Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • I just don't feel like studying.

  • E, I'm with you.

  • I don't feel like doing it.

  • I have no motivation.

  • Hi.

  • James from engVid.

  • I know that you're watching this channel because you want to learn English, but I also

  • know because you're human that there have been many times when you just didn't feel

  • like doing it.

  • Perhaps this is one of those times you didn't want to study, but you put on this video in

  • hopes that I can help you.

  • Well, you're in luck because I'm going to.

  • I'm going to give you four steps to help you get motivated to study English even when you

  • don't really feel like it.

  • Because I've got a...

  • There's a guy named Archimedes, and what he said was "Give me a big enough lever".

  • I'm paraphrasing, which means I'm not using the exact words.

  • So he talked about giving a big enough lever, or lever, and a fulcrum.

  • So this triangle is a fulcrum, something you can use.

  • He said you could move the world.

  • Well, my thing is if I can get you to motivate yourself to study your English, you, too,

  • will be able to change your world or move your world.

  • So let's go to the board and find out what four crazy methods I have for you.

  • Now, these look really weird.

  • I know when you're looking at it, you're going "What the heck is all this?", but I promise

  • in the end it'll make sense.

  • So the first thing I want you to do is think about why you're there and you don't want

  • to do it.

  • Try and figure out why you wanted to do it in the first place.

  • You wanted to learn English...

  • You wanted to learn English for a reason.

  • It could be for a vacation, it could be to meet some cute English girl, it could be for

  • your job in a promotion, or it could be just because you like learning languages.

  • But you've got to get back to that why.

  • Why is important.

  • There's a man named Simon Sinek who wrote a book, "Find Your Why", right?

  • And in this book, what he said was when we find our original why, we get passion.

  • We get passion.

  • It gives us energy.

  • It's the thing that drives us to change.

  • Sometimes that why is to change society to make it better, so it gives you that passion

  • to fight.

  • Well, we need to go back to that passion to get energy to help us with our motivation.

  • So one of the first things I want you to do is find your why.

  • Go back, sit down, take five seconds and think "Why did I want to do this in the first place?"

  • Instead of thinking "I have to do this", think about why I wanted to do it, how it was going

  • to change my world, and why I found it important enough to start.

  • That will at least get you moving a bit, because usually lacking motivation means you feel

  • stuck, unable to move, right?

  • So we're going to find our goal, and this is important because without your why, it's

  • like trying to fire a bow and arrow with your eyes closed.

  • You're going to miss the target.

  • So we find our why, we find our goal, we fire, and we will find we usually hit what we aim

  • at, and it's getting what we desire, in this case, motivation to learn English.

  • Let's move to number two, emotions.

  • Finding your why, I told you, releases passion.

  • Passion is an emotion.

  • Emotions have energy, but I want you to imagine your emotions as being an invisible wind,

  • and I want you to imagine that you're trying to walk in this invisible wind, but it's very,

  • very strong.

  • If you don't acknowledge, and that means pay attention to those emotions, and you don't

  • understand what they're trying to tell you, they're going to hold you back.

  • That's that invisible force, you know, your emotions.

  • You cannot see them, you feel them, they have an effect on you.

  • There's a Dr. Steven Peters who has a book called The Chimp Paradox, and what he talks

  • about is this chimp or this monkey inside your brain, right, is always trying to take

  • care of you and protect you, and it tries to do that by giving you emotions to tell

  • you to either fight, run, run is flee away, fight, or freeze.

  • Freezing is when we lack our motivation to do something.

  • We freeze, I don't want to do it.

  • If we can just talk to ourselves and acknowledge those emotions and say, "Listen, I am afraid,

  • but I will take a step forward because doing so makes life better", or "I am anxious,

  • I won't do a good job, so I will study more and that will help me move forward", if we

  • don't acknowledge or, you know, say, "Okay, these emotions are real, that wind is real",

  • they will hold us back.

  • So we want to acknowledge our emotions because when we acknowledge our emotions, that

  • energy that is holding us back is given to us so we can fly forward.

  • Kind of cool, right?

  • Just by saying, "Hey, I'm afraid", you can stop being afraid by saying, "I'm afraid,

  • and why am I afraid?" and thinking about what I can do to help my fear, because that little

  • monkey we were talking about holding you back can then help you move forward.

  • Now, let's move from there, from acknowledging our emotions, finding our why, acknowledging

  • our emotions.

  • A lot of you may not know this, but in North America we have something called the carrot

  • and the stick.

  • It's about a donkey, and we talk about how do you motivate a donkey.

  • Now, if you're a parent and you love your children, the carrot is like giving them candy

  • and praise and saying nice things to get them to do something to motivate them.

  • That's the carrot, do something good.

  • And the stick is military, the stick of discipline.

  • They won't listen, make them listen.

  • Okay?

  • So, a lot of people think, "Okay, carrot and stick, but here I have it reversed.

  • It shouldn't be this way, it's usually reversed."

  • First try the carrot, do something nice, then use the stick if that doesn't work.

  • Now, do you remember I talked about the emotions and feeling them?

  • Well, one thing you can do with emotions here is you can take the bad emotions, which would

  • be the stick, and we're going to maximize this, make the stick bigger, because what

  • we want to do is make the person so afraid of what might happen that is bad if they don't

  • finish what they said they were going to do.

  • What do I mean?

  • If you think of something like this, okay, I am getting a little bit fatter, and then

  • you say, "Okay, well, what happens if I...

  • That's not so bad.

  • We know it's bad, but you don't care.

  • But what would happen if we said, "Hey, what if you kept eating bad foods, just kept eating

  • them, kept doing no exercise?"

  • We would go, "I'll get fatter and fatter, then I'll get heart problems and knee problems,

  • I might have a heart attack, I might die, I might not be able to take care of my family."

  • And it's like, "Do you want that to happen?"

  • You go, "No, no, no, no, no, no."

  • So we use the stick to get you to move and not the carrot.

  • So by acknowledging it, one method we can do from acknowledging these emotions, first,

  • if that doesn't work, that you say, "Okay, I acknowledge my emotion.

  • Let me work."

  • Then you can say, "Okay, now imagine the worst thing that could happen.

  • Why am I mentioning this?"

  • Well, there's a guy named Dr. Jordan Peterson, and in his clinic, they did a study with a

  • mouse.

  • And they had a maze for the mouse, you know, a maze, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

  • blah, blah, blah.

  • And they had some cheese, and the mouse was hungry.

  • And what they would do is they would time to see how long it took the mouse to go through

  • the maze to get the cheese, and the hungry mouse did it pretty quickly.

  • But do you know what made the mouse run even faster to get the cheese?

  • You think they made the house...

  • The mouse...

  • Sorry.

  • The house...

  • The mouse even hungrier?

  • No.

  • They put a smell of a cat in the maze, and the mouse would run faster through the maze

  • to escape the cat than when it was just hungry for cheese.

  • When it was just hungry for cheese, it was motivated, the carrot, to eat, but the cat,

  • the smell of the cat, and possibly the cat catching it, made it run even faster.

  • So from there, they determined if you can think of what's the worst thing that could

  • happen and how you don't want that to happen, it's going to get you to move.

  • Now, I keep talking about emotion, emotion, emotion, and moving.

  • There's a reason for that, and it's going to come up here where we look at E + M. When

  • I was talking about emotion, if you separate the word "emotion", you're going to get something

  • interesting, which is this, E = "energy", and motion actually means "motion".

  • Okay?

  • By using these two tricks, we're trying to get the energy to get you into motion, because

  • when you're mentally stuck, you become physically stuck.

  • But the reverse way of doing it is if you get your body active, then your mind will

  • become active.

  • I want you to imagine for a second or two a rocket, you know, a rocket ship, standing

  • there, and the rocket, you're hearing, "Five, four, three, two, one, we have blast off."

  • That rocket takes off with tremendous power, yeah?

  • We can use the energy in motion, right?

  • And this is from a book by a woman named Mel Robbins called The Five Second Rule, to give

  • ourselves a limited amount of time to move.

  • Once we've used these two techniques, acknowledge our emotions and probably thought about this

  • one, that stick, we can use a limited time, which is a "five, four, three, two, one",

  • because the "five, four, three, two, one" enables us to keep our focus on what we wanted

  • to do, that's why we looked at our "why", keep our "why" in our mind, and just enough

  • time that you don't lose focus and you can jump right into the activity.

  • Before your brain says, "Stop, we don't want to do this", because if you wait for 10 or

  • 15 seconds, you start to think and maybe you won't do it, but when you only have five seconds,

  • by the time you've moved, it's too late for your brain to say, "Stop", you've moved forward.

  • And by taking that energy, creating physical motion, we can then get mental motion to get

  • motivated to do what we have to do.

  • Cool?

  • I know.

  • So, it's a simple system, and I promised you four steps, it's four steps.

  • And all you have to do is just start with the first one, which is remember why you're

  • doing this, and then try and figure out what are the fears holding you back, because lack

  • of motivation or people being lazy isn't usually that they don't want to work, it's that they're

  • afraid of something, and that keeps them stuck.

  • Remember?

  • Fight, freeze, or flight?

  • They freeze.

  • So, what we have to do is get them to find out or acknowledge what is getting them to

  • freeze, and then maybe making that stick a little bit bigger so it scares them off

  • to move.

  • And once we get that energy in motion, and we limit the time that they have to move from

  • five to one, then we'll find that those people will move towards what they want to do, which

  • in your case is English.

  • Okay?

  • I hope you enjoyed the video, and watch it again maybe when you're getting a little stressed

  • out about what to do, and they'll take these steps that go through them mentally, and you

  • might find you're getting more done besides English each and every day.

  • Anyway, listen, thank you very much.

  • I'd like you to come back to engVid for...

  • If you liked this video, more videos like this.

  • Of course, your usual grammar, prepositions, and whatnot, reading and writing skills, because

  • we've got lots of that with some brilliant teachers, you can go to is www.engvid.com

  • and seek out those extra videos.

  • Anyway, for now, have a great day.

  • Stay motivated.

  • Keep studying.

  • Ciao.

I just don't feel like studying.

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it