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"Poder aprender", el pódcast que te
ayuda a aprender idiomas, hobbies
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y skills de manera más efectiva.
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Acá hablamos sobre hábitos de
aprendizaje, práctica deliberada
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y estrategias para aprender mejor.
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Mi nombre es Walter Freiberg y
te invito a desarrollar tu poder
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de aprender para alcanzar tus
metas personales y profesionales.
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When life changes, most people freeze,
panic, or wait for things to settle.
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But what if change is actually
the best time to grow?
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Today, I'm sharing four
mindset shifts that turn life
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transitions into launchpads.
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This is what we're talking about in
episode number 93 of "Poder aprender".
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I've coached people through major
life transitions: relocating to new
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countries, switching careers, starting
a new business, and I faced my own.
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What I've learned is simple: you
can't control the change and you can
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control the mindset you bring to it.
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In my early twenties, I went from being
an atheist and having no faith, no
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spiritual practice at all, to having a
very strong spiritual context in my life.
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This happened after participating
in a meditation retreat.
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That was a Buddhist meditation retreat,
and when I finished that meditation
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retreat, I suddenly was a Buddhist.
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And I didn't expect that.
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That didn't happen with the most
people, so... it is not just based
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on the persuasion powers of the
people who were leading the retreats.
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It was, in a sense, something more
in terms of being open and being
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available to a transition, to a change.
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Even though I didn't have an spiritual
context in my life and I didn't have a
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path, I knew that spiritual growth could
be part of personal development and
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it could be a part of personal growth.
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I was open to that and I was curious.
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And that's how it happened.
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And I embraced that.
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And since then, I now I have
a spiritual path and I have a
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very strong spiritual context.
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What I like the most about this is
that this change, not only increased
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my faith and my sense of purpose,
it also taught me to embrace
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the unknown in other life areas.
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In this episode, I'll give you four
mindset tools to help you not just
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survive, but grow through change.
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Let's take a look at the first tool, and
the first thing I wanna say is growth
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mindset is not an optional during a life
transition, it's something essential.
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You could say that in normal life
growth mindset is helpful, and when
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you are doing some sort of transition,
that it's absolutely essential.
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That's so important.
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Without embodying it, without
adopting this growth mindset, every
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challenge feels like a threat.
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And with the growth mindset,
every challenge feels more
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like a chance to learn.
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At one point in my author's career
when I was in the process of writing my
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ebooks for Spanish learners, I thought it
would be a cool idea to have audiobooks.
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I had written ebooks and paperbacks,
so they were available as books, and
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there was a demand on audiobooks.
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My readers wanted to have an
audio version great books.
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And I knew this, and I created so
many ways of putting that off, and
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I would tell myself I don't have the
money, I don't have the skills and
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I don't have the talent to do this.
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My frame of mind was that of a
solopreneur, a person who is very
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proud of doing everything themself.
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And up until that point, I had created
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the covers of the books,
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I had written the books myself.
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I had done my own web design, email
marketing and I thought: if I'm
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going to create or if audiobooks
are going to be available, I am the
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one who has to do the audiobooks.
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And my reasoning was: "I don't have
the money to invest in the equipment."
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I was thinking, if I'm going to
record this professional audiobooks,
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I need like the most expensive
microphones and I need, so much
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equipment and a proper recording room.
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Or maybe, I would need to rent
a place to record the audio
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And I didn't have the training and I
thought: " I don't have the skills."
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And this might sound funny as a... the
host of a skill-building podcast, right?
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I have a podcast and it's
all about skill-building,
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learning, personal development.
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And here I'm telling I cannot
learn how to narrate audiobooks.
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And the thing is that, I, it's not
that I thought I couldn't do that.
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I was realistic and I thought,
this is going to take time.
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I can learn this and
it's going to take time.
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Here, the big transition was going
from a person who does everything on
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their own to even considering getting
help and collaborating with others,
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hiring people, leading a big project.
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And, at the end, I decided to
open myself to that possibility.
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Hiring voice talents, hiring audio
editors... and now I have audiobooks.
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It was challenging, it was hard.
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And, in the process, I found out that
leadership was not all about delegation
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and finding who's gonna do something.
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There was much more, there was more about
trust, letting go of being in control of
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everything, or this pride of "I'm gonna do
everything. I'm the powerful solopreneur."
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That meant to me the difference, the
transition between solopreneur to
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entrepreneur.
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A person who
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is doing everything on their own to
someone who is able to collaborate
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with others, who's able to hire people,
who's able to lead people in a project.
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That was huge for me, and I
think this is very in line with
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what I am sharing in this point.
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A growth mindset keeps you adaptable,
keeps you hopeful, keeps you
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moving forward when everything
around you feels uncertain.
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When you are second guessing yourself.
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At the end of the day, your outcome
will depend on your ability to learn
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faster than your situation changes.
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And that was my experience.
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The second component in a growth
mindset through life transitions
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is the role of curiosity.
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Curiosity and how it helps us frame
uncertainty or reframe uncertainty.
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Sometimes we see uncertainty
as something connected to fear.
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Uncertainty creates fear, and
truth is, fear closes doors.
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And what opens doors?
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Curiosity.
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And you can't be afraid and
curious at the same time.
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It's like you have to pick one.
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One of my coaching
clients is great at sales.
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He actually leads a sales team
and he's living a bilingual life.
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He was born in the United States, so his
native language is English, and he started
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learning Spanish a few years ago, and now
he lives in a Spanish speaking country.
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And even though he's fluent in
Spanish and he hasn't started
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learning it a long time ago, there
are times where there's uncertainty,
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there are moments of insecurity.
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There are moments where
he's very self-conscious.
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And I was curious: "is this present for
him when he's doing his sales calls?".
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And I wasn't surprised to
hear that that's not the case.
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When he's at work, when he's doing his
sales calls in English, he's very curious.
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He's curious about the other person
and he wants to learn, he wants
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to know about the other person.
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He's very relaxed and he
noticed that he can apply that
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to his Spanish conversations.
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He's already great at communication.
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He's a very good listener.
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He's very empathetic, very
high in emotional intelligence.
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And you know what?
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All that is available to him in Spanish.
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That's available to him
as well, in Spanish.
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It was about connecting those two things.
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He's fully utilizing that now.
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He can remember: I'm a relaxed person.
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I'm good at connecting with people.
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I'm good at interacting with people.
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I'm good at creating rapport with people,
and this is what I do for a living.
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This is something I'm good at.
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This is something I've been
practicing for years and years.
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And I don't know how many calls, how
many sales calls he's being through.
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So he has so many hours under his
belt, and that is in his blood
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and that's part of who he is.
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And that's something that he can use
when he is approaching strangers, when
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he is starting conversations in Spanish.
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When he's feeling unsure about his
skills, he can remember that there's
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something he doesn't feel so unsure about.
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There are all the soft skills and the
personal skills, the communicational
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skills that he already mastered in a
first language, and he can transfer that
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to the other languages that he learns.
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What happens when you replace
'what if this goes wrong?' with,
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'what could I learn here?'.
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You are shifting from
paralysis to exploration.
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What happens when you replace 'I'm not
good at having conversations in Spanish'
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with, ' I'm great at connecting with
people in any language.' Curiosity can
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be a strategy, and it's something that
can transform fear into fascination.
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It can be very helpful to
reframe uncertainty into
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opportunities, into new learnings.
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When we are going through a big
life transition, sometimes we are
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tracking big changes, big shifts,
and it can be hard to keep momentum.
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What if you were to track the tiny wins?
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Big transitions feel overwhelming,
and that's why most people quit.
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The
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secret is in the small
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wins and stacking small wins.
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That's what builds momentum.
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One of my favorite stories with
this is practicing journaling,
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writing just one sentence a day.
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This is something I, I had
heard, I think that it was in
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'Atomic Habits', by James Clear.
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I think that was two years
ago, when I was getting back
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to building a journaling habit.
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And I also wanted to keep track of what I
was doing, what was occurring in my life.
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And I think this is a good example,
because many times when we feel like
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journaling is because part of us feels
that something important is going
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on or there's something that's worth
committing to paper, like writing down.
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And that's how I was feeling.
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And my context for
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journaling was 'The
Artist's Way.' And I thought
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I would need to write pages and pages.
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If it's not less than two or three
pages a day, it's not worth it.
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I need to spend 20, 30
minutes a day minimum.
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Otherwise it doesn't count.
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What I decided to do is, I
told myself: 'you know what?
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I'm going to do one sentence a
day, and I'm going to make it
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about something that went well that
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day.' A self-acknowledgment.
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And it worked nicely.
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For example, today I could write something
like: 'I recorded a podcast episode.'
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Or I could say, I don't know: 'I ran
for 30 minutes', 'I went to the gym.'
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It doesn't matter so much what the win is.
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It's just a reminder of something
that is inspiring to us, something
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that uplift us, and at the same time,
it's helpful in building a practice
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of recognizing the good things
that are happening in our lives.
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It's not that we are using
that one single sentence to
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complain... that's not the idea.
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The idea is to use something positive
and that's in the direction that... of
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creating the life we want to create.
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It might sound silly and like not
a big deal, and like... this is not
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as powerful as writing for 20 or 30
minutes, and it builds self-confidence
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and it builds self-esteem in
terms of what we can control.
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For that reason, I think it's important
to track what you can control.
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You can celebrate tiny steps.
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And tiny steps today,.
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the tiny wins today become
bigger and massive wins tomorrow.
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Progress compounds over time.
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If you keep tracking your
tiny wins, you'll stay in the
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game long enough to win big.
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And to continue winning.
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Even if... these are small
wins, it doesn't matter.
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They are still wins.
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Even if it's just one
sentence, even if it's three
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words or ten words or twenty words, it's
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still a sentence.
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And that's a complete thought.
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That's what counts.
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The fourth and last point in adopting
a growth mindset in life transitions
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is about turning your transition
story into your next success story.
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The thing is that
transitions don't define you.
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It's how you are responding
to that transition.
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In every difficult chapter in
your life, there's going to be
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a seed of a next breakthrough,
something that you can do to evolve.
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When I
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moved to Uruguay in 2022,
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I started appreciating how
people is able to quickly
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start engaging in a new
country, start engaging with
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the culture, with the people.
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And that's something I started
seeing more when I left Argentina,
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when I became an expat myself.
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And I noticed that it's possible
to create a new life and to start
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engaging with the culture even
before mastering the language.
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You can tell yourself the story
that moving countries, especially,
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going from Russia to Uruguay,
from the United States to Uruguay,
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you can tell yourself the story that
this is a very difficult transition,
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this is going to be very hard.
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And you can also create these
stories in such a way that inspire
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you and inspire other people.
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One of the clients I work here in Uruguay,
he's an expat from Russia, and he
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decided to spend time with his favorite
activities even before he was fully ready.
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So he was learning Spanish,
he wasn't fluent, and he loved
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cinema, and he loved bird watching.
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After some time, he decided to
start recreating his favorite
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hobbies in this new country.
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Even though he was a bit clumsy and
uncomfortable, he created opportunities
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to go to the cinema, to go to events
around arts, to find and to connect
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with groups of other bird watchers,
to go on trips, to take photos.
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To continue enjoying the activities and
the hobbies that he always liked, and
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he was able to take all those activities
and recreate them in a new language.
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He was able to recreate all of that
in a new language, in a new country.
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Your story could inspire someone else.
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And, more importantly, it
can inspire your future self.
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You can tell yourself your own story
in such a way that it will create
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even more possibility for yourself.
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In this case, this person can tell
himself the story: 'I am able to recreate
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my activities and my hobbies in any
country.' if I can do it once, I can do
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it twice, and I can do it over and over.
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This is something I can do.
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What other things would
be available to him?
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Your transition is not the end.
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Actually, it's more of a plot
twist, and it's something that
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sets you up for your next win.
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If you're navigating a big life
change right now, lean into growth.
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Stay curious, track your tiny
wins, and trust your story is
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unfolding in the right direction.
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Share this episode with
someone who needs it.
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If you want extra resources and support
through your transition, visit my
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personal site walterfreiberg.com and
sign up to my email newsletter.
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Find a link in the notes of this episode.
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Podés escuchar "Poder aprender"
en las principales plataformas
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de pódcast y en YouTube.
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También te invito a suscribirte al
newsletter semanal en poderaprender.com
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para enterarte de los nuevos
episodios del pódcast y otras
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novedades para aprender mejor.
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En redes sociales podés buscar
este pódcast como "poder aprender".
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Encontrá todos los
links en la descripción.
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Y, si te gusta mucho, si te sirve el
contenido del pódcast, te invito a dejar
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una reseña y una calificación de cinco
estrellas en Spotify o Apple Podcasts para
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que estos episodios lleguen a más personas
y que más gente pueda aprender mejor.
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Eso es todo por ahora.
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Nos vemos en un próximo episodio.
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Sigan aprendiendo y
acuérdense de practicar bien.