Do These Things Before You Sleep & Set Yourself Up For Success

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 one thing 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. Do these things before sleep every night and set yourself up for success. I'm A.J. Hoag, author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

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All right, program yourself for success. I just, last month, I guess about five weeks ago, I taught this to my VIP members. To create, excuse me, to create a habit every night before you sleep

to program yourself, to program your own brain. It means your highest consciousness, your true self, Atman, spirit, soul, can program your mind, kind of your lower brain. Because the problem we have is that we know what we want to do. You want to speak English fluently.

Not just fluently, you want to speak English confidently. You want to feel relaxed, strong, confident, when you speak English? Perhaps, maybe, you want to feel confident and stronger even when you speak your own language, right?

Some people just are not so confident communicating in general. So how do you do this? How can you make yourself feel differently? This is a tough challenge, right?

You study a lot of vocab, you study grammar, but then you feel nervous every time you need to speak or you want to speak. Same with public speaking. You want to stand up, you have to give a presentation at your job, even just at a meeting. And you start feeling nervous, right?

And your heart's beating and your throat gets tight and then you can't speak well and you speak badly. How do you change that? And it takes some time.

It's hard to do it in one day. But you have to get to the emotional level, right? You have to get down deeper in your brain. And here's how you do it.

I'm going to tell you exactly step by step, okay? Step one, create a habit every night. Every night. You can do this in your bed. Well, you lie down to bed and you do a guided meditation, right?

A kind of meditation. Step one is relax your body. This is good to help you get to sleep also. So you want to relax your body. There are many ways to do this.

You could play some relaxing music. You could actually close your eyes and relax parts of your body one by one. So first you relax your face. You just focus on the muscles in your face and let them get completely relaxed.

And then you'd move to your neck. Make sure your neck is relaxed, all the muscles in your neck. And then down to your shoulders and then maybe down one arm and the other arm. You understand, down your back and your body and all the way to your toes.

Excuse me, I got a cough. I'm kind of, I've been sick. That's why I've been gone for a while, that and vacation. So you would first relax your body. That's step one.

Step two, you want to review in your mind. Every night you want to review the day. The day you just had. The last, you know, 18 hours, 12 hours, whatever, that you've been awake.

You want to review this. And you're going to review three parts. Number one, you want to review the thoughts that you had during the day. So your eyes are closed.

You're now relaxed. So you're not tense. You're feeling very relaxed. And just think about, through the day, what thoughts, and specifically I want you to think about what negative thoughts did you have during the day.

So these are the thoughts you want to get rid of. And they pop into your head. Maybe you thought, oh, I'm not good at English. Maybe you thought, You know, oh, I'm stupid.

Maybe you thought, oh, I'm foolish. Or maybe you thought bad things about other people. Oh, he's such a jerk. Or my parents don't understand me. Or, you know, there's all these negative thoughts come into our head and we know they're not good, right?

But they just kind of come and go. We don't pay attention to them enough. So the first step to get rid of them is to really be sensitive, to be aware. How do you do this?

Well, by every night, you review your mistakes, basically. What negative thoughts did you have during the day? Maybe you can't remember all of them, but try to remember them.

Don't get upset with yourself. Don't get angry. Stay relaxed. Just review. You're just noticing. You're not judging. You're just noticing. Oh, yeah. Once again, I was thinking all these negative thoughts about my teacher or something.

You do that. And then you just let go. You just notice and let go. Step two, you can do the exact same thing with your behaviors, your actions. What did you do during the day?

What actions did you do that were not good? Did you maybe get upset and yell at somebody? Okay? Or maybe you weren't patient and you said something not nice to somebody and

Okay? Or maybe you got depressed and you just were lazy and you didn't study when you should have studied. Okay? These are actions, right? Or actions that you did or sometimes actions you didn't do, right?

That you procrastinated. You didn't do what you should do. So again, you just review the negative actions from your day. Just notice them and remember them.

And then finally, step three, you'll go through and do exactly the same thing, this time with emotions. So you did thoughts, Then you do behaviors, actions.

And step three, emotions. Think about your day that you just had. Remember, you do this at night. Do this at night before you sleep. So you think about all the negative emotions.

And this is the big one. This is really the most important. Because it's the emotions that usually cause us problems. It's the negative emotions that cause us to do negative actions and often to think negative thoughts.

I find that the emotions often start things, right? Maybe you're just tired, right? You wake up and you're tired and you're in a bad mood and this starts, but because you have this negative emotional energy, this negative energy, you're irritated, you're tired, what happens? Then you start thinking negative thoughts and then you start doing negative things, right?

Or you don't do positive things. So just going to review, oh, yeah, I got angry in the morning. Oh, I got lazy later in the day. Oh, I was kind of nervous and I was worrying and afraid about money.

And then you just remember as much as you can, right? Just keep remembering what negative things did you do during the day emotionally, right? The feelings, what negative feelings did you have?

So all of that's part one. The negative, the bad. We're not going to end with the bad. You just start with the bad. Why are you doing this? What's the reason to do this?

You're doing this because this helps you correct. Your brain, your mind will become more sensitive. What this means is maybe tomorrow when the negative thought pops into your head, instead of just

following it, and thinking more and more negative things, you'll notice it, right? Because the night before, you remembered, ah, I don't want to do this.

So, next time it happens, hopefully, you realize, oh, that's a negative thought, I don't like that, and you stop it. You stop it before it keeps going. Or maybe you notice that you're starting to feel a little irritated, frustrated, and

Many times we don't really notice it and it just gets worse and worse and then we're really angry. You're in a bad mood, but instead you notice it because every night you're reviewing your mistakes and eventually you'll make fewer mistakes.

You become more sensitive and you stop them earlier so that you start to become frustrated and you realize, oh, I'm getting frustrated. I need to change my emotions now. I need to change my energy now before it gets worse.

So that's the reason to review it every night. But you don't want to end with negative. So now you're going to go to the positive. This is right before you go to sleep.

The last thing you're going to think about is the same three things, but this time positive. So I want you to think about thoughts. What positive thoughts do you want to think tomorrow when you wake up?

And these could be like positive thinking affirmations. I am great. I am awesome. I am a confident English speaker. I work hard and listen to English every day, two hours, three hours.

You could just say, I'm a loving person. I'm a kind person. I am succeeding with my business. I am succeeding in my job. Whatever. I have a great relationship with my husband or wife.

You understand? Whatever thoughts, positive thoughts you want to think about, Tomorrow, when you wake up, review them as you're relaxed, you're lying in bed.

Think about them. Review them. Just take a few minutes and think those positive thoughts. What positive thoughts do you want to think every day? What positive thoughts do you want to think tomorrow when you wake up?

And then again, same idea. Next, do the same thing, but this time actions. What positive actions do you want to do tomorrow? Maybe it's, okay, I will study English two hours tomorrow.

I will say something nice to my boss. I will exercise for 40 minutes. Whatever it is, okay? You can go through all of them. Just think of the big positive actions you want to take tomorrow.

Actions. And then finally, again, the most important one, emotions. This is where you're going to program yourself for positive emotions. So you're going to think...

What positive emotions will I feel tomorrow? What positive emotions do I want to feel tomorrow? Confidence. Strength. Love. joy and happiness excitement enthusiasm there are a lot of great ones okay so just think about the ones you want so that when you're doing english tomorrow how do you want to feel about it do you want to feel tired and bored while you're doing english for two hours of course not maybe you want to feel enthusiastic excited enjoy you know joyful um

Also with your relationships. Maybe you want to feel kind. I want to feel love. I want to feel generous. Think of these things. Imagine them. And then relax and go to sleep.

The power of this is you're doing it just before you go to sleep. So you're kind of putting these thoughts, these intentions, what you want and what you don't want, you're kind of putting it into your mind and then you fall asleep and it goes deeper into your mind, into your unconscious or subconscious.

Now will this totally change your life in one night? Of course not. That's why it has to be a habit. It has to be a habit, okay? You do it a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, a little bit.

And by doing it every night, this habit, this habit, you little by little change your life until those positive emotions, they start to become habits. You start to notice. I'm feeling these things more and more every day.

I'm doing these positive actions more and more every day. I'm thinking these positive thoughts more and more every day. And of course, on the negative ones, they're getting less and less and less every day.

Little by little, your mental and emotional habits change. This is so powerful. You won't even notice it. I'm going to tell you a story from my own life where I didn't even realize and suddenly something will happen and you realize, wow, wow, it's totally changed.

something is very deeply changed inside me and I didn't realize it. So do this every night, make it a habit. I actually recorded something, a guided meditation for my VIP members to use every night. So I recorded one.

It's got like music to help relax. It uses something called binaural beats. It's kind of a music that helps to put your brain in a very relaxed and open place.

state, you know, consciousness. And then I actually say, okay, you know, I kind of guide the VIP members to think about this. When you try my VIP program, it's just $1 at effortlessenglishclub.com. When you try it in the first month, I will send you that.

I'll send you an audio and you could actually just listen to the audio every night. You don't need to do anything. Just put on some headphones or, and then just when you lie in bed, just listen to it. I'll tell you, think about this, do this, do this.

And then when it's done, turn it off and go to sleep. So it's easy. All right, a story from my life. Well, first of all, I'm happy to be back. I went on vacation, so my family and I, we went to Guam, the island of Guam, tropical island.

And we had a great time. We went to the beach. We spent a few weeks there and had a really great time. The kids loved it. It was fun, just splashing around in the water.

It was great. So I was ready to come back and start doing shows, and then I got sick. Right here. I've got this cough, kind of sinus infection, and I got it, and then I thought I was getting better, and then it came back again.

So I finally, I usually avoid doctors, but I finally went to the doctor yesterday, got some medicine. The medicine's helping. I'm starting to feel a little better, so.

Anyway, I'm sorry. Sorry about the cough. And I apologize for being gone. So in Guam, something happened. And this is going to help you understand why this is powerful, what I'm teaching you today.

Because I've been doing this myself. I listen to this. I actually have one that I listen to in the morning. Sometimes. I can't do it every morning, but sometimes.

And then one I listen to every night before bed. And, you know, one of the problems I've had in the past, growing up for a long time, where I didn't like conflict. I didn't like to argue with people, fight with people.

That might even include physical fighting. Of course, nobody, most people don't like physical fighting, but even just arguing, right? So, I kind of usually would avoid it.

But something happened in Guam, right? We got our hotel, our first hotel. We had to change hotels. We went to this hotel. We used to go there, and it was great, but this time we went there.

And it was just full of all kinds of drunk people and people, I think, doing drugs. They were kind of weird people just hanging out around the hotel at night.

and, you know, we have two young kids, and so, like, this, coming from one of the rooms, there was a super loud music, I mean, super, super, super loud, like, you know, late at night, going into, like, 11, 12, 1 in the morning, they're having some giant party or something, so somebody called security, and I, you know, I couldn't sleep, I was worried, you know, the wake up the kids so i was getting upset in the past i probably wouldn't have done anything and maybe just called security but i went out there to i was like ah i'm gonna go out and see what's going on where's this coming from so i went to the room and the security guard was already there and he was just this little skinny guy and uh you know he was nice and everything but he said did you he asked me he said did you call and complain i said no it wasn't me but

I'll complain now. You know, this is crazy. This is almost two in the morning. You know, we came here to have a quiet vacation. So the guy said, don't worry, sir, I'll take care of it.

So I was like, okay, good. So I went back to my room. The guy knocked on the door. I don't know who was in there at the time, but basically it got a little quieter.

And then about 10 minutes later, boom, the music comes back again. I'm like, what the heck is going on? So basically, they ignored the security guard, and the security guard did nothing.

So this is the change in my life. In the past, I probably would have been too nervous to do anything. But instead, I just walked up to the door and went, bam, bam, bam, bam, pounded on it really strongly.

Boom! The door opens up, and there's this guy, opens it up, and he's got this kind of angry look, like, you know, who are you? What do you want? Right?

And then I look in, there are like 10, maybe 12 guys, all men, just 12 men in there. And they're all drunk. A lot of them are looking aggressive, like, who are you trying to break up our party? Like they're ready to fight almost.

The change for me is I felt zero nervousness, zero fear. And honestly, even at that point, once they opened the door, I didn't even feel so angry. So this is the change for me. It was internal.

This is a gigantic, huge, huge, huge, huge change for me. Ten aggressive guys. Several of them look like they're ready to fight me. And I just stayed calm.

I was just totally calm. I said, look, guys. And I was not a jerk. I was polite to them. I was respectful, but also strong. I said, Listen, guys, I have two young kids in the room near here, and we need to sleep.

Can you please turn your music down? Okay, I'm sorry to break up your party, but you need to turn the music down. It's late, and I have children. And it was amazing, like their faces totally changed, and they're like, oh, okay, yes, sir, and they start apologizing to me.

Oh, so sorry, so sorry. You know, just before, they were like rude to the security guy and ignored him. And then they were very polite to me. And they did turn it down.

Maybe not quite enough. We ended up changing hotels because the next night it was some other room. I didn't even know which room. Some other room was having a party.

We were like, this is enough. Obviously, this hotel is just some big party hotel. And we just switched to a nicer place. But anyway, this is for me. And maybe for you, this sounds like nothing, right?

Because we all have different challenges in life. We all have different weaknesses. But for me, this was, you know, later I was just thinking about it and I just thought, my God, that was a giant change.

I felt no fear, no nervousness, nothing. Totally calm about it. So this is the power. And when did that happen? I didn't, I don't know. Because, you know, in my normal life, I don't have to deal with this.

Japan, everybody's really polite. and peaceful, so I never have to deal with conflicts here. So, this change was happening inside me, and I didn't even realize it until I got tested in Guam, and then I realized something has powerfully changed in me.

For me, this is a massive change. A tremendous jump, a huge jump in confidence, and calm, and strength. So, What I'm saying to you, why is this important to you, is because this is the same.

Do this, do this. And all the other things I teach you, like in my VIP course, in these videos, when I'm teaching you these things about how to be more confident and all these other techniques I'm teaching you, do them and do them every day because you won't notice it maybe.

for a while. You won't realize that something is changing deep inside you and you won't realize it. Maybe you won't realize. Maybe, you know, two months and you think, well, nothing's to change.

I think I feel the same. But when will you notice it? You'll notice it when you have a job interview, for example. You'll notice it in a high stress situation where in the past you would have gotten nervous.

In the past you would have been, you know, struggling, fighting to speak well and speaking badly. And suddenly you'll realize, I'm not nervous. I'm speaking English very fluently. I'm speaking well.

Wow, everything's much better. You just realize it. It might be when you meet a native speaker or even not a native speaker. You just meet somebody and you start speaking English with them and you have a nice conversation.

Maybe you talk to them for 30 minutes. And then later, you're walking home and you realize, wow, I wasn't even thinking. I wasn't thinking about grammar. I wasn't thinking about vocab.

I wasn't nervous. It was all just supernatural and relaxed. These moments, that's when you know it's working. But day to day, you know, day to day often you don't feel it.

Right? Day to day often you don't feel it. So, have faith, I guess is what I'm saying. Have faith because it is helping. It is working. You know, you're making these tiny improvements.

So maybe... In one day, you're only improving 1%, half a percent. So you don't notice it. It's not enough. But that adds up. It adds up every day, every day.

These super little, tiny improvements, you don't even notice. But you will notice after three months, after six months, or nine months, or a year, the change is huge. The improvement is huge.

And then... Even then you don't realize until something happens. That's when you suddenly wake up and you're like, wow, oh my God. Everything's totally different now.

So good luck to you. Let's get into our comments and questions. And hey, I'm going to be back doing a lot more shows. I'm going to try to make the shows a little shorter so I can do them more often.

So we'll just go through the comments quickly and then we'll be done for today. Mohamed Elakar. I'm sorry if I pronounced your name badly. Do you think only listening to your podcast is enough to be like a native speaker and speaking and understanding and become advanced?

Yes, you can just use the podcast. You probably need to do some things like shadowing and listening to one episode, one podcast several times. You're going to make You need to maybe take some notes sometimes.

You'll need to make a little extra effort. But I know we've had people in the comments tell us that just using the podcast, the free podcast, that they'll say, I have...

I had great success. I'm fluent now and I only use the podcast. Or maybe they only use the podcast and my book. Get my book and the audio book. I'm going to make the audio book free soon also.

So right now the e-book is free when you join. Just enter your email on my website. But I'm also going to add the audio book so you can get the audio book free and the e-book free. And that's a good combination because you can get

You can read and listen at the same time. And of course, yes, you can listen to this show. Ana Grigoreva, good to see you. Where have you been? I've missed your lessons.

Yeah, I just vacation and then sick. But I'm okay now. Elizabeth Fonseca from Brazil. Good to see you. Esnaque, I guess, says, what does ain't mean? Ain't means am not, are not.

is not he ain't happy he is not happy however ain't is not uh you know it's it's considered many people would consider ain't to be uneducated it's uh you know not grammatically correct so uh i would generally recommend not using it when you speak but uh that's what it means

Nepal and Japan TV says, Hi, sir. I would like to see huge improvements in my English communication skills. Could you help me? How can I improve? The fastest way is just get my Power English course, effortlessenglishclub.com.

Go to my website. Join the course. Listen to it every day. Use all these techniques I teach you. That's the best way. Anna again says, speaking is the most nervous and difficult part of learning English.

Yeah, for sure. I'm into this process now. I try to speak my brain and my mouth. Don't want to connect with each other. Right. So, keep on going. Just keep going.

You know, again, it's the same idea. In Japan, they call it kaizen. It's the idea of tiny improvements every day. Don't try to make a big improvement in one week or one month.

Don't think about big improvements. Just think about every day I want to make a tiny little improvement. And then the big improvement happens. It'll surprise you.

But it's lower stress to just focus on tiny little small improvements every day. Very little. Francisco Rivas says, we need you to talk about El Camino de Santiago. Oh, I love it.

That's one of my favorite topics. I love talking about the Camino. In fact, I was just showing my kids pictures. couple weeks ago we were looking at photos and they were looking at pictures from my Camino de Santiago trip so I'd be happy to talk about the Camino again why not I should get if I get Joe on the show it would be fun because we did it together

And I said, sometimes I think it's impossible to speak fluently and accurately. Exactly. And that's one of those negative thoughts you've got to get rid of, right? Every night.

It's one of the things that will pop in your head. It says, this is impossible. I get it. Because I felt the same way about the whole conflict thing. And then it's totally changed.

I think jiu-jitsu helped tremendously for me. That's one of the big ones. And believe me, I got so frustrated with jiu-jitsu going... still do, going and just, you know, getting beat by the other guys and going and getting beat by the other guys and feeling slow and feeling slower and older than everybody.

And these negative thoughts pop into my head all the time and I just try to push them away, you know. But then something like that experience in Guam happens and then I realize, whoa, this is powerful.

It's not only Jiu-Jitsu, but Jiu-Jitsu, Sanatana Dharma and a few other things. It's several things. That's the other thing. The things that will change you, it's these little tiny improvements, but often it's tiny improvements in different areas of your life.

So you're doing this review every night. So you're changing your thoughts, behaviors, and feelings a little, little, little. But then, of course, you're also listening to the podcast or one of my courses today. and you're doing other things, maybe you're reading, you're doing several things, and each one you're improving a little bit, and then they all combine someday to make a huge improvement, and you'll be surprised.

It's a great feeling when you get that surprise, but you can't, I don't recommend you try to get it, because it just creates stress. Just have faith it's going to happen one day, and when it does, you can celebrate. It's a really good feeling.

Mohamed Omer, good to see you. Paolo Jose says, you rock, man. Thank you. Sandir Digital says, hi from Somalia. Hello, hello. How to feel the emotional peak.

That's something I teach and I recommend that you do every morning. And, you know, the simple fast... Technique is you play exciting music, you jump around, and you use your body to get into that emotional state. Peak means highest, the top emotional state, the most positive.

Dini Hayati from Indonesia says hello. Francisco Rivas is in Texas. Kazakhstan, Maulin from Kazakhstan. So, as usual, from all over the world. Jorge Fernandez from Brazil, Azerbaijan, but live in Texas.

All right, as you can see, Vietnam, Nham, another Nam Nguyen says... I'm so busy, I don't have time to think about negative things. That's good. If you're busy doing positive things, productive things, and it pushes out negative thoughts, that's great.

What's the quote? There's a quote in English, like an idiom. What is it? Idle hands do the devil's work, I think is how it's usually said. It means if you're just sitting around doing nothing, then often you're going to end up

wanting to do something negative, something bad. But if you're busy doing positive things all day, it's hard to do negative things if you fill up your schedule doing positive things.

So just make sure you're busy doing positive things. That's the key thing. It's not a bad technique. Okay, Jonas Yoi says, I'd like some help picking up or understanding native speakers' discussions.

because now I understand what you talk about. Okay, this is probably the highest level of listening ability, is listening to two or more native speakers talk to each other.

Okay, so this is difficult. Why? Because let's say two Americans talk to each other. Well, they're not going to go slow at all because they're talking to another native speaker.

So they're going to speak at full speed. They're going to use slang, idioms, everything. right? No attempt to make things easier. So this can be very tough.

And if they're both fast speakers, it can be very, very, very difficult. So what I recommend on YouTube or anywhere you can find them is find, try to find discussions. Like podcasts are good where you have guests. So you've got a couple people, especially if it's relaxed and they're just chatting with each other.

You could use like Joe Rogan, for example. He's got some podcasts where he's talking to just his friends, like Joe Rogan and Eddie Bravo, for example, because it's more of a natural conversation.

Sometimes a podcast, an interview, it's not so natural, right? Because one guy is asking the questions and then another guy just answers. And it's not totally like a normal conversation.

But if you can get a podcast where it's like just two friends chatting, That's better, right? And then you want to listen to it many times, not just one time.

Also in here says, I want to join the VIP team. Great. Just go to my website. You'll notice at the bottom there's a menu for our catalog and you just join VIP.

Welcome. Martha from California, USA, obviously. Robert Marville from Mexico, Mexico. Luisa is from Costa Rica, Vietnam. We've got everywhere. We're all over the world, as usual.

Pakistan and India. Nisar, Vivek. All right. Amar says, Talking to yourself and repeating what you want to do. or feel helps a lot in changing the behavior of your subconscious mind.

Yes, indeed. There's a nice book I read. I'm trying to think of the book. It's called What to Say When You Talk to Yourself. So it's about self-talk. Because many times we're talking to ourselves in our brain all the time.

We're thinking. So, exactly. If you are careful... you can choose to say positive things to yourself. And it's the same idea as if you are constantly saying positive things to yourself, it pushes out the negative, right?

If you're not, if you're not focused on this, if you're not paying attention, then it's easy for the negative stuff to start popping in, especially if you have a habit of bad negative thoughts, right?

So you repeating the positive things, pushes out the negative. Amir says, after finishing the Power English course, which course do you recommend, AJ?

It's a good question. It depends what you want. If you just want more advanced, general speaking, do the VIP program. However, if you have a more specific need, like, for example, some people want to really focus on business English,

You could do the business English course, or some people really need or want to focus on pronunciation. It depends on your native language, right? So, if English pronunciation is very difficult, like for example, if you're coming from a non-European language,

if your own language like Thai, Vietnamese, right, the pronunciation is super different, Chinese, Cantonese and Mandarin both, then pronunciation might be very important and you could do the pronunciation course.

For, I think, people who already have European languages, it's closer to English. You might have some accent, but probably pronunciation is not as big of a problem. So you could do business English or do VIP. VIP is a good general one to do after Power English.

Okay, the next question, what about listening to audiobooks? Is it beneficial? Audiobooks are fantastic. Yes, listen to audiobooks and get the book too and read it.

Do both. Agrawinid says, I have a good quantity of listening, but my focus is not good. Okay, gotcha. Right. So, you're kind of playing English a lot, but you're not really focusing on it.

So, what I recommend is give yourself a time limit for really strong, focused English. It might just be 10 minutes in the beginning, if that's difficult.

And put on headphones. Headphones will help you focus more. And stand up and walk. You can just walk in a circle if you're in your own apartment. Or you can walk outside.

But move your body. And then finally, try the shadowing technique. You can just do a search on YouTube or Google for shadowing. And that forces you to concentrate.

You can't do shadowing if you're not focused. So do those things and that will help. Ah, Rainier says, DeMarco says, I remember when you did a show from Guam, only audio before you had kids. Indeed, yes.

We had a good time in Guam, especially after we changed to our nicer hotel. We moved over to, actually, it was a really nice hotel, and we had a great time. The kids loved the water. It was very nice, very nice.

Hey, good to see you as always. I notice I look like you in character and personality. What is your best advice for me? I listened to your podcast for a few years.

Best advice for you for English or for life? I don't know. For life, I would just say I love this idea of Kaizen, this tiny improvements. This for me, I've noticed in my life when I focus on trying to make a big improvement, when I want to, oh, I want to change in six months, I'm going to do this big thing, that it just never works for me.

I always get frustrated and it starts to feel like too much and I usually quit, right? But when I just focus on tiny little improvements, just making a daily habit and, uh, just focus on that, then I do improve. So like the jujitsu example, I don't think about being a black belt.

I probably never make it. I doubt it. So I'm like, I don't care. It doesn't matter. Next week, I'm going to try to be a little better. Just a tiny bit.

And everybody else is improving faster than me. It doesn't matter. I'm just going to focus on myself. Okay, I was bad at something last month So this month, maybe I can be less bad.

And that helps me with motivation to keep going, keep going, keep going. And then suddenly, these changes happen and you don't even realize it. Okay. Esnak says, do you think shadowing is one of the most important things for learning English?

I wouldn't say that. I think it's just... It's a technique. It's a tool. There's shadowing. Shadowing is when you listen and speak with the audio at the same time.

No pausing. It's something that some people like a lot. Some people like to use sometimes. And some people hate. So you don't have to do it. No. I just recommend everybody try it.

I think it does have benefits for some people. I like it. I like doing it. I not like constantly doing it, but I like doing it some. And it'll help you get a feeling for the pronunciation of English or any language.

So I think it's just one of those things that you just try. I think the storytelling method, the story lessons method, And Effortless English are the most important ones. That's the heart.

And I think that's the most important. We're going to call mini stories and point of view stories. Those are the most important. Shadowing is kind of optional.

It's your choice. I think it can be good, but you don't have to do it. If you hate it, don't do it. Cool. H.J. says, I've joined Effortless English as a VIP member yesterday.

Happy to watch your live show. Welcome to VIP. Watch your email because... What is today? Thursday. I'm going to send out an invitation next week and we'll do a VIP coaching call again now that I'm feeling a little better.

Nam Nguyen says, AJ, I want to thank you for teaching me English. English brings me so many opportunities in my life. I've earned a salary three times compared to the past.

Well, that's awesome. Man, that's great. Congratulations to you. So, three times more pay, income, because of English. Yeah. So, this is why a lot of people learn English, right?

There are very practical reasons, right? Because it is, you know, the international business language, the international travel language, the international language of science, tourism.

So it has some very, very good practical benefits. Okay, I'm going to take a couple more and then I'm going to go, but I'll be back again soon with another show.

Anna says, hey, you have 2 million subscribers. That's right, we passed 2 million. Seems all subscribers have missed you. And ask their friends to subscribe so you'll pay attention.

Yes. Miguel Rojas says, you are the goat. You don't just teach English, you teach more than that. God bless you. Goat means greatest of all time. We're not talking about soccer.

Kulk says, I listen for three hours and do the shadowing technique for two hours. Is that enough? Wow, that's great. That's really good. Yeah, good for you.

It's definitely enough. H.J. says, what do you think about studying American dramas or TV shows such as Modern Family? Yeah, yeah, you can do that. Movies, TV shows, anything you enjoy that's from native speakers, right?

So American, Canadian, British, whatever. All good. The detective says, what opportunities do you think AI, artificial intelligence, can give us? Can it give us healthy conversations that improve our English?

I don't know. I've tried with the conversations. I've played around with it, actually. So-so on some of the stuff. A little weird. Unnatural. I think where it really can help is writing.

Because I tested it out, and it did a very good job of correcting writing. So what you could do is if you're – and writing is tough because I've struggled with, like, how can I teach writing? I think AI has a great – these AI programs really have great potential here. So, for example, you could write one paragraph about whatever, anything, or two paragraphs, or one page.

And then what you do is you copy and paste it. You put it in the AI program, and you say, you know, ask the AI – You say, you know, rewrite this using correct English, correct grammatical English at a 10th grade level or a 9th grade level or whatever level of English you want.

And you hit it and then it'll rewrite it. Whatever you wrote, it'll change it and write it again. And I played around with that a lot and it does a pretty good job of that. It's pretty good.

Pretty good. So this can really help you because then what do you do? Then you compare the AI's writing, the AI version, to your own, and you can start to see your mistakes. And why this is good is it's not just mistakes.

See, in traditional classes, they'll just correct your mistakes, but that's not so helpful because it helps a little, but you're not learning what is better.

So it's much better if they just rewrite the whole thing. You can see your mistakes, but you also see, oh, I could say it that way. That's the way to write it. That's a good way to write it.

I recommend if you use AI for doing rewrites, you know, correcting your writing, tell it to do it at like a, I would say tell it to do a sixth grade level. Sixth grade. Why? Because it'll keep it simple.

And you don't need to write at a, you know, PhD level in the beginning. You need to first be able to write clearly at a sixth grade level. You should be able to write about any topic at that level using simple direct sentences. That's what you want.

Then you can work on getting more academic later, okay? But start there. Karim says Egyptian people need to focus about pronunciation. Okay, so yeah, exactly.

So Egyptian speakers, Arabic is again a language, you know, that's further away from English for pronunciation. So pronunciation can be a bigger challenge, a bigger issue. Someone who speaks Spanish, you know, yeah, you'll have a little bit of an accent, but I think you should be able to, you know, pronunciation shouldn't be too much of a problem.

German, same thing, you know. Oh, cool. Tien Tron says, I am from Texas. I've been listening to your YouTube videos every day, almost every day. After three months, I can understand you 100%.

Awesome. Okay, a couple more. Hey, Amina, good to see you. Saw you on Twitter today. Amina says, I've known you since 2014. I've been listening to you from the past until now.

I've learned lots of things with you. You've changed my life. I would never know how to thank you. Thank you, Amina. Thanks for, by the way, your comments on Twitter today and always.

Quocvo says, what's the difference between the normal course, Power English, and and the VIP course. The VIP course is more, I'd say, a little more advanced, a little more difficult.

So it's level, really. So I recommend most people start at Power English level. If you're intermediate level English, most of you are, start with Power English.

You can do both. You can actually get them both at the same time if you want to try. If you feel like you're a little more advanced, then just jump in and try VIP.

You can try VIP for just $1, 10 days for a trial, so it's low risk. Paishow says, Effortless English helped me a lot. Thank you. You are welcome. Edson Lopez de Silva Jr. says, Every single day I practice my spoken English using your voice in my mind as a partner.

I answer your questions often like I've often been interviewed by you. Yeah, funny. Oh, that's a good question. Sadek, he says, sometimes when I am shadowing, I do not focus on meaning.

I just copy what you're saying without effort. I think in time my subconscious is working. Is it good or must I focus on meaning in vocab? Now, I think with shadowing, you don't need to focus on meaning and vocab.

Just what you're doing is good. Other times, you can listen, just listen, and focus more on the meaning. Or when you're reading, you can focus on the meaning. Doing the mini stories, you can focus on the meaning and the vocab.

But shadowing, you're still going to get some of that, right? You're right, subconsciously. But because it's so fast, you really don't have time to think much about anything.

So shadowing, what you're doing is fine. Just try to repeat exactly and focus more on the sounds. 5BZZA says, I used to listen to you while exercising on the beach when I was in Turkey.

Nice. Kalkalk says, I want to take the IELTS exam. What do you think? Good luck. We've had a lot of people take it who've done very well. Jairo Martinez says, thanks for all your advice.

I am applying your advice to learn Italian. Guess what? I am now trilingual. You're awesome. Great. All right. I think that's all for today. Good to see a lot of familiar names, as usual.

Okay. So, just to summarize again, since we've done a lot of questions, back to our main topic again. When you go to sleep, before you go to sleep every night, you can lie down or you can just sit if you want to and close your eyes and relax your body, step one.

Step two, you're going to review the negative things from your day, from the day you just had, right? And you're going to review the negative. What are you going to do? Thoughts, behaviors, actions, and feelings, right?

What you don't want. And you're just going to remind yourself. Don't get angry. Don't get upset that you made mistakes. You're going to make mistakes.

We all make mistakes. So the point is not to get upset about it. It's just to notice. You just notice, oh yeah, I did all these things. Oh, another mistake.

Oh, I was thinking all these negative thoughts. Oh, I got angry. Oh, I got depressed. Whatever it is. Fine. You're just reminding yourself so that tomorrow you'll do it less.

And then finally the next step, step three, you do the same thing, but this time with the positive. What positive thoughts do you want to think tomorrow when you wake up?

What positive actions will you take tomorrow when you wake up and during the day? And what positive emotions will you feel tomorrow when you wake up during the day? You're just kind of programming your mind before you go to sleep.

And then when that's done, Close your eyes. Just keep closing your eyes. Just relax and go to sleep. If you want a recorded version of this, you can join my VIP program, and I actually have a recorded version where you can just listen to it, and I help you do all of these things.

But you can do it yourself. All right. Lots of love. I'm happy to be back, as always. Hey, oh, last thing. We have a new website design. Hey, our new website design is finally...

Here, check it out. Go tell me what you think about it. EffortlessEnglishClub.com EffortlessEnglishClub.com Tell me what do you like about the new website design. Okay, I will be back again soon.

See you on Gab and Twitter and everywhere else. Bye-bye. Thank you.