Welcome to the Listening Time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 135 of the Listening Time podcast.
I hope you all had a good end of the year.
And I hope that you're ready for 2024 and that you're motivated to make this a good year for you.
And at the time of recording this, it's still November.
I'm recording this very early.
However, when this is released, it will be 2024.
So I want to make sure to wish you all a happy new year.
And in today's episode I want to talk about the fact that it's going to be a new year when this episode is released.
Like I said, it's not a new year for me yet.
It's still November.
But when this is released, it will be a new year.
And I want to have a new mindset.
So this episode will be mostly for myself.
I want to talk about some of the things that I want to change about my mindset.
But I think that you might also benefit from it, because maybe these are also changes that you can make to benefit your mindset this year.
So I think that this will be a good topic.
Even though I'm talking to myself here, I am also going to relate it to people in general.
So hopefully you'll benefit from this.
And before we continue, remember that if you want to really improve your listening this year and you want to start to understand native speakers when they speak fast, then make sure to join my membership so you can get my specialized listening training.
So make sure to go down below and click on the link in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And if you feel ready to practice your listening with real conversations, then make sure to join my US Conversations podcast so that you can practice with those real conversations that I have with other native speakers.
The link is also down below.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
And if you like this podcast, please share it with anyone else you know who's learning English.
And please give it a five-star rating and write a review.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let's talk about the new mindset that I want to have this year and that maybe some of you want to have this year.
So the first thing that I want to improve regarding my mindset this year is that I want to view every day as a gift.
I already do this and I already understand this.
I get that this is true, that every day is a gift for me.
However, I don't act like it all the time.
There are many times when I don't act as if the fact that I'm alive today is a gift and I kind of take it for granted.
In English, when we say that you take something for granted, what we're saying is that you don't appreciate it.
You just view it as obvious that it's true and that you don't really stop to consider that.
You just say, oh yeah, of course.
You You just take it for granted.
You don't appreciate the significance of it.
So for me, I know that every day is a gift, but sometimes I take this for granted and I don't really act like this in my daily life.
I don't act the way I want to act according to this idea.
So when I say that every day is a gift, what I'm saying is that I need to understand that I don't necessarily deserve good things.
Sometimes we can feel like that, that we deserve to have good things.
If we have good things, it's because that's how it's supposed to be.
We deserve that.
However, I think that if we have that type of thinking all the time, then we don't actually appreciate the things that we have.
We don't appreciate the good things in our life because we view it as something that we already deserve.
So why do we need to appreciate it?
However, I don't want to have that mindset.
I want to have a mindset where I consider every day to be a gift that I don't deserve, but God gave it to me.
So I'm thankful, I'm happy, and I'm going to appreciate this day.
And I'm not only talking about the day, but all the things inside my day, all the things that happen and that I have, and the experiences that I have.
I need to view them as not things that I just deserve, but but gifts that have been given to me.
I think that's a good attitude to have.
And in general, with this mindset...
I want to have more gratitude.
Gratitude refers to being thankful for what you have.
So if I view every day as a gift and I don't think that I just deserve all of these good things, Then I can be more grateful.
I can be more thankful for the good things in my life.
Because, for example, when you receive a gift from someone else, you're thankful, right?
You didn't have that gift before.
No one made that person give you that gift because you deserve it.
No, the person just gave it to you and you can appreciate it and be grateful.
And so that's how I want to view things that every good thing that happens to me, every good thing that I have, is not something that I deserve.
It's a gift given to me and I can appreciate it much more and just be thankful throughout my day.
I think I've talked about that in several episodes, but I think it's really important.
If you're grateful, your life is going to be a lot better because you actually appreciate things.
So That's a big thing.
And if I'm grateful for every day, I think that I'll enjoy my day more.
I'll enjoy the little things, the details that might seem insignificant.
I can actually appreciate these details more because I view them as a gift and And I don't just take them for granted, right.
So that's an effect of viewing each day as a gift.
When I say that time flies, I'm saying that time goes by very fast.
I want to stop and appreciate the good things that I have because time goes by fast.
And before you know it, you're a lot older and you haven't even appreciated the all the cool, amazing things that you've had up until that point.
So that's the first thing that I want to improve about my mindset this year.
I want to get better at viewing things as gifts that I receive and not thinking that I just deserve those things.
So the next thing I want to improve about my mindset is I want to have my thoughts more balanced when it comes to thinking about the past, present and future.
I think this is one that a lot of people can benefit from.
I'm sure that a lot of you spend more time than you'd like thinking about the past or thinking about the future, or living too much in the present and not thinking about the future, for example.
So I think that most of us can improve in this regard.
And specifically, I need to improve by not thinking too much about the future.
I'm the type of person that thinks about the future all the time.
I think about the future constantly.
And I think that it's good to think about the future.
There are some great benefits to thinking about the future, of course.
However, when you think about the future too much, then you run into some problems.
In English, when we say that you run into something, in this context, we mean that you encounter that thing, you encounter those problems.
So, more specifically, because i think so much about the future, the future is always on my mind.
Because of this, i deal with anxiety and i can't always enjoy the present, And this is something that I really want to change.
Just like I mentioned when talking about enjoying the little things, I want to be able to enjoy the moment and not be thinking about the future when something really great or precious is happening right now.
So I want to balance that.
I'm not saying that I don't want to think about the future.
Obviously not.
However, I want to have more time thinking about the present, let's say.
And if you're someone who thinks about the past a lot, for example and I sometimes do this you might also have another issue of maybe thinking, feeling like you're always regretting things in the past and you can't enjoy the present because of your past mistakes or things like that.
And I think it's good to recognize your mistakes from the past for sure.
However, if you're constantly regretting, replaying those in your mind, and you're always thinking about the past and things that happened, that can be another issue, right?
Or maybe you don't just think about your regrets from the past, but maybe you think a lot about how great the past was and how things aren't good now, but they were great in the past and that can be a depressing thought to think that Everything was better before and now things aren't as good.
That's another issue, right?
And I think that's a common tendency that a lot of people have.
We tend to view the past and maybe exaggerate how good it was.
But really, it wasn't that great before.
And we're just looking at it from a future perspective.
And so the same thing will probably happen 10 years from now.
You'll look back to things that are current now.
And you might think that the things now are much better than the things that will be happening in the future, for example.
So it's easy to fall into that trap.
So I think it's important not to spend too much time thinking about the future or the past.
And it's also not good to just always think about the present and not think about the past or the future.
Because if you never think about the past, then you're never going to learn from your mistakes.
You're never going to learn lessons from experiences that you had.
You might not appreciate your memories from the past.
So that's not good.
And if you don't think about the future ever... then you're not going to have goals for yourself.
You're not going to actually plan to achieve certain things and you might fall into the trap of just wanting pleasure now, and that's not a good thing either.
Right, we need to learn to also delay our gratification.
Sometimes, when you delay your gratification, we're saying that you do the hard thing now or you don't Get the pleasure that you want now, so that you can have it in the future and in a better form.
And that's an important skill to have.
So that's why it's also important to not just focus on this moment and having fun right now, and that's it.
We also want to be able to consider the future and the consequences of our actions and have goals for ourselves and be able to envision ourselves in the future.
So I think that's really important as well.
For me in particular, my problem is that I need to not think too much about the future and instead enjoy the moment more and be present in the moment and enjoy the little things that are happening right now and appreciate what's happening now.
So that's another thing that I want to change.
Another improvement that I need to make is that I need to view things that happen to me as not just happening to me, but happening for me.
So I heard someone say this recently, and at first I thought it sounded kind of cheesy.
When we say that something is cheesy, that means that it sounds kind of cheap or unoriginal or inauthentic.
It doesn't sound very good.
I thought it sounded kind of cheesy, but the more I think about it, the more true it is.
It seems pretty true to me now that I consider this sentence.
So things happen for me. and not to me.
What I'm saying is that we often feel like we're just the victims of everything that happens.
Oh man, this happened to me.
He said that to me that occurred, and I just suffered the consequences of all of this.
Of course that's the tendency of how we think about bad things or inconvenient things, or challenging things.
That's kind of a normal tendency for people.
However, if we start to think about these things as happening for us, meaning they happen for our benefit, then we can actually get something good out of these situations.
So if we view things as happening to us, that means that we complain and get mad and are really negative about things that we don't like.
That happened before.
However, if we can view every challenge or inconvenience or problem as an opportunity to learn or grow or gain experience from then things aren't so negative.
We can try to take the positive from every situation.
This is something that I definitely need to work on.
I want to start to view things as learning experiences rather than just problems that happen to me.
I really want to improve in that regard.
And I want to become stronger from the things that happen to me that aren't so great.
I want to use those things to become stronger, to become a better person, to become wiser and, By the way, the word wise means that you have a lot of intelligence because of experience.
You're wise.
So I want to become wiser and just learn from these things instead of complaining about them and feeling sorry for myself.
I want to get better at seeing these things from a different angle, a more positive angle.
So always asking myself, how can I learn from this situation?
What can I gain from this experience?
How can I become a better person from this?
Or what trait do I need to develop?
Or what skill do I need to develop to better handle this challenge?
Always trying to look for how I can improve from the situation.
So that's something I want to get better at.
And I'm sure some of you might also agree with me there that that would be a better mindset to have.
And lastly, I want to give one bonus tip.
Mindset change here related to language and language learning.
This is a general one, not just for me, but I wanted to give you this extra little encouragement here.
So with language learning, we can sometimes... have a mindset where we want to rush things.
We want it to go faster.
We're annoyed when we feel that we're not making progress and we get discouraged because it doesn't seem like we're improving fast enough.
So I think that it's better to have the mindset where you are not rushing.
Don't rush.
There's no hurry here.
You're always going to feel like you're failing if you have a mentality where you want things done really fast.
You want the improvement to happen really quickly.
That just simply doesn't happen very often with language learning.
So if you're listening to me right now, that means that you're practicing your English.
And if you're practicing your English, you're improving, even if you don't feel like it, even if you don't feel like the progress is happening.
If you're actually practicing your English, you're doing your listening, maybe you're speaking or whatever.
If you're doing this practice, you're improving.
You're improving because the words that you hear me say and the phrases you hear me use, all of these things are going into your brain.
They might not stay there, but you're at least being exposed to them.
And you're getting more of this exposure to English every time you do your listening practice.
And this is helping your brain.
It's helping the language learning process.
So this process might be really slow, but it's happening.
And I think that the mindset change that a lot of us need to have me too, I'm also guilty of this is we need to not rush.
Don't feel like the progress needs to be fast, because it almost never feels like it's fast, especially once you reach an intermediate level.
The progress usually seems very slow after that, but it's happening, as long as you continue on with your practice okay.
So once again, don't rush.
Just trust that you're improving.
You can maybe dedicate more time to your English learning.
That would be great.
And challenge yourself more.
Use content.
That's harder for you, for sure.
Do those things, but don't expect to see progress really, really fast, okay?
Do those things, challenge yourself, dedicate more time if you have it, but just be patient with this process.
Okay, so that's it for today.
I hope that you enjoyed this episode and I hope that you're ready for this new year and you have a good mindset to start this year.
And remember that if you want my help understanding native speakers when they speak fast, if you want my training, then make sure to sign up for my membership so you can get my listening practice seminars and, And if you become a family member, you'll also get my advanced podcast episodes where I speak fast.
And if you want to challenge yourself and start to listen to real conversations between native speakers in English, then join my US Conversations podcast.
And you'll also get the transcript for each conversation with the definitions of key words and phrases that we use.
So the link is down below.
That's patreon.com slash us conversations.
And if you like this podcast, please share it with your friends and family members and give it a five star rating and write a review.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of listening time.
