The biggest thing stopping your English fluency is not grammar.
It's not vocabulary.
It's not even English listening practice.
It's something much deeper, something deep inside of you.
Today, I'm going to share some ideas from one of the greatest thinkers in human history.
And the secrets you learn will transform your English more than any course.
Stay with me.
This is different than any English video you've ever watched before.
Yeah.
Okay, what's the problem, right?
Okay, years of study, zero fluency.
Still feel frustrated with your English speaking.
I get it.
When students come to me they are all frustrated from years and years and years of study, but they just can't speak naturally fluently conversationally confidently powerfully, right.
They feel bad because they make the same mistakes over and over.
Grammar mistakes, pronunciation mistakes, getting confused about vocabulary.
It's all very normal.
And then you also compare yourself to other people.
You see someone who speaks English better than you.
You start feeling bad.
Ah, they speak fluently.
Maybe at your job.
Other people get credit.
You know, sometimes other people get credit for your ideas.
You're in a meeting, you've got a great idea.
Maybe you've kind of talked about it with people.
But then in the meeting, you know, your English is not good.
You kind of shrink down.
You become a mouse in English.
You're a lion at home.
But in English, you're a mouse.
And then other people voice your ideas or say your ideas.
Maybe a pause or something.
And they get the credit, right?
Common comment happens all the time.
And so, so, so, so, so many people, maybe you, are perfectionists.
And, you know, on one hand, that's good.
You have high standards.
You want to speak fluently.
You want to be like a near native speaker.
But that perfection, and especially the focus on perfect grammar, is also a trap that can kill your confidence, and Grammar kills your speaking.
It kills your fluency.
This is the problem.
And when I say that, I mean trying to memorize grammar rules and trying to be perfect all the time.
And a lot of times, you know, you hide, you know, you shrink down.
It's time to use English.
And then you don't feel confident since you don't speak up.
Or when you speak, you don't sound confident, right?
It's all, all, all.
Very common.
And it has one root cause.
Today, we're going into kind of a deep topic.
Really, it's a spiritual topic.
And that deep cause is pride.
Pride.
It's not about grammar.
It's not about vocabulary.
It's not about method.
Pride.
Pride.
Because you say, I must not look bad.
That's what you're thinking, right?
Deep down, that's what's happening.
You're thinking, I must not look bad.
I must not appear weak.
I must not fail.
That's pride.
That's pride.
The opposite of pride is humility.
Humility.
And that's where we get into our great teacher, our great mind, our great philosopher, the Imam al-Ghazali.
Imam al-Ghazali.
Imam al-Ghazali, I think all Muslims know him.
Imam al-Ghazali, a very famous Islamic scholar and writer and teacher.
And he wrote extensively about Kibir.
I'm probably pronouncing that terribly, I'm sorry in Arabic, but pride okay.
Pride is a disease.
Pride as a disease.
A disease that affects us in all parts of our lives.
And this is a paradox we call in English.
Paradox.
It's a good vocabulary word.
Paradox.
Paradox is when two opposite things seem to be true at the same time or seem to be good at the same time.
So this is a paradox because, on one hand, you want to feel strong and confident about when you speak English, right?
You want to be a lion in English, not a mouse.
But on the other hand, pride actually destroys our confidence, right?
So we want confidence, but not pride.
So this is a deep topic and we need to think deeply about this and how we can develop confidence so you can speak confidently.
Be your best.
Be a lion in English, not a mouse.
To do that, we actually have to have humility.
So let's discuss the ideas of Imam al-Ghazali on this topic and how it actually connects to English learning.
And in truth, it connects to all parts of your life.
So I'm going to read a few things.
He taught pride hides itself.
You do not know you have it, right?
We all think we're humble, but it's the little voices deep inside. that pride comes from.
It disguises itself as being high standards or being careful or I'm not ready yet.
The root of that is pride, right?
Because you don't want to look foolish, right?
That's what it all comes down to.
I don't want to look bad.
And Imam al-Ghazali describes the levels of humility from kind of the surface level.
You know, you say, oh, I'm humble.
Everybody kind of does that, right?
To be polite.
But inside, we all have ego.
We do.
It's natural.
It's human nature.
Imam al-Ghazali also taught that true knowledge when you really really, really understand, when you have true knowledge, humility naturally comes.
Because the more you learn, the more you realize you're quite small.
The more you learn, the more you realize your own limitations and weaknesses and have to accept them.
That's true humility.
True humility.
And by the way, Andrew Murray, one of my favorite Christian writers, wrote about this same idea.
He said, humility is not thinking less of yourself, not thinking I'm a horrible person.
Although if that's true, then you have to be honest about it and change it.
He said, it is thinking of yourself less.
So it's not focusing on yourself so much and me, me, me, me, me, me.
And, of course, both Imam al-Ghazali and Andrew Murray taught and believed that the focus should be on God, on the highest, not on ourselves, always ourselves me me, me.
The desire to appear great in the eyes of others is the root of much human suffering.
Much human suffering.
True humility means being so focused on serving, on knowledge, On learning, that you forget about yourself.
You forget about your image.
You forget about how people view you because you are serving something higher.
You're trying to contribute.
You're focused on something higher, not yourself.
Okay, so when you forget about your image, you can relax.
When you have true humility, you can relax.
This connects very deeply to English.
Because when you let go, you have real humility.
You realize, okay, yeah, I'm not perfect in English.
I'll never be perfect.
I'm not perfect.
Me, AJ Hogue, native speaker, English teacher over 30 years.
I'm not perfect in English.
I make mistakes.
Sometimes when I'm speaking, maybe my confidence isn't great.
I feel a little tired, right?
You have to be honest about it and accept it.
You're a human being.
You will always be imperfect, not perfect.
The more you accept that and develop this true inner humility, the more you can relax.
And then when it's time to speak English, you just do your best, right?
It's part of our code.
We do the best we can.
It's the second part of our code.
We do the best we can.
Not we're perfect.
Not everybody thinks we're awesome.
Not our grammar is perfect.
No, no, no.
We do the best we can and we accept we make mistakes.
We're not perfect.
We will never be perfect.
We will always make mistakes.
And when you accept that and you relax you're communication your English speaking ability actually becomes much, much better.
The words will come out more because you're not constantly worrying and thinking and analyzing all the time.
You just let it come out.
And if it comes out a little badly, you don't care.
So you sound confident, you look confident, right?
You do become an English speaking lion, because when you're always focused on pride, being perfect, worrying about what everybody thinks, scared of making mistakes, it actually makes you into a mouse.
Right, because then you start oh right, that's when you know you're, you're feeling strong, you got great ideas, but then you, when it's time to communicate in english, suddenly you're a mouse.
Not good, and the root of it is pride.
We're getting deep today okay, we're getting very philosophical.
So Here's some practical things to do to kill that pride and develop real humility which will actually improve your English speaking.
Number one, speak English every day, even when you sound bad, especially when you sound bad.
Do not let mistakes stop you from speaking English.
Do not let your pride stop you from speaking English.
People here in Japan, where I am right now, have this problem.
Now, on one hand, the Japanese are incredibly focused on excellence.
And I love that about the Japanese people.
It's wonderful.
But with English.
I know that many of them actually know a good amount of English, but they actually won't try to speak, especially to someone like me, a native speaker.
They see my face and they won't speak because they think they're not good enough yet.
And that's just pride.
Number two, make at least five mistakes every day on purpose, on purpose.
Just get it out and make the mistakes and just get used to being relaxed about it.
Get used to just doing it loudly and let everybody hear your bad pronunciation.
Let everybody hear your grammar mistakes.
Get it out.
Let go of that pride.
Three.
Stop comparing yourself, especially to native speakers.
OK, that's a crazy, prideful comparison.
You're comparing yourself to someone who learned English as a baby from a baby.
Right.
I'm 58 years old.
I've been speaking English.
Let's say the first year I wasn't speaking.
So 57 years I've been speaking English fluently from when I was a baby.
You can't compare yourself to me.
That's crazy, okay?
That's just pride killing your confidence.
Don't do it.
Don't compare yourself to native speakers, and in fact, don't compare yourself to anyone else.
Of course, you're going to try to improve always.
Of course you listen to me and try to copy me and do your best.
Of course, but don't get upset because you don't speak exactly like me or like Tony Robbins or something.
It's That's just pride, and it's crazy.
It actually hurts your confidence in your speaking, right?
And the same is true even for people maybe where you work.
Someone at your job speaks English better than you do.
You're not helping yourself by comparing yourself to them and feeling bad because they're a better speaker than you.
It doesn't help.
It's just pride.
If someone does correct you, I hope they don't.
Sometimes people will do it.
Just say thank you.
Say, okay, thanks, and let it go.
Don't get all crazy about it.
Don't think about it constantly.
And don't get upset.
And, you know, if it's not a native speaker correcting you, sometimes they're giving you bad advice.
They're correcting you in a wrong way.
I just did a video called Natives Make Mistakes, Natives Break Rules.
We break grammar rules all the time.
And sometimes I've heard you know English learners who are maybe like at an intermediate level, trying to correct my English.
And it's crazy.
Like, you don't know what you're talking about.
You're talking from a textbook, but that's not actually how we really speak.
So if someone corrects you, just say thanks and let it go and don't think about it.
And just remember that every high-level person, someone who speaks, maybe again someone at your job, someone you know who learned English as an adult, and their speaking is amazing.
Just realize they were like you in the past.
They were where you are now.
Relax.
So English is not a it's not a it's not a don't think of it as like some formula you have to master.
It's not a set of rules.
OK, it's a door.
It's a tool that you use to communicate your ideas.
OK, humility opens that door.
Be humble.
All right.
Now, I want to read from you from The Alchemy of Happiness by Imam al-Ghazali.
I'm going to share my screen now with you.
Okay, so I highlighted a couple sections that you know.
This is very philosophical and spiritual, but we can connect it to English and to your life in general.
Okay, so he wrote, A man should call himself strictly to account for his past actions.
Now, the translation here in English is a bit formal.
Not a bit, very formal.
So let me help you with the vocab.
Call himself to account means you got to judge yourself, basically.
Be honest, right?
So a man should look at his past actions, or a woman and when you did something bad, when you did something wrong, when you've been weak, when you've been sinful in Imam al-Ghazali's language you should admit it.
Admit it.
So often, again, pride, what do we do?
We don't want to even admit.
You don't want to say, oh, yeah, I'm bad.
I made mistakes.
I did something wrong.
I hurt someone.
I was sinful.
So the first step is that you've got to be honest.
The first step in humility true, deep humility, is you must must must, be honest with yourself, about yourself.
Next sentence, every evening, so maybe before bed, he should examine his heart.
So you should look at your heart.
You should look at what you did that day.
And not only what you did, but your thinking and your feeling.
Examine his heart as to what he has done, to see whether he has gained or lost in his spiritual capitals.
So he's saying, look inside yourself and see, did you gain?
Did you grow spiritually at the deepest level?
Or did you lose?
So he's taking a very wide, deep view of life here.
We're not talking about the surface.
This is more spiritual, the more necessary as the heart is like a treacherous business partner, always ready to cajole and deceive.
So what he's saying is that he's saying the heart, I would say our mind, our subconscious, our unconscious, our pride.
We're always trying to fool ourselves.
The physicist Richard Feynman said that we are the easiest to fool.
Meaning it's The easiest person to fool is yourself.
The easiest person to lie to is yourself.
We lie to ourselves all the time and try to make ourselves bigger and better than we really are.
We try to forget about or ignore our weaknesses, our mistakes, our vices, the things we do that are bad, our sins.
And then we kind of try to blow up and make bigger our good things, the good things about ourselves.
So it says we have to be careful.
We have to be careful, right?
So it says the heart, the unconscious mind is always ready to cajole and deceive.
Sometimes it presents its own selfishness under the guise of obedience to God, so that a man supposes he has gained, whereas he has really lost.
And we What's he saying here?
He's saying we fool ourselves all the time.
We'll do something bad, but then this is called rationalizing.
To rationalize.
Good word in English.
To rationalize.
To rationalize is when you do something bad, deep inside you know it's bad.
But then you make a bunch of excuses in your mind to tell yourself that it was actually good.
Oh, actually, no, no.
I cheated someone, but actually it's okay.
And you give a lot of reasons.
Right.
He's saying this is human nature and it is human nature.
It's true.
And so we'll sometimes, you know, think to ourselves, I'm being I was good.
But in fact, we were not.
All right, let's go on to our next quote here from him.
Come on, help me out here.
Sorry.
There we go.
Okay.
Move my camera over here.
All right.
What was that?
Let me adjust my camera.
Sorry.
There we go.
If a man finds himself sluggish and averse.
Sluggish means lazy, basically.
And not self-disciplined.
He should consort with one who is proficient in such practices to catch the contagion of his enthusiasm.
See, I told you this is kind of a very formal and somewhat difficult translation.
So let me make it easier for you.
Okay, if you find yourself being lazy and you don't have self-discipline, right?
Self-discipline is when you do what you know you must do.
But, oh, we don't want to do it.
That could be something simple, like I should be listening to English and studying it, but I don't want to.
Or it can be deeper and more spiritual, right?
I should live a virtuous good life, but instead I'm not.
So he's saying what should you do in that situation?
He says you should consort with means.
You want to be around someone who has those qualities so you can catch their enthusiasm right.
So if you are not self-disciplined, you want to be around people who are self-disciplined.
And just by being around a lot of people who are self-disciplined, you will start to imitate them.
You'll start to be more like them.
Tony Robbins calls this a peer group, P-E-E-R.
It's the group you hang around.
If you hang around a lot of lazy people, They will kind of start pulling you down and you will become more lazy.
If you hang around a lot of sinful people who are doing bad things, they're going to pull you down and you're going to become a more bad person, a worse person, right?
So he's saying you need to choose who you are around and you want to try to be around the best possible people.
And just that can change your life completely.
And he says, if one cannot find such a pattern of austerity close at hand.
In other words, pattern of austerity is again self-discipline and living a simple life.
So what if you don't have people like that around you?
That's what he's saying.
He said, it's a good thing to study the lives of the saints.
So this is the great thing in life that, even if you're surrounded by people who are lazy or who just are not great well, guess what we have so through human history?
So many great thinkers and saints and great people, and you can study their lives and, in many cases, read what they wrote.
For example, this book get it in english.
It's called the alchemy of happiness by imam al-gazali.
Of course you can read Scriptures, you can study the lives of saints, the writings of saints, of the very best people, the people that had the most self-discipline, who were the most virtuous, the most good.
And by reading about their lives and reading what they wrote as a daily habit, they will start to pull you up, pull you up.
You'll start to become a better person and gain more self-discipline. because of their influence.
And indeed, you will also gain great humility.
Because, I know, when I read writings from great saints or great men, you know, on one hand I'm inspired to be better.
And on the other hand, I feel humble because I'm like, I'm not even close to those people.
You become more aware of your weaknesses, your imperfections.
And that's a good thing.
That's true humility.
All right.
And then finally, a very philosophical point, and I think this gets to really the heart of it.
Shame upon thee, O soul, for thy overpowering love of the world.
This is almost Shakespearean, the language.
It's not how we speak now.
So he's saying, he's kind of talking to himself, right?
He's saying that our that we should be ashamed because we love this material world so much.
We're so focused on money and things and this material world.
And it's a shame.
It's terrible.
It's the source of our pride.
If thou does not believe in heaven or hell, at any rate thou believes in death, which will snatch from thee all worldly delights.
Okay, so this is a core, extremely important principle in life.
And you'll find this in most religious teachings, because it's maybe the major truth of our lives, now that we're living right.
So he's saying even if you don't believe in heaven and hell, even if you're not religious, you know you're going to die.
You know that.
We all know that.
And that when you die, all your worldly delights, right?
All your successes, all your money, everything you gain in this life, gone.
It's all gone.
Right?
And we don't want to think about it.
We kind of know that, but we push it away.
But he's saying you need to keep that deep, essentially spiritual, Mindset.
Perspective.
Because that's the truth.
Buddhists describe this as impermanence.
Impermanence is one of the core teachings of Buddhism and of Sanatana Dharma, and of Christianity and, of course, of Islam, as Imam Al-Ghazali is teaching us here.
This is the truth, and so this is really the source of deep humility, when you realize it doesn't matter how great you are in this, How powerful, how much money, how handsome or beautiful.
You can achieve all of those things.
But if you live long enough, you're going to age and get old.
And you're going to die.
And all that will disappear.
And probably within you know, 30 to 50 years, maybe within just one year, you'll mostly be forgotten.
Your family will remember you, but then, of course, they will die too.
Certainly within a couple generations, all memory of you is gone.
Everything you achieved, gone.
So he's saying, don't forget this.
And when you really think about this and you spend time daily thinking about this, It changes your perspective.
Suddenly your little English mistakes are not a big deal, are they?
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter at all.
Certainly work to be better, because that gives you self-discipline and you can contribute to your families right.
You have these higher reasons you want to use English to make your life and hopefully, the lives of others better, especially your family members.
But never forget this.
And he says, why are thou so mad at the world?
Why are you so focused on all this when you're forgetting this big truth?
And, you know, amen to that, I say.
So this is the core, right?
This is the core of deep, deep, deep humility.
Never forgetting this key essential point.
And to bring it back to English again, this kind of humility.
You know at first, you know, I know it's scary and maybe depressing sometimes.
People think, oh, that's depressing to think about it.
But it's the truth.
Hiding from the truth does not lead you to anything good.
It's the truth.
We must never forget it in any moment.
And when we remember, then we do develop that humility.
And it's called perspective in English.
It's how you see things.
And perspective kind of helps you decide what is important, what is big, and what is small, right?
When we have this very short material prideful view, It's like we're looking through a little tunnel, a little telescope, a microscope really.
And so something that is actually quite small seems huge, super big, right?
Like I made, my English is not good enough yet, right?
You're looking through this microscope and you're getting all worried and upset about it, right?
That's looking through a microscope.
That's no perspective.
You're not seeing anything outside that.
And it's killing your confidence right and making you crazy.
But when you take a big, wider view, what Imam al-Ghazali is teaching here right now, you realize okay, you know your English is important, you're trying to improve it, but you realize it's like it's this small compared to that big truth of you.
Know that eternal truth of the truth of life and death and, if you are spiritual or religious, the truth of what comes after death and that eternal life.
That's huge.
So your English, you know, is very tiny compared to that.
It's fine to improve your English.
You do want to improve it.
You want to be a lion in English, not a mouse.
But keep humility.
Keep this wide perspective.
And as I said, you know, the truth is that it'll actually give you more confidence.
And I'm speaking from my own experience in life is that the more I have become spiritual, the more I've had this wider and wider perspective.
And it's something that happens naturally for most people as they get older.
On one hand, I'm much more humble, right?
I have much more humility.
I realize how small I am, how weak I am, how small all my little material desires and goals and problems are.
They're tiny.
But what's interesting is realizing that at a deep level and realizing it emotionally too.
It actually has increased my confidence.
Because now if it's not so important, well, I don't need to worry about it so much, do I?
I can just relax and do my best.
Just relax and do my best.
And when I relax and do my best, I'm more confident.
I perform better in whatever I'm doing.
I enjoy it more.
And I actually do better and improve faster.
So that's the paradox I was talking about at the beginning, right?
That deeper humility which in some ways makes us feel smaller naturally, certainly in this life we're living now and all our concerns, gives us actually a very, very deep confidence.
This is deep confidence, okay?
This is the root of true, real, deep confidence, this humility.
I teach you a lot, a lot, a lot of techniques for, I would say, more surface confidence, right?
So peak emotional state and anchoring and NLP techniques and All these different techniques using your mind imagining, visualizing goals.
All that's fine.
You just have to realize it's only about that big, really.
Okay?
And all that will help you in the moment when you need it.
You've got a job interview.
You've got a speech.
You can use all these techniques I'm teaching you in those moments, and you should use those.
But long-term, for true deep deep, deep confidence in English speaking and in all parts of your life.
You need this.
You need to develop this deep humility and a spiritual perspective.
And that's how you go from being a mouse in English to being a lion.
All right, lots of love to you.
Just a note, you know, obviously i'm doing recorded videos right now because my internet fortunately the internet here in japan uh, we're using just a temporary internet while we visit japan, so it's not so fast so doing live streams.
I was having a lot of connection problems, so i'm just going to record videos While I'm here.
When we go back to the United States I'll start doing live again.
Okay, so do me a favor, leave a comment.
If you know of Al-Ghazali, tell me, you know, what are your favorite teachings from him?
And if not, then tell me below, comment below on YouTube or any other social media.
You see this, you know, comment below.
Tell me about the struggles you've had with your English confidence and how you develop this deep confidence and humility.
And finally, of course, get my free book, Effortless English.
It's back here.
Get my free book, Effortless English.
Learn to speak English like a native.
I'm giving it to you free because I want you to learn my system.
So you can look in the description below and you'll see a link where you can get my book free.
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Lots of love to you.
See you next time.
Bye for now.
