you can learn new skills, and you can learn how to market yourself, you can learn how to be really good at job hunting and interviewing.
And it's not easy. But you do have some control over that.
But there are some things in life that you have no control over, right?
Like, so for example, you know, someone in your family gets seriously sick, or dies.
And you can't do what can you do about that?
Right? There's nothing you can do to change that outcome.
Or, you know, people get in traffic accidents, they have a traffic accident, and they get a terrible injuries, and then terrible problems that come from that.
Again, this is totally out of your control.
Once it happens, it's done.
And, you know, it can be very tough to face these situations.
You know, my own case, you know, you have a child who is going through some very big difficulty.
And again, a lot of it or most of it out of your control.
And this becomes very frightening.
So how do we deal with it?
And so, you know, I was a couple months of just being really scared and stressed and depressed, like severely depressed, and a combination of just constantly stressed out and afraid and worried, and just being also exhausted, so tired, not sleeping.
And, you know, it's like I just kept struggling, like with what do I do?
And this book helped me a lot.
Because in these kind of situations, this is when we turn to praying.
Because this is where you have to turn to something higher than yourself.
When you're facing these kind of terrible problems, extremely frightening problems, things, many things that are out of your control.
How do we find strength to keep going?
Right? Because we must keep going.
We cannot lose hope.
We cannot let ourselves become permanently depressed.
Right? Like in the, for me as a parent, you know, I need to be strong as a father to help my child.
If he feels me, if both my children actually feel me, they see me, they know that I'm depressed, I'm scared, it just makes them more scared.
Right? So like I struggle with this, I realize I have to do something, because I need to be a good father, and I need to give them confidence and support.
And especially my one child who has, you know, a lot of difficult things ahead.
But really, but is his sister as well, right?
Because the whole family can feel it.
And this is often the case, we don't live in a vacuum, we don't live alone.
We all influence other people and other people need us to be strong.
Sometimes maybe it's hard for us to be strong for ourselves.
And at that time, we need to think of others.
It's like, well, they need us.
Other people need us to be strong, right?
Not to just give up, not to be depressed, not to be hopeless.
So let's talk about it.
And you know, my first step and the thing that has helped me the most, of course, there are lots of little tricks for little small things we can do to deal with stress.
Right? You can find them online, you can find them in books, people tell you to exercise, get good sleep.
That's hard to do. If you're super stressed, it's hard to get good sleep.
Because you just sit there, you lie there in your bed and you can't go to sleep because you're worrying so much.
So it's a nice idea.
But how do you do it?
And even sometimes if you're super depressed, it can be hard to exercise.
Like I got so depressed and worried that I got sick.
And so I had a fever and I was just in bed.
And so there was no exercising, I couldn't go to jujitsu, I couldn't do any exercise, just laying in bed.
And then everybody else in my family got sick, which created even more stress.
So my kids got sick.
It's like everybody was sick.
It's terrible. So I think this the spiritual level is the first level, the most important level we have to focus on when we are having an extremely difficult time in life.
Facing something very difficult, very scary, and especially things that we can't totally control or even influence.
So this book I quite liked is called The Battle Plan for Prayer.
And it talks about the power of praying and why praying is important, and how it can give us strength and help.
And in chapter six, he talks about, this is one of my favorite parts of the book, he they is two brothers, Stefan and Alex Kendricks, they talk about specifically how to pray.
Like, well, because this and I like this a lot, because a lot of times people will talk, you know, pray, pray, pray, and you know, I need to pray about this.
But then, you know, how do we do it?
Right? Like, and they talk about, actually, four different kinds of praying, and they recommend that you do all four every day, try to do all four kinds of praying, or when you are praying to do try to do all four of them, at least a little bit.
So let's talk about that.
And we can talk later, if you want, especially when we get into the comments and questions, if you want to talk about why praying is important, how does it help, you know, these kind of things.
But let's just get into the specifics.
So the first kind of praying, right, when you're praying, praying to God.
And, you know, that might be whatever name for God you have.
The first kind is, they call adoration, prayers of adoration.
What does that mean?
prayers of love for God, you're basically saying, you know, you know, God is great, you know, you're, you're, you know, like, in Christians might, you know, just say, hallelujah, you know, praise God, praise God, right?
That's a common phrase you'll hear in English.
Praise God, praise God.
What's the, what is it in Islam?
Allah Akbar, God is great.
Right? It might just be in, in Sanatana Dharma, we'll just chant the names of God or might say say, om namo nara yanaya, which means I bow to you, God.
Right? This is just these are prayers of adoration, where, you know, some so often in praying, it's easy for us that we were asking, we want something, you know, please help me, please help me, please help me.
And that's fine. That's okay.
It's good. We'll talk about those kind of prayers in a minute.
But we also need to go the other way, just like any relationship, you can just think of your relationship with God, that your relationship with any person is the same, right?
If you have a relationship like you're married, your husband or your wife, if you only ask them, you say, you just want them to give you love, give me love, give me love, help me, help me, give me love, give me love, help me, help me.
It's very one sided.
It's not really a relationship, is it?
It's just you taking, taking, taking in a relationship, you need to give love to write and tell your spouse, tell your husband or wife, Oh, I love you.
You're wonderful. And I'm so happy to be with you.
So this is kind of the same idea that you are, you're, you're trying to give something.
The second kind of prank, they call Stefan and Alex Kendricks, the writers of the book, they call prayers of confession, prayers of confession.
And in some religions, confession is quite formal.
I believe in Orthodox Christianity and Catholicism for sure, they actually do confession where they go, and they actually talk to a priest.
And they confess, what does confess means?
It means you, you're, when you're praying, you're, you're being open about your weaknesses, your sins, the, the mistakes you've made, the bad things you've done, and asking for forgiveness.
Right? But it's, it's a, it's a way of being open and honest about yourself, really being honest about your weaknesses, your problems, because so often we try to hide these things and pretend that we're perfect.
Right? Or maybe not pretend we're perfect, but we don't want to think about all the bad things we do.
And they might be small things.
Right? It might just be feelings.
Maybe we're jealous.
Maybe we're selfish.
We're all selfish sometimes.
Right? So prayers of confession, you're just confessing again, as you pray to God, that, you know, please forgive me for these things that I've done and my weaknesses and please help me with these things.
So you're, this is a way of becoming, you become a better person.
This makes you humble.
This is an act of humility, true humility, real humility, not just pretending that you're humble, but real humility, meaning recognizing that you're, that we're not perfect.
None of us are perfect.
And you know, most of us are not even great.
So prayers of confession.
The third kind of praying that they talk about in the book and chapter six are prayers of thanks, thanksgiving.
This is gratitude. I've done so many shows on this topic where I talk about the power of gratitude, that even when our lives are very difficult, we have so many problems.
We also, though, always have things that are good.
Even when a lot of things in our life, our lives are bad, we still have good things.
And we need to remember those things, you know, psychologically, this helps to give us hope and make us stronger, I think spiritually by giving thanks, even at our low points, even when we're having lots of difficulties, that this is very powerful spiritually.
So you give thanks, give gratitude as you pray.
Thank you. And you just try to think of everything in your life that's good and say thank you.
You know, like I say, thank you for my family.
Thank you for my children.
Thank you for my wife.
Thank you for Effortless English.
Thank you for my wonderful students all around the world.
Thank you for my health.
I'm still healthy. You know, thank you for I have for my home.
I have a place to live.
I'm not homeless, right?
Thank you for all the food, the food I get that I that we can all eat.
We're not hungry, right?
We should be thankful about these things because you can just look at the news and look around the world.
There are people who don't have these things, people who are starving right now.
People who are in war zones, who are dying and being killed and just all kinds of horrible stuff.
So if that's not happening to you, it's good to be thankful for that and to remember that, okay, I have some tough, really tough things happening in my life now, but I still have some good things.
And to keep remembering that and connecting to that every day, praying prayers of thanks.
And then the final kind of praying in the book, the final kind of prayer, prayers of supplication.
There's a long English word.
I'll discuss what that means in a minute.
Or often people call this petitionary, another long word, petitionary prayers.
What these mean is this is where you're asking for help.
Okay, that's what this means.
Supplication, petitionary prayers, it means you're asking for help.
You're most natural for all of us, especially during tough, difficult times, right?
Because many times, if you're facing things in life that are so, so, so scary and difficult, that there's no one else that can help you, right?
You feel like there's no hope.
And so this is when you have these petitionary prayers to God, where you're like, only God can help me now.
And this is how I've felt in the last couple of months with my son.
So this is where you say, God, help me, please help me.
And there are many kinds of petitionary prayers, many kinds of help you can ask for.
I mean, you can ask for God just to give you things, just ask for miracles.
But, you know, that may happen, that may not happen.
I think a lot of times the most effective prayer of asking, of supplication, are where you're asking for strength, asking for courage, ask for guidance, ask for wisdom, ask for clarity, meaning, help me be clear, what should I do?
Please lead me, please guide me, please help me.
And these, this, this, I like these kind of prayers myself and I, and I feel they're effective.
And we'll get to this finally as the last topic.
So let me just review then, I recommend you get this book because this book goes more, talks more about the power of praying and why it's powerful.
Because we all know every prayer is not answered.
Okay, you can't just demand from God or the heavens, you know, give me everything and then it's going to happen.
That's, we know that doesn't work.
Okay, so that's not the point.
The point is to give is that it can spiritually make you stronger, fill you up with hope and guidance and clarity.
No matter what happens.
This is what I found that over the last few months of just focusing on really focusing mostly on praying and praying and praying, a little bit of chanting and kirtan, but mostly praying that, you know, now finally, I'm at a point where I do feel like I've gotten a lot of guidance, guidance, you can call
it intuition, whatever you want to call it, but I feel much more calm, much more hopeful, strong, courageous, as a result.
So this, it does help.
And any of you who have faced extremely painful and difficult things in life, you know, that sometimes there's nothing else that will help.
Just praying. So again, get this book.
It's called The Battle Plan for Prayer.
The Battle Plan for Prayer by Stefan and Alex Kindrick.
Just Kindrick. That's their last name, their brothers.
Kindrick. I highly recommend the book.
Chapter six talks about the specific kinds of prayers and they recommend do each kind every time.
They recommend in the book you pray in the morning and pray at night.
You can make your own, you know, you know, Islam famously has, you know, very specific times, you know, it depends on your religion, your, your schedule, whatever you want to do, you can make your own schedule.
But the point is as you do it, you know, say at least a couple of words of adoration to God, you know, God is great.
Hare Krishna, Om Namo Marayanaya, Allah Akbar, whatever it is you want to say, you know, for your religion.
And then prayers of confession.
Confess your weaknesses, confess your mistakes, your sins, your, you know, we all have them.
So this helps you to know and be honest with yourself.
This will give you true and real humility.
It's very, very effective and helpful.
Prayers of thanks of gratitude.
Stay connected to gratitude, no matter how horrible things are in your life right now.
Find something that's good and say thank you for that.
And then finally, only at the end, the last kind of prayers, prayers of asking, asking for help.
Please help. Please help me God, right?
All right. Now, as I said, just a quick note again, my only real website is effortlessenglishclub .com.
It's on the screen if you're watching on video.
All others are fake.
Be careful. We've been getting some reports, people complaining that they, they went to a fake website, they paid money and they got nothing.
You know, I can't help you.
If you do that, we can't help you.
It's not our, those are got, there's a lot of cheaters out there.
Okay, you got to be careful.
So go to our official website only.
This is our sales website, effortlessenglishclub .com.
That's the only place to buy my courses, only that one.
Power English is a good one to start with.
My Power English course, it's on the home page.
Go read about it. All right, let's get into our comments and questions now.
I can discuss this topic, any topic you like in the, in the, in the comments, because I've been gone so long, you might have questions.
I'm sure there might be a lot of questions for me right now.
All right, let's get in here.
I can't read the Arabic writing, but this person says, praying is very important in Islam.
It is indeed. It is very demanding.
It is highly recommended active worship.
I believe it was five times a day.
Is that right? In Islam?
Yes, right. Highly recommended.
I mean, more the better, I think, as much as you can.
I think it's a, it's a great practice and it is comforting.
It will help you at the very least, you know, we can talk about the various benefits, but I will tell you this, it's comforting because when you're filled with stress and fear and worry and or grief, you know, all these terrible feelings, the act of praying and praying and praying about it, every day,
every day, every day, maybe, and, and, and multiple times a day, it, it will kind of, it will comfort you spiritually at the deepest, deepest level.
You know, and the reason I'm doing the show, this, I thought about, I wasn't sure if I should do this topic today.
I know it sounds very religious.
It is, it is a religious topic, spiritual, religious.
But, you know, I realized, well, I've just gone through and still going through this extremely tough time.
And I know out there that you maybe now are going through that very, very tough time, or in the past you have, or in the future you will.
Because I think in life, all of us at some time must face these things, you know, just as the Buddha said, you know, life is full of suffering.
It's the first truth of Gotama Buddha.
He's right. There's no avoiding it.
There's no avoiding it because there is death.
Death is reality. Loss is reality, right?
And there's just no way to avoid it.
You might be lucky early in your life.
I was, and nothing much happened.
But then later in life, something's going to happen.
Okay. It's, it's, so we're all going to face these kinds of things eventually.
And that's why I'm doing this topic because I know I don't want anyone out there to become hopeless.
And I know that some of you are going to face even more difficult, more painful situations than I am.
And so I just try to share things that help me.
That's all I do in my show.
And with all of you, anything I try to teach, I'm always just teaching you things that have helped me in my own life.
I try these things myself first.
And I just want to help people who are going through tough times.
I want to help you have great success and reach your goals too.
That's kind of the fun part.
Those are the fun things, right?
The goals, make more money and be healthy and do all kinds of cool stuff.
And, you know, those are fun and they're great.
But then sometimes life hits us hard.
Life hits us hard. And we just got to get through something very tough and painful.
And that's where we need things like prayer and some other things which I'll talk about in other shows too.
Fabrizio tells us, do you have a fear of dying teacher?
Do I personally fear dying?
No, I don't fear dying at all.
Not at all. But I don't want to die.
The only thing I worry about is that I want to live long enough.
I have a sacred duty to my family, right?
I have young children.
So I don't want to die.
I need to raise them to be healthy and happy adults and do everything I can in this life to help people and to be helpful and useful and good.
But when the time comes, I'm not afraid of my own death.
No, not at all. One tech with, of course, an extremely important question.
Is there a God who can hear my prayer?
What do you think? Is it just a psychological feeling?
This is an extremely deep and big question.
And it's not a question that other people can answer for you.
Because of course, my answer is yes, of course there is.
Yes. But it took me several years, many years to find that answer for myself.
And not just find it, but to know it with certainty, 100 percent certain.
So this is, you know, for some people, they're already certain, and that's great.
And some people are not sure, like I was not sure for a long time.
And, you know, I just read and continue to read, you know, books about philosophy and books about this question.
And, you know, I read the atheist arguments from, you know, the people like Daniel Dennett and what's the other guy's name?
British guy, biologist.
Anyway, the famous atheist guys, right?
I read their books and I read, you know, but then I read the other arguments.
And, you know, just more and more, I realized that, yeah, absolutely the answer is yes.
But you got to you got to really find this answer on your own.
And I think you should, let me give you another book recommendation, because I just read it.
It's actually, if you want kind of, some people are coming from more of a science background.
This is the world we live in now.
So there's quite interesting book about this question about God from a scientist.
It's called Return of the God Hypothesis.
I believe the writer is a physicist.
And it's an argument for God from a scientific point of view.
So I think that would be, for some people, like I'm more focused on the philosophy.
This was, it was an okay book.
I already had my answer, honestly, but it was kind of interesting to see a scientist arguing and discussing this question from the viewpoint of physics, astronomy, and science.
Quite interesting. Return of the God Hypothesis.
Stephen, what's the guy's name that wrote it?
Stephen Meyer. Meyer.
M -E -Y -E -R. Stephen Meyer.
I can type it into the comments if you want.
Return of the God Hypothesis.
And it discusses how, you know, a great many super famous scientists, maybe the most famous, is Isaac Newton absolutely believed 100 % in God and that that science and God are not exclusive.
You know, they're some kind of militant radical atheist in science that a couple I just mentioned.
But it's not at all all scientists, certainly not.
Okay, let's see. I'm gonna go kind of just go go back closer to the beginning of the comments, see if I missed any here.
Just a lot of people saying hello.
I know you guys missed me.
Camille Osam says, how are Joe Weiss and Kristen, my my friends?
Are you all in touch?
Yes, indeed. I text, I just texted them this morning.
So we, we text and still communicate.
They're my good friends.
Time Story says, since 2008, until now, I've continued with you, AJ.
15 years. Wow, that's amazing.
I know I was just recently thinking about that.
I've been doing this for like 17 years.
Amazing. Jennifer Amonsio says, welcome back.
Hi from the Philippines.
Happy to see you again.
We really missed you.
Yep. I'm glad to be back.
And I'm, yeah, I just I've been having a tough time, honestly.
I didn't go to jujitsu for like a month.
I was just depressed and overwhelmed and stressed and much better now.
Doing much better now.
But honestly, this book is one of the books that helped me tremendously this battle plan for prayer really good.
And of course, the actual praying being the most important thing.
Huanglei says, this is the thing that happened to me so many years ago.
Yeah, yeah, I know.
You know, a lot of you I know have been have had some extremely tough some people have, you know, it's not that a Dharma, you know, we call it karma.
Some people have extremely difficult karma at from childhood, you know, they're born.
I mean, we know some people born into families where they're abused, like terrible, terrible families.
And they suffer right from the beginning.
Other people, you know, they're born with very difficult health problems like my son.
And then other people like me, I you know, I had good karma.
As a kid, like I had a really easy pretty much a perfect childhood, no problems, really, I'm you know, a few small things.
But when I compare to people who really suffered as children, my little problems were nothing.
But you know, now as a father, I'm having a lot of very big difficulties and stress.
And so I think, like I said, I think eventually all of us face these things.
Maybe there are some really lucky people who have good karma, good luck, good fortune, their entire lives, you know, but for most of us, there's, there's gonna be some time, maybe already happened.
Maybe it's gonna happen.
Maybe it's happening now.
But it's good to prepare yourself spiritually to be ready for it.
Chris says, Hi, I'm glad to find you on YouTube and listen to you.
You speak very clearly.
And I live in San Francisco.
Oh, little pause there.
Sorry. I also live in San Francisco.
Oh, hey, Chris, I might be going through San Francisco.
We'll see. Anna, good to see you.
I'm absolutely delighted to see you.
Such an important topic today.
Indeed. I'll be back doing more shows again now.
Maybe probably just start.
I'm gonna try to start just by doing once a week, once a week, once a week, just but get back in the habit again.
Reem says thank you for your efforts to get us fluent in English.
You're welcome. Akko, good to see you.
Akko in Tokyo. I missed your YouTube live.
Thank you. Yep, I missed you guys, too.
Yeah, Anna says the most difficult times in life were when I was taking care of my little children.
When I was at maternity leave, one of my children had problems with health.
We had a Yeah, reanimation.
Yes, it's exactly when it's so tough, you know.
Yeah, I really understand now like, because they're parents who have such difficult situations with their children, you know, serious health problems or, you know, maybe developmental problems such as autism and other issues.
And it's very tough.
It's tough and it's scary.
Right? I will say it makes you a better person, though it will make you into a more patient, more loving, more compassionate, more humble person as a parent when you go through this.
It has for me, that's for sure.
Good. Cheryl Salazar says, been listening to your videos for quite a while.
It's been motivating me to learn more and master English.
I'm happy to discover this channel.
Thank you, Cheryl. Morak says, a long time no see AJ, I've been listening to your podcast and mini stories five hours every day.
After three months, my listening skill has improved a lot.
I bet. Good work. Five hours a day.
Man, very good. Impressive.
Good. Vame vero me gay.
I'm sorry to mispronounce your name probably.
How do we handle crisis to prayer is a good way to face the reality.
In my case, I praise the Lord every day.
Yeah. And of course, our father.
Yes, exactly. Exactly agreeing with me.
Siobhan from India.
Hello from Chile. Thank you, Rose.
Hello from Thailand.
People, lots of people saying hi.
Okay, I'm catching up here on the Gregory says hello from Haiti.
Thank you. Yeah, Vame makes a good point.
This is kind of about the topic.
Today's topic says before you ask before we ask God for what we want.
First, thank God for what we have.
This is just a general great attitude in life, isn't it?
Before we ask and try to get take or get we should first focus on being grateful for what we already have.
And this is true spiritually with prayer.
I also think it's just true psychologically for just like your goals, like people, for example, who want more money.
Fine, it's okay to want more money and you want a better job, a better business, a better career.
And it's fine to focus on that goal and think about it, you know, getting more.
But I think first, though, and every day, you should always focus on what you already have and being thankful.
So even if you live in a little tiny one room apartment, that's very small, and you have very little money, and you have a goal to become very successful, that's fine.
But every day, before you think about your goal, say thank you.
Oh, I'm so grateful.
I'm so grateful. I'm grateful that I have a place to live.
I'm grateful. I'm not living in a war zone.
I'm grateful that I'm fairly healthy.
I'm grateful that I have food to eat.
And I'm grateful that I have a, you know, a good family, all and just think of everything you're grateful for first and, and really feel it.
Don't just say it, feel it.
And you can pray and do this.
And you can just say it out loud, and you can write it down in a journal.
And then after you have that great feeling of gratitude that your life already has so much good in it.
Then you think about all right, now what are my goals?
All right, I'm gonna build a great business.
I'm gonna make more money.
I'm gonna get a better job that I like better, whatever it is.
That's, I think that's exactly the way to do it.
That's great. Okay, I'm catching up now.
Let's see. Okay, well, as soon as I'm about to read something, it skips ahead.
Sorry, let me find it again.
Okay, Marlin. No, no, not Marlin.
Where was it? Oh, yeah, heaven.
Heaven says my son is autistic.
I have just been through a difficult time today, like every day.
Yeah, I understand.
I'm dealing with something similar, actually.
And I have nothing to do other than pray.
Pray means hope to me.
Heaven, I'm going to give you a few suggestions, because I've actually researched this topic.
Number one, Gemini is a language thing.
It's English, but it might help your son.
There's something called sunrise.
You can check that out.
Those are two good ones to start with.
And you've probably done a lot of stuff already in yourself.
But just in case one of those is helpful to you.
Good luck. I understand how difficult it is.
I have a very clear understanding how difficult it is.
Nagmed, Madhavi says, I really needed to hear these words tonight.
Thank you so much. You're welcome.
That's why I needed to hear these words for the last few months.
So I understand. Sometimes it's so helpful just to hear.
There's hope and to give some hope and some, you know, some focused on something during a very, very, very tough times.
Alex says, please try to read books from Lee Carroll and his crayon channeling up.
I'll check it out. Yeah.
Mike says, I think it's more important to be grateful.
We usually forget about that part indeed.
Yeah. RBK says, I believe the whole world is living in difficult times.
Yeah. And at some level, yeah, we see threats of war and hunger and selfishness.
Faith in God and firmness of spirit is the only way not to lose hope.
Yes. I mean, we are like, this is what I was saying, you know, in the beginning, at some level, we all have problems to face, right?
Because the world is the way it is.
And there's no way to avoid some problems.
And you know, you might, maybe you're not living in a war zone, but you know, you're gonna, you might have to deal with selfish people, you might have a job that you really hate, you know, there's, there's always something, right?
You might have some kind of health problem.
Maybe it's not huge, but it's still bothering you, right?
There's always, always, always, always, right?
But so these are, that's sort of the normal all the time.
And then, and we can sometimes get depressed about that until we get hit by a really big crisis, something terrible.
And then we realize, oh, those other problems were actually quite small, right?
So this is, again, why to focus on gratitude, because however bad it is, it can always get worse.
Yeah, like Nalib, Nilab says, everyone has their own mind, they have to use their mind and do the research to find out why they are created.
What is the purpose of their creation?
Then they'll find out the information.
Exactly. This is why you can't give the answer to someone.
You can give your own answer and you can encourage.
But you know, this is, this is not a small question.
These are huge questions.
You know, the question I got is they're really a God.
And are my prayers effective, you know, are meaningful?
And, you know, what is the meaning of life?
Why are we here? And, okay, these, these are not small questions.
You shouldn't just have some quick little answer you heard in, you know, in a movie, or something, right?
These are deep, deep, big, big, big questions.
So absolutely, it's, it's, you may, you may need years to really think.
And when I say think about these, you need to read, read books about these topics.
This is not something just for Twitter.
Okay, this is something that, or X.
This is, you know, this is the, these are the most important questions.
I mean, these are the questions of life.
Who are you really?
What is the actual purpose of life?
Why were you created?
Why were you born? Why are you here?
Where are you going after?
I mean, this will, when you have to answer these questions to decide what the rest of your life means.
So take some time to do it.
It's not, it's not usually a quick thing.
In fact, it probably never ends this question.
You're always thinking about it.
David Landau says if I buy PowerEnglish and the original course, can I have a discount?
In fact, you will get a discount just buy one.
And then after you buy it, you'll get a, you'll get an offer to add the other one at a cheaper price.
So that's how you do it.
Like Raman Somal says, life is full of suffering, but you have to be strong and learn.
And indeed, you know, like Buddha's first truth is life is suffering.
It's usually in English, I see it, life is suffering.
I'm not, I'm not sure that's the best translation, but life, you know, suffering is not avoidable in life would probably be the best way to say it in English.
But that's only the first one.
The other three are very hopeful.
The other three of the four noble truths are extremely hopeful.
The first one seems quite depressing.
But it's true. You know, life meaning this material life that we're in now.
But the other three, you know, suffering has a cause is the second one.
And there is a cure to that cause.
And then the cure is the Noble Eightfold Path.
So meaning that the Buddha actually was very optimistic, right, as all you know, as is Islam, Sanatana Dharma, Christianity, very optimistic in the long term, none of them promise easy life in this life.
None of them promise, you know, no philosophers, no religions promise, you know, easy life, no suffering, that that's not reality.
But if you think eternally long term, then it's a very different.
It's a very different thing.
It's super optimistic.
And not just that, guys.
You know, the other thing I someone was asking about this question of, you know, religion, I gave you the return of the God hypothesis, which is kind of very sciency.
But for me, in terms of books that really help you with this question, I think the near death experiences are very powerful.
So the research about near death experiences, life after life is the book I did for a book club life after life.
And that's very powerful.
And it's not any one specific religion.
But when you start reading all these stories of people who died and came back, they had a heart attack, their heart stopped, and then their doctors brought them back five minutes later, what did they experience?
And it's first of all, it's amazing how consistent they are.
They're not exactly the same, but they're very similar, the experiences.
And then you start to say, wow, thousands of people have had these similar experiences.
And they all have this message of hope.
That's very powerful.
So life after life, read some books about near death experiences.
Or if you if you want, there are a lot of YouTube channels now that interview people who had near death experiences, they died and came back.
And I think, you know, through these are much more common now, because of, you know, modern emergency medicine, right?
So 1000 years ago, it was not common for someone to die and come back again, right?
I mean, I don't even know that it made me didn't even know CPR, just to use your hands and try to pump the heart, right?
So 1000 years ago, if someone had a serious heart attack, or if their heart stopped, or they drowned in a lake or something, they were just dead, you know, almost very, very rare for someone to die and then be brought back after their heart and brain stopped.
But now it's, you know, I wouldn't say common, but it's much, much, much more common, right?
So this is why we have so many more people talking about these experiences.
And when you can find it on YouTube, you can, in their actual researchers who go around and, and they confirm that the people really did die, and they, you know, they confirm a lot of the details of the stories in terms of what happened, you know, yes, they died, yes, this happened, you know, all these
kind of things. So it's kind of it's quite interesting.
Now, do those as Buddhism denies the existence of any supreme God?
Well, I don't know, you know, I don't know which specific branch of Buddhism you may be talking about, but that's not true.
Lord, you know, Buddha never answered that question.
He was asked the question and he remains silent.
So Buddhism just does not address it.
It does not deny God, but neither does it.
Does does does Buddhism?
And I, you know, again, there's, we say Buddhism, there are lots of different kinds of Buddhism, right, Tibetan Buddhism, and, you know, Thai Buddhism, and, etc.
Mahayana, Theravada, etc.
So it's hard to say, because I don't know if there might be some specific Buddhist group, but there are certainly many Buddhist groups that especially Mahayana Buddhism that come very, very close to affirming saying yes, there is God.
Not quite. 100 % directly, but pretty darn close.
But then and then a lot of but a lot just like in Thai Buddhism, as far as I know, they just don't discuss, it's just not discussed.
It's, you know, the idea is you have to find out for yourself.
Right. So, but Buddha himself just did not answer the question.
He just stayed silent.
So that does not he did not deny God, he just didn't discuss the topic.
And in fact, in that way, you know, in many ways, Buddhism is more of a system of meditation and psychology than religion, somewhat, but it's a little complicated.
Yeah, Maria Peridomo says important topic for all people, they need something to believe and to pray for.
It helps. Yeah, Claudia Fernandez, I've realized this already says I have two married children, I continue to have a lot of worries about them.
It never ends. Yeah.
I realized this is going to be the same.
I keep thinking like hoping like, okay, we'll get through all this and then I'll stop worrying.
But I realized, no, I think as long as I'm alive, I'll worry about my kids at some level.
Yeah, but you know, we love them.
And that's our job, just care for them.
Guinaman says, I absolutely agree that being grateful is very important, no matter how many things you have.
If you're not grateful, it won't be enough.
Exactly. That's that hungry ghost syndrome, they call it actually comes from Buddhism is this hungry ghost is like a person who you can never get enough, right?
You have 100 million dollars, but now you want 200 million.
Yeah, 500 million. Oh, I need a billion, right?
Or it could be food, I can never get enough and never get up and then getting fatter, fatter, fatter, still eating more and more and right, this never ending greed.
Gratitude helps to fight that, as does humility.
Kunkam says, watching from Myanmar, I prepare myself because there's a war zone close to us.
Luckily, not too close.
But yeah, you know, who knows what's going on?
We'll see. This is speaking of this, these are things we cannot control.
We have zero control over what's going to happen in the world, politics and power as the American empire starts to crumble.
Who knows what's going to happen, you know?
Marlon Vado says, I just want to say thank you for the nice effort to bring useful topics to us.
I have seen God's hand in many situations in my life.
I use I read Psalms for inspiration.
Very nice, very nice.
Omar Pineda says, greetings from Mexico.
I've just finished your effortless English course with the respective repetition.
It was so powerful.
Where did it go? To improve my English and my language acquisition.
Thank you. Fantastic.
Omar, good, good to hear from you and thank you for sharing your success.
Okay, well, I'll go about an hour today, so we can go a little bit longer.
Yeah, like this is the attitude, right?
Collette Compensate, Jesus also said there will be troubles, but be of good cheer, because he has already overcome the world.
Well, exactly. And it's not always easy.
You know, like I said, I find that sometimes we're facing a very hard, tough problem.
And maybe you're, you know, you're, you're certainty, super strong, right?
And you know that you're not afraid of dying at all.
But it can still be very hard in the moment now, when you're really suffering, when things are tough, or even worse, someone you love is suffering.
It can be tough, even though you know, well, you know, if you think about the near death experiences, for example, you know, okay, well, eventually, everything's fine.
There's really is nothing to fear, do not fear, right?
Bhagavad Gita, the Bible, they both say that, do not fear.
But you know, it's tough in the moment when you're struggling and in pain or, you know, it's, it's, but it does help still.
I will say that maybe it's hard, maybe you can't always be of good cheer.
I know that's what we should try to do.
Right? Or you know, it's not the Narma to have equanimity, to not be so concerned about the ups and downs of life, even the terrible things.
But you know, and the great saints, the great, great, great saints, right, the great men and women.
Now or in the past, they could do that.
And that's why they're saints.
And that's why we, you know, respect them so much now.
But it's because it is so hard.
But for most of us, the average normal people, yeah, you know, someone you love dies, you're going to feel terrible grief and pain, but you'll feel less when you have this certainty doesn't when you when you pray, as we discussed today, you'll feel that you know, when my mom died, a couple throughout
about three years ago.
Now, you know, yeah, it was very painful.
But you know, I just finished reading about near death experiences.
And you know, of course, you know, I had already had certainty about what happens after death.
And so, of course, it was super painful for me, but less so.
I was able to have I was, I could accept it more peacefully.
Then maybe if it had happened 10 years ago, or something like that, then it would have been much more tough for me.
So it's not there's still can be tough, these things, right?
Or if you're just in physical pain, right?
Sometimes it's just a physical pain, right?
And so you know, we do your best, you do the best you can.
That's the part of our code in effortless English, you do the best you can, at least try.
Alex T says, Have you read the book conversations with God?
I did read it, actually, but it's a long time ago, a long, long time ago.
So I don't remember any details about it.
I think I remember it was good.
But I just can't remember the details.
Oh, icky guy. Yes, I bet.
Good to see good to see you says icky guy.
The book is great. It's about the Japanese concept, meaning a reason for being.
I've had other people recommend that book.
I need to read it icky guy, icky guy.
All right, I think we're about done.
Okay, good for another, but I want to say hi to some people that I recognize here.
Let's see. Yeah, do the scorpion gives some very good practical advice.
I handle fear in this way.
I simply do whatever the task is even in fear, just do it.
You don't know how strong you are until you decide to face a situation with courage.
Exactly. And this will be the topic of some future shows getting down to, you know, I'm focusing on the spiritual level right now, the highest level, highest or deepest level most important.
But then the next level is the psychological level, the mental and emotional level.
Right? How do you handle crisis?
And this is exactly what I'm doing.
You know, and one of the things like due to scorpion here, the profile name, you focus on the next task, right?
Because if you look at the whole big problem, it can be super difficult, frightening.
So you just like what do I need to do now?
What's the first thing to do?
Just going to do that.
Get it done. Get it done.
Okay, you get that done.
What's the next step?
Just going to do that.
Get that done. Don't even think about anything else.
Don't think about all the huge thing.
What's the next step?
Okay, good. What's the next step?
That's what I've been doing.
Little step, little step and little by little, making some progress.
This is what you do.
And I've already faced, you know, when my kids were born, we faced some, a very huge crisis and exact same thing.
It was just, I kind of had a little breakdown for about half a day.
And then I realized why I have to do something.
I can't just sit around being miserable or being overwhelmed.
I got to do something because no one else is going to do it.
And so I said, alright, what's the first thing?
What needs to be done?
I just made a big long list and we just went down the list.
Do this one first. Done.
Do the next thing. Done.
Do the next thing. Done.
Boom. Step by step, step by step.
That's how you get through crisis.
I will do a whole show about this.
It's called micro goals.
And a lot of like, even the military uses this idea.
Amina, great to see you again.
Thanks for saying hello.
It's Alexander Perez, Fernando Diaz.
Great to see you. I have noticed that desires create suffering.
Indeed. Once we learn how to control our desires, we start being grateful for the simple things life offers.
Indeed, wanting more, wanting more, wanting more.
It never ends if you want more.
Instead of, it's a very opposite of gratitude.
Because if you say you want more, it means you're not quite happy or grateful with what you have, right?
To some level. So it's okay.
We want to keep improving and there are certainly, we can do that.
But the gratitude part should be the strongest part, right?
Samir Nuri says, behind every beautiful smile, there may be hidden scars of sadness and struggles.
Well, this is a good point.
You never know when you meet people, like strangers, people you don't know.
You know, we look in the outside, but you never know what that person has been through.
You don't know what they have overcome, right?
You don't know what they may be dealing with right now.
We don't know, unless we get to, of course, get to know someone and talk to them and really learn about them.
But when we first meet people, we don't really know.
You know, they might seem cheerful, but they may have had so many difficulties in life.
Right? You never know.
Sounds good to be kind when you can.
Marlon says, I hope you, I'm sorry to hear your mom passed away.
I hope you find comfort among your beloved family and become stronger with God's blessing.
Very nice. Thank you so much.
Koonkom with a practical question.
What language do your kids speak?
English and Japanese.
I'm trying to teach my baby English.
She understands a little.
She's just two. That's a good age.
Could you give me advice on teaching kids English?
Yeah. Just have maybe a few hours every day where you just talk to your child in English only.
Also, just get books, you know, kids books, little story books that are in English, of course, and read them.
You're going to repeat the same books a lot, you know, whichever ones they really like.
Read to them in English every day.
And you could even show them, you know, I don't like too many videos, but you could find some really simple videos and show them.
Like there's one we like called Shimajiro.
It's Japanese, but they actually have an English version of it.
I like it because it's usually just sweet, very nice family situations.
So little things like that.
And that should be enough.
When will you do your next show?
Probably next week.
I'll try to do it next week again.
Uh, yeah, you have says, Hi, AJ, I have one question.
Do you often meet with your parents or relatives in the USA?
I know you live in Japan.
No, I have not met with them.
And it's been five years since we went to America.
Now some a couple of my sister and my mom came here the first year when my kids were born.
But so it's been four years since I've seen my sister, I said my mom passed away, but my father.
So we're probably going to go back this year.
And we have other reasons to go back to for my son's medical care, but probably going to go back to America for the first time and have a kind of a long visit this year.
It's been a long time.
I haven't been in America in over five years.
Okay, well, I think that's all.
Follow me on a gab or Twitter if you want to announce when the next show is.
But thank you so much.
I think that's enough.
I'm so happy to be back again.
So again, effortlessenglishclub .com.
You can see on the screen here if you're watching this right here.
It's my only official website.
Be careful of the pirate skies.
A lot of people get cheated by pirates.
So that's the only website where you can buy my lessons.
We have one other one where you actually get the courses after you buy.
But for buying the lessons, the courses effortlessenglishclub .com.
Start with Power English on the homepage there.
It's a good one to start with.
If you need business English, if you need pronunciation, you know, you can do that too.
But effortlessenglishclub .com is my only real website.
Buy my courses there.
I'll be back again with another show soon, probably next week.
Lots of love to you.
And I'll see you again soon.
Bye for now. What are you doing, kids?
