Are you FREE?

Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A.J. Hogue, where A.J. 's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all, without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's A.J.

with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. Hi, I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native American.

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That's where you get success with your English speaking. Go to EffortlessEnglishClub.com. EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Welcome, welcome. Today we're going to talk about freedom.

Freedom. What is freedom? And we're going to do a little exercise. Meaning I want you to think about something. We're going to lead you into... kind of go through some thoughts, some questions, and connect it to that.

Then you'll think about your freedom and kind of decide how free are you. And I want to help you today get an idea in your mind. What is freedom exactly?

For you, what does it mean for you? Freedom, freedom. like financial freedom and just freedom in general. What kind of life do you want? You know, it's good to be specific.

So today we're going to talk about this. How to really get clear in your mind, how to be clear in your mind about the life you want. Because see, sometimes I think we get...

Sometimes I think we get distracted or we get attracted to ideas that really are not our own, right? Like from movies, from TV, from people we know. And we think, oh yeah, yeah, so I've got to make this amount of money. I have to do this.

I have to buy that. And we have these ideas. We think all of that will make us happy. But we don't really specifically think about the exact life that will make us happy.

So I think it's very good to be specific about it. So today we're going to be specific. You and I both. I've already done this. But I'm going to help you do it so that you can imagine your kind of perfectly free life.

The life that will give you the most meaning and happiness. And maybe you're already living it now, which would be fantastic. But you're not. Either way, it's good to know.

Now we're live on YouTube again. You know... I'm waiting on this company to change their software to fix the Facebook problem. That might be a few weeks.

It might be a couple months. I don't know. It's not my company, so I just have to wait until they fix it and they tell me. The next upgrade, hopefully, will fix it.

Until then, we'll be live on YouTube. Now, I did decide that we'll do our movie club on Twitch. Let's do the movie club on Twitch, not on YouTube. So we'll do it on Twitch.

That's kind of different. It's a different platform. Twitch is a streaming, video streaming platform site. And hey, Lisa. And it's owned by Amazon. So it's still a big company, you know, West Coast company, unfortunately.

But still, I don't really care if they ban my Twitch account. They can ban it. I don't care. So we'll do it on Twitch. There's also another one called BitTube.

I need to play with it, though, because BitTube has a few... They still have some bugs. I've had some issues, some problems with my BitTube account. But that one is much more free speech.

So that could be a possible one also. If we have any problems on Twitch, then we'll switch to BitTube. All right, so let me just talk, let's go ahead and do this, let's do this kind of, what do I want to say, exercise about freedom. I just wanted you to think it through.

Because today I did a walk-in talk today and I talked about, you know, one of my favorite topics, simplicity. I talked a little bit about our next book, the next book club, which will be,

Your Money or Your Life. That's the name of the book we'll do after Brave New World. And I talked about some of the ideas in that book. And one of the basic ideas is that true wealth, true freedom is measured in time.

So often we think about financial freedom, for example, is a popular phrase, financial freedom, and we measure it in money, in dollars. And we think, I have to have this money. But what really you should think about it is time, because time is really what measures freedom, not money. Not money.

You can have a lot of money and not be free. So it means, what does it mean in terms of freedom? It just means that each day... that you are kind of the master of your own time.

You decide what you will do each day. You're living each day exactly as you choose to live. Meaning you're not going to a job that you hate because you have to. You're not stuck somewhere for hours in a building where you don't want to be.

That's not freedom. So what I'd like you to do is to think about Your perfect day, your ideal day. If you could imagine, you know, that... You are now totally financially free.

You have all the money and all the time you need and want. What would you do? Imagine it. And you can do this after the show if you want. Write it down.

But really think of the entire schedule of your kind of typical day that you would love. Like your perfect day that you want to live. Just an everyday. Not like a special day like climbing some great mountain or something.

But I mean your normal everyday. What would it be like? Like what time would you wake up? What would you do in the morning? What would you do in the afternoons?

What would you do in the evenings? Exactly, right? What would you do at night? How would you fill all those hours each day if you had total freedom? You didn't have to go to work, didn't have to go to a job, didn't have to do anything like that that you don't want to do.

Maybe a more important question too is like, you know, who would you spend time with? How many hours of those days would you be spending time with people that you care about, that you enjoy, that you love?

How many hours per day would you be learning, learning things? And what would you like to learn? English, of course, but what else? How many hours of those days would you be doing physical activity, you know, exercise, training, walking?

Would you be outdoors a lot or would you be indoors? How many of those hours would you spend reading, seeing your friends, etc., right? Then you start to get a more clear picture, like what does it mean? What exactly does it mean for you to be free?

And see, the reason this is powerful is that most people, most people when they do this exercise exactly, they realize they don't need so much money. Because most people, when they do this and they think, okay, what's kind of my wonderful, typical day? Like every day, what would I do on my kind of wonderful day?

And for most people, it actually does not require much money. You know, I did this myself many years ago and I realized exactly that. Well, I want to be outdoors. I like walking.

I'd love to go walking. I'd like to have a lot of time for physical training, running or walking. You know, maybe do some strength exercises. I want to be able to spend lots and lots of time with my family, you know, with my wife, and of course now I have children.

I want plenty of time for my friends, you know, to talk to them on the phone or, you know, to see them. I want lots of time to read, like reading and learning just about anything I'm interested in.

I wanted lots of times for just thinking. I just like to sit and think a lot. I like to sit at a coffee shop or when I'm walking and just think of ideas.

I love doing effortless English and love teaching, so I want time to do this, to do this show, to make lessons occasionally. So that's my normal day. And of course, eating and time to go out to eat sometimes.

It's time for meditation, prayer. You know, and as I, as I wrote this down and I was very specific, like what would I do in the morning? What would I do next? What would I do next?

What would I do next for this, you know, great day? Exactly how I want to live. And then I looked at it and I realized almost everything was free. Almost everything in that day was free.

It didn't cost money. Okay, food, a little bit of money, cost a little money. But it was my dream day. And at that time I was working in the past when I,

When I did this exercise, I was working. I was very unhappy. I was spending eight hours a day at a job I didn't like, that I hated. I was spending probably two more hours a day going to the job and coming home from the job.

I was spending time each day recovering from the job, just being tired and feeling bad. So I was very unhappy. I was not spending my day how I wanted to. Most of my hours per day were doing things I really didn't like at this job.

So as I made this list and I went through and I made this kind of wonderful schedule, perfect schedule, but it really did. I was amazed that it required almost no money.

And that was very motivating for me because then I realized, well, I can just live a simple life and have this perfect dream life that I want. And I don't need to make a lot of money. I don't need to be a multimillionaire. I don't need to be a big billionaire.

I can just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut my expenses, live very, very, very simply. And I can have this, all this freedom, or at least most of it. At that time, I didn't have a business. At that time, I imagined, well, at least I can work just a little bit.

Maybe I only work three hours a day instead of eight hours. And I can get a job near my house. So no, I don't have to go there for one hour and come back. So I could, instead of 10 hours a day doing something I hate, I could get it down to like three hours.

And then I have tons of time, a huge amount of time to go walking in the park and read and study and learn and think and do all these things. So it was very motivating, very excited. And this was a big motivation for me to simplify my life. to eventually live in my car, live in my van, stop working full time, all the things I did before Effortless English.

Now another part, another part to think about, so that's daily, that's your everyday life. Then another thing to think about is monthly. So, you know, like your perfect month. Are there some special things you would love to do every month?

Like maybe, like for me, at that time, not so much now, but at that time, going camping. I wanted to go camping every month. And I hope to do it again with my children when they get bigger. So, go camping.

I wrote that down. Maybe take a little local trip, you know, where I'm living. Go do some local trips. Maybe go to see some music a couple times a month.

Some live music with my friends. Things like that. So I started making that list. Monthly, what would I do? Some special things every month. And again, it was not expensive.

Music, I realized, if I see local bands, small local bands... They're very cheap. You know, the big famous guys, of course, you might spend lots of money, $100, $200 for a ticket. But just some local band at a local place, you might spend just $10 or $5.

And now I'm not so much into that. I don't do that. But at that time, I did. And again, I found, you know, go to see a movie. And again, I figured out ways.

I could see, I go to a cheaper movie theater where they show older movies and there are other ways to save money. So again, I found, wow, most of the things on my monthly list also are cheap or free.

And then finally, you do, as you might guess, you do yearly or annually. What are some things you would like to do your perfect year? Maybe there's certain holidays. Maybe you want to visit your family.

Maybe travel. Like for me, it was travel. That was a big one. I wanted to take a trip every year. And like a long trip, like a two-month trip, something like that.

So that's probably the most expensive thing on my list at the time, on my little dream schedule. The most expensive thing was traveling each year. So then I had to figure out, well, how can I How can I reduce the cost of travel?

And I realized, well, number one, I can go to countries and places that are cheaper. Don't go to the most expensive places. Don't go to San Francisco.

Go to some place that's much, much cheaper. And then I realized, well, I could find other ways to make money. And this is actually how I started getting interested in teaching English. Because I thought, well, if sometimes I want to travel...

In other countries, I could teach. I could teach English, even just like privately. You know, just teach some people at a coffee shop to make enough money, make a little extra money for traveling.

And if I travel super cheaply, right, like just backpacking, stay in the cheapest possible places, even that would not be too expensive. It was a little expensive, right? You still had to buy plane tickets and travel's not cheap, but... I could make it cheaper, and I did.

And for, again, when I didn't have much money in the beginning, for many years I was a super, super, super tight budget traveler. My first trips to India, my budget was so low. I stayed in the cheapest, cheapest places in India as I traveled.

But I managed to travel two and a half months just as a student with very little money. And then, you know, I did the same thing in Thailand, traveling very, very cheaply. And then later, you know, now I've got plenty of money, so I spend a little more when I travel. But...

You don't have to. I realized even that, maybe I realized at that time, maybe I can't do it every year, but maybe every two years I could still travel. And again, I don't have to be super rich. I need some money to travel, but I can travel very cheaply.

And again, I don't need to become super rich. So this was all very motivating. And what it shows you is that, see, I think sometimes we get caught by the advertising and the TV and the culture.

And we imagine financial freedom means expensive cars, big houses, millions of dollars. And this is the idea we get in our head. That's what you need. And traveling in the five-star hotels.

But really, I think most of us don't care about that stuff, really. And so actually, most of us don't need any of that. And most of us need much less money than we think to be financially free. Because it's about your time.

It's about your time freedom. You can become much more free just by, instead of working full-time, you can cut down and then only work part-time. And then you have lots and lots and lots of time.

So anyway, I'd like to just do this activity. Just as a curiosity, do it. Your perfect day schedule, your perfect monthly schedule, your perfect annual or yearly schedule.

And then after you do that, after you write that down, kind of estimate how much would it all cost? How much would you actually need to make each year to have that life?

right? If you didn't have to go to work or if you only needed to work part time and if you might be able to cut it down lower, lower, lower the amount of money and then just work less, work less and have a lot more freedom in your life.

You know, and if you have children, maybe homeschooling. Like for me, homeschooling is part of that now. But again, homeschooling is super cheap. In fact, it's basically free.

So anyway, think about it. Think about it and because I'd love for you to have that freedom and, uh, You don't have to have the TV version, right? You don't have to have the movie version with all the money and cars and houses and the high-stress job.

You don't have to do that. You don't. Okay, then. Let's go to questions and comments. I'm curious what you all are saying. All right. Let's see. Subham Dutta says, lots of love from India.

Speaking of India, what you're doing on social media is very appreciable. It's not just about learning English. It's more about being a good person to find a way for living in this rough world. Yes, that's right.

That is indeed my goal and purpose. Thank you, Subham. That's very nice. All right, just kind of scrolling through. Lots of people saying hi, as usual.

Oh, yeah, so Alexei says, don't forget about books to force our brain working and avoid TV and similar stuff. Yes, and see, what's great about that, books are fantastic, a great way for freedom in general, mental freedom. And they're also, they're better than TV and movies and they're cheap because you can go to the library. You can go to the library and also the great old books, they're usually also cheap if you just buy them.

So many of those classic old books, if you look on Amazon.com or some other bookseller, you'll notice that the best books are often really, really cheap.

And it's the new kind of not so good books that are the expensive ones. So it's great. And then again, libraries are even better because then it's totally free.

Yeah, so Ibrahim Ali says, my dream is to travel all around the world for the rest of my life. And see, me too, Ibrahim. That's, you know, exactly what my dream was. That was my big one.

Everything else for me was very, very simple life. But you can still do it. You know, you can travel very, very cheaply. Now, can you travel cheaply in New York City and San Francisco?

Yeah, you can, but you have to be creative. You can. You've got to maybe make some connections so you can stay with people instead of paying money. You could find ways to maybe do a little bit of work while you're traveling so you're making a little bit of money as you go.

You become a backpacker and keep your expenses super low. You eat at grocery stores instead of restaurants. You can go into groceries and You know, just buy fresh food and make sandwiches and things like that.

So there are many ways you can cut expenses. You can even take buses instead of flying. I did that in India. I took buses and trains all around India, northern India.

And it was much, much cheaper, much, much cheaper. And it's actually, in some ways, it's more difficult. It's physically more difficult, right? Because I can't tell you how many stories I have about...

long night bus trips in India on roads, bang, bang, bang, and getting no sleep and exhausted. But it's also kind of an adventure. You get great stories from those bus trips and the train trips, the long ones, and you meet interesting people more than flying, flying so fast. Flying is convenient.

It's nice. But those other kinds of travel are also interesting and cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. You can camp. Some people go camping. In America, if you traveled around America, camping is a good way to do it.

America has beautiful countryside. Really great national parks and state parks where you can go camping and hiking. Lakes and mountains. Just amazing.

So many in the United States. So, so many. It's a great way to travel America and just do lots of camping. Get a little lightweight tent, like an ultralight backpacking tent.

and take, you know, oh, there is a train, but mostly buses. So there's just many ways you can do it. It still costs money, yes, but you can do it much more cheaply and have that dream. And in many ways, budget travel is more interesting.

You actually meet more people, local people in general. And Abraham, with the follow-up question, can you talk about the benefits of travel? Well, there's so many benefits. Personally, psychologically, I'll just talk about my own experience.

The first benefit, so my first trip was to India. It was a two-and-a-half-month trip to India. I've told the story before, some of the stories. It was an amazing trip.

Yeah. So many stories in that short time. And actually, because I had no money and I was traveling so cheaply, it forced me to do local transportation. not just flying.

So I had to take local trains, local buses, rickshaws, things like this. So I met so many local people. And I had a few bad experiences where some people stole some money, not much money, but changed from me or tried to cheat me. A few things like that, that happens.

But also I had a lot of great experiences, met some amazing people, met some other travelers who were great. The first thing it did is build my confidence. It was the first time I did something that different and challenging by myself. I went alone to India, a place I really didn't know much about.

I'd read it in the guidebook a little bit, but I'd never traveled outside of America. Really never even traveled in America much. So my self-confidence by the end of the trip, it was stressful in the beginning, kind of scary. But by the end of the trip, I was so much more confident, you know, because you have to make all these decisions by yourself.

Where are you going to stay? You got to find a place to stay. If someone's trying to cheat you, do you trust them or not? You know, figuring out, learning about the local people, the local culture, deciding where to go, all these things.

I got sick. I was in the hospital for three days on that first trip. Um, all kinds of things happened. By the end of it, I was so much more confident as a traveler, but really much more confident just as a person.

It really helped me grow up a lot. Um, and of course, after that, I was, I just left travel. I couldn't stop after that. Uh, and then of course the other benefits are, you know, I learned, so it opened my worldview huge, right?

Hugely. Hugely. Before that trip, I only knew America, right? I'm American. I grew up in America. I never was outside of America. So all of my view about everything in life was the American view and only the American view.

So once I traveled India two and a half months, I realized, wow, you know, there is a completely different way of life that is extremely different than the United States. Very different.

Food, culture, just a way of living, housing, houses, family life, everything in India different. And many of the things I liked in India better than America, not everything. I like my country, but I realized, oh, everything in America is not the best.

I love their close family life, for example. I like that most Indians live a more simple life. Their food is fantastic, better than American food. There are so many things that I really loved, and so it opened my world a lot, my worldview, which also gave me a lot more wisdom and more knowledge.

Number three is just exciting. It's fun. It's interesting. It's stimulating. You know, one thing is in... It's nice to have a peaceful life at home and a simple life.

It's great. But we also need a balance because sometimes we get stuck, right, where life becomes the same, just doing exactly the same thing every day, every day. And I was doing that at that time as a student, just going to class, study, take the test, write the paper. And I'd been doing it for years, you know.

I was in high school, then undergrad university, then graduate school, right? So I was in grad school and I had all these years of school and it's just the same thing every year, every day. And suddenly when you travel, every day feels so long. Every day is unexpected.

You never really know what's going to happen. It's like a surprise. It makes you feel alive. It makes you feel alive because you never know who will you meet.

In your normal life, you kind of see the same people every day. You do the same things. But when you're traveling, especially when you travel like that, like that budget travel, don't plan it too much. Then all these surprises, you meet some amazing person you never expected.

You have some amazing experience. Maybe you have a bad experience. It's very tough and challenging. But all these things happen and you have these big problems and you miss your train.

Now what do I do? And it's all these things in it. That three and a half months in India, it felt like a year. It felt like I was gone a year. It felt much longer than just two and a half.

Did I say three and a half? Two and a half. It felt much longer than just two and a half months, eight, ten weeks, something like that. It felt like a whole year of experience in that short time.

And I can go on and on and on about the great things about travel, but those are a few. Those are a few. Yes, Mark, I agree with you about global warming.

Mark Merrick. I think that's Merrick, right? Is that Mark? Merrick? Is that you also? Or someone different? I think your picture looks the same as Merrick.

Okay. Tong, I'm going to give you a... Tong Nguyen says, well, you can get sick very bad and need a lot of money to be treated. Not if you learn to fast.

This is one of the things I love about fasting now. You can heal yourself without spending lots of money. You do dry fasting. If you get really sick, dry fast.

I wish I knew this in the past. I wish I knew. I could have saved myself some money. Now luckily I've been healthy most of my life so I haven't. I have not had a lot of big health expenses but you really don't have to worry about that so much.

Daniel, Patrono, I travel around Indonesia. See, that's great. It's also an inexpensive country. It was really amazing. Have you ever been in Bali? I have.

I've been to Bali a couple times. I actually have quite a good friend who lives in Bali, who's from my home state. He's married to an Indonesian woman.

N says, couch surfing is a website to stay with local people and get to know the culture without any money. Exactly. Exactly. Check that out. Couch surfing.

Couch is like the thing you sit on and surfing, like surfing in the ocean. Put them together in one word. Couch surfing. There's more than one website about that.

And it's a great way to, like especially staying in places that are kind of expensive and like you want to stay in London or you want to do Paris or New York or San Francisco or Tokyo, then things like couch surfing or dorms, you know, that kind of stuff helps a lot.

Shirley Diaz says, this is the first time I met you live. It's a pleasure. Thanks a lot for your messages. Shirley from Brazil. Thank you, Shirley. Brazil.

Ah, someone asked me about my teacher's course. I'm just thinking about this today. I've listened to your lessons for a long time. It says Priscilla. Candido.

I'm grateful because I love your tips and ideas. They've helped me to be a better person. I'm interested in your teacher's course. I think next year, I'm thinking beginning of next year, I will do my teacher training course again.

So I've got to We've got to get the business English course first this year, soon. Well, that'll be open again, business English conversations. And then next year, I'll get the teacher training course going, maybe beginning of next year.

Dalal says, in the flight, in first class, in business class, they have many privileges better than economy class. I noticed this for long trips like London. Well, yes, they do.

But if you don't have money, you can't do it. Now, I do fly business class now, and it is wonderful on those long trips. I only do it for long trips, but I do fly business class on long trips. And yes, indeed, it's really nice.

But on the other hand, if I didn't have money, I wouldn't do it for many, many, many, many. Let me tell you. Many years. I flew back in economy on 18-hour flights, 22-hour trips, okay?

Long, long, long trips flying in economy. But you know what? It's a little sacrifice, but you're not going to die. And if you do it, then you can travel.

You can still see the world and you can save money, right? So is business class nice? It is nice, but you don't need it. That's my point. You don't need it.

If you have the money, great. So see, here's a good point. Lukasz says, my dream is to go run or walk because from five weeks I can't walk because of an injury. I understand already how simple things are important to be happy.

Lucas is giving us a good point too. We forget what we already have. We forget to enjoy and appreciate what we already have. Like I said, I love walking.

I just love being outdoors walking every day. Really, it's probably my favorite thing to do. And it's free. But so many people forget about this until you get hurt, you get injured like Lukash, and then you can't walk.

And then suddenly you realize, wow, walking is such a wonderful thing. It's so nice to be able to go out and walk around. So we forget all the stuff we have because it's kind of normal. And this is part of also living this wealthy, free life is that by doing it, we can't.

Focus on appreciation, right? Appreciating all the things we already have. Things like just, yeah, going for a walk, playing with your children, talking to your friends, seeing your family members, looking at the trees in the park. These little simple things.

Having a nice tea or a coffee at a cafe, right? Good point. Nice comment. Like Igor Mudrik says... Most real values in our lives are free or cheap, but a lot of people don't appreciate it.

Yeah, see, good point. He just repeated. He said what I said. Great minds think alike, Igor. In modern world, number one value is money and it's sad. Well, and what's sad about it is it's a mistake.

People don't understand what money is. It's just a, it's not even real. It's just an agreement. It's just play. It's really like monopoly money, right?

It's just we agree we can use it to buy things. But money by itself doesn't mean much. That's why it's important to identify what are the real things that bring happiness and a good life for you.

And then you start to realize most of them don't cost a lot. And then, do you still need some money? Yeah. But you need less than you think. Less than you think.

Lots of people saying thank you. Thank you, Rahim Udin. That's nice. Thank you. Yeah, okay. Now, this is a good point. This is how people get trapped.

And I'm sorry, my... I have like zero ability to pronounce Chinese. Yi Swan Lai says, I want to stop being a salary slave, but the most difficult reason is my current salary is much higher than average in my country. I worry I have no other skill to make money.

Yep, right. That's how you get trapped. That's how you get trapped. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. You're just comparing yourself to other people.

Who cares? It doesn't matter if your salary is higher than average. So what? The question is, how much do you need to live a free life, to be happy? How much do you need?

And then, you know, what jobs or, you know, how can you reduce the amount of work you have so you can live that life? It doesn't matter if it's more than most people or less. It doesn't matter. I mean, most of my life, I made much less than most people.

I was a social worker. I taught English in schools. And I had a whole lot of other jobs like security guard, sandwich delivery, I worked in a shoe store, I worked in a bookstore, on and on and on, these cheap jobs.

Dishwashing dishes, you know. Yeah, Lazaro Prudenzio says, freedom is not the absence of commitments, true, but the ability to choose and commit myself. What is best for me?

Yeah, it's the choice. It's choosing to use your time and your energy as you choose, doing what is most important, most meaningful to you. So it doesn't mean be lazy. Most people don't want to just be lazy.

That's not freedom. I mean, it is a kind of freedom, but it's not very fun, honestly. Try it. Honestly, I had this idea, actually. A little bit. I did have a little bit of an idea right as I was starting Effortless English.

And it started to make money. And I realized, ah, I can quit my job quite soon. Soon I'll be able to quit my job, never work again at a job. And I was having a lot of money, making a lot of money, compared to my life before.

I mean, I make a huge amount of money compared to my life before. And so I thought... Well, I was so unhappy working. I had worked like 20 years of working jobs I hated, 20 years of unhappiness with jobs.

And so the idea that finally I could quit and never work a job again, let me tell you how happy that made me. It was one of the greatest happinesses of my life. And I kind of imagined, well, I'm just going to be lazy, man. I'm just going to lay around.

I'm not going to do anything. And I'll just travel around and do vacations all the time. It'll be fantastic. And honestly, it was. I did it for my wife and I both.

We did it for a few years. We also went to seminars. We took lots of trips and things. And it was a nice break for sure from working. But what I found is that eventually I started to get bored.

Eventually I started to get bored just going on vacation. We'd go on vacation and I'd find I was getting really bored on vacation because my life at home was already relaxed. I wasn't working anymore.

I didn't need a vacation. My whole life was a vacation, so I didn't need to go to some beach somewhere and sit around because then I'd get really, really, really bored because I was already had a huge amount of time to relax.

And so I realized, yeah, okay, no, I still want to do things. I still want to do work. I still enjoy doing teaching and doing apparatus English. I still enjoy learning.

I want to learn things. But I got to choose what I wanted to do, choose what was meaningful for me. And that was the key difference. Hey, Nassar says, Nassar Trust says, I've got my Twitch account ready for the main event, Red Pill, the Matrix movie.

Nassar, great. Yeah, wonderful. It was a great, the movie thing was a great suggestion. We're going to do Twitch. Twitch is a video streaming platform, like I said, video, but mostly, most of it's video games, but you can stream anything you want.

So I'll stream our movie club. Now, the movie club, let me explain. This is not movie technique. This is not a movie technique course because that is very slow.

Now, it's very good, but it's very, very slow, very detailed. And when I do a movie technique lessons, I will do the entire movie, every single bit. And I can't do that with copyright publicly.

So this is a movie club, so it's just like our book club. We're just more appreciating the movie and discussing the ideas of the movie. So I might explain a few. I might show a little small piece of it, explain a few words or phrases, but mostly I'll be explaining the general scene, what the general idea is, and then discussing the main messages, just like we do with the book club.

And we'll do it on Twitch. Why not? Twitch.tv, by the way. You can follow me there. Twitch.tv. It's not .com. It's .tv. Twitch.tv. And Twitch.tv is... My account is A.J.

Hogue, just my name again. A-J-H-O-G-E. Oh, thank you. Gabriel Inacio gave me $2 on a super chat. Is it $2 or 2 rubles? Or 2 R? I'm not sure what an R is.

But anyway, in some currency... That's very nice, Gabrielle. Thank you. Noradin Atiki says, My dream is to meet you someday. Well, there's two ways to do that.

Number one, you can travel to Osaka, Japan. Send me a message. Let me know before we can arrange a time. Have a coffee or something. The other way is when I travel around the world, watch my gab, watch my Twitter,

And then, you know, maybe you can meet me if I'm near you. Have you ever been to Sri Lanka? Knowledge Lanka asks. I have not, but I'd like to. AJ, come to Brazil.

There's a Hare Krishna temple there. Very nice, says. Let me see if I can read the whole name. Carolina Almeida Ana Almeida. Wonderful. I want to go to Brazil for sure.

Brazil, amazing place. Narendra inviting me to Nepal. I've been to Nepal two times. One of my very favorite countries and amazing food and beautiful mountains and great people.

Everything's great. And Ashok says, if you visit India, let me know. I'll definitely go back to India someday too. I want to go back. It's been a long time for India for me.

Christy, hey, good to see you, Christy, again. Your way of financial freedom is really inspiring. To live simply also helps me practicing my self-control on anything, especially buying more things. Thanks, AJ, you're inspiring.

Yeah, that's right. It brings a greater self-discipline, self-control, which long-term brings more happiness to your life. Elena asking about homeschooling. I don't have such a thing in my country.

Is it legal here if children don't go to school? Who teaches children at home? The parents? Yes. Usually one or both parents. Elena, the best thing to do, I don't know, for each country there is a group called the...

Let me see. Homeschool Legal Defense Association. H-S-D-L-A. I follow them on my Twitter account, so I'll retweet them. So go to their website, and they actually have on their website, you can search by country.

You can look at each country and find the law. the laws about homeschooling and see is it legal in my country or not. They also, if you join, it's very cheap to join them. They will give you legal advice.

They will help you. Their lawyers will help you if you're worried about that. Like it's no problem. In the United States, it's legal. Every state is legal.

It's complicated in America because each state is different. It's legal in Japan. It's not super common, but you can do it. So anyway, check that. The parents teach.

I mean, you could hire, I guess if you have money, you could hire a tutor to teach your children if you wanted to, like the kind of rich people in the past used to do. But usually it's one or more parents doing it.

How to do it, there are so many ways to do it. You can have a very, very, very strict, organized system. You can buy a curriculum. There are many homeschooling curriculae.

meaning complete plans of everything, telling you exactly what to do, exactly what to teach, exactly what to read, exactly what to study. They even have their own materials they'll send to you in the mail or online. There are also ones that are online.

So those are the very, very organized ones. And then at the other end, there's the very, very flexible, not organized, where you're just kind of learning each day and there's not much of a plan.

And then there's kind of everything in the middle. My approach will be in the middle. I'll have probably a couple hours a day with my children that is organized where I want to teach the main, the core things. I've got certain things I want to teach.

Of course, in the beginning, reading, you know, reading, rhetoric, writing, basic math. And we'll be reading lots of classic stories and learning about our own family heritage and things like that.

But then most of the day, so that's only a couple hours a day. It's all you need. When you're really focused, you don't need so much time. The schools waste huge amounts of time.

That's why they need six hours or more because they're wasting a gigantic amount of time. When you're at home with just a few of your own kids, you can boom, boom, boom, focus, focus, focus. You can do the same work in two hours.

So then the rest of the day, what will we do? Then we just get to, it's more flexible and open. We'll explore the world. We'll read books. We'll go to the library.

We'll play games. We'll do all that stuff. So anyway, I will be talking more about homeschooling because I'll be doing it myself. Let me just jump down to the bottom because you guys are typing so fast.

Let me see if I get that super chat real quick if you ask a question. Nope, just a thank you, Gabrielle. That's really nice of you. Now, Saadia Ceylan says it's hard to make money in a foreign country because they cannot speak your language.

Well, it is indeed. You're right about that. It is harder to make money abroad. I mean, I was lucky I could teach English. But, you know, if you want to travel, usually most people work in their own country, save money, then they travel using the money they saved.

Asma Abbas asking... Thanks for your hard work. You're awesome. Just a little suggestion. Can you do lessons about Yiddish, Latin, or French words that are common in English?

Again, thank you. Yeah, Yiddish, I don't know, but in terms of Latin and French, there's just a huge amount of words that come from Latin and French. And really, you know, of course, most of the French words come from Latin. So if we can trace it back to Latin, there's a gigantic number.

Um, I mean, I could do it, but it's really like a large part of English. Yeah, like Namah says, I knew a person. I asked him once, do you think you're free while working at the coffee shop?

So he's working at a coffee shop. He said, yes, I feel free because there's a great relationship here and nobody is the boss. Right. Right. I tell you, a nice peaceful job that you like and you enjoy the people and you have plenty of free time so you're not working too many hours, that is much better than a job that pays a lot of money but is high stress and you don't like the people and people aren't friendly and you're unhappy and you're working too much.

I'd rather have the cheaper and relaxed job. Knowledge Lanka again says, I've been listening to your podcast, watching your YouTube videos for seven months. Now I can speak English fluently. Thanks a lot, AJ.

You're the best teacher I've ever seen in my life. Well, thank you. That's great. And see, people just use the podcast and they get results. If you're motivated and disciplined, you can just use the podcast only.

It's free. A lot of people like to get my courses because they're organized and maybe a little faster, but you don't have to. If you don't have any money, it's okay. There's still solutions.

Kumar says, you are the single person army of energy and motivation. I appreciate you. That's a nice way to say it. Thank you. Lisa. Hey, good, Lisa. Good to see you.

I decided not to work for a couple of months. Thank God I can take a break. It's so nice, right? I can join the Effortless English Show every day. Because I'm not worried about my future at all.

I can say I'm free. I'm so grateful. It's a wonderful, wonderful feeling. It is, Liza. I agree. As I said, you know, really for me, that freedom started when I started living in my car.

And I mean, I can't, it's hard for me to describe this, you know. So I've talked about it kind of before, you know, I was working jobs. I was so unhappy.

I decided to save money, live in my car, the first time just one summer. The second time was a whole year, but the first time just for the summer. But still, I'd been out of school a while.

I'd been working all these jobs and so unhappy working all these jobs, you know, job after job after job. And it's hard to describe how happy I was that one summer, the first time I finally had three months without a job, just to do anything I wanted. Did I have a lot of money? No, I was living in my car.

But every day to wake up when I wanted to wake up, to go to the park and jog and walk with my dog, to take a bath in the river, to go to a coffee shop and just sit downtown and relax, to meet my friend Kenny that I mentioned and chat with him, to go and just do fun activities, clubs and sports and things like that.

In the evenings, again, to go for long walks in the evenings, to eat at just cheap little restaurants for students in my hometown. It was amazing. It was like a huge relief, like all this weight and pressure off of me.

And that's when I knew, I knew I could not go back. I could not go back to stressful jobs again, that I had to find a way to have that kind of peaceful, simple life.

And, you know, I tried many things after that. But that was really a big change in my life. And it is. It's an amazing feeling when you get it back. Okay, a couple more and then I've got to go watch babies.

Yeah, Kinoko. Kinoko OG says... Kinoko means... Mushroom in Japanese. I got a DVD of Matrix for just $1 at a thrift shop. Lucky. There you go. Yeah, go find the Matrix, guys.

It's an old movie, so you should be able to find it for cheap or even free. Yeah, so like, you know, Sach Bela says, Really, in my spare time, we do a lot of things. For example, drawing.

See, drawing is so cheap. You get a paper and pencil and you can draw and it's a wonderful activity. You can teach yourself to draw. There's a good book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain that you can learn drawing pretty well with that book.

Also, see your videos. It's fun because we love English language and, of course, we try to do your gestures. Thank you, AJ. Yeah, right. So also like learning languages, right?

You can just make that a hobby where, of course, you're learning English, and when you're happy with your English, you could go learn another language, learn Spanish, learn Japanese, learn something.

People like Steve Kaufman, that's their hobby. He gets so much enjoyment from that and doesn't have to spend a lot of money. Oh, here's Gabrielle who gave me the super chat. Hugs from Brazil.

I feel I'm free because as a spiritist, I don't chase too much money. Exactly. I believe in reincarnation, so we're here in this world to evolve, helping each other like you do. Gabriel, wonderful, very nicely said, and that's great.

Exactly. You know, when you get that life, a more spiritual life, this is one of the great things about it. You begin to find that appreciation and love and joy in people and experiences instead of things.

And then you're free and you're rich even if you don't have a lot of money. Yeah, like Namah says, kind of a negative definition of freedom. Nowadays people have another mindset. They use freedom incorrectly.

They think, I'm free. I can do whatever I want by damaging others. But it's not right. Exactly. They are free in a way, but they're using their freedom very badly.

You can be free and use it very badly and become very unhappy. Freedom is not the only thing. Freedom is maybe a first step. I'll tell you that sometimes the hardest part is how to use your freedom.

How to use it to be happy. How to use it to have a good life. Not because you could be free, I guess, and have lots of money and use it to drink and buy lots of stuff and do terrible things and be really unhappy.

Right? You have the choice. So, yeah. Mansuri is asking about BJJ. Are you a BJJ practitioner? It's great. What belt do you have? I was. For one year, I have not trained.

I'm still just a white belt. They do stripes at my gym, so I think I have four stripes. I was getting closer to blue belt, but then I had a bunch of things happen with

specifically with my babies and medical issues and things like that with them. And so I haven't been there for a year. But I'll go back. I'll go back.

I really hope my children will do Brazilian jiu-jitsu. So I'd love to go back and eventually get that blue belt. All right, a couple more, guys. Gabrielle says, I can't afford your course, unfortunately, right now.

Whatever I watch, I'll donate a little money. I can. Thanks a million for your time. Hey, Gabrielle, that's great, and you don't have to do that. It's up to you, but I do this show for free, and I'm happy to do it, and as the person before said, you absolutely can use this show every day.

especially repeat some of the shows that are your favorites, get that deeper learning. You're really going to improve your listening. You can use my pronunciation techniques. I've done some YouTube videos about that, also free, where you can use that shadowing technique and other techniques.

That'll help your fluency and your speaking and your pronunciation. All that you can do just with my podcast and also reading books. in English and doing audiobooks, so you can do things very, very cheaply with English too if you can't afford my course. I mean, I'm happy when people buy my course because it does help me and my family, of course, but I also understand some people can't afford them, and that's why I do all this free stuff.

So it's your choice. Ah, Citravan asks, can you have Joe or Kristen on your show? Yeah, they're really busy now. They're working. both of them working jobs now, but, uh, I'll see if I can get them to come back on my show.

I just got, it's the, and the other problem is see where time zones there in San Francisco and I'm in Japan. So, but anyway, yes, those are my two best friends, Joe and Kristen. So, uh, I'll try to get them on my show. All right, guys, I got to go.

Um, just a couple more. Ah, Arian with a good book club recommendation, Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins. Yes, I think we'll do one of Tony's books. That's actually probably a really good one to do.

We'll do one of his books eventually. Saroj Singh. Namaste, sir. You are the best teacher in the world. English language is very tough for me, but I'm trying to speak when I apply your methods.

Just keep going. Just keep going. You're going to do fine. Just keep going. You'll see. Like everybody else, you'll be fine. Just be patient and enjoy it.

Enjoying it is so important. Abraham Alisa is asking about our movie club. Are you going to do the whole movie in one show or one or more scene every week? Yeah, not the whole movie in the show.

I'll divide it. Maybe like each movie, I'll do about six shows. So I'll divide it into six parts. like six sections, about, you know, some maybe longer, some a little shorter, but something like that.

So about six weeks, we can do one movie. So then it's not too much. Like I said, if I did a full movie technique, it would take like a whole year to do it.

Maybe not a whole year, but it would take a lot of lessons. So we'll do about six parts, cut the movie into about six parts. And so most of the movie, that's about 20 minutes. Like let's say if we have a two-hour movie,

that would be about 20-minute sections. For an hour and a half movie, it would be, what, 15 minutes, right? This is a good way to say it. Alona says, Alona Bruschenko,

When I started to learn and enjoy my English, I am free. I changed my life. I found a lot of interesting people. Traveled in different countries. If you can feel happiness and harmony, you are free.

I like that definition. If you're living a life that's full of happiness and harmony, you are free. That's a nice way to say it. All right, I think we're just going to end with Tomas, and then we're going to go.

Tomas says, I asked my friends what they would do if they had a fortune, right? A huge amount of money. And they did not have to work for money. The answer was often they would help others.

Yeah. Yeah. AJ, that's what you're doing now. We are grateful. Certainly, that's what happens. This is one of the things you realize when you become more financially free, when you become free in general.

Like I said, I had the idea, I just want to avoid work. I was so unhappy about work. That's all I would think about when I was young. When I finally got the freedom, the full freedom with plenty of money and everything,

Then I just started, yeah, eventually I realized, yeah, I want to help people. I want to contribute. You want that feeling of meaning, contributing to people in my life, contributing to my students, you all, just in general.

That's definitely a big part of it. Definitely. Good point. Okay, and finally, again, Lisa says, just another reminder, I made my Twitch account. I'm waiting for your first live show.

Here, let me put that on the screen here. I'll put my Twitch. Oops, that's not it. One second, guys. Let me just click this on. And for those watching in video, my Twitch, it's Twitch, T-W-I-T-C-H, Twitch.tv, and then slash AJ Hogue is my account.

So it's now on the screen. You'll see it here if you're watching on video. So follow me there on Twitch. That's where we will do our movie. Club. In our movie club, our first one is going to be The Matrix.

Neo and Morpheus and The Matrix. One of my absolute favorite movies. So that's got to be the first one. We're going to do The Matrix. The Matrix. Prison for your mind, Neo.

Lots of good stuff. That's a great movie. Really fun movie. Visually interesting. Amazing story. Great deep meaning. All of that. We will do The Matrix soon.

So follow me on Twitch if you want to comment. You can just watch it. If you don't have a Twitch account, it's no big deal. Some people say, I don't have a Twitch account.

I don't want to be on Twitch. You don't have to. You can just watch it. Anyone can watch it. You don't need an account. But if you want to comment, like live comment, like now...

then you'll need a Twitch account. So just sign up. It's no different than having a YouTube account or a Facebook account. It's just another social media.

So just sign up, get one, and then you can comment during our live movie club lessons. And someone asked also, will I record them and put them on the podcast, just the audio? And yes, I will. So if you're a podcast listener,

No worries. Podcast listeners get everything and they get extras. Like I said, later today or tonight, maybe tomorrow, I'll add my walk and talk. I did a special walk and talk for just the podcast, just the audio podcast.

My audio podcasts, just get any podcast app. There are many different ones that are free. And then just do a search, Effortless English, and subscribe. You'll get it for free, just audio.

That's all, guys. Good for today. I enjoyed it. Great talking to you. Lots of love to you. Always great comments. Always great, interesting people. We have a very intelligent and kind group.

Thanks to our code, right? And I always love doing these live shows now. Really enjoy them. My favorite part now is the discussion because you always have such great comments and questions.

So interesting. Now, I know I can't always read them all, guys. There's a lot of you, and you're all typing. So don't get upset if I miss your comment.

Sometimes, eventually, keep trying eventually. You know, I'll choose it. I'll give you a little hint, by the way, to help you if you want me to choose your comment or question. I focus on questions that are connected to our topic.

Those are my favorite ones. So if you're asking a question that's just general English and I'm not talking about general English, then I often will ignore it. Like today I'm talking about simplicity and freedom. So if you're asking me about how do I improve my writing, probably I'm going to ignore the question because that's not the topic today.

Now sometimes I will do, I promise I will do, questions and answers where I only talk about English and English learning. I know those are common questions.

But if you watch my old YouTubes, and other old videos, I've answered these questions many times, probably hundreds of times. So you'll find your answers if you just watch my old videos.

But if you don't want to do that, just be patient and maybe every couple of weeks I'll do just an English question and answer where I just focus on those basic questions about learning English. But on other days when I'm talking about something else,

you know, try to comment or ask a question that's connected to the topic, right? If I'm talking about Brave New World, then I want questions and comments that are about Brave New World. If you ask me something else, probably I'll ignore it. I'm not trying to be mean to you.

I'm just trying to stay focused because that's what we're talking about. Okay? Sounds good? I love you guys so much. Thank you. And as always, join my VIP program.

Commit. Don't quit to my VIP program. Support Effortless English and speak English powerfully at EffortlessEnglishClub.com. EffortlessEnglishClub.com.

Bye.