How to Survive Hard Times

I'm A.J. Hogue, the author of Effortless English. Learn to speak English like a native. You want to speak fluently, powerfully. You want to speak English effortlessly.

When you want to do that quickly and make fast progress, when you're really serious, you want to commit. I recommend my VIP program plus Power English. That combination, VIP plus Power English, is incredibly powerful, thus the name, and you will make great progress.

Go to effortlessenglishclub.com. When you need to improve your pronunciation, maybe your pronunciation is not great, People don't understand you so well. I have a pronunciation course.

It's very different than most of the other ones out there. You get it. Same website. And when you need to do job interviews in English, you need English to improve your career, improve your job, make more money.

My business English course is the best for that. Okay. Okay. This is actually my third time today trying to do this show because the two times before, my kids kept interrupting me.

And, you know, it's okay because they're so sweet and they're curious what I'm doing. And I was trying to record... trying to record outside during the day while they were playing and they kept wandering over and it would break my concentration so I just decided to wait until the evening to do this so let's try again this is my last attempt I want to talk about something I don't know I'll start this I'm going to start this walk and talk with kind of a heavy topic but

by talking about an extreme case. But really, I think for most people, it can still be useful, even though this extreme example does not describe most people.

So what am I talking about? Well, I saw some social media post about... I didn't see the actual post, but people talking about it, that some girl, some Japanese girl...

posted on, I don't know what it was, TikTok or X or whatever, but she did like a live stream of killing herself, right? So she, it's like this teenage girl, I believe, and jumped out a window, a balcony of her apartment, quite sadly, and died.

And she, you know, she turned on the turned on the camera, and then, I don't know, she said something, I think I saw a translation where she said something, like, about, uh, uh, how, you know, her life had no meaning anymore, and, uh, I don't know, she just, you know, wasn't very specific from what I, the translation I saw, and I did not go watch the actual video, I don't want to see it, um,

But, you know, certainly any parent out there, this might weigh heavily on your mind. It's sort of the worst nightmare of a parent, or if you care about someone. And it's kind of the ultimate despair, right?

The ultimate act of meaninglessness and despair to kill yourself. Quite sad, right? For this poor girl. But, you know, so that's the extreme case, right?

But there, I think, most of us, whatever your age, can identify with less extreme examples, which is just the example of going through very, very, very, very tough times in your life.

And sometimes these tough times might be fairly brief, but intense, right? Might be a few months, but just, you might just have some terrible things happen. Could be, you know, several months, a year.

I just got through an extremely difficult year, as I've discussed a few times, you know, due to my son's uh you know need for another a third heart surgery and uh you know various issues and problems with it and and you know that led ultimately led us to to leave japan and move to the united states so we could get a second opinion here he ended up having the surgery here and you know of course the good news is and this is

the uplifting, the positive part of today's episode, which I wanted to discuss, is that, of course, we got through it, and now it's spring, and the sun is out, and it's warming up, and the flowers are starting to bloom, and the leaves are coming on the trees, and my son has gotten through his recovery from that surgery. The surgery went very, very well, and his recovery has gone very well this winter, and it's kind of like a feeling of coming out of the winter, not only

literally, meaning, actually, the weather. But, I mean, it feels like a metaphor, too, coming out of the winter, like that all last year was kind of a dark, cold year, psychologically.

And it feels like we're coming out of that. And sometimes that dark period, that tough time, can last for years and years and years. Some people have, like this, probably this poor girl,

And Japan may have their entire childhood is like this. We know of terrible cases of people being abused, kids being abused. So their whole childhood is hell.

Horrible. Right? And of course then that affects them deeply as they become adolescents, teenagers, and that hell may continue for them at home through that time until they can leave their house. Right?

But then, of course, it leaves scars psychologically. People have gone through terrible breakups. Maybe you had a girlfriend or boyfriend that you were sure was the one and you're going to marry them. Maybe you did get married and then ended up getting divorced.

Right? So, also devastating in that the pain of that can last for, you know, it can stretch out for quite a long time because sometimes in those situations, you know, the process of the relationship going bad and leading to unhappiness and then finally the breakup and then, you know, getting through the loneliness and the grief of the breakup, you know, that can take several years sometimes.

Or, you know, someone close to you may die. Like my mother, when she died, it was tough. It wasn't, you know, just get over that in one week, you know.

So, we all will face these things in life. You probably already have at some level. And if you haven't, you will. But it's very, very important that we realize that spring will come.

Spring will come. Not only in terms of climate and weather, but, you know, it's a metaphor. And it means the darkness is not forever. even when it lasts quite long, like with a child.

And of course, for children, those years feel like a very, very, very long time. Ten years to someone who's my age can seem to go by fairly quickly, but for a small child, ten years, it feels like forever. And that's the point when we are in a tough time, a painful time, a difficult time.

For any of us, It does seem like time can slow down and it can feel like there's no escape. It feels like it will never change. It will never end. And this is when it's possible to despair.

And to despair means to lose hope, to give up, to feel totally helpless. And obviously the worst case of that is suicide. but a slightly less worse case is when people just sort of become long term depressed and just kind of give up on life and that happens much more often than suicide where people continue living but they become bitter or sad or pessimistic with no energy with no

energy or enthusiasm or love in their hearts anymore, and they kind of die inside a bit. I think it's going to be especially tough for young people. And by young people, I mean young adults, you know, so kids, of course, but teenagers and kids in their 20s, because, yeah...

It's very easy for, I think, easier for young people to feel like things will last forever. When, you know, when you're my age, you're 57, you've been through quite many years and you've had lots of ups and downs and ups and downs. And so when tough things happen, you know, like me last year, okay, it's still no fun. It's still rough.

It's still difficult. But, you know, I know that it's not going to last forever. But for a 20-year-old, even, it can feel like the end of the world, or at least the end of their life.

And it's very easy to think in terms of catastrophe. That means disaster. Oh, it's never going to get better. Oh, this means the end of my life. So let me just tell you, and this is especially for my younger listeners out there, it will get better.

It will get better. I can't promise you when it will get better. Okay, I can't. I will not promise you things will get better quickly or soon. It just depends what the situation is.

There are many, many possible things that can happen in different situations. So that all depends. I am going to talk to you today, though. about things to help get through tough times and get through them more quickly and more strongly and more powerfully so that when your spring comes, you're ready and you're expecting it.

But the first thing you have to realize is it will get better. And you have to stop the negative self-talk of saying, oh, everything, it's over. Oh, this is the end.

This is, it's horrible. You have to stop that. You know, we've talked before about Tony Langwich's triad of the three, kind of three things you can control inside your own mind to change how you think and feel, to change the results you get. And one is your body, which I've talked quite a bit about, your physiology, changing how you stand and move.

Right. And one is your focus and one is your language. And here I'm talking about your language because what can happen? I'm going to give you examples from my own life, okay, to tell you.

Because now I'm 57, so there were several times in my life where it seemed like the end. It seemed like a disaster. Everything seemed horrible. But it did get better.

And in fact, now, looking back, looking way back, at the age of 57, I can now say many of those bad things I'm grateful for. Because I went through those bad things, better things came to me later. And of course, I could not see that at the time. But now I can see it looking back.

Now I'm grateful. Let me give you a first example. My first serious girlfriend, and I thought I was going to marry her. And then, guess what? She broke up with me.

Left me for some other guy. At the time, I was just out of university, so I was in my early 20s. At the time, it felt like the end of the world, a disaster.

College was over, so it was at a time in my life where I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I'd just been a student my whole life, going to school.

And then I was in university, but I was just kind of messing around in university. I didn't really have a career idea. So I got out of university, and I had no real useful skills. I had no idea what I wanted to do.

I was working terrible jobs, barely surviving, barely making enough money to survive. So already kind of stressed and unhappy, and then boom. Boom. So at the time, that breakup felt like the end of the world.

I did not take it well. It was my first and only girlfriend, serious or not. And I was serious. And, you know, I did. I was really, really, really depressed.

And I... First, for the longest time, I tried to get her back, tried to figure out ways. How could I get her back? And when that became obvious that wasn't going to work out, it felt like the end of the world, a disaster.

But the good news is I did not just... stay depressed. I was depressed, but I did other things too. And this is what I want to talk to you about when you're going through tough

times. It's okay to be depressed. It's okay to feel super upset. You're going to have those thoughts of, oh, it's the end of the world. It's a disaster.

But what's not okay is to just focus on them and repeat them, repeat them in your mind again and again and again. You got to kill that language and change it. So when a thought comes in your head, it's the end of the world. This is over.

I'll always be lonely for the rest of my life. Whatever. I'll never make any money. I'm a failure. You let it come in, but then you change it. And then you say something positive.

You just force yourself to say something positive. No, I'm going to learn from this and it's going to get better. It could just be something like that. I'm going to learn from this and it will get better.

And this is my first tip to you when you're going through a really, really hard time in life is number one, identify or look for opportunities for learning. Okay?

decide that in the middle of this terrible thing, you're going to learn. You're going to look for answers. And you might have no idea what those might be, but you're going to look. So for example, in that breakup, what did I do after that breakup?

I decided, well, you know what? I took responsibility. First of all, I realized, okay, well, you know, I'm a stupid kid. I didn't know anything about relationships or anything.

And I did a lot of bad stuff and I was, you know, not a great boyfriend. She wasn't perfect either. But, you know, I realized, okay, well, I need to learn about relationships.

So I just started reading every book I could find on relationships. And looking back, you know, a lot of the ones I read actually are nowadays I wouldn't agree with very much. But the important part was that I started focusing on something positive, which was trying to learn something, trying to figure out what was going on and try to learn something from it.

And this will help you get through very tough times because even though you're suffering, it gives your suffering some meaning. Right? You start to get a feeling somewhere inside that, okay, I am suffering and this is terrible and I want it to end, but it's not ending.

But I'm learning. It's motivating me to learn. And so there's a little seed inside of you where you might not even think of it consciously, but unconsciously you know that, well, this might be the seed of something that makes me a better person, a wiser person.

And of course, that can ultimately lead to you having a happier, better life. And it will, in fact. Another example, you might say, well, what if someone dies? Well, yeah, what if someone dies?

So my mom died. And what did I focus on for learning? Well, you know, luckily I already had the beginnings. I was already, you know, the beginnings of a spiritual practice.

But I decided to investigate and try to learn more deeply about and more widely, about death, and what potentially comes after. And this is where I really went deep into reading about near-death experiences.

People who have died, and for whatever time, their brain stopped, their heart stopped, clinically dead is what we say, medically dead, and then they were brought back to life somehow.

And there's so many stories of this, so many examples, and there's various ways this can happen. People can die, and then they do the shock to the heart, and it brings them back. There are people who've drowned in cold water, and the cold water preserves their body enough where they can be, again, shocked back to life sometimes.

And because of modern medicine, we now have a lot more of these cases than, of course, in the past, before modern emergency medicine, most people were not brought back. So we didn't have so many of these stories.

But now we do, and these stories, while not exactly the same, share a lot of the same themes, a lot of very similar things that people come back, say that happened to them, that they saw, that they experienced. And the biggest one of all is that it was not just blackness. Okay, they were aware. In fact, they were hyper-aware.

And they went out of their bodies and they experienced themselves as Atman, a spirit or soul. And okay, you might read or listen to... And you can listen to the interviews, too, of people.

So nowadays, people can... You know, they're still alive and they'll give interviews on video. And there are people who... Scientists who actually study...

And this phenomenon, meaning by saying they interview people and they have actually double-checked some of the things they claim. You know, for example, someone dies. They're in the operating room.

They're trying to bring them back to life. And in the waiting room of the hospital, in a totally different area of the hospital, maybe their husband says, you know, goes and gets a candy bar from the machine.

And then the person who died will say, oh yeah, I saw you get a candy bar from the vending machine. It's impossible for them to know that, right? Because they left their body and they could actually see other places. So it's things like that.

And so people, they're researchers who've investigated these things to confirm some of those claims when they can. But overall, what happens is when you read...

books and books about this topic and you listen to lots and lots and lots of these interviews, you start to see these very clear patterns and the evidence, the eyewitness, direct experiential evidence becomes very powerful.

So what's the point? Well, when I was feeling sad and suffering and sad about my mother dying, I chose something to learn, and this is what I learned. And did this help me feel a little better and comfort me and get through it?

Yes, it did. It also confirmed and strengthened my own spiritual religious faith tremendously. So, when you're going through a tough time... focus on learning something.

Focus on learning whatever it is that's happening. Okay, your business is failing or you're losing money. Well, start reading tons and tons and tons and tons of books and watching videos, listening to podcasts about money, finances, investing, personal finance, whatever it is, okay?

Or maybe even learning whole new skills and new careers. Jump into learning. Focus on learning. So at least while you're suffering, your suffering starts to

motivate and empower something positive learning and growing and becoming wiser this helps you get through it not only will it help you in the future it definitely will help you in the future but it's also going to help you in the middle of suffering because it gives your suffering some meaning and we can endure we can get through a lot of very painful things if it has meaning meaning

It's when it's meaningless. That's when people kill themselves. Or just become permanently depressed. It's when they feel like there's no meaning to what's happening to them.

And that brings me to point two. Philosophy, religion, spirituality, choose your word. Okay, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to focus on a specific one.

Okay. But when you're going through extremely tough, difficult times, you need the big picture. The big, big picture of life. Because too often we focus just on ourselves and on the little things that are happening to us and they seem like they're everything.

But no matter how much we suffer as one individual person, it's not even close to everything. And in fact, this life... This one life, even if you were miserable from when you were born until you died, this one life is not even close to everything. It's still tiny and small and super short.

And so we need perspective, right? We need to see things as they are, not bigger than they are, not worse than they are. And that's this philosophy. What does this mean?

It means we need to examine the biggest questions and the biggest perspective in life. perspectives in life that human beings have been asking for thousands of years. What is the meaning and purpose of life? Is there a meaning and purpose to life?

That's an important one because if your answer is no, if you are kind of just stuck with some materialistic programming that you got from school or possibly parents or the culture around you,

Well, that's going to lead you to despair. If you just think life has no purpose, there's no meaning to life. There's no purpose to life. There's nothing higher.

There's nothing eternal. I'm not part of something bigger. Well, that is depressing. And so if your life becomes unhappy, yeah, it's very easy to lose hope and despair because it has no purpose or meaning.

But I guarantee that is not the case. I promise you that. But I can't prove it to you. You've got to figure it out yourself. So, if you're going through a horrible, tough, difficult time, that's a great time to explore these big topics.

What is the purpose of life? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? And if so, what is the nature of God? What is God like? If there's a God, is He neutral?

Is it just some energy? Is it a person? Is it a good person? And then what is my own nature? Who am I really? Am I just this physical body? Am I just this collection of cells and atoms, and then when this body dies, it's all done, and that's it?

Or am I something more? Am I consciousness, right? Thinking, awareness... Am I temporary or am I eternal, meaning forever? And then, if I'm, if I'm, if there's something spiritual to me, if I'm not just this body, and if there is a God, what is my relationship to God?

What is my duty to God? What is my, um, yeah, I guess, I guess perspective, you know, like where, how, what does this mean about the meaning of life? You have to

investigate these questions. When you're in despair and suffering and having a tough time, you're kind of open. Okay, all that pain is terrible, but it does make you open to wanting to seek and find meaning.

Sometimes when everything's going great, if you're making lots of money and you're rich and you got tons, you know, say you're a guy and you're a rich guy and you're young and you got all these, you know, beautiful, sexy women trying to get you and you're all the different woman every night and you got tons of money coming in and everything and it's all just a party, party, party. You know, those guys don't tend to sit around thinking about the meaning of life.

or God, or spirituality, or what happens after we die, or any of this, okay? Because, hey, everything's great, it's lots of pleasure, pleasure, pleasure.

Bad for them, because someday they are going to have to face it, and they won't be ready at all. But when you are in pain, and you're suffering, and things are really bad in your life, and you

You're sad or depressed. That actually opens you up to these questions. So that is a great time. And again, how do you investigate? I mean, if you already have a religious tradition, that's great.

You should go deeper into it. But if you don't, this is a good time to start exploring them. You could start by reading lots of books about near-death experiences because those are not specific to any religion.

But then you could also decide, well, maybe I'll just investigate the scriptures of different religions. I'll read the Koran in my language, and I'll read the Bible in my language, and I'll read Bhagavad Gita in my language, and I'll read some of the Tripitaka Sutras in my language, Buddhist, and I'll read the Dao De Ching.

in my language. That would be a good intro to comparative religion at a very, very basic level. You could read books like The Perennial Philosophy or some other books like that, which try to find some of the similarities between religious teachings.

Joseph Campbell... And then if you find yourself interested and attracted to certain of these teachings, then you go deeper and you start reading more.

And of course, there are always videos and interviews and talks and discussions that you can find online now and videos and things and podcasts. So it's a great time to go into these things. That's another thing I've always done in my life.

Every time I had a hard time in my life, I tried to focus on learning. And the other thing is, I just, I don't know, I don't know why, but I always seem to have this inclination, this interest, this motivation to start going into these topics. And, you know, I read, I started reading, I read

the Bible, and I read, you know, Buddhist sutras and Buddhist writings. I got into Tatnat Han for one period of my life that was really tough. And eventually, Sanatana Dharma.

But, again, it gives meaning. As you start just exploring these questions, just by asking and asking looking into it and reading about different people's ideas on these questions, you might not get all the answers immediately. You probably won't, you know, the ones that are going to satisfy you.

But what you will do is you will start to get a feeling that, okay, I'm not exactly sure what it is, but there is a purpose. You'll start to get the feeling that there is a purpose. It's not all meaningless.

It's not all meaningless. And even my suffering is not meaningless. It may take a long time to figure out what the meaning is, okay, or the purpose is, but if the purpose is simply that it leads you to a genuine spiritual path, an upward path, I promise you, that's the best meaning of all. And...

this suffering's worth it. Even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. So, learning. Focus on learning, number one. Number two, focus on, I'll just use the word spirituality.

Read about spirituality. And that's a very broad, big topic, okay? But, you know, the meaning of life, the purpose of life, why are we here, the nature of

existence, right? Start exploring that. It's the best time to explore that. I mean, there's no bad time to explore those questions. But when you're really suffering and having a hard time, it's a particularly good time because you're kind of open, you're humbled.

And I think that's why. Because, you know, the spiritual path, to just be really vague in general, the spiritual path really opens to people who are humble.

Humble. When you feel yourself to be small and insignificant, then the great and the eternal opens up for you more. When you feel yourself to be awesome, right?

An extreme example again, like you're super rich and you've got all the all the hot girls or boys or whatever wanting you and you're famous and you're at the top of the world and everything's awesome. It's very easy to get a big ego and then those people tend to be kind of closed to spirituality, to God, to Dharma, to any kind of spiritual path.

Sometimes we have to be really brought down low before we're lifted up. So learning, spirituality, focus on those two things. Final thing before I go, I'm going to get back in, see my kids.

The final point is you've got to be patient. Because even if things have gone very badly for you, especially again, I'm speaking especially to young people where you might feel like, I haven't done anything.

My life has just been... horrible this whole time or a lot of the time you know what you might just be a late bloomer like me okay because you know everything in my life has come at a later time in my life and right now at the age of 57 i'm the happiest i've ever been i feel the best i ever have i feel like i have the most meaning in my life ever

this is the best time in my life so far at age 57. You know, in fact, I kind of feel sad for people who hit my age and they look back and, you know, wishing, oh, I remember life was so great when I was 20. Oh, I wish I was young again. Man, I don't.

I don't. Not at all. I was, you know, it's not just this one thing that I discussed, like the girlfriend leaving. There was a A very long chunk of my life, all through my 20s and most of my 30s where I was extremely lonely.

I didn't know what was going on in my life. And it was up and down and up and down. A lot of lows. A lot of low points. And then things finally started to pick up for me in my late 30s.

I started Effortless English and I got married. And those two things were great. But there's still a long road to this point. And even when things are going great, you're going to have tough times, like I said last year, even though I'm the happiest I've ever been.

But we had still a tough, tough, stressful year last year. So this is so important to you to remember that It will get better. And it's very possible that you could have the best part of your life could be when you're 50 or 60 or 70.

And that's not what you're going to see in the media. It's not what most people are going to tell you. It's not the popular image, right? The popular image.

We live in a youth culture. It's all about, you know, to be, you know, young and awesome. And that's the best time in life. I don't think it is. I don't think it's just me

Okay, yeah, you're young, you probably have the most energy and health. Not everybody. Some people don't have very good health and they figure it out later in life.

But a lot of people in general, maybe that's the case. But it's also true that you don't know what's going on in the world. You have no idea. You have no experience.

So it's very hard to make great decisions when you're 20 or 25 or even 30. It takes people time to figure these things out. And so if you just keep focusing on learning and learning and learning and on spirituality or philosophy on these deep questions, keep focusing on them year after year after year. Don't look at it just for months.

Don't look at it for, oh, my whole life will change in two years. Look at it in terms of decades, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years. What happens is your life will start getting better and better and better. You start getting momentum.

So even if your life sucks at 25 and you got no money and you're completely alone, yeah, I know. I know what it's like. I know. Or maybe you hit 35 like me.

35 was living in my van. And, you know, I saw it as an adventure and interesting challenge. But I was broke. I had almost no money living in a car. No girlfriend or boyfriend.

Not married. No kids. No, very little money. And I'm sure most people probably thought, what in the heck is going on with AJ? He's 35. He's got nothing in his life.

three years later, I started my business. And a year after that, I was financially free, traveling the world, all the money I needed. And, you know, completely and totally, absolutely transformed, changed and different. That's how fast things can turn around.

So this is my message of hope to end with for you. No matter how dark it is, when you stay focused on those two things and you just keep being persistent, don't give up. Stay focused on those two things. Learning, learning, learning.

Spirituality and philosophy, spirituality and philosophy. Just keep focused on those year after year, month after month, day after day. It will turn around. And when the turnaround happens, you might be shocked how fast it happens.

especially if you've had years and years and years of a bad life, especially if you had a bad childhood and your youth has been terrible and it's been nothing but bad luck and everything seems horrible and you just stay focused on those two things and then something happens. It might happen when you're 40.

Don't give up. Don't give up just because you're 40 and think, oh, well, God, everyone else has already done everything. They've already had their careers and everything's done and I haven't done anything.

I'm not miserable and alone. It's not too late. Keep the faith. Keep focused on these two things. And it will turn around. Because what's going to happen is you're doing constant and never-ending improvement.

It's a Tony Robbins principle. It's a Japanese principle, Kaizen. It's making tiny, tiny, tiny little improvements. That learning you're doing and that focusing on that deeper spiritual questions is making little changes inside of you, possibly big changes inside of you.

And okay, maybe after one month, nothing much seems to happen. Maybe after a year, small things happen. But I guarantee after 10 years of doing that, 20 years of doing that, you will be transformed.

You will be totally different than you were. Meanwhile, most of the people in the world are doing the opposite. Most of the people in the world, they are fast starters. They're off running because everybody's pushing them to do it.

Everyone's telling them, you got to succeed now. Get a job. Get a career. Do this. Get a girlfriend now. Get a boyfriend now. Get out there. Party, party, party.

Make money. You know... Do everything now. Fast, fast, fast. You got to do it all. So they're all like racing around. They're not thinking about anything.

They don't have a big perspective. They're not thinking about the meaning of life. They're just doing what the culture and people around them are telling them to do, what everybody else is doing.

And these are the people that end up having the crisis at midlife who suddenly think, what is the meaning of life? What am I doing? And sadly, some of these people, you know, they're married. They've got two, three, four kids now.

And suddenly their whole life feels meaningless because they never thought about any of it. They didn't choose any of it. And even though on the outside everything seems like it's perfect, on the inside they have no purpose, no meaning, nothing deeper.

And that's when those are the people that get divorced and leave their kids and do all kinds of terrible, crazy things and kind of wreck their lives and many other people's lives too.

You don't want to be that person. And you won't be. You'll be the opposite. Because while everybody else starts fast and tends to fade, fade, fade, that's why you see that in the movies, that's why the message is always that, oh, middle-aged people and old people, they're the miserable ones, oh, the young or the great.

It's not true. If you focus on those two things, make those two things the focus of your life, especially in tough times, then you start getting better and better and growing and growing and growing. Whatever happens to you physically,

Yeah, you're not going to have maybe the same athletic performance when you're 60, but you can have greater wisdom, greater skills, greater happiness, greater joy, deep, powerful meaning and purpose to your life, financial independence, freedom, all of these things.

And that'll get you through so many tough times if you just feel like things are getting a tiny bit better or if you think they can, that they will eventually.

So don't kill yourself, of course, but don't despair either. Don't despair. Don't fall into pessimism or bitterness. Focus on those two things, learning and spirituality, learning and spirituality.

will give you a life that just keeps growing and growing and growing, ever more powerful, ever more deep, ever more joyful. So if you're having a tough time now, start today and do those two things and commit to doing those two things for the rest of your life.

You're going to be okay. You're going to be okay. And if things are going well for you, guess what? You still focus on those same two things because that's how you make things even better.

That's how you make sure that all the good stuff you're having now in your life will continue and even get better. So it's actually a message for people who are doing well too. All right, lots of love to you. I'm going to go back inside now.

EffortlessEnglishClub.com. See you next time.