This is lesson 7 of the free English course.
Previous lessons: lesson 1 | lesson 2 | lesson 3 | lesson 4 | lesson 5 | lesson 6

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Have you ever felt “unmotivated” to improve your English?

If you have, you’re not alone. Below is one of the many emails I got from unmotivated students:

Hi. I want to start practicing speaking English. But when I start practicing it, I found that I am going blank.  also I am just repeating the same sentence structure & words. these things are driving my confidence low. My motivation energy is low nowadays due to disbelief whether I could become master in English or not.

When I read that email, I fully understood how this student felt.

When I began to improve my spoken English (by imitating native speakers), it was difficult and challenging. Oftentimes, I felt frustrated the person I was imitating spoke fast, or because they used a lot of difficult words or phrases that I couldn’t use in speech myself.

At the time, I did not like to practice because it felt uncomfortable.

However, there were 3 things that I told myself quite often in the beginning. These 3 things were the reason I didn’t give up despite feeling unmotivated.

Now I want to share those 3 things with you.

Let’s begin.

1) Everybody sucks in the beginning

When you start doing something, you’ll be terrible at it.

Listen to this audio recording. It’s a recording of me trying to speak English:

It’s OK if I don’t understand what I was saying. At the time of the recording, my spoken English was not good. This recording is short because I couldn’t express my thoughts in English well.

I’m not going to lie. The first time I listened to that recording, I was disappointed in myself. Why? Because at the time, I had already been practicing English for quite some time. (But my spoken English was still not good.)

So, just like anyone else, I was quite bad at speaking English at first. And I didn’t improve quickly at all. This made me feel frustrated.

Fortunately, I didn’t give up. I decided to be patient. I told myself that it’s natural to be terrible in the beginning. There’s nothing wrong with me. This made me feel a little better about myself.

Now, let’s hear another recording. It was recorded after my spoken English had significantly improved.

As you can hear, I still wasn’t perfect. I made some mistakes and didn’t speak very clearly. But at least now I could communicate!

Here’s the lesson to be learned: If you’re currently terrible at speaking English (or reading, listening, writing), don’t let that demotivate you. It’s natural to be terrible in the beginning. If you keep improving and never give up, you’ll definitely get better.

2) Don’t avoid difficulty. Embrace it.

Let me tell you something that might surprise you.

If you feel uncomfortable or frustrated when practicing English, that is actually a good thing.

Let me explain.

As I said earlier, when I started to improve my speaking, it felt difficult and challenging. I felt frustrated almost every time I practiced.

However, I never quit because I had the right mindset right from the beginning.

Before I got started, I had read a book called The Talent Code. This book is about how to develop skills effectively. The book taught me that in order to improve, I must practice something difficult…something that would make me feel uncomfortable and frustrated.

So, during my practice, if I felt like what I was practicing was difficult, that’s when I knew I was stretching my speaking abilities. That’s when I knew I was doing it right.

On the other hand, whenever I felt like what I was practicing seemed easy to do, that’s when I knew that I wasn’t going to improve much. That’s when I knew I had to increase the difficulty of my practice.

This mindset made me embrace difficulty and avoid doing easy stuff.

Unfortunately, some students tend to avoid difficulty and challenges. When these students learn English, they seem to focus on “having fun” or “being entertained.”

But trust me, if you want to significantly improve your English, you need to do something uncomfortable and challenging. (Which is not fun at all.)

Embrace difficulty, don’t avoid it.

3) Getting older WITHOUT getting better is scary.

We all get older every day.

I believe that in today’s world, you need to do something to make yourself more valuable as you get older.

It’s risky if you don’t do that. Imagine losing your job (or your business) and having no valuable skills to get a new job (or build a new business). That’s scary!

Maybe I’m a bit pessimistic, but this fear is another thing that made me practice regularly.

When I got myself to practice speaking English, I felt safe and secure. Why? Because I was doing something that would make me more valuable in the future. I felt good because I knew that a year from now, I would speak English better.

Right from the start, I knew that if I quit just because the practice was difficult, a year from now, I would be one year older, but my spoken English would still be the same. This thought motivated me so much.

Every time you want to give up, you need to ask yourself these questions:

• What will happen if my spoken English does not improve?
• What if I cannot get a good-paying job?
• What if I don’t earn enough money?
• What if I cannot provide for my family?

These questions might make you feel scared, but that’s OK. Fear is a powerful motivator. Use the fear of getting older without getting better to motivate yourself to practice!

Conclusion

Most people have the wrong mindset when it comes to learning English.

• They expect themselves to improve very quickly.
• They avoid difficulty and challenges.
• They don’t think about long-term consequences of not improving themselves.

I hope that by reading this lesson, you now have the right mindset.

To conclude, here are 3 things you can tell yourself when feeling unmotivated:

1. Everybody sucks in the beginning. (This includes you.)
2. Don’t avoid difficulty. Embrace it.
3. If you give up, a year from now, you’ll be one year older but your spoken English will still be the same.

Thanks for reading. This article isn’t supposed to be read just once. You should read it many times (especially when you feel unmotivated and want to give up).