Hey everybody, welcome to this phrasal verb episode.
I hope you're all doing great.
Remember that the idea behind these phrasal verb episodes is for you to hear these different phrasal verbs used naturally in different sentences, while you're doing your listening practice.
Because really, that's what you're doing with these episodes.
I'm talking to you.
You have the transcript if you need it, so you're listening and you're also hearing these phrasal verbs repeated over and over in different sentences in a natural way.
This is how we learn vocabulary, and this is how you should learn phrasal verbs.
So for today, we're going to look at two phrasal verbs.
The first one is adhere to.
So what does this mean?
Adhere to means means to choose to act according to some principle or some rule.
So you are choosing to follow this principle or this rule and act according to it.
So here's an example sentence.
So this means, that I try my best to act and live according to these commandments in the Bible.
So that's the first one we're gonna look at.
People use this phrase when talking about Different principles rules philosophies, things like that.
This is when people tend to use this phrasal verb.
You might hear it in other contexts as well.
And the other phrasal verb we're going to look at today is advise against.
So this means to recommend not to do something.
You're recommending that someone else not do something.
So it's like a negative recommendation.
Here's an example sentence.
My parents always advised against making hasty decisions.
So this means that my parents always recommended me not to make hasty decisions or not to make decisions that I didn't think through very well.
So when you advise against something, you recommend someone not to do it.
So now I want to talk a little bit about adhering to a minimalist philosophy.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about this, and as I talk...
I'm going to use these two phrasal verbs a number of times in different sentences, so you can just practice your listening and you'll hear these phrasal verbs used naturally and I'll repeat them multiple times.
Okay?
So a minimalist philosophy.
I am someone who would probably be considered by many people to be a minimalist.
It depends.
In some areas of my life, I'm definitely not a minimalist.
However, in other areas I definitely am and I definitely like the philosophy of minimalism to an extent, meaning to a certain degree.
I like this philosophy.
I'm not an extreme minimalist, but I like the idea of minimalism.
So let me talk about adhering to this type of philosophy.
Well, first of all, I like how I feel when I adhere to minimalistic principles.
When I kind of live and act according to this philosophy, I feel better throughout the day.
And people might wonder why that is.
And I think it has a lot to do with feeling lighter.
When you adhere to minimalism, you tend to feel like you don't have as much stuff, of course.
And you don't have as much stress on your mind, maybe.
Because when we accumulate more things, and even in a physical space, you just see so many things in your space.
For me it kind of makes me stressed, to be honest.
I feel like the more stuff I have, the more that I have in my mind as well.
And I feel like I have a heavier weight on on me.
And when I'm more of a minimalist, I feel lighter in a sense.
It's kind of interesting.
So I don't think that you need to adhere to a very strict set of guidelines to enjoy the benefits of minimalism.
I don't think that There's a certain set of rules that you need to follow.
You have to adhere to all of these principles.
And I think that we can be a minimalist in certain aspects, in certain areas of our lives.
And in other areas, maybe we don't need to be minimalists.
And I think this is the case for me.
Okay, so when I think of my family life, I have a wife and kids.
And when you have kids, it's not always easy to adhere to a minimalistic philosophy.
And Some people would even advise against doing this and following this type of philosophy when it comes to every area of your kids' lives, right?
For example, I know some parents that don't let their kids have anything toys at all, and if that's your choice, that's fine.
They just have an empty room, so to say.
People probably aren't that extreme, but I'm just giving an example here.
If you do that to your kids, then your kids won't have any stimulation.
They won't be able to play and discover things and invent games as well and imagine stories with their little toys.
I think that's good for kids.
So I don't want to be an extreme minimalist and and adhere to this really strict minimalism with my children, for example, because I want my children to have some toys and be able to use them to play with, and all of that.
So I don't want to take this too far and try to make my wife and my kids extreme minimalists.
So I think a lot of people would also advise against that as well.
However, In other areas of our lives, it might make sense to be more of a minimalist.
And when I apply this to just my own possessions, I think that I see nothing but positive effects of this.
I feel better when I know that, if I need to move somewhere tomorrow, that all of my necessary possessions can fit in one bag.
I'm sure not many people can say that, but I can.
At least for my essential possessions, I can just...
Put everything into one big bag and I'm good.
I can move tomorrow if need be.
We can use the phrase if need be to mean if this is necessary.
So I like this for myself.
I like adhering to a more minimalistic philosophy when it comes to my own possessions, not necessarily my wife and my kids possessions.
So there are some things that minimalists would advise against that, even if you're not a minimalist, I think these are good suggestions.
So one thing that minimalists and, I think, just other ordinary people would advise against is hoarding things that you clearly don't need.
What does it mean when you hoard something?
This means that you accumulate this thing and you don't throw it away or give it away.
And you just accumulate more and more of these things and maybe your whole room collapses is full of these things that you clearly don't need and you're just hoarding them.
There are some TV shows that have this as the whole idea of the show.
Like when I was a teenager.
I think I remember the show Hoarders, where they would try to get someone to get rid of all the stuff that they've accumulated in their house.
And they had tons and tons of things.
And like they couldn't even walk through their house because their floor was covered with all of these things that they were hoarding.
So most people aren't that extreme, but some people are.
And it's, I think, good to make sure that you're not hoarding things that you don't need.
This is something I would advise against as well.
I would also just advise against becoming really attached to possessions.
So maybe you're not hoarding things, but maybe you have some possessions that you're just really attached to.
This is something I would advise against because our possessions aren't eternal.
They don't last forever.
They're not as important as people think they are sometimes.
At the end of your life, you're not going to regret not having more possessions.
I don't think that's a common regret that people have at the end of their life.
So I don't think we should become too attached to our possessions.
I think that we should have a better, healthier relationship with our possessions and not let our possessions control us right.
That's important.
And one other thing that I would advise against is I would advise against becoming too extreme with this minimalistic lifestyle.
So it's great to adhere to a minimalist philosophy.
I do this to an extent, but I don't think we should adhere to a very extreme form of minimalism.
For some people, this may work.
So I guess I shouldn't say that nobody should do this.
But I think that for the majority of people it's probably not that best to be a very extreme minimalist, because when you take anything to a very extreme extent, it can become unhealthy right, and so if you go to too far with this, then you might end up being unhappy.
You might stress yourself out too much by always trying to make sure that you have the minimal amount of everything, and you're always stressed about this.
That is counterproductive.
Something that's counterproductive is something that actually hurts you when you thought it was going to help you, right.
So that can be counterproductive if we take this to an extreme, right?
So those are some things I would advise against for most people.
But overall I think that minimalism has helped me just be able to have a better relationship with things, physical possessions.
I don't feel like physical possessions own me or control me.
I feel like, if I want to, I can just move tomorrow and I can just get rid of a lot of my stuff or sell it, and I wouldn't have any issue with that, and I can just buy some new things in my new home if I need that right.
So there aren't many possessions that I have that I would say I absolutely need this and I can't ever get rid of this.
I don't think I have many possessions like that.
So that's good, because if I lose some of these things, or some of these things get taken away from me, It's not the end of the world, right?
These are just things.
These aren't the most important parts of my life, right?
So as you can see, I kind of adhere to minimalistic philosophy, but not to an extreme.
I'm definitely not an extreme minimalist, right?
All right, I hope that you were able to really get the meaning of adhere to and advise against by just hearing me talk about this topic.
I think this is the best way to learn phrasal verbs.
Just learn them like you learn normal vocabulary naturally through listening and through reading.
And I would encourage you to sign up for my membership and specifically to become a Listening Time family member so you can get my advanced podcast episodes in which I speak fast.
That's the next step that you can take.
To reach a high level of listening is to use advanced content, fast content.
So the link to sign up is down below, and you also have the link to sign up for my us conversations podcast down below as well.
In that podcast, i talk to people from all over the united states about different topics.
It's really interesting and it's great practice for your listening.
You have the transcript with the definitions of key words and phrases as well.
So go down and click on that link and check it out as well.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this phrasal verb episode, and I'll talk to you in the next one.
