When I was growing up, I remember everyone around me saying that I NEED a university education if I don’t want to have a terrible life.  I believed it.  Almost everyone I knew believed it too.

At that time, university wasn’t SOOO expensive.  Students could pay for school with a good part time job.  They didn’t graduate with a huge debt and crazy student loans.

Things are very different now.  University is unbelievably expensive, and more and more students are going to school.  It seems that everyone believes that having a university degree will somehow just “magically” give them a good job when they graduate.  Well, with so many people having degrees, the “good jobs” are getting harder and harder to find.  Students in the US are paying an average of $27 000 USD per YEAR just to go to school.  Some students are paying a lot more.  When they graduate, they have an insane amount of pressure to pay back a crazy student loan, and it’s harder and harder to find a high paying job just by showing people your degree.  A lot of employers now realize that A) too many people have the same thing, and B) It’s really just a “fancy” piece of paper.

With technology changing so fast as well, colleges and universities aren’t really able to “keep up” with it all, and really prepare students with the proper knowledge they will need for the jobs of the future.

Chinese students have been going to the US in HUGE numbers over the past 10 years or so.  They are growing so fast.  I just read in a really interesting article from the Wall Street Journal that about 70% of them return to China after graduating to find a job, and less and less of them can find a good job.  They’ve almost “wasted” their parent’s hard earned money, and it’s not their fault either.

The price of education is going up fast, the quality is going down fast, and more and more people are joining the workforce with the same degree, the same piece of paper.

They have a huge debt/loan to pay off.  It’s almost like they have a mortgage, but NO HOUSE!

Students in America owe a total of over 1 trillion dollars in student loans.  That is $1 000 000 000 000.  Insane.  Thousands and thousands of students in the US owe more money just in student loans, than the price of a pretty decent house!  I’m not joking.

REAL skills (like learning high level English, computers/internet, and networking) are becoming more important (and not expensive)

Anyway……  Do I think that it’s a terrible idea to get a university education?  Of course not!  But I absolutely think that you should really think about this carefully, and don’t just be a sheep and think that your insanely expensive piece of paper will just magically help you.  You need to think ahead and think “smarter” than most of the other people who just believe whatever they are told by society.

I’d love to know where you are from, how old you are, and what your thoughts are about this topic.  Please share your thoughts about this important topic in the comments below.

I also just watched an AWESOME documentary about this situation and I put that video and the article about international students studying in China here in the VIP community for you guys to enjoy.  You will love both.  There is a lot of great stuff in there that is both really interesting AND will help your English.  I spend so much of my time looking for this kind of stuff for you guys.  I’m sure you’ll love it

Again, please let me know your situation, and your exact opinion on this.  If you completely agree or totally disagree with me, that’s totally fine.  It’s great practice for your English to get your thoughts down in writing, and it’s great for all of us (including me) to learn and think about different perspectives.  We can all learn from each other.

“The 1 %” is a relatively new and very popular term to refer to the richest 1% of the people in society. So, for example, if you had a small town of 1000 people, “the 1 %” of that town would be the richest 10 people.

This term is used a lot when talking about “rich people” in general, or people who should be paying more in taxes, or when talking about the “wealth gap”. That is, the large and growing difference between rich and poor people.

A “gap” is a space. I could say, “She went to the dentist to fix the large gap between her two front teeth. She looks much prettier now”.

So when we hear something like, “The wealth gap is getting a lot bigger.” That means that the rich people are getting richer and the poor people are getting poorer.

“The one percent” are the rich people. They also want to stay rich. Many of them will influence politicians (law makers) to make laws that help them keep their money (low taxes) and help them keep earning more of it easily.

They have been very successful in the USA over the last 30 years. The top 1% of the people in the US now own about 25% of all of the money. (In the 1970′s, the top 1% had only 9% of the money.)

The situation is getting more and more severe as well. Life is amazingly easy financially for the top 1% of the people, and it’s very hard for the bottom 25% of the people. Those people have a hard time buying enough healthy food for their families and clothes for their kids.

Many, but not all, people in the 1% make the argument that poor people are lazy and shouldn’t get any help from the government. They believe they already pay more than enough money in taxes. They believe that if the poor people want more money, they can just work harder for it. No one is stopping them.

I am personally somewhere in the middle. I do believe that people who work hard should be allowed to have a much better stuff than people who sit around doing nothing. I also believe that many poor people are in fact very lazy and believe that they should get free stuff for doing nothing.

But I don’t believe that the rules of the game are reasonable. It’s possible to work for 60 hours a week (ie. not lazy) and still not be able to feed your family healthy food and pay for health care and pay for your kids to play sports and have an education. I think that’s a bit ridiculous.

An economic system that allows for rich people to have their own private air planes and also allow for millions of poor people to not be able to afford a tomato sandwich and a visit to the doctor seems stupid.

I’d like to see economists work towards a new system that allows for a very large and healthy middle class. There would still be some rich and poor people, but the difference wouldn’t be as insane as it is now.

BUT…… Guess what. I really can’t imagine that happening. It seems like we’re in a world where greed is #1. The richest people have so much control of everything and they will do anything to make it stay that way.

So, no matter what you think or hope is true, we’re living in a world where it is important to try to get ahead and earn money. No one is going to take care of you, you need to take care of yourself. The difference between rich and poor is huge, and it is getting bigger every year. Having a good job will pay a lot of money, and getting a terrible job will pay almost nothing, even if you are working hard in both jobs. You need to be more competitive. You need to improve your chances to get a high paying job by doing anything you can. Your hard work now will make your life much better in the future, and your family’s as well.

If that isn’t an amazing reason to start getting more serious about learning English right now (so you can be more competitive and earn more money) I really don’t know what is.

Love to hear your thoughts below.

For the best ways to improve your English fast, join us in the VIP, AND in our high level community. These places are for people who really want to get ahead in life.

An honest effort, is when you actually try your best at something.  Only YOU know when you are trying your best, so only YOU know if you are putting in an honest effort.

When I was a young kid, my parents, teachers, and coaches were always telling us how important it is to try our best at whatever we do.  I’ll have to admit, I never realized how truly important this was until pretty recently.  I believe that part of the reason was that I was afraid to believe this.  I didn’t want it to be true.  For me personally, I almost fantasize about a successful and happy life without needing to put in a full effort.  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want or expect success with no effort.  I guess it’s just that I hoped that hard work wasn’t so important for success.  I somehow wish that intelligence and great ideas were more important than they are.

I kind of hoped that hard work was something that was just for the “stupid” or the “average” people.  I wanted to be more creative, more thoughtful, and attain success from simply having better ideas than the ideas of the typical “hard workers”.

But the truth is that when I think about all the people I know in my own life who are successful at anything, hard and consistent work is almost always the biggest reason.  The most successful people I know are not the smartest people, and they aren’t the most talented either.  But they are the hardest working people.  Even if their ideas and plans aren’t that amazing, they end up succeeding at almost anything they do because they keep working hard no matter what the situation looks like, and they never give up.  If their first plan doesn’t work, they try something else and work even harder.

This is true for people who are successful in business, in relationships, in learning a new language, in fitness, in pretty much anything. Hard work is insanely important for success.  You can make all the excuses you want, and many of your excuses might even make sense, but the real truth is pretty simple; if you want more success in your life, then you need to work harder than you are now.

This blog is supposed to be a little “kick in the pants” for anyone reading this.  It’s a wake up call.  I know you’d like to improve many areas of your life, and your English level is just one of them; and it’s a very important one too.  Even if you already know a lot of what I’m saying, I just hope this wakes you up a little bit.  You need to study harder.  You need to be more consistent with your studying. You know that you need to improve your English, and I hope this blog helps you realize that you shouldn’t waste even one more day procrastinating and making excuses.  Life is short, and we have no time to waste.

For a great way (the best way) to improve your English, try our VIP community.  I’ve been uploading awesome documentaries, books, and now some full length awesome audio books.  When I was in Canada, I read a lot of really great books, and I’m sharing the best ones with you guys in this VIP community.  I’ll keep them there and keep adding more stuff I know you’ll love.  I just uploaded one of the best and most famous books ever about psychology and improvement.  This will absolutely help your English and your life. It’s in there now

Of course, the China232 VIP room is pretty sick as well.  Do you know that Add and I already have more than 211 VIP podcasts in there?  If you study all those lessons, you’ll have unbelievable English in less than 90 days.  Just sayin…

Love to hear your thoughts and comments as usual  Did this post help motivate you to get off your butt and start working harder?

I was reading an interesting article written by an American female doctor.  She recently quit her job as a “traditional western doctor” and has since been writing about “Eastern medicine” like Chinese and many other types of traditional medicine.  The older I get, the more I believe in “Eastern” medicines.  It’s more about understanding human health, rather than just treating illness with pills and surgery.  (Pills and surgery make A LOT of money for the huge industry of western medicine, and people in that industry will do everything they can to make sure they keep making huge profits)

The article she wrote was talking about “self discipline”.  That basically means to learn to “control yourself’”.  If you have “self discipline” it means you can follow your own plans.  For example, if you say to yourself, “I promise I’m going to wake up every morning at 6 am and go to the gym for a workout”, and then you actually do it, it means you have good self discipline.  If you make that promise to yourself and then maybe go for a few days and then quit, start sleeping in, and watching TV on the couch instead, it means you have terrible self discipline.  So it is all about learning to do what you say you are doing to do, and not be a lazy piece of garbage who keeps doing the easiest things all the time.

Everyone knows that self discipline is absolutely important for business success and for overall life success.  This woman, however, was talking about how it’s also just as important for your physical and mental health as well.  Even though it seems like life would be much better if we had millions of dollars for no reason and we could just sit around the pool all day getting a sun tan and drinking fancy drinks, it’s actually not as good for us as we imagine.  (Trust me, I imagine how awesome this life would be ALL THE TIME)

We are happiest when we have things to do, even if they are sometimes boring things.  We respect ourselves more when we do a lot each day, and respect ourselves less when we sit around doing nothing or just goof around all the time.  When we don’t do much, we start to feel a sense of guilt for some reason.  I’m not even sure exactly why, and I kind of hate this fact, but I think it’s true for the “human animal”.  We simply need to do stuff just to feel useful, even if it’s not necessary for the money.

So, the first point is that we need to do what we say we are going to do, otherwise we are going to experience an annoying amount of “guilt”.  Who wants to feel guilty for any reason?  It sucks.  It’s unhealthy too!

The second thing I want to say about guilt was something I learned from a great book she recommended.  I got the audio book, I listened to it online, I LOVED it, and I put it here in the VIP community for you guys to listen to as well.  I think that book alone is worth trying out a month in there.  And there is a lot of other things in there, and a lot more to come…..

….. One of the many interesting things that the book was talking about was guilt from yourself, and guilt from other people.

There are 2 extreme personality types when talking about guilt.  One is “neurotic” and one is “character disorder“.  These are opposites and are both very extreme.  Most people are probably somewhere in the middle between the 2.

If you are “neurotic” it means that you blame yourself for everything.  If anything in your life or anyone else’s life goes wrong, you think it’s your own fault, and you feel super sick with guilt because you wish you could have done better.  You experience a lot of pain because you keep torturing yourself by telling yourself that you are a failure and you should have been better.  If you are “neurotic” in this way, you might be quite depressed and stressed.  It’s of course good to take responsibility and try to do the best you can, but if you feel overly guilty for everything that doesn’t work out well for you and blame yourself too harshly all the time, you will feel sick and you’ll be sick.  Being “neurotic” is not healthy.  If you notice that you are neurotic sometimes, then try to remind yourself to relax a bit and stop blaming yourself too much.  Just do the best you can and move on.  One advantage of being neurotic is that it makes you more likely to succeed at things.  Someone who is neurotic with their English study will often learn it really well, because they won’t accept failure, and if they fail, they will blame themselves and do whatever they can to make sure they learn it.  This is how they are with everything.  The important point to remember is that you need balance.  You can’t be overly harsh on yourself for everything or you’ll probably die young.  You need a balance.

“Character disorder” on the other hand, is the other extreme personality type for guilt.  If you have character disorder, it means you always think that everything bad that happens to you is someone or something else’s fault.  You blame yourself for nothing at all.  I’m sure you know people like this.  Maybe you are even in a relationship with someone like this…  They blame you for everything!  They make you feel guilty for everything and they always act like nothing was their fault.  They are masters at making excuses.  The positive for them is that they don’t feel much guilt, but the negative thing is they make other people extremely miserable all the time, and they also don’t succeed as often because they don’t believe they can control their situation.

The important thing to remember here is this, if you know people who have character disorder, do whatever you can to stop accepting their blame.  It doesn’t matter how good of a person you are, they will make you feel guilty, and get very sick, if you let them.  You need to stop listening to their insane nonsense excuses.  If you have character disorder, you might not even realize it if you are reading this, because you’ll be so great at blaming other people for everything.  It’s too hard for you to imagine that your behaviour is your own fault.  That’s what character disorder is!

Another thing I found interesting, and quite logical, was that many people who are neurotic date people with character disorder.  It makes for a very unhealthy relationship because one person (the one with character disorder) is always blaming the other person for everything, and the other person (the one who is neurotic) is always accepting the blame and guilt for everything.  If you are in this type of relationship. you need to either get out of it, or at least tell the other person what is happening and make sure you don’t allow them to “run all over you” and blame you and make you feel guilty for everything.  You’ll be sick if you do!

I’d love to hear your thoughts as always.  I think you’ll love the book too.  Again, the full book is right here for you to listen to and enjoy.

Are you neurotic sometimes?  Do you know people with character disorder?  Do you believe that endless guilt is as terrible as I’m describing.  Please share

I think its a really interesting idea and I’m thinking of doing it myself.  I just read about it yesterday and I’m thinking that maybe some of us can start doing it together.  I put this guy’s full experiment here in our 232 group.

So, here is the idea…

It’s about intentional self deprivation.  ”intentional” means that you do something on purpose.  ”Deprivation” means that you avoid something that you would generally want.  It sounds weird at first but it makes sense.  Just give me a chance to explain…

We are all living in a world where things are almost “too easy”.  And ironically, all of the modern advancements that are designed to make our lives easier and better can often end up making our lives far worse!

Think about things like, “watching TV, using Facebook, owning a car, playing on your cell phone, having junk food in the house”…..

All of these things are fun to do/use, but they can easily become a problem.  It’s so easy for all of us to become fat, lazy, and pathetic animals.

We all know we should watch less TV, go the the gym more often, eat healthier food, try to earn more money, etc.

The problem is that modern life is filled with so many ways to waste time or do unhealthy things.  The best way to live life is to do things that are both enjoyable AND helpful/healthy in some way.  Learning new things, exercising, spending quality time with your family and friends are all things that are both enjoyable in the short term and also useful and healthy things to do.  They are also, unfortunately, things that we often don’t do enough of.

Why?  Because life is filled with stuff that is so pathetically easy, that our little animal brains have a very hard time saying “NO” to something that is enjoyable in the very short term.

Sometimes it’s fun to watch your favourite show on TV, and sometimes it’s quite enjoyable to talk to your friends on Facebook or even eat unhealthy food.  But these activities are just SO EASY and SO CONVENIENT, that it’s quite possible to just waste so many hours doing these things, and very often not even get that much enjoyment from doing it.  It almost doesn’t make sense but we all know it happens, and happens easily.

Think about how easy it is to open up your computer or Ipad with no real goal at the beginning.  Maybe you think you are just going to check your email and then stop using it.  Somehow, 2 hours fly by and you mindlessly just start playing games, watching pointless videos, or having a boring or meaningless conversation with some friends on Facebook.  TV is even easier.  We go into the fridge or cupboard and grab some snacks, then sit on the coach and watch 3 hours of TV while pigging out.  I’m talking about eating when you aren’t really hungry, and watching TV shows that you aren’t even really interested in.  You just do it because it’s easy, and it gives your brain a chance to not think or worry about anything.

It’s really terrible and unhealthy behaviour, it’s not very enjoyable, but it’s so easy to do.  There are many things like this in modern life, and it’s our job to control these habits before they control us.  These habits suck our energy, kill our ambition, make us fat and sick, and make us poor and unhappy.

If you have any bad habit at all, even a small one that wastes too much of your time, I think the answer is simple (If you are actually serious about changing).

You NEED to stop it completely for a while.  If you have been watching too much TV lately, then you need to start watching NONE for a while.  If you have been eating too much chocolate or drinking too much coke lately, then you should try having NONE for a while.  If you have been wasting too much time on Facebook, then you should not use it AT ALL for a while.

Many people will tell you that you are being too “extreme” or going too “overboard” if you try to cut one of these things out of your life for a while.  The truth is that it may be necessary to be “extreme” for a while, if you really want to experience a healthy change.  (And trust me, I’m sure you want a big change).

If you eat too much chocolate, people will say, “try not to eat so much”.  If you waste too much time on Facebook or watching TV, then people will tell you to try using it less.  It sounds like the advice makes sense, but it almost never works.  If we just say that we’d like to “exercise more” or “watch less TV”, then nothing will happen.  The reason is that we have no rule to follow.  We can keep tricking ourselves by saying, “I’ll do it tomorrow” or “I’ll only watch for a little while”.  Then we find that nothing happens.

If we take something COMPLETELY out of our lives for a while, it’s actually easier to not use it.  Watching no TV at all is much easier than watching only 30 minutes a day.  Eating no ice cream whatsoever, is much easier than just having one or two little spoons of it and then stopping.

I highly recommend you try taking one simple thing out of your life, and see how you feel after just 7 days.  Don’t use Facebook AT ALL for one week.  Don’t watch any TV at all for a week.  Don’t eat any chocolate or drink any coke at all for a week.  It’s not that hard actually if you just make a clear rule for yourself and make a little game/challenge out of this.

You will start to notice that your life may be actually better with less convenient ways to waste your time.  You might hate it at first, but you may start to love it later.  Don’t even worry about what you will do with the new free time, just make sure that you stop one bad habit for an entire week.  Even if you think it’s stupid after 2 or 3 days, just keep doing it anyway for the full week.  I promise, a week with no Facebook won’t kill you.  You may love it, you may hate it, but I’m sure you’ll learn something about yourself.  After the week, you can decide whether or not you want to continue doing it or not.  You just have to promise that you won’t “cheat” during the week.

The guy I’m recommending here talks about his program and he suggests doing each of these things for a month.  He is an expert on doing this and has a great and clear plan.  Again, it’s here for you to read in our community.   (Along with many other free things in there.  Movies, audio books, e books, high level chatting partners…)  We’ll keep adding to this and making it better and better for you guys

If you’d like to try changing one small habit for a week, I’d love for you to write about it in the comments.  Share your experience with us.  Let us know your plan (Don’t be shy and there is no need at all to feel embarrassed).

Do you think this is a good plan?  Why?  Do you think one week is long enough, or do you think a full month is needed for this?  Do you also believe things like Ipads, smartphones, TV, 24 hour Macdonalds, and the many other things in modern life that are supposed to make our lives easier and better are often making our lives worse overall?  Do you agree that today’s generation is in many ways more weak, lazy, and pathetic than generations of the past?  (50 years ago for example)  Please share any or all thoughts you may have about this in the comments.  Can’t wait to read them!

Andy

In Canada, you can play golf at a VERY nice golf course for under $200 per time.  Sometimes it’s much less than $100.  And I’m talking about really beautiful golf courses, not just average ones.

So why then, would any reasonable person pay $100 000 per year for a membership?  It made no sense to me before.  Now it makes perfect sense.

These guys aren’t paying for how nice the golf course is.  That is only part of it.  It’s a small part actually.  What they are really paying for is the community.  Think about the other people who go to those courses.  Most of them are also successful business people.  They pay for status and ability to meet these people.  They talk and do business together.  They make friends and get their children in this rich group of successful people.  In some ways, the whole thing makes me sick.  I wish the world were a more fair place.  But the reality is that it’s not.  It does make sense for these people to stay together, meet each other, and network together.

It’s MUCH more likely that you will meet someone worth doing business with on one of these super expensive golf courses than if you were to try to meet these types of people at other places where “regular” people can go.

I was thinking about this because I was thinking about a social networking website for English learning.  These aren’t the exact same thing, but you’ll see what I mean in a minute…

People who speak English as a second language and are actually serious about improving their English, their business, their lives, etc, don’t have anywhere to go to meet each other online.  There are a lot of garbage websites that allow anyone on there.  If you want to speak with someone to “practice your English”, you can absolutely find a partner on a million free sites.

But the problem with this is HUGE.  These sites that allow anyone to join, attract people who aren’t really serious about learning English or really serious about anything at all.  Why?  Because most people in the world are not serious about anything they are doing.

If you want to meet a partner to speak English with, share ideas, share stories, share culture, you will want to meet someone who is at or above your level.  You want someone who can challenge you and you can learn from.  It’s not easy to find these people, but they exist.

Imagine for a second that you wrote on your Facebook page, “I am looking for someone to learn from, talk about business and life, and really challenge each other to improve our English skills”.  I can’t imagine you will find anyone.  Maybe, if you are lucky, someone will say “Yes” to your offer, but they probably won’t be the type of person you are hoping for.

As you probably know, Add and I have been making a new free video EVERY DAY at www.LearnEnglish232.com  

We are hoping to get people to get in the habit of going there every day for the new lessons.  We want to grow that site to 50 000 visitors per day.

But many of the people who find this site or that site aren’t super serious about learning English.  We also want to find the SUPER SERIOUS people and provide an opportunity for amazing English, business, and life learning that does not exist anywhere else on the internet.  That’s our goal.

The people who are not serious will not pay a small monthly fee to join the membership part.  And that’s great.  Our plan is to build a membership site for serious learners.  Everyone will have a great profile with an awesome photo, bio, linkedIn page, Skype number, where they are from…  A lot of stuff.  Then these people will be able to search through the other serious members and we can all have a really high level and private conversation.  Also, the members will be able to contact each other and set up high level language exchanges and other things.  It will be a real community.  I’ll be on there providing reading material, movie talk, technology stuff, and a bunch of interesting and high level topics for group discussion.  We’ll all push ourselves to get better and better in not only English, but in life too.

I want to have a lot of great free English learning content for everyone to enjoy, and a high level SUPER VIP program that is connected to this one and also adds a lot more.  We’re still talking about how we want the site to be.  And since some of you guys who are reading this right now will be interested in joining it, it would be great to hear your ideas now.  We are building it for you and other high level people like you.

What do you think of this idea?  What would you like to see in that program?

Help us design it with your ideas and then it will be much better that way!

And by the way, don’t worry, it won’t be expensive like an elite golf course!  It doesn’t need to be.  The only reason I used that example was to try to make a point.

Love to hear your thoughts guys.  By the way, does anyone here already have the great habit of going to www.LearnEnglish232.com everyday yet?  What do you think?  Have you shared it with your friends, students, or teachers?  What do they think?  We’re still in the beginning stages of developing this, and we’re sure this will be the best yet!

It will be connected in some way with China232.com VIP membership, so don’t worry about that.  We’ll take care of you guys and make it kick ass!  There will be tons of amazing free stuff for everyone and an insanely awesome high level private English learning VIP club.

Sounds like a win/win to me!  What are your thoughts on this whole topic?  Even the part about rich people paying so much for golf.  Does it make sense to you too?

Your comments are always appreciated.  You guys have been great lately with that.  Keep it up.  I read EVERY one!!

Give yourself a break!  What do I mean?  I’m not talking about a holiday (although, going on a holiday is pretty sweet).

I’m just talking about giving yourself a break from any feelings you have of guilt.  We all have things that we’re feeling guilty about, maybe not super guilty, but even just a little.

Maybe your diet hasn’t been great lately.  Maybe you haven’t been the greatest boyfriend or girlfriend in your relationship lately.  Maybe you aren’t happy with how little you’ve been exercising or studying.  Maybe you have been doing as well as you’d like in business or at work.  I don’t know.  But I am guessing there is probably at least one thing in your life where you feel like you are kind of  blaming or even hating yourself in some way.

My advice today is simple:  Take a break from any self-hate, guilt, or worry that you have for at least today.  Just take a moment to realize that this worry and guilt you feel isn’t helping you.

I’m not saying that you should just do whatever you want and not care anymore.  I’m just suggesting that you take one day to completely forgive yourself 100% for anything that you are blaming yourself for.  Forget about what you did or didn’t do.  The blame isn’t helping the situation.  You should also stop blaming other people or outside events.  Just accept whatever situation you are in, at least for today.  See how you feel.

Just smile, relax, and enjoy being you.  None of us are perfect and we all have things we are blaming ourselves for.  It sucks our energy and makes us feel less confident, less happy, and just worse in pretty much every way.  This self blame, even if it is pretty small, isn’t helping the people around you either.

So just let go of any pain from the past that you are holding onto.  Today is a new day and you can change anything in your life starting now.  It will be a lot easier to do this if you can stop dragging the pain from the past into each and every day.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.   Your responses to the last blog were absolutely amazing by the way!

Have a great day

Ok….. Today’s topic is about “being yourself”.  This phrase is used all the time in spoken English.  It’s supposed to be good advice.

In most western countries (maybe other countries too), if you ask you parents for advice on how to act when you are on your first date, most of them will just tell you to “be yourself”.  Everyone seems to agree with this idea of “being yourself”, but I honestly wonder if they are even thinking about it AT ALL when they give this kind of advice.  I often think people just say things without really thinking about what they are saying.  It drives me insane!

What does “be yourself” mean anyway?  Basically it just means “don’t be fake” and “do and act the way that you feel is natural to you”.

Well, that sounds great, but what if the “real you” doesn’t work?  What if people don’t like “the real you”?  What if they are offended by your jokes or your personality?  Should you change? or should you just keep “being yourself” and seeing what happens?

I’ve thought about this question a lot actually.  I’ve thought about it for my entire life.  Sometimes I even think about it when I make lessons for this website.  I don’t want to offend or upset other people, but I still want to be my REAL self.

The reason this question is so important to me is because “the real me” doesn’t always work; not even close!  Bosses and teachers often HATE the real me.  They get embarrassed by my sense of humour, etc.  (The truth is that I don’t like them either, but that’s another story)…..

After thinking about this question for years and years, I think I believe that I should try really hard to be myself.  It’s too important.  The truth is that I might miss out on certain opportunities because I’m not always obsessed with doing what society thinks is normal, but if I am not myself, I will end up feeling completely sick.  And who wants to feel sick?  That’s horrible.

The truth is that I never want to offend anyone.  It’s never my goal.  It’s also true that I don’t always have the same opinions as other people.  We are all different to some extent.

So what should I do?  Do I have to keep all my thoughts and opinions inside?  Should I be afraid of accidentally offending someone who is overly sensitive in my opinion?  I hope not…

It’s kind of a weird feeling when you make podcasts and videos.  Trust me, I totally know 100% that I’m not some super famous person.  But, over the years, millions of people have downloaded our podcasts and/or watched our videos.  (It’s a lot more of the podcasts but the videos on learnenglish232.com will catch up fast).  The point is that Add and I have seen tons of comments about our work.  We know that we have fans, but we also know that thousands of people probably listen to 30 seconds of one podcast or watch a few seconds of one video and think “I hate these guys”, “This is boring”, “This sucks”, or WORSE.  It’s only natural that this happens, it’s just a weird feeling when you experience it personally.

At the end of the day, I think Add and I have to keep on being ourselves and just being happy with it, no matter what happens.  We certainly have to try to keep getting better and to be the absolute best we can, but we need to just be careful not to “change” anything about our fundamental “core” beliefs.  We want to make the best stuff in the world for our REAL fans, and just forget about anyone who doesn’t really understand the whole point of the 232.  Let’s face it, some people don’t get it.

Large companies have no personality because they are too worried about trying to make everyone happy.  That’s not really our job.  That seems too boring.  I was talking to another popular online teacher about this the other day.  He told me he has decided not to share his real thoughts and feelings with the world because he doesn’t want to “get into politics” or have to deal with all the emails from people he offends.

I totally understand his perspective, but Add and I have a different opinion on this.  We want you guys to know the real us.  We think it will make for much better lessons, and a much more interesting environment for real discussion and real English learning.

What do you guys think?  Should we keep being ourselves?  Should we worry about accidentally offending people with some of our jokes?  Should we be even MORE like the real us?

We’d love to know your thoughts on this.  One thing Add and I both love is brutal honesty; you know, the real truth.  If you totally agree, please say so and why.  If you totally disagree and think something we say or do is retarded or ridiculous, please say that too.  Not just with this blog, but always.  No matter what the feedback is, we love hearing the real truth.  It makes everyone better and it makes the world more interesting.

Also, what about this question in YOUR own life?  Are you your real self all the time?  When, if ever, do you think it’s useful to be “fake”?

I hope this blog made sense, and I hope you found it at least somewhat interesting.

Ok……….          I’m waiting for those comments guys!  And girls

Oh ya… If you have ANY blog topic requests or video lesson requests, please write them in the comments and I’ll do my best to make that asap!

Andy

I naturally get stressed all the time so I often find myself reading these kinds of things.  Most of the articles I find online aren’t really that good, but this one was one of the better ones I’ve seen.  It’s from the Harvard Business school.

I wanted to share it with you for 2 reasons.  The first reason is that I’m sure you’ll find it interesting and helpful.  Even if you aren’t a stress case, I’m sure that you’ve had times in your life where stress was annoying and you wanted a healthy way to get rid of it.  This article will help you for that.  It’s enjoyable to read and think about.

The second reason I wanted to share it with you is that it is a perfect level of English for us to discuss together.  I’m sure you’ll learn some great English in here.  This will help improve your reading comprehension.  (“Reading comprehension” means how well you understand what you read).

I want you to read it first and try to get the main idea.  Don’t use a dictionary.  Then read it one more time and write down any words or phrases that you don’t understand 100%.  Even if you almost understand them but not quite perfectly, write them down and share them in the comments section.  After I get about 20 good comments, I’ll write a free lesson which explains all these words.

I hope this is quite useful and I think it will be.  Enjoy the article and remember to comment.  Don’t be shy!  Thanks gusy:)

Here is the article:  How to Lower Stress

I was on a bike ride with a close friend and we started talking about photography. I never thought I was good at taking pictures, I just thought it was an easy thing to do. I actually hated hearing people talking about their “photo taking ability” because I thought it was such a joke.

Until today, I basically thought that all anyone had to do was buy a good brand of a digital camera for about $300 and and then just point and shoot. If it was dark, I used a flash (the light). If it was light, I didn’t. From a distance, many of my pictures looked not too bad so I didn’t realize there was a problem or that I had no idea of what I was doing. I knew they weren’t professional quality but I thought they were good enough and I never bothered to find out what the problem was.

My friend had an older 4.8 Megapixel camera and I had a pretty new Fuji 10.0 Megapixel camera. I thought that I could easily take clearer pictures without even trying because I had the better and more expensive camera. Wow. I was totally wrong. (We both were using the automatic “auto” setting). I thought that the auto setting meant that the camera did all the work for you and the person didn’t need to try.

We were taking “close ups” of the letters on business cards. It sounds like a boring and stupid picture to take but it’s actually quite fun and a great way to test the quality of a camera. A “close up” in camera language means a photo from a very close distance.

We put our photos on a large monitor (computer screen) and looked at them. His photos were WAY better and clearer than mine. I couldn’t figure it out. I didn’t realize that I needed to hold the button down half way and really look at the screen and make sure the letters were in perfect focus. I didn’t know that I needed to keep moving and adjusting the camera very slightly until I saw the letters perfectly.

When you take a photo from far away, it’s hard to see the quality. If you are taking photos of the letters of a magazine or business card, it’s easy. For my friend’s photos, we could “zoom in” on the computer and see the letters so clearly. “Zooming in” means to go really close and make a small part of the photo take up the whole computer screen.

On his photos, you could see each letter in very high detail. We could even see the glue that puts the ink on the card. For example, we could zoom in and see the letter “k” on the entire size of the computer screen. It just looked like a big “k” with little bits of glue. It was shocking.

Then we tried mine and they totally sucked. From a distance, the photo didn’t look too bad. It was just that up close, my picture was just terrible. It means that I didn’t really understand what Megapixels were and I just thought paying more money would make things better with no effort.

The truth is that having good eyes, still hands, and understanding how to use your camera is MUCH more important than the quality or price of the camera.

I don’t know this for a fact, but I believe that over 98% of the people who want to buy a digital camera for around $300 are just clueless. Most people know some of the top brand names and they know that the more expensive cameras are better. People buy cameras and don’t even learn how to use them. It’s weird. We do the same thing with computers too. We get a “good one” and then learn less than 1% about how to use it well. I’ve learned that I need to learn a lot more about the technology I am using if I want to really see the benefits. It’s not just about saving money, it’s about enjoying the benefits and not being a total fool.

I need to know more about cameras anyway because Add and I are working for Pivothead, which is the best mini hands free video camera ever. Click on the link and you’ll see what I mean. It’s really exciting. I love the logo of the guy in the backwards baseball hat too. I wish I could draw…

Anyway, I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences regarding this or a similar story you may have. Who knows, maybe it’s just me who is completely clueless.

Andy