Don't Try To Set More Goals To Improve Your English. Do This Instead!

If you know you are working hard to improve your English skills, but you're still not getting the results you want to be getting, then this episode is for you.

Together we're going to talk about the power of systems and specifically, we're going to talk about how your system is the problem AND your system is the solution to helping you start making progress again with your English or CELPIP prep.

If you're stuck right now, even though you're working harder than you ever have to make progress: then you need to hear this!

It's not about working harder.

It's not about setting better and more goals.

It's not about blaming a lack of people you can practice with.

Progress with English is completely under your control - and today you're going to learn what you need to actually be working on in order to get yourself and your English unstuck!

You are invited to join a three-month book club program to work on developing effective systems for language improvement.

Links Mentioned Today:

Forget About Setting Goals. Focus On This Instead. - By James Clear. This is the article I quote in the podcast. Please do take a moment to read through it if you are at all interested in what you can do to begin transforming your results with your English or CELPIP prep.

Join my new bookclub! We're going to study James Clear's book: Atomic Habits - as mentioned in the episode. Together we'll work on developing your English and CELPIP learning system so that it produces the results you need.

00:00 Introduction: Struggles with Practicing English

01:38 Welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly Podcast

03:06 Common Challenges in Practicing English

04:39 The Danger of Excuses and Obstacles

06:45 A Realization: The System is the Problem

09:35 Changing the System for Better Results

20:16 Invitation to Join the Book Club

23:44 Conclusion and Final Thoughts

 I've got English speaking co workers, but we hardly talk. I work remotely most of the time anyway, so I rarely have people around to practice my English with. And when I get home, my family always want to speak to me in our first language. And to be quite honest, when I get home, I'm so tired from my day that I really don't want to use that time to be practicing my English.

I just want to relax. and speak with my family, speak with my loved ones, and use my first language and not even think about English anymore. And yet with all of that happening around me, I still feel frustrated because I want to develop my English skills. I know I need to, but I feel trapped. I feel like no matter what I do, No matter how hard I try, I can't seem to make the progress that I need to be making with my English or with my CELPIP prep.

I just can't make progress. And I feel frustrated. I feel so disappointed with myself. I somehow thought that my life would be different now that I'm here in Canada. So, uh, And yet, all I feel like I'm doing is spinning my wheels and not making any kind of progress anywhere. What should I do? Let's talk about it today.

📍 Well hello there, and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam.

I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people. People just like you, who are working towards becoming fluent in English, so we can learn from their experiences together. Now, you might be wondering, who is this guy talking to me on this podcast? Who is this guy? Well, if you are just joining us, my name is Aaron, and I am so happy to meet you.

I've been an English teacher for over 16 years and I now work to help people prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes. Like I said before, if you're just joining us, welcome. How are you doing today? I'm glad that you stopped by. I'm glad that you decided to download this episode and have a listen.

I hope that you'll sit back and relax and enjoy today's episode. And my friend, if you are not new here, if you are a regular returning listener, Hello to you too. Thank you so much for being here. I'm glad that you are joining me again today. So, new listeners, old listeners, how are you doing today? I'm glad you're here.

So, do you resonate at all with the way I open today's podcast? Experiencing so much frustration with your lack of progress with English and the lack of ability to connect with others outside of your home in English. Like maybe your workplace doesn't give you the opportunities that you hoped it would because maybe you're a remote worker or maybe you just don't have co workers around you all the time that you get to talk with.

I mean, not all workplaces are created the same. Like in my workplace, I am surrounded by people that I can talk to in English all the time. But that might not be the case for you. In fact, I know for many of you, it's not. And when you get back home again at night, when you are surrounded by people that you can talk to, probably the last thing that you want to do is to try to use English again, because you're tired, right?

You've had a long day. You just want to sit back, relax, and just use your first language. Probably your family is also tired and just wants to use their first language with you as well. I think that this is a terribly common situation that people find themselves in all the time. And this situation is, while it's common, I think it's one of the most dangerous ones that you can be in.

And today we're gonna talk about why that is.

It's dangerous because when you're in a situation like the one we just talked about, it's easy to look at all these obstacles and call them reasons why we can't use English more each day. We look at our co workers who we never see or hardly talk to as lost opportunities.

I mean, it's not for a lack of you wanting to practice, but you just can't because there's nobody around. So that blocks you from making progress. Or when you get home, maybe your family does prefer to talk with you in your first language. And like what we said, to be honest, you're just tired and you don't want to go through the mental hoops of trying to use English when you're at home.

You just want to relax. I bet that sounds mighty familiar., I bet that or a similar version of it does. And it's what you experience each day.

But here's the bad news. When it comes to allowing a lack of connections with people at work, for example, or the preferences of your family as well as your own after a busy day at work to be what keeps you from making progress with your English, my friend, you are already set up to fail when it comes to your English skills.

Why? I'm going to share some tough love with you. Again, this is not meant to be me talking with you as one who already has his life figured out. No, no, no. And it's also not meant to come across as me talking to you as if I don't struggle with these things myself. Because that is also not true. No. I'm talking with you today as someone who's in the trenches with you.

I might be fighting a different battle in that I'm not trying to develop my English skills, but I am facing the same kind of obstacle as you. And we're going to find out together what that obstacle is. So please keep listening. What I'm about to share with you is a realization that I made myself. Not myself with my own powerful brain.

No, I made it myself as I was struggling through the obstacles that I've been trying to overcome. It just dawned on me, like a lightbulb switch, and it's what I want to share with you today. I won't get into too much detail about what our situation is, other than to say it's a financial one. And it's one that my wife and I have been struggling hard with for years, years.

We've been trying everything to try to fix it. We've purchased books, we've gone through courses, we've talked to people who seem to have this particular area figured out, but it never seems to work for us. No matter what we try, we always seem to be bumping up against the same thing block the same frustrating results, the same failures.

And like I said before, it's been years. I hate to say it, but it's been years that we've been trying to do this and we've never seemed to be able to get it right.

We've tried everything except the thing that we need to actually be working on. And it's the same thing that I want to share with you. Are you ready? Go and stand in front of a mirror. I dare you to just go and stand in front of a mirror. If you're driving, don't do that. If you're outside of the house and you don't have a mirror to stand in front of, that's okay.

When you get back home, do this. Stand in front of a mirror. The reason why You and I are not making the progress that we need in your case with your English or your CELPIP skills. In my case with my financial goals that we just can't seem to make progress on. The reason why is staring right back at us.

If we're standing in front of a mirror, the reason why we're not making the progress that we need to be making is looking right back at us. Yep, that's right. If you're standing in front of a mirror, that's who is holding you back. It's you. It's me. It's not your job. It's not your boss. It's not your lack of co workers.

It's not your co workers if you have them around you and they don't want to speak in English with you. It's not your family. Nope. It's you. It's me. It's me. and the system I have been following each and every day. And it's the system that you've been following each and every day that are produced, that is producing the results that we are getting.

This is what I realized just a few weeks ago, as I was reading an article by James Clear, and I'll link to it in my show notes if you want to check it out. And I highly recommend that you do, by the way. but I want to share with you one quote from it that really struck home for me and what my wife and I have been trying unsuccessfully up to now to deal with.

Here's the quote. " If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. Focus on your system instead." That's by James Clear. I'm going to read it again. "If you want better results, then forget about setting goals. focus on your system instead." Again, that's by James Clear. And I'll have a link to that article where I pulled that quote from for you in my show notes today.

So did you catch that? Did you catch what James Clear was saying? It's not about setting goals, it's about working on your system. Now I've always tried to set goals and have big ideas around the change I was telling you that my wife and I wanted to see happen in our lives, but we never stopped to realize, I never stopped to realize that my lack of progress that we've been facing is all because of my system.

The things that I've been doing each day that are creating the results that we are getting. It wasn't because of inflation. It wasn't because we aren't making enough money. It wasn't because we have teenage boys at home. No, it's because we're not following the right system. Boom. That was the realization that hit me just a few, I think it was about a week ago that it just, it was like somebody turned a light bulb on in my mind.

The things, the results that I'm getting are because of the things that I do each and every day. If I don't like the results that I'm getting, I need to change the things that I'm doing each day. Here's another quote for you. It's by a guy named W. Edwards Deming, and this is what he says. "Every system is perfectly designed to get to get the results that it does."

I'm gonna say that again because it's a doozy. It's a powerful one, and I don't want you to miss it. " Every system is perfectly designed to get the result that it does.", and that's by Edwards Deming. You know, we tend to think that systems, I tend to think that systems are what makes computers work, for example, or what businesses use to do what they do each day.

We don't think about systems as things that people use, that you and I, regular people. , we don't think about them as things that we use to get the results that we get. At least I never did. I never thought of the way systems work in my life until I read that quote.

Systems are used in businesses. Absolutely. Systems are used in cell phones. They're used in computers. Absolutely. But you and I also use systems each and every day to make our life work. And a system has many definitions, by the way. But the one that's most helpful for what you and I are talking about right now comes from the Cambridge Dictionary.

And I'm going to link to it again in my show notes for you. Here's one of the definitions that the Cambridge Dictionary offers for systems. Are you ready? It's a way of doing things. A system is a way of doing things. The way we do things each and every day is a system.

So if you want to create change, don't focus so much on setting goals. Instead, focus a lot of attention on the system you are using that creates the results you're getting. As the James Clear article later points out, goal setting is still useful and important, but not working on the systems that create your results, the things that you and I do each and every day.

If we don't look at those and make changes with those, that means that we're never going to make the progress that we need or want to be making. In other words, if we don't focus on changing our systems, we're always going to stay stuck. But if we change the system we use, we'll change the results that we get.

That's the exciting part. What I realized about our personal situation was exactly this idea. I never, in all our years of trying to figure this stuff out, I never took a look at the system we were using and how it was creating the results that we were getting. Just like what Edwards Deming points out, our system, the one that my wife and I have been using over the years, is perfectly designed to create the results that we keep getting, even though they are negative ones.

It's perfectly designed to create that outcome. And it works, each and every time. Year after year, it continues to work. What's worse, we've continued to use that broken system, hoping that we would get a different result. I think somewhere that's a definition of crazy. Doing the same things over and over again, hoping to get a different result.

Yeah. Hello, that's me. I'm not just talking with you about this. I'm talking to myself. It never works. Doing the same things over and over again and hoping to get a different result just does not work. So since making this realization, I've started to make some changes in my life. I enrolled in a class that is focused completely on helping me change this, this specific system.

And I've started to implement what I've been learning, taking apart the broken system, and trying to add different, better working ones. And I'm excited to tell you that I've already started to see small positive changes. Nothing spectacular yet because I'm only a week or so into this, but change has already started to happen.

I didn't set bigger goals. I didn't dream a bigger dream. I'm not even working harder. Instead I'm changing my system. that I've been using, which will eventually help me change the results that I've been getting. And for the first time, for the first time in a really, really long time, I feel excited. I feel excited about what's going to happen.

I feel excited about the change that I know is coming because I'm changing the system that I'm following. And because I'm changing the system that I'm following, we're going to start getting a different result. Now let's switch this over to you. Take a moment and step back from your life. Try to imagine yourself flying way up high in an airplane.

And you're looking down at the things that you do each day. What are your systems? What system are you trying to use right now? And again, a system is a way of doing things. What are your ways of doing things that you've been using in order for you to develop your English skills or to prepare for the CELPIP exam?

Can you write those systems down? Can you see them? Can you see them for what they are? Like, the things that you do, like the building blocks that you've been putting together each and every day, hoping that they will help you achieve a certain outcome. write them down and then ask yourself a really honest question.

Are my ways of doing things, my systems producing the results that I need them to take your time and really honestly think this through. When I did that, as I was looking at how our financial situation was working, I realized that our system was broken. It wasn't working and it wasn't producing the results that we needed them to.

That means that we needed to make a change with our system. And I think that it means the same thing for you. If you realize that, no, the system, the way I've been doing things in order to build my English skills are not working. No amount of hard work following that same system will produce the result that you need or that you want.

Enrolling in 50 million other classes or, uh, you know, devoting hours and hours of extra work to follow that same system will not produce the change that you hope it will. Something needs to change inside of your system.

And this is actually good news. It's good news because guess what? Your system, it's yours. It's 100 percent in your control and it doesn't depend on anybody else. Your system does not depend on your boss. It does not depend on your co workers or a lack of them. It does not even depend on your family

being around you. It depends on you. I'm not saying that you won't have obstacles to overcome as you begin working on redesigning your system. It likely won't be easy. It likely will take some time and hard work to make happen, And it likely will require you to make some challenging changes in the way you do things.

But, I'm certain, I am positive, that if you begin changing your system, the way you do things, each day, to help you develop your English skills, if you begin developing new systems, instead of blindly continuing to do the same things as always, even though they're not working, I'm certain that you'll begin to see some positive results.

Let's work on this together. If you're tired of getting the same results with your English that you've always been getting, and today's podcast is resonating with you, it's speaking to you, then I want to invite you to join me for a three month program. Together, we'll read James Clear's book. It's called Atomic Habits, and we'll work together to redesign your English development system.

If you'd like to join me on this, you'll be responsible to buy the book. I just checked over on Kindle. It's 17 Canadian. Each week. Here's what we'll do. We'll have a reading assignment from the book to work through. Each week we'll meet together once on Zoom to talk about what we are learning, and each week we'll begin figuring out what our current systems are and what we need to do to change them so that we start getting the results that we're all looking for when it comes to our English and CELPIP prep.

Now let's talk about the costs. Just 17 for the book and 50 a month for the next three months for our study sessions together. That's it. Here's what you're going to get in return. Number one. You're going to get a new reading habit. If reading in English has been difficult for you to master, this is the program for you.

Number two, you're going to get new friends. As we meet together over the following weeks, we're going to get to know each other pretty well. You're not going to feel alone as you're working on this. You're going to realize, hey, there's other people out there who are struggling with the same thing as me.

That means we can talk about this. That means we can talk about our frustrations. That means that we can talk about the times when we fail. That means that we can talk about the times when we feel so depressed and so frustrated with our lack of progress that we want to throw our hands up in the air and give up.

You'll have someone that you can talk to. You'll have support. And best of all, the third thing that you're going to get out of this, you're going to get a new system or a new way of doing things that will actually help you to achieve the results that you want in English and on this CELPIP exam. You can try this absolutely risk free.

Join me for the first month. That's one complete month. If you don't like it, cancel. And I'll refund your money a hundred percent, except for the book, the book is yours. But if you don't like what we're doing, I will refund you that 50. I don't want to keep your money if it's not producing the results that you need or that you want.

Does that sound good? It's a risk free invitation. Join me. If it works, things are going to change for you. If it doesn't, hey. I'm going to give you your money back.

Are you interested in joining me? Please go to celpipsuccess.com/bookclub to join the waitlist. We'll be starting on July the 22nd. July the 22nd. That's not too far away. If you want to create change in the way you are working with your English skills, Don't wait on this. Join me. We'll work together to make this happen.

Just go to celpipsuccess.com/bookclub and join the wait list. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that you found today's podcast to be helpful for you. And I'll see you again next week. Bye bye.