Hello everyone and welcome back to the english with neil learn english podcast.
How is everyone doing today?
In today's episode, we're going to talk about hitting a plateau.
Now, when you hit a plateau, You basically reach a point along your journey when you feel like you're not making any progress.
You just feel flat.
You feel like...
Things are not going anywhere and you feel like you can't make progress no matter how hard you try.
This is called hitting a plateau.
And you can hit a plateau in many different areas of your life.
But since this is a Learn English podcast, let's talk about hitting a language plateau now.
When you first start learning a language, especially in the beginning, when you're just brand new to the language, you feel like Every day you're making so much progress, right?
Because you know nothing about the language.
Everything is new.
Everything is fresh.
So you're really excited.
But after a year or two, when you are no longer a beginner, maybe you reach the intermediate level.
Sometimes it may feel like you're just not making any progress.
You feel flat and I've experienced that many times and it's very frustrating and you don't know how to move past this phase.
So I'd just like to offer some advice, share my experience about what has worked for me when I hit a plateau, and maybe you can try some of these ideas to help you break through this plateau.
So what I have found when I feel like I have hit a plateau is to simply just take a break.
Just simply stop.
Because when you hit this plateau, you become very frustrated.
You get very angry, right?
You feel like I'm not going anywhere.
I'm studying hard.
I'm working hard, but I'm not making any progress.
So what I have found is to just stop.
And there's no length of time.
Everyone works through things differently.
When I find i hit a plateau, i usually stop for about three days so i can reset and i can go back and evaluate hmm, what is working for me, what is not working for me, and within those three days i just I can take time to reset my mind and figure out what things I can do to move forward.
So the first thing that you can do is to take a break.
But the best thing that I have found for breaking through a plateau is to simply switch your routine.
You have to change things up a little bit.
So something interesting about the mind, about the body is, when you do something continuously, when you do the same thing regularly, your mind and your body, It adapts to this thing.
It no longer becomes a challenge because your body is used to it.
And when you hit a plateau, it's that feeling.
It's like I'm not progressing because there is no challenge.
There is no stimulation.
You need to stimulate your mind.
You need to stimulate your body by doing something different.
About a month ago, I felt like I was hitting a plateau.
I just felt like I needed a new challenge.
I just felt like I wanted to change something.
So I went to the bookstore and they have this section of books from the Oxford Press and they're called short introductions and they have hundreds of different titles.
And what I simply did, I just went there and I just grabbed the book off the shelf and I bought it, and the book that I bought was on the Rastafari movement.
Now, I know nothing about The Rastafari movement.
You know, I listen to Bob Marley and he's always talking about Rastafari, Rastafari.
And so getting that book and reading it like I am right now, it's actually quite interesting.
I'm like, whoa, I didn't know about that.
Oh, wow, now I understand reggae music a little bit better.
Because now I know the history, I know the culture of this movement.
And that gave me some new stimulation.
That actually opened my mind to some new ideas.
And so I was able to break through that little plateau that I had by stimulating my mind just by reading something new.
And you can do the same thing with English.
You can do the exact same thing with English.
So if you're always reading the same books, just simply read a new book.
If you're always watching the same type of YouTube videos or the same type of videos, watch something different.
Watch something different if this is actually a cool thing that you can do on YouTube.
At the very top of the home page, if you scroll to the right at the top, there's these tabs And the very last tab says new to you in YouTube.
Click on that tab and YouTube is going to show you just different videos, things that you didn't know about.
So this is one way that you can consume different media.
You can consume different ideas and just simply doing that will stimulate your mind.
It'll spark something new. to help you move past that plateau.
Let's use another example with speaking.
It's interesting.
They just had a new statistic out that the world has reached 8 billion people.
That's a lot of people.
And we know that English is an international language.
You can never run out of people to talk to.
If you're always talking to the same friends, you're always talking about the same things.
Talk to someone new.
Get their perspective on life.
And that'll help stimulate your mind so that you can move past the plateau.
And I wanted to share a quote with you.
It's a very famous quote that we say in America.
And the quote is, if you keep doing the same thing, you can't expect different results.
Now, isn't that the truth?
Right.
So try that out.
Try that out.
Take a rest if you need it but, most importantly, switch up your routine so you can move past this plateau.
All right, my friends, that is it for today's episode.
Thank you for tuning in to the English with Neil podcast.
I look forward to speaking with you in the next one.
Take care everyone and talk to you soon.
Peace.
