Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 522, Developing a Healthy Mind.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 522.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Remember the Learning Guide.
Membership is one of the ways you can support these ESL podcast audiophiles, so be sure to go to our website and take a look.
This episode is called Developing a Healthy Mind.
It's a conversation between Luke and Lorelai, giving their views on what it means to have a healthy mind.
Let's get started.
I just finished reading a book about how to get the most out of life.
Starting today, I'm going to live life to its fullest.
Oh no, not another one of your fads.
Weren't you eating only blue and red colored foods a couple of months ago?
This is not a fad.
I'm changing my lifestyle so I'll be able to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
And didn't you go through a phase where you spoke only to animals?
I'm not listening to you and I'm not dwelling on the past.
I'm living in the moment and enjoying everything around me.
I'm ignoring your negativity and concentrating on appreciating the moment.
What are you doing now?
What problems?
We could start with your judgmental attitude and your closed-mindedness.
How's that?
Forget it.
Nothing can get me to buy your latest hocus pocus.
This episode is called Developing a Healthy Mind.
Healthy is the opposite of sickly or ill.
We usually use this term to talk about your physical body health.
But here it's being used a little differently.
It's being used to talk about your mind, the way you think, and whether that is healthy or not the way you think perhaps.
People have different ideas about this, of course.
Lorelei begins our conversation by saying that she just finished reading a book called about how to get the most out of life.
The expression to get the most out of life means to enjoy life as much as possible, to experience life in its fullness.
In its completeness.
Usually people talk about this when they are referring to success or enjoying life somehow.
So Lorelei's reading a book which is very common, at least in the United States, what we call self-help books, books that people read to try to make them happier or better or healthier.
Lorelei says that she's going to live, starting today, life to the fullest.
To live life to the fullest means something similar to getting the most out of life, to enjoy life as much as possible.
Luke says, oh no, not another one of your fads.
A fad.
F-A-D is something that becomes popular very quickly and remains popular for a short period of time, and then everybody forgets about it.
This happens with songs.
This happens with television shows.
It happens with dances in particular.
I remember a few years ago, there was a dance fad called La Macarena.
And it had these moves that you would, well, forget it.
It was a fad and everyone's forgotten it already.
That's what a fad is, something that you forget that is very popular but then is no longer popular.
In the 1970s, a fad was pet rocks.
People sold these rocks like they were pets.
It was amazing.
So, anyway...
Getting back to our story, Luke says weren't you eating only blue and red colored foods a couple months ago?
Obviously, Lorelai likes to try new and different, perhaps strange things like eating food that is blue and red.
Lorelai says that this is not a fad.
I'm changing my lifestyle so I'll be able to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
Your lifestyle is the way that you live, the way you spend your time, for example.
Fulfilling means satisfying, giving you a sense of happiness and completion.
So a fulfilling life would be a life that was satisfying, that was happy, that was complete.
Luke says Luke is reminding Lorelai of all the somewhat crazy fads that she was part of in the past.
He says, didn't you go through a phase?
To go through a phase P-H-A-S-E means to experience a certain period in your life when you become very interested in a certain thing.
It's sort of like a fad, but it's something that you personally get involved in.
It could be for months or even years.
The expression is often used to talk about people who are going through some sort of change in their life that perhaps isn't necessarily positive, or is experiencing some sort of difficulty.
We might talk about a teenager going through a phase.
They're going through a part of their life where they're angry at everyone or they don't like to talk to their parents.
This is usually a somewhat temporary situation.
It doesn't go on forever, we hope.
That would be going through a phase.
Lorelei says, I'm not listening to you, and I'm not dwelling on the past.
To dwell D-W-E-L-L on something means to spend a lot of time thinking about something, especially something that makes you sad or makes you angry.
People may say, don't dwell on it if something bad happens to you.
Don't keep thinking about it over and over again.
Dwell has a couple of different meanings in English.
Take a look at the learning guide for some more explanations.
Lorelei says, I'm living in the moment and enjoying everything around me.
This is a popular self-help idea to live in the moment, to focus on what you are doing right now.
Don't worry about the past.
Don't worry about the future.
Live in the moment.
Live in the now.
Lorelei says I'm ignoring your negativity and concentrating on appreciating the moment.
Negativity is when someone always sees the bad side of things.
One only thinks about the negative things.
The noun is negativity.
To appreciate means to recognize the goodness in something, to value something.
So Lorelei says she's going to ignore Luke's negativity and concentrate on appreciating the moment, appreciating what's happening right now.
Luke says, what are you doing now?
Lorelei says, I'm practicing mindfulness.
Mindfulness.
To practice means to follow some rules or some guidelines about how to live your life in this case.
But practice has a couple of different meanings.
So take a look at that learning guide once again for some more explanations.
Lorelei is practicing mindfulness.
Mindfulness is a notion, an idea that you are aware of what is going on around you.
You are paying attention to what you are doing.
There's an old expression to be mindful of something means to be paying attention, to be concentrating on to know what was going on.
More recently, people have talked about mindfulness as being a way that you are always aware of what is around you.
And this is supposed to somehow help you be calmer, help you appreciate life.
Lorelei goes on to say that she's repeating her mantra and calming her mind.
She says to Luke, you should try meditation.
It may help you with your problems.
So Lorelei is doing meditation, which is the practice in many different traditions, both religious and non-religious, of focusing on something controlling your thoughts.
In some types of meditation, it's focusing only on one thing.
In other types of meditation, it could be trying to focus on nothing, emptying your mind, if you will.
Those are kinds of meditation.
One way of meditating in some traditions is to use what's called a mantra, M-A-N-T-R-A.
This is a word or a phrase that you repeat many times to yourself quietly, as part of concentrating focusing on a certain thing and not having other thoughts.
The idea is that it makes you calmer physically, physiologically.
To calm your mind means to give you a sense of relaxation, of peace.
Lorelei says that Luke should try meditation to help him with his problems.
Luke says, what problems?
Lorelei says, we could start with your judgmental attitude and your closed-mindedness.
We could start means, well, there are many things that we could talk about, but here's one.
We could start with your judgmental attitude.
To be judgmental means to always be giving someone your opinion, whether you like something or don't like something.
Usually, it's a negative way of talking about someone.
If you say someone is judgmental, that's a criticism.
You're saying that they're always telling people things they don't like.
They're always judging other people, criticizing other people.
So you're criticizing them, which I guess would make you judgmental.
I'm not sure.
Close-mindedness means not willing to listen to other people's opinions or ideas, only having your own ideas, and not even paying attention to what other people are saying.
Not being willing to listen to other people.
Lorelei is saying that Luke is judgmental and close-minded.
Luke says, forget it.
When Luke uses the expression to buy, he doesn't mean give money to someone in order to get something back.
He means to believe or accept something.
Someone may say to you, I'm not buying it.
He says that he didn't go to work today, but I'm not buying it.
That means I don't believe it.
I don't accept it.
Well, Luke doesn't believe the ideas that Lorelei has about meditation and mantras and mindfulness.
He says, I'm not going to buy your latest hocus-pocus.
Hocus Pocus is something that, in this case, is impossible or false.
It's a set of ideas that you think are silly, that you think are nonsense.
And that's what Luke thinks about Lorelei's ideas.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
I just finished reading a book about how to get the most out of life.
Starting today, I'm going to live life to its fullest.
Oh no, not another one of your fads.
Weren't you eating only blue and red colored foods a couple of months ago?
This is not a fad.
I'm changing my lifestyle so I'll be able to live a happier and more fulfilling life.
And didn't you go through a phase where you spoke only to animals?
I'm not listening to you and I'm not dwelling on the past.
I'm living in the moment and enjoying everything around me.
I'm ignoring your negativity and concentrating on appreciating the moment.
What are you doing now?
I'm practicing mindfulness.
I'm repeating my mantra and calming my mind.
You should try meditation.
It may help you with your problems.
What problems?
We could start with your judgmental attitude and your closed-mindedness.
How's that?
Forget it.
Nothing can get me to buy your latest hocus pocus.
We appreciate the great job that our script writer, Dr. Lucy Say, did on today's episode.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us next time on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2009 by the Center for Educational Development.
