I'm A .J. Hoag, the author of Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native.
Now's a very, very good time, and especially good time to join my Power English course and add the VIP membership as well.
Well, our social community site is doing fantastically great.
I had a wonderful chat with members last weekend.
We did a Zoom call.
It was so nice to see your faces, to hear your voices, to actually talk to you.
It's great to connect with you.
So wonderful. And I will be doing another member call soon.
a little busy the next couple weeks because actually my father's coming to visit and my wife has a actually a green card interview coming up for American immigration so little busy just the next couple weeks after my dad goes then I'll do another call It's great, and there's a there's one guy on the site now, who's already organizing a conversation group.
I think he's still looking for members, so you want to practice your conversation, your English conversation skills, have a weekly meeting with other members, and chat with them in English and practice it's a great great great great opportunity get on there now and just look on the main timeline it's called the feed the timeline on our community site and you'll find his post with information about his group and how to join or you can also make your own group if you like and of course you can talk to me during our member calls today's topic i thought i'd do something a little different today you
know i have a tendency i i have an attraction to philosophical topics topics, practical philosophy, we could call it, I guess, how to live a happier life, a more fulfilled life, a more meaningful life, and how to have greater success, you know.
I mean, these are the most important topics, but sometimes with the audio podcast, this podcast, I also like to do more casual topics that are not philosophical so much. I just finished, I just did a live video show on my YouTube channel, or you can just go to the website, EffortlessEnglishClub .com, look on the blog, and I'm going to post it today, so you'll see it there, too.
But also kind of a philosophical topic.
so today's topic is Hawaii it's a little bit just more of a cultural topic it's just about a place in the United States but a very special place a very different place sure most of you know because Hawaii is you know fairly famous it's been in decent number of movies for for example, and Hawaii is actually the state of Hawaii.
It's one of the states.
It's a full and official state of the United States.
One of the 50 states.
So like Georgia or Indiana or California.
And Hawaii, the state, actually consists of several islands.
So it's out in the middle of the Pacific, literally in the middle.
If you look on a globe, you look at the huge circle, the huge area of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is almost in the center, almost right in the center of the Pacific Ocean, right?
The biggest ocean on Earth.
There are several islands.
There are a number of little tiny islands where almost nobody lives.
In terms of which islands have, you know, like reasonably, you know, like actual towns and actual decent sized population, there are four.
There's the island of Hawaii, which the locals call the big island because it's the biggest. That's the one with the volcano. And it's an active volcano, meaning it's alive, lava is coming out of the top.
Now, not like in a huge explosion, but you can go up there and visit it.
It's a national park.
And you can actually go up to the top of where the crater is where the lava comes out, and you can see the red glow of the circle where the lava is.
And then sometimes, every now and then, it'll kind of, lava will kind of erupt.
It'll come out. Erupt means come out.
It'll erupt or come out of some other part of that island.
There been, it's been a while ago, but sometimes it'll, you know, actually the lava will come, flow down.
And I think one time it actually went into like a housing area and burned a bunch of houses.
I know it's blocked one of the roads one time.
So it's an interesting place.
The next largest island is Maui, which is gorgeous.
I'll talk more about Maui soon.
Then there's Oahu, which has the only city, which is Honolulu, the city.
And it's got the most people.
The most people live on Oahu.
makes sense because it's got the main city the capital, Honolulu and then the smallest island where there are a lot of people is called Kauai which in Japanese means cute my wife and I, Tamoe By the way, before we had kids, we actually, we'd visited Hawaii several times.
We spent, I think, one month, we got a condo.
And we stayed one month in Honolulu, like right in the center of the city.
And then, later, I think like a year later, maybe two years later, We went and we actually rented a place and lived on the island of Maui for like it was not quite a year.
Almost a year. And it's a magical place.
The thing about Hawaii what's interesting is when you're on Hawaii at least when we're on Hawaii it's different than the rest of America.
So a lot of America, a lot of the states, a lot of the cities, all kind of feel the same.
I mean, they feel like America, the ones on the mainland, right?
So yes, there are some regional differences, but the truth is that in America, because people have moved around so much, a lot of the regional differences are gone.
on. You know, where I grew up in the South, the Southern part of the United States, the Southeast, used to have a very, very strong culture that was different than the rest of the country.
That is not true anymore.
I mean, yes, you can maybe get out in the countryside and in certain places in the South, and it still has a Southern culture, a Southern feel, but the truth is so many people from other parts of the country especially the north so many people have moved to the south that they've really kind of watered it down and this has happened in so many places in the united states plus there's so much immigration legal and illegal that most places in america basically feel the same that you know that geography might be a little different.
It might be desert in one area and trees in another.
But the actual culture, the people, it's pretty much the same.
It's the same shops.
It's the same feeling.
If you're in California, if you're in Colorado, if you're in Indiana, there are some differences, but it also just feels quite, quite similar.
But Hawaii's not not like that.
Hawai 'i feels different.
Hawai 'i feels like another country to me.
For many reasons. And indeed, of course, it was its own country for a long time, and then it became a territory and then a state, but it's still, it's very much its own culture, its own place.
And the people who live there definitely have that feeling, that attitude, that Hawai 'i is different, right?
And people in Hawaii kind of have a slightly negative view of the mainland.
That's what they call it.
The mainland, right?
The big, main part of the United States.
Hawaii, being tropical, not surprising.
Not surprisingly, like a lot of other tropical places, has a very relaxed culture.
People there have a very relaxed attitude about life, right?
slower pace one of the things I love about it the south used to be that way where I grew up but it's not that way anymore but I like that I like that slower more relaxed lifestyle and you still find it on Hawaii it reminds me very much of Thailand in that way the Thais also have that mindset set, right?
The Thais say, sabai, sabai, right?
Everything's fine, relax, right?
Take it easy. That's what they say in Hawaii.
Take it easy, right?
Take it easy. They call it the aloha spirit.
Aloha is kind of a, it's hard to translate into English.
It's from the native Hawaiian language.
It can mean hello and goodbye.
People use it to say hello and goodbye.
But it also, aloha is a, it means like the spirit of Hawaii, kind of.
It's that island spirit, that happier, more relaxed, less worried mindset.
It's also, you know, this more connected to nature.
So the Hawaiians, and we'll talk about who the Hawaiians are because it's a mixed group, but Hawaiians of all types, of all races, of all backgrounds, have this aloha mindset.
It's very much a part, a strong part, of the Hawaiian culture.
And it's because, you know, it's a tropical island.
It's not surprising.
the people of Hawaii are also very, very unique.
It's quite a unique and special mix of people that, again, is very different than you will find anywhere else in the United States.
Not surprisingly, it's very Asian.
So the big groups, the big cultural and racial or ethnic groups on Hawaii are the, what you might call East Asians, mostly Japanese, people who have family members in the past who were Japanese, so it's a very, very strong group that have a Japanese heritage.
Heritage means their family background.
Because a long time ago, a lot of Japanese workers came over to work in Hawaii.
They were brought to Hawaii to work in the fields for the sugar and the pineapples.
And then they stayed.
And you also get some, you know, there's some Chinese, Thais, other East Asians, but Japanese being the biggest. So that's one big group, people with Japanese heritage.
Another large group are Filipinos.
so same thing a lot of filipinos came over for work and you have a very large group of people who have a Filipino heritage whose families in the past were from the Philippines who are racially Filipino third big group are mainland mainland white European Americans, like myself.
Also a big group, especially once Hawaii became a state.
A fairly large number of people from the mainland, white European background Americans moved to Hawaii.
So there are a lot of that group.
A lot of people with that background and heritage also.
And then the final group, the fourth sizable group, are the native Hawaiians, the Polynesians.
And they, as far as we know, were the first people to find the island of Hawaii and to settle there.
there. And they have of course had therefore very strong cultural influence on Hawaii and even people, these other groups that have moved in, the Japanese, the Filipinos, the Euro -Americans, Americans, they've all been attracted to and learned some, or been influenced strongly by a lot of the Native Hawaiian culture and ideas and lifestyle.
style. Finally a final large group in Hawaii.
What you might expect actually are you know you might call mixed race or or mixed because of course these groups have you know these all four of these groups have been Hawaii quite a long time now and so they've you know know, they've married.
Euro -Americans have married, you know, have married people from, with a Japanese background or, you know, Filipinos or, you know, they've, they've all intermixed.
So there's quite a large group of people who have a mix of Asian and Euro -American and or native Hawaiians in their family background around somewhere which also makes it pretty unique very quite unique actually compared to the rest of America I mean nowhere else in America do you find that kind of mix it's probably the most Asian state in America you know with the large large number of Filipinos and Japanese.
And then, of course, you have the Polynesians that, you know, other than maybe Guam, you don't find a lot of Polynesians in the rest of the United States.
So it's very unique, very special.
For the most part, these groups get along very well.
For the most part. Now, there is some resentment.
I know that you definitely find some of the native Hawaiians don't like the the Euro white Hawaiian so much. You've got to be a little careful sometimes but you know that happens in any multi ethnic multi racial society.
But compared to most places like that the Hawaiians actually and probably because of this aloha spirit and the laid -back nature they just do seem to get along a lot better I think the other thing that helps that of course is all the intermarriage there's so many people have family members from these other groups in their past or even in their present so that's quite special as well another extremely very very special thing about Hawaii is just the environment is paradise it's paradise it's I have traveled all over the world and I've never seen a place as just perfect in terms of the geography
the land and the weather weather, everything.
I've never seen a place as perfect as Hawaii.
It is perfect, and it's perfect all year long.
There's no bad season in Hawaii.
There's no bad month in Hawaii.
Every month is great.
It gets warm. It's warm enough to swim.
It gets, like, in the middle of the day, you know, hot enough to swim.
the ocean's warm perfect temperature but it never gets super hot it's not even like Indiana right now it's in the middle of the summer it gets over, so for Celsius it would be like 32, 33, 35 and really really humid a lot of the mainland United States has that weather in the summer.
And it's, you know, I don't mind it, I kind of like hot, but it can be unpleasant.
It's very hot sometimes, and especially with the humidity kind of hot, and the air just feels wet, so you're just sweating like crazy when you're outside, especially in the middle of the day.
Hawaii does not get that hot.
So it's just, it's always always warm, you can always wear shorts, but it's never super hot and it never gets cold.
It gets a little cool at night sometimes, a nice breeze, you know, the breeze comes in off the ocean, it depends on where you are, which island, cause there are actually little small climates on the islands.
So sometimes if you're on one side of an island it can be cooler or wetter, and another side side of the island is more dry.
But overall, just about a perfect, if you were looking for a paradise climate, that's It's Hawaii.
As a result of this, there are so, so, so many outdoor activities.
Hawaii is the perfect place.
It's really a paradise for people who like to do things outdoors.
because you can go outdoors and have great weather every single day all year long there's not really a like a big heavy monsoon rainy season there's not a super hot season like you sometimes get in other tropical areas so you know of Of course, people do a lot of water sports there.
Surfing is famous as one of the best surfing spots in America.
Surfing, kite surfing, wind surfing, stand -up paddleboard. A lot of people do some kind of boating there, like canoes or kayaks, you know, like boats with paddles.
Like one of the famous things they do, they actually have these team races, these big, long boats that use paddles, and they have a big race every year.
different teams race against each other out in the ocean of course things like fishing, there's also snorkeling scuba diving any ocean activities you can do it there and the water's clear, it's a perfect temperature, it's great and also other outdoor activities activities.
Of course, lots and lots of people, you know, just walking, hiking you can do there is great, and just walking along the beaches.
Running is very popular.
Triathlons. If you know anything about triathlons, that's, uh, those are races where you swim, then you ride a bike, and then you run, typically.
And the big famous race for triathletes is called the Ironman.
which is something like a two mile swim i believe so like a 4k or something swimming in the ocean followed by a 112 mile bike so what 200 something kilometer bike ride and then run a marathon but the original iron man which they still do is on the big island of hawaii people do so obviously people do cycling there golf beautiful i mean stunningly beautiful golf courses amazing so nice with incredible ocean views and oh it's a golfing paradise i'm not a big golfer but when i lived in hawaii uh that's the one time in my life where i played a good amount of golf right would go go golfing a lot this is so beautiful
so nice just to be out on the golf course for four hours just walking around with the scenery amazing and they're great anything else you can think of outdoors you can do there it's great I think because of this, Hawaii has the longest life expectancy in America.
Of the 50 states, people who live in Hawaii live the longest. They live the longest lives.
I think it's just because they're outdoors and they're active.
And also, it's a lower stress.
It's such a relaxed place in general.
Less stress. lots and lots of time outdoors in the ocean it's it's not surprising people live much longer there I sound like I'm a tourist like I work for Hawaii tourism but it's great and it's just it's a special place in the United States like I said a lot of places in America are pretty much the same.
When I travel in America, a lot of it just looks the same to me, but Hawaii is very different.
And, you know, I have a special kind of attraction to it.
It's some of the best, the happiest times for me and my wife were in Hawaii when we lived there.
culturally too in addition to the Ataloha spirit and the tropical island all of that which is wonderful you also because of the Japanese and Filipino populations and history uh it's it's it really feels like the perfect blend the perfect combination of western and eastern asian east asian uh culture and i tend to think that the japanese and even the filipinos too the uh uh cultures have influenced that as well and that's also part of the reason people tend to be more relaxed more polite.
Japanese are famous for for being you know incredibly polite and I've never been to the Philippines but all the Filipinos I've met traveling are also so sweet and polite and you know I guess that's I'm guessing that is a common thing for Filipinos When we lived on Maui You know, actually, when I lived on Maui That's when I recorded my business English course You all may not know that I don't know if any of you have gotten my business English course A lot of people love that course Love it And that course was recorded With my father And it was recorded in Hawaii We were in Hawaii at the time so I
had the idea of doing this course and talked to my dad about it he he was excited yeah let's do it let's record a course let's make a business English course and so we brought him we flew him to Hawaii to Maui and he stayed with us for I think almost a month and during that time we We would, we planned and recorded lessons every day and made that course.
My dad loved it too.
He'd been to Maui before, but he loved it.
He loved Hawaii. Everybody loves Hawaii.
That's the thing too.
When we were there, we got so many visitors from our families.
Like, you know, living in San Francisco, we got a couple visitors.
visitors and uh but kind of for a short time not that often but suddenly when we were on maui when we were in hawaii like all our family everybody wanted to come visit us my friends kristen and joe came and visited us my dad visited us my mom came and stayed with us my wife's uh sister with her child came with and visited us And everybody has the same exact reaction.
Everyone loves it. Everyone loves Hawaii who's been there.
They love it. My mom loved it.
Oh, she loved to just sit on the beach and watch the ocean.
You know, with my daddy, he's a golfer, and I took him to some of these great golf courses, and we played golf together, and he loved it too.
our normal days when we lived there on Maui, just to give you an idea of what it was like I would get up in the mornings and we'd just open the windows up, usually at night we'd just open the windows up let a cool breeze come in, cool it off, there's no need for air con and certainly not at night wake up, you know, have a breakfast I would then I usually drive into one of the little local beach towns go to a coffee shop have a little coffee and then I would go kite surfing.
So I took kite surfing lessons it was it was quite difficult for me to learn it I've never done any board sports before or water or or anything like that, but I eventually learned to do it, and I would go most days, if the wind was good, I would be out there on the beach, and I'd go kite surfing for a couple hours, you know, then my wife and I would often drive down to a different area, and go snorkeling Get our masks and our fins and we go snorkeling and look at the fish and see the sea turtles Maybe do that for an hour or two You know and then have have a nice relaxing lunch somewhere maybe
do a little shopping for the day and get our food they also have nice farmers markets there where local farmers and local fishermen will bring this their stuff and you can buy it it's very nice and then we had a nice little ritual which we did almost every evening we would in the evening we would drive down to this one beach near a town called Paiya, and we would just sit and watch the sunset, sitting on the beach, relaxed, watch the sunset, watch the sun go down, and then you know then drive home, have a nice evening.
I would often do do my work in the evenings at that time.
And that was it. And then go to bed and start again the next day, you know.
Some days, instead of kite surfing, I might play golf or we might drive to you know a different beach town and have lunch or something but it is it's just so wonderful and of course I could enjoy it better I have my own business so I have a lot of a lot of time and a lot of flexibility excuse me but you know even people who work there work jobs there they all seem to have the same relaxed attitude you don't find many workaholics on in Hawaii now like any tropical place of course the negative side of that is everything takes longer it's not super efficient you can't expect you know I remember it
took us like a month to get at internet.
Because, you know, everybody just kind of works more slowly.
Nobody's in a hurry to do anything.
But you just get used to it.
You adjust, right? The Hawaiian's attitude, if you move there and then you start expecting everything to happen quickly and you expect everything to be like the mainland, they don't like that attitude.
And then, you know, it's It's very common. They'll say, this isn't the mainland.
This isn't the mainland.
And good for them because they want to preserve that.
They don't want a bunch of workaholics.
They understand that life, there's a balance to life and just work, work, work, work, work and hurry, hurry, hurry.
There's no point to it.
They have a high quality of life without tons of money.
you know, so many Hawaiians, and especially people who've lived there a long time, you know, were born there.
You know, what they do for fun is they go to the beach, they swim or surf or fish, and they have, like, little beach parties with, you know, barbecues on the beach with family and friends.
none of it requires a lot of money maybe on Honolulu there are dance clubs and things I don't know, I never saw one it's just not that kind of a culture not that kind of a place One thing my wife loved about, some things my wife particularly, especially loved about Hawaii and the culture there is that there is a, it's hard to explain but there is a spiritual element to the culture that's missing from most of the United States.
I think part of that is that people in Hawaii are so much more connected to the land and In the ocean.
You know, in America, mainland, I should say, a whole lot of people have zero connection to the land.
It's so urban or suburban.
People spend all day indoors.
You know, they're indoors in their house in the morning.
They're inside a car, driving to their work.
they work inside an office all day, they drive home in their car and they go inside their house and they watch TV or they do whatever they're gonna do and they're hardly outside at all.
All they do is really go from their car, to their house or like their car in a parking lot, into the store but like 99 % of their their time, they are indoors.
So it doesn't really matter to them if it's snowing, if there are mountains, if it's desert.
It's just a very, they live in artificial environments most of the time.
They've completely lost their connection to nature.
Now this is true of most cities too.
I mean that's also true in Japan of people who live in Tokyo and Osaka.
saka. It's the same thing.
They're outdoors more, walking around, but it's a very urban environment.
But Hawaii, like I said, is different because the weather is absolutely perfect every day, all year.
People are just outside.
They're connected to it.
They're connected to the land.
They're connected to the weather, the sky.
It wasn't just my wife and I.
Lots of people go to the beach and just watch the sunset every evening or for the early folks I guess they watch the sunrise tons of people swim surf kite surf windsurf something like that boat fish so people are outdoors and they're seeing that beautiful landscape now Hours and hours and hours every single day, there is absolutely a very strong, much stronger connection to the land.
And there's a spiritual element to that.
And the native Hawaiians view the land and the volcanoes, for example, as sacred.
As being spiritual.
and that has that attitude and that mindset that belief affects and it has influenced everybody who lives in Hawaii and so my wife and I do very much like that I think it it it adds a little bit of depth, a deeper meaning to people's lives there.
So I'm sure you can find people in Hawaii who are super materialistic, but it's much less.
It's a less materialistic culture and mindset there than the rest of the United States, which is super materialistic.
Also because of this, you find that Hawaii is like a big center, like a very strong area in the United States for what you might call alternative health.
So you find all kinds of people who are into, who practice all kinds of different health practices.
You know, maybe something as simple as massage therapy and a ton of different kinds of massage therapy or herbalism or other things like that also meditation because of the Japanese there are a good number of Buddhist temples active Buddhist temples of people who still go that are all through the islands so there's a decent -sized Buddhist population and of course Christian too so I think this also helps contribute to the longevity the reason people live longer and are healthier there in general they're outdoors they're much much more active and they they also don't immediately just turn to drugs
and surgery for every problem they have a lot of other alternatives one thing I personally like about Hawaii it's also a great place for homeschooling tons of people home school there like that's probably the first place I ever lived where I I met a lot of people who were doing homeschooling this is before I had had kids, but there are a lot of homeschooling families there, a lot of homeschooling groups where the families get together and do activities together.
They're all homeschooling, and then they get their kids together and do things.
So it's not perfect.
Politically, I don't particularly care for the politics of Hawaii, but all politics is super corrupt, so it's not a big deal.
But overall it's about as close to paradise as you can get.
There are many other parts of the world that I very, very much like.
I really like Japan.
I love Southeast Asia.
Parts of Europe, too.
Really love. But Hawaii is a special, special, special, unique place.
So much so that we have considered going back.
The reason we left Hawaii, Because you might think, people ask me this, if it's so perfect, why did you leave?
Good question. Why didn't you stay there and live there?
At the time, the reason was we had no family there at all.
No family. We had no children.
And my wife's family was all in Japan.
And then my family all here in the mainland, Indiana and Georgia.
And we didn't have kids.
so it's just the two of us so we got a little lonely and we wanted to be closer to family so we actually went so at that time we moved to Japan but now that we have children it's different now we have children you know any I don't know it's just it's just different it's different than just being two people now there are four of us and I'm never lonely now it never lonely none of not a second.
I used to be very very lonely a lot of times and now with my wonderful kids...
never! I think that the kids would love it there.
They love being outdoors.
I think it would be a great environment for them.
So we've considered at a later date, maybe several years from now, we have considered moving back to there.
We'll see. We'll see.
So I hope you enjoyed this.
This is, like I said, not a very philosophical topic today.
Just wanted to talk about something a little bit different and unique.
If you ever get a chance to visit Hawaii, I highly recommend it.
Yeah, actually, I remember the very first time I went to Hawaii.
Well, I didn't go there.
I just passed through Hawaii.
I was flying back from, I think I was flying back from Thailand.
And I think I went, and for some reason, usually I would go straight to San Francisco, like from Taiwan.
But somehow I got a deal where I ended up going through Hawaii first. I just had a layover in Honolulu.
But it made a strong impression on me.
I remember because the plane landed and I got out and had to go to walk through the terminal to go to the next, to find my next flight.
And I remember just from the terminal, the terminals, some of the walkways and halls and things in the terminal at Honolulu airport are open air.
There's no windows.
It's just open, right?
There's a roof, but there's...
It's kind of like a bridge, but instead of windows, it's just open air.
Just lets the breeze come in.
So I remember looking out and then from the airport you can see, you can look back and you can see the city of Honolulu with the this great big, lush, green tropical island, I mean a mountain behind it and the crystal clear you know water which at certain times a day looks a deep blue or other times it looks kind of like a green and blue and I just you know I can't I still have the image in my head that first view I got of Hawaii just from the airport just looking out at the The wind, the, the, the, not the window, the, like the little hallway, the terminal.
Looking back at Oahu and thinking, oh my God, this is gorgeous.
This is amazing. I had no idea.
And that image stuck in my head for years.
Still, it's just still stuck in my head.
I thought, whoa, this, I want to come back to this place sometime.
And luckily we did.
so if you get a chance go there and you know spend some time i know some people go to hawaii and they do these like resort vacations where you're just in the resort all day i'm sure that's nice but um kind of miss out on everything i just talked about all that hawaiian culture and the feel of hawaii you're not going to get that just at a big beach resort.
I recommend if you have the time and the money if you ever visit try to make it a little bit longer trip and stay like an Airbnb or something if you can and try to get into that island mindset a little slower, more relaxed visit and you'll get more of a feel for what the real Hawai 'i is like.
I think it's good to visit places like that, or even places like Thailand, where you can see that you really get to see groups of people that are living in a very different way than the go, go, go, work, work, work, money, money, money mindset that we find in so many parts of the world, especially cities.
And it's so easy to get caught up in it and to think, oh, if I just get more money, if I just get a better job, if I can just get a bigger house, if I can just get a nicer apartment or condo, if I can just get a better car, if I can just do more, more, more, then I'll be happy, then everything will be better.
But you get to go there and you get to see, wow, you know, these people are way more happy, less stressed, have a feeling of connection to their families and to others and the land, feeling of having a more meaningful life without working like crazy, without much money.
because a lot of people in these places are not super rich. They're not rich at all.
Most would be categorized as poor based on their, you know, income.
And yet they have quite rich lives.
You know, you could take someone with, let's say, kind of a low income, a low salary in a place like I don't know New York City or Chicago and you can find someone in Hawaii with a similar level of income and the person in Hawaii is most of the time is going to be a much happier much more relaxed person and have a much, much, much higher quality of life.
So it's not always about money.
We should remember this.
Now I'm getting philosophical again.
I can't help it. It's what I do.
Of course, you can find this, a similar difference.
You can find this same idea in the difference between cities and small towns and countryside.
I think just Hawaii is kind of an extreme, a very strong version of this, because like the whole state is like that.
Even the City of Honolulu, it's a city, but it doesn't feel like a city.
Like Honolulu just doesn't feel like a city to me, because you can stay in Waikiki, Honolulu it's the busiest part of the city it's the biggest tourist area where you get tons of Japanese and mainland tourists in Waikiki they've got all these high rise condos and hotels there lots of restaurants it feels fairly busy walking around and yet it's right on the beach you can walk from the center of Waikiki key this busy bit the busiest area of the city and you walk five minutes and you're on this gorgeous Beach stunning amazing and you look back from the beach towards the island and it's this you know
there's a couple there's this big famous not really a mountain giant hill called diamond head it's very famous unless you'll see it in lots of postcards.
Again, it's right on the beach. It's kind of like this big, giant cliff.
You can walk up to the top of it.
It's right there in the city.
You can walk to it from Waikiki.
A lot of people do.
And then in the center of the island of Oahu, I can't remember the name of it.
It's a big kind of mountain, very green, lush, beautiful.
So the scenery, every direction you look is stunning and gorgeous.
You don't feel like you're in a city.
It's not like being in New York where you look around and all you see are buildings and concrete and steel and cars.
Even in the busiest part of Honolulu, it's gorgeous and beautiful.
It's amazing. It's wonderful.
So like I said, this is kind of an extreme version where the entire entire state, even the city itself has that relaxed, connected, slower mindset that you normally find in other places, more in the countryside.
side. We don't have to work like slaves.
We don't have to endlessly chase more and more more and more things more and more and more money we don't have to be stressed out all the time think about this okay my daughter is playing basketball in the the rain well done yeah i see yeah playing basketball in the rain huh nicely done so right it's these kind of simple things like with my daughter just now these are the things that matter okay so you don't have to move to hawaii to get this but it's if you feel caught up if if you feel stressed out, if you feel like you're always in a hurry, if you feel like your life is not relaxed, not meaningful,
you feel lonely and disconnected, consider moving.
I'll tell you, it's not always the answer to everything, but sometimes just changing your location, your environment, moving someplace where the people around you are happier and more relaxed and live a less materialistic life that can change almost everything in your life.
Tony Robbins calls this the peer group.
Peer, P -E -E -R, peer group.
It means the, it's kind of like, you know, your friends, your co -workers, it's the people you are around a lot, might be family.
But it's Just the people you are with each day, every day.
What people do you connect with?
What people do you interact with?
Who are you around?
And what is their mindset?
And what is their culture?
And Tony makes the point that because we're such social creatures, we're social beings, that we are very strongly influenced by that.
So if you live in the center of a big city like a man if you live in Manhattan in New York City it's extremely difficult to be to have that Hawaiian attitude in a place like Manhattan because it's the absolute opposite culture because pretty much everybody around you is busy super materialistic workaholics go go go everything's in a hurry, everything's fast and you get influenced by it it's very hard not to even if you are normally a more relaxed person you live in that environment for a few years you're going to get more stressed you're going to find yourself hurrying all the time you can't help
it we're influenced by our peer group this is, by the way, one of the easiest ways to change your life and to to help yourself have a better life and to have more of the kind of life you want.
Hang out with other people, live around other people who live the way you want to live.
Seems simple, but yet so many people don't do it.
So many people get so caught up, so focused on career and money and jobs and all these other things, that they they I mean I think my dad did this when he was younger you know he got offered a job got offered more money a promotion so we ended up moving our whole family and going to some completely other place new place but then what we're surrounded by people who care about money and promotions and things, right?
It didn't. I know as a child, all the times I moved, that my dad moved us because of his job and promotions and more money, none of it improved the quality of my life.
In fact, the opposite.
You know, yeah, we started, we lived in bigger and bigger houses as I got older because my dad made more money but we because we moved around a lot it cut all our connections I'd lose all my friends and have to start again and the environments even though the houses would be bigger there was just something sterile something not alive like the opposite of that Hawaiian mindset something kind of isolated and lonely and the neighborhoods where we lived I think it was similar for my mom so it was not just that just not just for the kids I know for my sister it was similar I don't know for my dad but get
to a good environment even if you have to cut your salary a bit even if you have to live in a smaller, simpler place.
Find a place that has the kind of mindset, the kind of people, the kind of culture where you can be influenced in the direction you want to go, right?
You can be around people who live how you want to live.
And online, you'll you'll see people kind of give this kind of advice, but it's usually for a materialistic purpose.
So they'll tell you, hey, if you want to be rich and successful, you need to hang around rich and successful people.
You want to be around, you know, you want to make tons of money, well, you need to live in a place and work in a place where you're around other people who are work, work, work, work, work for money, money, money, money, money all the time.
And then that's going to influence you to work harder and make more money.
And that's true. It's true.
It's correct. The advice is correct, but I think the deeper purpose is wrong or unhealthy.
But you can just change that advice.
You can change that advice, and instead of focusing on the materialistic, find places to live where people aren't materialistic, where they do care more about family, where they are connected more to the land and the people around them, where they do live a slower simpler less stressful life where they do have a stronger spiritual life just doing that without you don't have to make any other big efforts that's what's nice about it when you're around people like that you will naturally be pulled in that direction without even trying you don't have to even consciously try to do anything you'll just
be influenced by all the people around you the culture that you're in and then these changes will happen inside of you effortlessly.
It's hard to be stressed in Hawaii.
It's hard to be relaxed in New York City.
To use two extreme examples.
Alright, it's time for me to go and play with my children.
It is raining, so I guess I gotta go for a walk in the rain.
Lots of love to you as always.
And as a final note, This is what, in a small way, in a virtual way, this is what our community site is about.
This is exactly my same thinking with our effortless English community.
And this is the reason why I wanted to get away from Facebook, X, Twitter, Gab, and all the rest. because the environment there right the online environment on those sites is negative and nasty and it's just too easy to get distracted by it influenced by it pulled down by it but with our own site its only effortless English members every person on that site follows our code we do the best we can we do the right thing we show each other we care everyone on that site agrees to promote and follow our values such as contribution positive leadership and so you get on that site you get in our community
site you start to comment and interact with people on the site and you will you will you will find your motivation for English, just getting stronger and stronger.
Your motivation to listen to the lessons, to practice chatting with people, all these things.
You'll find that you'll just start enjoying English more, and you don't need to try to do anything special.
Just getting on the site and connecting with these other members who are so positive, who are already successful with their English, many of them very successful, that you will will find yourself effortlessly changing your attitudes and getting more and more and more success with English enjoying English more being influenced in these very strong positive ways so please when you join my power English course my VIP program also get on that community site introduce yourself say hello connect get lots of love to you talk to you next time bye for now
