Joy To The World and To YOU

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. I'm A.J. Hogue. You speak English fluently. You speak powerfully. You speak confidently.

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EffortlessEnglishClub.com Joy to the world. It's a very nice Christmas song. There is a nice Christmas song. Joy to the world. Right? Very nice song. Check it out.

I'm not sure if there are other language versions. I know the English version. You can find it on YouTube. It's called Joy to the World. You can probably find one that has the words in English.

Very nice. This is a good time for that. Joy. What is joy? Joy is basically like great happiness. A tremendous happiness. Deep happiness. And this right now is the time to focus on joy, to focus on happiness.

Of course, if you're a Christian, Christmas is a great time for that. But even if you're not, it's the end of the year. It's the end of the year. And...

Next year, right? 2021 is coming soon. We have just about a week until the new year, January 1st, new year. And it's quite normal, many of us, that at the new year, we make goals, right?

We decide, what do I want to do this year? And we have small goals. We have big goals. And we get to work, right? These are called New Year's resolutions.

New Year's goals. Because there's a feeling of starting fresh, right? You start a new year. It's fresh. It's new. It's kind of like being reborn a little bit, right?

The old year is gone. The new year begins. And we get to work. We want to get to work. I'm sure English is one of your goals, right? And it's very common, many Effortless English members will make a big effort, extra energy, extra effort for English at the new year, the first few months of the new year.

It's a good time to do more than normal. Do more hours per day. Make extra effort. Make a big effort in the new year. to make a big jump, a big improvement.

You can improve a lot in three months. I think three months is a good amount of time to focus on a big improvement, on a lot of extra effort. More than three months, it's a little difficult to keep going, right? Of course, you want to

do English every single day. But if you want to do kind of a challenge, a personal challenge, a big goal, a big improvement, a lot of extra effort, extra work, you can't do that forever. You'll get tired.

So I think about three months is good, at least for me. I usually find that three months is a good amount of time to do extra. So I recommend, why not at the new year, starting January 1st, or you could wait until like January 1st. 5th or January 15, something like that, right after the holidays, and then, boom, extra effort, do extra hours of English, and do it for three months, so until March, right, February, March, actually until April, if you start in the middle of the month, so until spring.

It's actually, it's a good time, it's the winter time, at least in the north, the northern hemisphere is winter, and it's an excellent time to just focus on

What's most important to you on English? And maybe you have other goals like working out, getting in good shape, whatever it is. But let's get back to our topic today. Joy, joy, happiness.

This time of joy and happiness right now. If you plan to make a big effort in January, there's one problem. You need energy to do that. Emotional energy, physical energy too, but emotional energy.

And sometimes what happens is people have a tough year and they start January and they have big goals and they try to do extra work, but they're still kind of tired. They still feel a little negative. They still have maybe bad memories and bad feelings from last year, from this, you know, from the previous year.

So it's important that right now, this time at the end of the year, this time now, it's very important now to let go of your problems, your pain, difficulties. Anything difficult or negative that happened this year, any problems you had this year, any failures you had this year, any sadness,

you had this year, any tragedy you had this year, anything like that, time to let go. This is the time. It's right at the end of the year, the last week of the year. It's time to let it go.

Maybe you had a really tough year. I don't know. Some people had a tough year this year. So that's fine, but we can't hold on to that forever because then you will start next year feeling tired.

You'll start next year feeling negative. That's not good. It's no good. So we have to decide, let go of all the negative stuff. Let it go. It's gone. It's time to let it go.

Let it all go from this year. Anything negative, anything bad, anything difficult. And this last year, I mean this last week, sorry, this last week from now until the end of the year, we have one week, focus on happiness, focus on joy, focus on gratitude, focus on all the things that are, in fact, very, very wonderful in your life. And I guarantee, because you're still alive, and you're still listening to me now,

that you do have many good things in your life. You do. A lot of them. We discussed, we talked about yesterday, grace, the beauty and goodness that comes from God, that comes from life itself, that comes from nature.

And hopefully most of you will have one or more people in your life that you love and care about. So you focus on love. You've probably had good things happen this year also. Even if you had a tough year, you still had some good things.

Remember them. Remember them and say thank you. Thank you for the good things. Even the bad things, the tough things. Maybe you learned something from them.

Maybe they made you stronger. Maybe you don't even realize it yet. Maybe you don't quite realize it yet. But... Next year or two years from now, you'll remember, you'll look back and you'll say, you know, actually I'm better.

Because the bad things that happened, because of those problems, I had to get smarter. I had to grow stronger. I had to have more faith. And now I'm a better person because of that.

So I'm happy for those problems. Maybe it's hard to do that now, but in the future you can. But what you can do now is let go, let go, let go and focus on all the happiness and good things in your life. And let this last week be a time of celebration and happiness.

Let this whole period right now from today is the 24th, December 24th, where I am. All right. So that's one. And then one week will be December 31st. So it's it's the last week of the year.

Let it be a year of happiness. Celebrate with people you care about and love. Celebrate all the things you enjoy in life. If you love nature, get out in nature this week and just appreciate it.

If you have people you really love and care about, connect with them. Try to spend time with them directly. If they're far away, call them. Talk to them.

Have a nice long chat with them. Send them a nice letter. People don't do that much now. Write a letter with your hands and mail it to them. Just telling them how you appreciate them.

You're grateful for them. All the things you like about them and respect about them. It might be your parents if they're still alive. It might be your children if they're older.

Husbands, wives, old friends. Many, many people that are good and and that have given you love and given you respect and helped you in life, well, remember that and be grateful. If you are healthy, if you have your physical health, well, be happy and be grateful for that and really celebrate it, appreciate it.

We forget sometimes. We only remember when we get sick. We get sick and then we remember, oh, man, oh, it's... Now I'm sorry. It was so nice to be healthy before.

So... If you're healthy now, then you should celebrate that because that is a great and wonderful thing to have your physical health, to have your energy still.

Appreciate it. We don't have it forever, so appreciate it now while you do have it. To all of these wonderful things, let this end of the year be a time of great happiness.

And what this will do, think of it, it's like a battery. It's like charging your battery, your emotional battery, right? Because maybe sometimes we get to the end of the year, we're tired. Emotionally, we're tired.

We had a hard year and working and problems and difficulties and kind of the end of the year, getting a little tired and our emotions may be kind of low, maybe kind of negative.

It happens. So this is a good time now to recharge. Imagine it's recharged like plugging in, like you have a battery, an emotional battery, right? And now is the time to fill up, fill up all those positive emotions.

Fill them up again in your mind. Fill them up again in your heart. Recharge your emotions, your positive emotions. So you begin the year, you begin January full of happiness, full of joy, full of enthusiasm, full of energy, full of gratitude.

full of determination, power, then you will do a great job. You'll do great with your goals because you'll have all that emotional energy, positive emotional energy, to use for your new goals, to start your life new again next year.

But you need that energy. Without the energy, it's very hard to do. In January, if your emotions are low, your energy is low, Maybe you have great goals, but it will be hard to do it.

It will be hard to achieve them because if your emotions are too low or too negative. But if this week you just fill yourself with happiness and goodness and joy and appreciation and gratitude and love, and you fill up, fill up, fill up with all those wonderful emotions, boom, you start the new year. You feel fantastic, full of energy, full of enthusiasm.

And you will rock. You will rock. You will do great on all of your goals. You will start that new year feeling alive, feeling like a totally new person.

Reborn. In a way, each year, we are reborn. We're kind of born again. You kind of think of at the end of the year, the old, that year dies. Let it die.

Let all the difficult, bad things die. Let them go. And then think about The new year is kind of a time of rebirth, right? You're being born again, in a way, and starting again.

Everything new. So this is a great week of celebration, of joy, of happiness. Play music that you love, that makes you feel happy. All this week, if you watch movies, don't watch negative movies, don't watch movies that make you feel sad.

Or don't watch movies that make you feel angry. Watch movies that make you feel happy and alive or that make you laugh. Watch really happy, joyful movies, right? Same thing about the news.

That's why I'm not talking about it right now. Some of you asked me about politics and news. I don't want to talk about it right now because we'll talk about it next year.

This is the time... Don't listen to that stuff, okay? Things that are going to make you angry or tired or negative, just totally get rid of them this week, okay? Do not listen to anything like that.

Even music, you know? I like some music, like I like some hard rock, right? Or occasionally like some metal type music, but... I'm not going to listen to it this week, like if it's too angry and too, right?

This is not a good time. I don't want to listen to that. I'm listening to kind of happy music, almost like dance music. Tonight I had like a little dance party with my babies.

It was very fun. I had a great time. So I just put on like, I played Michael Jackson and the B-52s and some like old 80s dance music and I was dancing around with both my babies and it was really fun.

I feel really happy after doing that. And it was a really fun, happy time. So I recommend just doing things like that this whole week, the entire week. So seven full days of happiness and fun and positivity.

And get rid of anything negative. Get rid of it. Get it out of your mind. Don't listen to it. Don't watch it. Don't even think about it. Gone. It's gone.

We're starting again. All right, so let's chat now. We'll go to our live comments and questions. That's all I have for today, just very simple. It's just a nice, simple, short show, and let's just hang out, those of you watching live, and I'll take your comments and questions.

Hey, Vladislav, good to see you. ah olga says aj your speech is so calming for me i'm going to follow your advice thank you great olga it's always great to see you by the way sarah good to see you sarah says uh you always inspire and remind me to be grateful and be happy in my life thank you for everything thank you sarah and you know i i recently talked to many vip members sarah was on the call and uh

You know, they did this for me. They kind of gave me a lot of very, very, very sweet and nice compliments and said a lot of very nice positive things to me that made me very happy. I'm very grateful. Thank you.

Kind of reminded me that I'm helping people and why I'm doing this. And thank you so much. It was really very nice. It was a nice Christmas gift for me, from all of you.

Oh, cool. Here's Vladislav recommending a Russian singer. In Russia, I like the singer... Let's see if I can pronounce... I can't pronounce this correctly, but Jania Lubick.

She has winter songs, New Year, Christmas songs. Excellent. Perfect. Oh, Igor, yeah. You had mentioned this guy before. Tell you what, Igor, about me interviewing a guy... What's his name?

Justice Walker... An American, he's a missionary who came to Russia at age 13, stayed here, speaks Russian without an accent. He built a farm, raising his kids.

Yeah, he sounds very interesting. It would be a very interesting guy. Send me his information on Gab, and I'll put him on my list. He does sound like an interesting person to talk to, to interview for this show.

Trong says, I hope everyone all over the world will be happy, healthy, funny, and have better things next year. Thank you, Trong. Trong Volk. Ah, okay.

So, asking for movies. Whoops, the comments just jumped. I lost it. Where is it? Mmm... Where did that comment go? Sorry, one second. Someone was just asking about movies.

The comments are coming in so fast that I lost it. One second, guys. Sorry. I'd like to ask you expectations in about 10 years. I'd like to ask you...

Uh-huh. Sorry, guys. One second. I lost it. Okay. I'm sorry about that. Anyway, someone asked... I think someone was... I'll just try to answer the question.

Someone was asking, do I have any good positive movies to recommend for this time? Well, yesterday I recommended a couple. It's a Wonderful Life is a great one.

There's also A Christmas Carol, one of the older ones. There's couple versions uh christmas carol with the george c scott it's probably my favorite one it's a i think it's from the 1980s and there's one with um what's his name the guy from the x-men and star trek he's bald um patrick stewart he did a version of

A Christmas Carol. He also did a movie, and it's pretty good, too, although I like the George C. Scott one better. So those are two very nice movies that are very positive.

I find that Jerry Maguire is a very nice, positive movie as well. Jerry Maguire, that's Tom Cruise. So there are a few nice ones to watch. Oh, this is interesting.

Andy LeBlanc says... Today I took a taxi, and the driver was so freaking amazing. He was 70 years old, but so charismatic and positive. He was funny and really gave me a positive energy.

That's really cool. That's great. Nice. I'm glad you had that experience. So I hear you saying, what's my expectation about the end of the pandemic? I know I said before it would end after the election.

Now I think they plan to make it go forever. So it will end when you stop wearing the stupid masks and when you just decide that it's over. Because the media is going to try to make this go forever.

The governments are going to try to make this go forever because it's a way to control and scare everybody. So it'll end when you want it to end. Matia 23 says, what's your opinion about meditation? I'm 17.

I meditate every day. I think it's useful. Meditation is fantastic. It's wonderful. That's great. Very good. Yes. I highly recommend it. Oh yeah, Sarah says, I found you two years ago at Christmas time.

I'm grateful for that. Thank you, Sarah. When will I finish the Jerry Maguire movie? Ah, good question. I'm not sure. I want to. It's a great movie. Yeah, please don't spam the comments.

Just post a comment one time. If I don't see it, you can post it again. But two times is really the maximum. Oh, cool. Mohammed Guffley says, thanks, AJ.

Because of you, I pressured myself and got into the battlefield and created a YouTube channel where I post my videos with native speakers. Cool. Thank you for your great content. Nice.

Awesome. Good for you. Excellent. Put the link. Hey, Mohammed, you know, give me the link. Post the link to me on Gab and I'll share it so other people can find it.

Oh, cool. Arzan Mamun says, last year I set a goal to be fluent in English. I successfully reached the target because of the speaking challenge run by A.J. Hoag, not by me.

So many thanks for that. Unfortunately, this year I haven't set any goals. Don't worry about the goals yet. Do it in January. Right now, just focus on being happy, appreciating, right?

You don't need to think about goals right now. It's the end of the year. Just relax. In January... We'll talk about goals. Fernanda, great to see you also.

Gratitude is the word, AJ. This difficult year, we have to thank our lives, our family, and our health. I'm so grateful as well for having our friendship, AJ. Have a great time with your family.

Thank you, Fernanda. That's very nice. Thank you. Mohamed Belmone. Sorry, Mohamed Fadel Belmon. I can't pronounce your last name. I'm sorry. What's your opinion about the Ali Richards method?

I like Ali. I have one of his courses in Japanese, which I use. It's just some conversations. It's like 20, I think, 20 conversations. And it's like a little story that he does with the characters.

It's nice. I like it. It's good. He has other ones too, but I like that one. I use that one for Japanese. Fetch says, how do I benefit from the live streams you do?

For these live streams for the podcast, you just listen to them. This is extra listening content. It's extra practice for your English listening. So that's all you do.

Just relax and listen. You can repeat them if you want, but that's all. I don't recommend trying to study them with any kind of stress. Just listen and relax.

If you want to do something a little more organized, a little more disciplined, get one of my courses at effortlessenglishclub.com. Dimitri says, I wish you to be the same positive person in the next year. I'll do my best.

Cool. Margarita Filimonova says, I believe that one day I will be a great speaker because of you. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Margarita. I'm sure you will.

You will. I'm just going to jump to the bottom because they're coming in so fast. Oh, TMoc, one of our supporting members, says, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, good health, and good luck. God bless you always.

Thank you very much. That's very nice. Oh, cool. Merab John says, Hey, AJ, I've qualified for the medical entrance test. I have scored very well in English because of your learning, your teaching.

Thank you. Congratulations. Nice. Good luck to you. Hassan asks, How do you master the Chinese language, although it is difficult? Well, I don't speak Chinese, but...

The two major challenges of Chinese are the tones, which is a pronunciation issue and a listening issue. To hear them can be very tough for people who have never heard a tonal language before.

And, of course, the characters. The writing is also very tough. So, you know, the characters, that's a whole different thing. That's a difficult challenge.

There's a very good... What is the name of it? So it's basically the same thing. What is it? I can't remember the name. So in Japanese, there's one called Remembering the Kanji.

R-T-K is usually Remembering the Kanji. The same guy wrote a book about Chinese and learning Chinese characters. Let me see if I can find it, because it is useful. Okay, remembering...

I'll give you his name, because this is the best way I know... This is the best I know. It's really... Yeah, and... Oh, yeah. James Hazig. It's called Remembering the Hansi.

So, I believe that's for the Chinese... And his last name is H-E-I-S-I-G, Hezig. So if you're studying Japanese or Chinese characters, this is the best one I know, the best book I know for learning that.

And the writer's name is Hezig, H-E-I-S-I-G, do a search, and that's what I recommend. For the speaking, you just got to listen a lot. I don't know of any, I can't recommend any Chinese course. I don't know of any good ones, so good luck.

Oh, Sahir Sami says, I own a travel agency since last March. It's been totally closed. I'm still waiting to overcome this pandemic. What's your advice in this hard time?

That's a hard business right now. I think overall it's a hard business because people are booking travel online more and more. So travel agents in general, travel agencies, it's a tough business.

My advice is you've got to find another way to make money. I'm not saying close it completely. If things change, you can still reopen your travel agency or you can... Hopefully it will improve, but find other ways, maybe connected to your travel agency, but you've got to find some other product or service.

You've got to find something you can do, you can sell now, right? I don't know what that is for you, but don't just sit around waiting, right? You're going to have to get creative, and you might start a totally new business that's not connected to travel at all, or maybe you do something that's still connected to travel, but maybe something online. I don't know what it is for you, but you've got to find other ways to make money.

Hey, Vipin says, good evening from India. You're the best teacher in the world from my point of view. Thank you. It's very nice. Omid asks, can you give me advice on how to be productive?

So I always give this advice. When people ask me about time management, productivity, I... My advice is do things that you love to do. Then it's easy.

You don't need a big effort to do something if you love it. You want to do it. Things you hate to do, those are the things that are hard to be productive at. It's hard to do things when you don't want to.

Then you need motivation and you have to try to trick yourself. It can be very hard. Let's say for exercise, you're trying to get in good shape. Well, there are many, many, many, many, many ways to exercise, right?

You can ride a bike. You can run and jog. You can walk. You can lift weights. You can do body weights. You can do gymnastics. You can play a sport like soccer.

You can do martial arts like jiu-jitsu or boxing. There are many, many, many, many, many. Or you can do dance, different kinds of dancing. There are many, many ways to get exercise.

So... The key, a lot of people try to force themselves, right? They say, I'm going to run. But they hate running. But they keep trying to force themselves to run.

They're always fighting themselves. I don't want to run. But I must do it. That's a bad way to do it, I think. Instead, you've just got to find the kind of activity that you really, really, really like.

Then you don't need motivation because you want to do it. So if you love walking... outdoors you like going for a walk every day then it's very easy to do no motivation necessary no time management necessary you will do it because you like it you enjoy it or maybe you enjoy dancing like social dancing maybe you want to do you want to learn salsa dancing or the waltz or something and it's so much fun and you love it love it love it well you want to do it all the time you want to practice it at home That'll be a great kind of exercise if you really love it.

I'm doing jujitsu, a kind of wrestling, a kind of martial art. I don't need motivation to do jujitsu because I enjoy it so much. I want to do it. I want to do it more and more.

So that's my best advice for anything is find the things you love to do and then it's easy to be motivated. It's easy to be productive. If you love doing your own business, if you love being an entrepreneur, you'll do it. You'll do it probably too much.

So you won't need motivation. You won't need productivity. Sunfin Cheng says, yes, characters of Chinese are more than English, but the grammar is simple and easy. Right.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. That's the good news about Chinese and Thai. maybe some others, is that the grammar is super simple. You don't need lots and lots of verb conjugations.

My wife speaks Chinese, so what she did is she focused first on pronunciation because that was really the big thing for her. She's Japanese. She already knew the characters, so that gave her a big advantage for the reading. But for speaking...

Chinese and Japanese is completely different. So she had to learn to be able to hear and say the different tones. It's very tough for people who don't have a language like that. So she focused on that a lot in the beginning with a native speaker and even in a classroom.

And once she got that, once she was good at that, then she just went out. She moved to China, so she lived in China, and she just talked to local people all the time.

So that's how she did it. So it's a huge amount of listening and chatting with people. But first she had to master the pronunciation. Like for English, it's less of a problem because English pronunciation doesn't change the meaning of the word, but Chinese does.

Oh, Muhammad Obi is asking, why don't you interview effortless English supporters to inspire others? Well, it's interesting you mention, because I mentioned that, actually, and I will be doing that next year. I'll interview some VIP members and others, so I will do that.

Okay, Slavisa! Slavisa, good to see you, as always. She says, I'm late, because I was running around before Christmas, and I have a lot of work to do. Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all.

No worries, it's a busy time. It's a happy busyness, though. It's a good busyness. Oh, cool. Myokola Kozlo says, talking about being reborn, today is my 23rd birthday.

This is the day, right? This is a date right before Christmas. Gives me spiritual meaning. Thank you. Yeah, very nice. Good for you. Yusufin says, because you always make us happy and energetic, I'm always forever deeply grateful towards you.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'll give you a secret, guys. You don't become rich from YouTube ads. Almost nobody. So, no, I'm not interested. It's just annoying.

I don't want a bunch of ads on my videos. So, thanks for thinking of me, but no, I don't like it. I don't want to annoy you guys having to watch advertisements for other products. I wouldn't make much money from that anyway.

Olga asks me, do you like swimming? Yes, but I hate cold water. I'm going to swim twice a week next year. What's your opinion about swimming in swimming pools?

Wonderful. It's great. Swimming is a fantastic exercise. It's awesome. Yeah, it's great. I like swimming, but I'm a little... I don't like cold. A lot of pools are cold, so this is the thing.

I don't like to regularly swim and get into a cold pool two, three times a week. I don't like it. When I lived in Hawaii, the warm ocean, we would go swimming all the time, snorkeling and swimming almost every day.

So, yeah. So that's, swimming is great. It's wonderful. It's a good exercise. Very good exercise. Jack Lane, the guy, you know, one of my great role models and heroes for health and fitness.

He would, he would swim every day, one hour. Ah, okay. Muhammad, just says, Muhammad says, I have a problem. Sometimes I'm so obsessed with deep learning.

I want everything perfect. Because I believe a lot in deep learning, but sometimes after 30 times, I get bored. Okay, right. Well, that's enough. I see your point.

Yes, it can be too much. If you get to that point, you've repeated an audio 30 times or a lesson, you're getting bored, just go to the next one. Okay, yes. Deep learning is good.

It's good to get that repetition. It's definitely beneficial. It's helpful. But don't do it too much. When you really start hating it, if you really start getting bored, then new things.

So it's fine to jump to something new. It's fine. Graf Valdemar asks, AJ, how to sound more academic during conversation. You're probably asking the wrong person this question, but I'll give you my answer.

Just to spice up your active vocabulary, how to transfer passive words to active. Okay, so there's two parts to the question. To sound more academic, my advice is don't.

Why? There's no point. You don't need to. Academic speech is boring. Academic speech is... less clear, less powerful, less persuasive. The only point of academic speech is that academics are trying to sound smart.

It's an act. They're acting and they're trying to make everybody think they're smart. Forget that. Just be smart. And communicate powerfully. Powerful, persuasive, clear,

Good, great speakers do not talk like professors. They use simple, clear language. They use the most simple, direct vocabulary that they can. So, in my opinion, there's no point to that goal.

Don't do it. Don't waste your time doing that. How to transfer from passive to active... Really, it's a lot of repetition. The more you hear a word, the more it will become active in your mind.

So you hear it one, two, three, four, five times. Maybe you understand it. You're not ready to use it yet. In my opinion, there's no need to force that.

After you hear it enough times in the right situation, eventually it'll kind of come out, and that's fine. You don't need to force yourself to do that. You can always just...

say the same thing using more simple common words you can say almost everything you need to say with very simple common words occasionally you do need that exact word and then maybe you make an effort to use it but overall I'd say avoid academic speech because it's not good meaning it's not clear and it's not powerful

Oh, this is interesting. Ihsan Kasami says, I'm currently living in Palestine. I'm planning to move to Texas in six months. Well, that's a big change.

I'm a bit nervous. I'm wondering if six months is enough time for me to become fluent. Yes, it is enough time for you to become fluent. That's the good news.

Now, the tough thing is you're going into the United States to live. So, you know, you'll have some challenges. talking to native speakers. Some of them are going to speak very fast.

But yeah, make a big effort for six months. You will be able to communicate well. And then when you get to the United States, then just keep reading, keep listening, talk to lots of people, do your best to make friends. And this is going to help you make even bigger improvement, of course.

So don't get stressed about making mistakes. When you come to America, if you can't understand people sometimes, don't worry about it. It's normal. Don't get stressed about it.

Artful Dodger, are you transphobic? Am I afraid of trans people? I'm not afraid of them. No. Let's see. Hishar Jarji says, how the hell am I going to get happiness without having money?

Well, very easy. You don't need money to be happy. So if you think you need money to be happy, you are going to have a very painful life. Because when you finally get money, you'll realize...

Oh, still not happy. Oh, no. Now what? Right? This is what happens to a lot of people. They get money. I'm sure you do have money. You feel like you don't have enough money, whatever that is.

It's not going to make you happy. It can remove some stress, right? If you're stressed out about money and then you get money and you have a better income, of course, the stress goes away, which is very nice. But money will not make you happy.

Love makes you happy. Gratitude makes you happy. Family. You know, your husband or wife. Your children. Work that is meaningful and enjoyable to you. That'll make you happy.

Faith. Grace. These things will make you happy. Money's not going to make you happy. It's sad because this is the message pushed by so many movies and TV and media.

People think, oh, if I just have more money, oh, look at all these super rich people. They seem so happy. It's an act. A lot of them are very miserable people, we know, because they become drug addicts.

They kill themselves. They're miserable. So if you think becoming rich will make you happy, you're wrong. So, don't waste your life trying to find that out, okay?

Become rich if you want, that's fine, but not to make you happy, right? Become rich to get rid of financial stress, to take care of your family, to, you know, enjoy a fun life, all that's fine, but you have to find happiness, real deep happiness you have to find somewhere else,

Don't look to money for that. Okay. Okay, that's an interesting question. I want to ask you a question. I have old novels that go back hundreds of years.

The language of old literary works. Oh, is it different from current language? Yes. I mean, in some words. Yes, exactly. Right. So if you're reading, like, say, a novel that's 200 years old, let's just say, I'll give you a very easy example.

Let's say 18, I think it's 1850, 1860, something like that. Henry David Thoreau. One of my favorite books is Walden. Okay, so what's that? 1850? It's about 150 years.

And is it different than like a novel written now? Common novel now? Yeah, or like a book about the same topic, if someone wrote it now, would the language be kind of different? Yes.

Not so much the individual words. The vocab's mostly the same. But the style of writing, the sentence structure, and indeed some of the, even the words chosen, those old books like Thoreau, for example, it's very, very, very, very, feels very formal.

The style is much less direct. It can be very beautiful, but harder to understand, I think, for modern readers. So, if you're, you know, as an English learner, I recommend reading more recent books.

I think most things like, let's say, 19... something like that 1940s 50s I think anything from 1950 40s something like that until now will be fine even maybe even older than that yeah but I think you'll find in general that the writing of course each writer is different so it's hard to say exactly because it can be

One writer can be very, very different compared to another writer. But if you're choosing, you know, a little bit easier books, a little more direct books, kind of popular books, stories that are written more recently, you'll find the sentences probably a bit more direct, the vocab a little simpler in general, I would say. The style of conversation now, you know, the writing is a little more close to the speaking.

So, it can be a little tough. If you get even older, you start going back farther, then the language changes even more. So, until, you know, when you get, when you go back to like, say, Shakespeare, then now the language, it's all, it's not a different language, but it's, it's still English, but it's a, it's a different kind of English.

Um... where you'll start seeing words that we don't use anymore now, and ways of even grammar that we don't use anymore now. Right? And then, of course, you keep going.

The farther you go back, the more it will change, change, change, until it does really become a separate language, like Old English, like Beowulf, for example.

It's, you know, it's English, but it's not almost, not quite, it's not modern English. It's a little bit, you know, I don't know what the technical word would be, but it's really, you would find it very difficult to understand. So, more recent is better.

Mohammed Somrani asks, I'm trying to learn British English. Was wondering if you have a good podcast to suggest. Yeah, Luke Somrani. what's the name of it luke's english podcast i think is with the name his name the name of his show luke l-u-k-e like luke skywalker uh luke's english podcast i believe is the name of his show he's a nice guy british english interesting person too so his show's not boring he doesn't just talk about

grammar or verbs or something. He talks about British society and what's happening. It's quite interesting, I think. That's a good one for British English.

That's an interesting question. Mirob John says, why do we feel a little bit more attentive when we listen to a native speaker But it doesn't happen in the case of typical English teachers.

Because typical English teachers are boring? It's my guess. They're talking about grammar rules and textbook exercises. And let's face it, that's boring, right?

For most people, that's boring. There are a few people who love that kind of thing that they find it fascinating. But... For most people, that's boring.

But a native speaker, they're more likely just to chat about, you know, normal things, right? Normal, everyday things that are far more interesting to you and I and most people.

Annie LeBlanc is recommending for another British podcast, Paul Taylor. So I haven't heard that, but Annie, I'll trust Annie there. She recommended Luke also. And then a guy named Paul Taylor.

So if you're interested in British English, check out Paul Taylor. Let me know what you think. Oh, okay. So the follow-up on the questions, I really like old literary works.

This is my field, a studied department of English. Well, if you enjoy it, do it. That's great. Great. No problem. You'll get a lot of great vocabulary because I'll be honest, they were more intelligent in the past.

They wrote more intelligently. They used more vocabulary, a wider range, you know, a larger number of words in general. So... If you enjoy those old books, I find that they are better written, more interesting, a more complex level of English.

That can be more difficult, but it's also more interesting and more beautiful and more powerful, I think. So enjoy it. Great. Good for you. I recommend old books for sure.

Elana, hey good, Elana Khan, good to see you. Enjoy simple pleasures, she says. Imagine the best and be around the people who make me smile. The best way for me to be happy.

Exactly correct. Exactly. And Odutu Loa, kind of the Buddhist point of view. If you want to be happy, reduce your attachment towards everything. Don't cling.

Nothing is worth clinging to. Everything is impermanent. Right, the more we attach. So exactly, from the Buddhist point of view, again, attaching to money and focusing, money, money, money, I need more, more, more, more.

It will decrease your happiness. And there's great wisdom in that teaching. Margarita says, Filmanova says, effortless English members and UHA are the most friendly and kind people I've met during my 36 years.

Oh, that's very nice. Wow, that's great. I agree. We have a great group of people here. Very, very nice. Effortless English members and fans are awesome.

Fantastic people. That's why I enjoy doing this. It's really great. Olga says, is learning English poetry by heart a good way to improve one's spoken English?

Hmm. I generally want to say no. Poetry is very, typically very different than normal conversational English. So I would say enjoy poetry as art, but Overall, probably not going to help your speaking so much.

Okay, let's do a few more. Someone asked me about web... What do you think about web applications for language study? MemeRise, Duolingo, Lingualeo. I don't know Lingualeo.

Is it effective for beginners or not? And I find them boring. My personal opinion. Like, Duolingo, I know. I've tried it. And I... I quit after a few days.

I found it super boring because they typically, most of these typically focus on the same old textbook, right? They're teaching you little grammar things and little drills and little tests. I find it super boring.

I would rather just do, just jump in and start doing mini stories, right? Like, like for Japanese, I just, I just get the link. And they've got a set of mini stories. And I just jump in and start listening to them.

And my wife has some too. So I just do that. I just jump in and start doing it. Instead of doing all these school type, these textbook kind of activities.

Which is a lot of these web applications, they're just copying the textbook approach. They're using the web. They're using modern technology. But the method is actually just the same old boring method.

So I don't like them. I find them very boring. I would say, you know, if you're doing English, you guys are already, you know, more advanced than beginners. So if you're a beginner and you're doing another language, go to link.

Just jump right in on the mini stories. Do a search. They've got them in a lot of languages now. So... Like if you're doing Chinese, some people have mentioned Chinese.

I bet they have Mandarin. I think they maybe even have Cantonese. Just jump in and start doing the mini stories. And I promise they'll seem very difficult.

Like you're going to have to focus on just one for a while and maybe repeat it like 50 times. And you're going to have to read the translations and try to figure out the words. And if your language is not a tonal language, you need a lot of repetitions for a while. But I think it's still more interesting and fun and challenging to do that than some textbook type thing.

For me, at least, it's more interesting. Slavisa says, Definitely money does not bring happiness. Happiness is in love, family, health, nature, friends, sunset and sunrise. Happiness is all around us, but some people don't recognize it.

Well, that's very well said. Very well written. Excellent. I totally agree. I'm going to read it again. Happiness is in love, family, health, nature, friends, sunset and sunrise.

Happiness is all around us. That's poetic. That's very nice. Wow. Thank you, Silvisa. Okay, I'll do a couple more. We're almost to an hour, so a couple more and then time to go.

Is learning marketing important? Ask the legend. If you have your own business, it is not just important, it is required, or your business will probably fail.

For your career, if you're working in jobs, I would say it's important. Yeah, it will help you a lot in your career if you know how to market yourself. I've talked about this topic many times recently in the show.

So, absolutely, yes. Now, if you're not, if you're just doing other things, if you're not outside of business and your career, do you need marketing? Maybe not.

That's very nice. You're the best, wise person I've ever met. You're part of our family, not only our teacher, not only English teacher, your lifestyle guru. Thank you.

That's very nice. Thank you so much. Thank you. Optimus, with a Thai name, asks, In real life nowadays, do native speakers use a lot of idioms? Yeah. Usually, yes.

For communication in general, thank you. Yeah. I would say most native speakers do use... I'm talking about Americans, I guess, probably other countries too.

I mean, I'll give you an example would be my own family. That when I... I've recorded a few conversations with my mom and with my dad, for example. And when I do, I'm always surprised how many idioms they use, right?

Because I don't think about it so much. I don't use a lot of idioms myself. It's not my style of speaking. I don't do it very much. But, um, you know, when I, when I pay attention, because as a native speaker, I don't really notice it, you know, usually it's just natural.

I understand it. But, um, But when I really focus on it and think about it, I do notice that, yeah, my mom uses a lot of them. My dad uses a lot of them.

My friends use a lot of them. So, yeah, they do. Idioms are very common. Seo Wu says, are you going to spend your whole life teaching English? Do you find it worthwhile?

I probably will. That's not the only thing I do. I have a lot of other things I do in life. But yeah, I enjoy it. I feel it's worthwhile. So yes, I do plan to continue doing it.

Try living without money and see what happens. I have. I lived in my car. I lived in a van. I'll tell you what happens. Life becomes super simple. Now, when you say try living without money, I lived with very little money, lived very simply.

If you want to live with zero money, well, in this world now, not so easy. You could become a monk, I guess, or a nun. You, uh, or you have to go out into the mountains, become a mountain man or a mountain woman and learn how to hunt and, or, uh, or make, get a household and learn how to grow all your own food. It's possible.

But, um, yeah, the idea that you need lots of money to be happy is wrong though. Do you need some money if you're going to live in the, be part of the economy, right? You're going to go to the grocery store.

You're going to pay rent, that kind of thing. Yeah, of course. You need some money. But you don't need to be rich. That's the point. You need less than you think.

A lot less. And remember, the word is need. It can be nice to have more, but eventually there's a price. If you want to be a billionaire, for example, let's just say be extreme.

You want to be super, super rich. A billionaire. There's a very big price to pay in areas of your life. To reach that level of money, you're going to have to work like crazy.

You're going to have a lot less time for your family. You're going to sacrifice probably a lot of family time in order to make not even a billionaire, even just millions, tens of millions of dollars.

For some people, they want to do that. But I think for a lot of us, I would not want to do that. My family is more important to me. I would never want to leave my children and work 15 hours a day.

I don't care how much money I made. What is the Red Pill course about? That is about the movie The Matrix. It's like a short It's kind of a mini course.

It just teaches you vocabulary from that movie. So after you finish the course, you should be able to watch the movie and understand it pretty well. The English in the movie.

Matam Kumar, how is Christmas celebrated in Japan? I think they get chicken. I think they eat chicken. I think it was Kentucky Fried Chicken did some marketing campaign here in the past.

And it's kind of a romantic holiday, so couples on Christmas will go out to dinner or something. Usually couples without kids. And I think they still do, they do for children a little bit of the Santa Claus thing where maybe the kids might get one little gift or something. But it's obviously not a Japanese holiday, so...

It doesn't have the history or the tradition or the meaning that Christmas has in Christian or in, I would say, European cultures. That's an interesting question.

What's your favorite airline? You've traveled a lot. My favorite airline has an interesting question. Well, I'll tell you, I'll give you the opposite first.

I hate any airline that is based in the United States. I was going to say American Airlines, but that's actually the name of a specific airline. So United, Delta, American, they're crap. Any USA airline is crap.

Terrible. Terrible service. Awful. So the good ones are in... The best ones for me, I find, are in Asia. I don't know. There's a few that I like. It's hard to choose.

Let's see. I'm trying to think of the ones I've flown the most. Eva Airlines is nice. EVA, based in Taiwan. I've flown on that airline a lot. And always had good experiences.

Very good service. Flight attendants are nice. I don't think I've ever had a delay with them, despite I've flown a lot of long flights with them, so that's pretty impressive.

Thai Airways is quite nice. Thailand's airline. Singapore Airlines, I've only flown one time. It was nice, but they have a good reputation. And then Europe...

In Europe, I've flown on Swiss Air. That was also very nice. Swiss Air, I've flown, and that was nice. And I've flown on Emirates, which was also good.

So, yeah. I don't know if I could choose one. Out of those was one a lot better. No, not really. I'd say those are all pretty kind of like kind of near the top, right?

Just good service, no major problems, not a lot of cancellations, generally friendly staff. I do find the Asian flight attendants are much nicer, much better service in general.

Although Swiss Air was not bad. So there you go. My reviews of airlines. But United sucks. Delta sucks. American Airlines is... I will not fly American Airlines.

The one that has that actual name. American Airlines. They're based in Chicago, I think. They're USA. They're horrible. I've had so many bad experiences.

I will not fly on that airline. It's so bad. They're rude. The flights are always late. It's crap. Don't fly on American Airlines. It's terrible. Terrible.

Okay. So there we go. Where do I live? I live in Osaka. Vietnamese Airlines is pretty good too. Not bad. How do I deal with huge stress? S. Carlo. I usually, with stress, like really big stress, I will have, you know, I'm not a monk, so it will break me for a while.

So what usually happens is I have kind of, like when I'm super stressed, I will have a period, maybe a day or two days, or it depends on what the stress is, but where I will just really just, Like, I'm kind of useless.

And I'll get stressed out and maybe super frustrated and bad mood, all these things. And then, finally, I'll kind of just say, I got to stop. I got to change, right? And I kind of have to break myself out of it and take action.

Like, this happened with one of my babies. It was a really, really, really stressful situation. The baby's health. And, you know, I don't know. It was probably...

couldn't go too long so i had about half a day maybe a day or so where i was just uh really really really scared and depressed and and uh miserable and useless and then i had to stop myself and say my baby needs me and i can't do this anymore so you know i stopped i prayed i and i just took action i just said i gotta take action there's no There's no more time to be stressed. I've got to take action. And that's what I did.

So, you know, it's okay. And I guess I'm telling you this because I think sometimes we think we have to, we think that, oh, we're supposed to be like perfect monks, right? And, you know, again, like sometimes you see these kind of guru, speaker type people like Tony Robbins and they're always positive and

And, like, maybe it's easy to think, like, oh, they never get stressed out, right? Like, they always react perfectly. They're never worried. They're never scared.

They never get angry and frustrated. They just... They're always, like, perfectly controlled. And that's not a realistic... situation or or ability for most people it's okay to be overwhelmed for a while right like if it's a sad situation it's okay to cry and be and feel super sad for a while it's or to feel really angry to feel really stressed it's okay to do that it's human the key thing is you can't get stuck you gotta you gotta break out you gotta

You got to somehow break out of that, right? You can let you go for a while if you need to. And then you can say, okay, well, now it's enough, enough. Now I have to change.

Now I have to take action. I must take action now. So that's the key point that you have to, after a few days or whatever, sometime you have to just say enough and stop crying, stop being angry, stop being stressed and just do what's necessary and take action. And it's totally fine.

Just do that. Just don't forget to do that. Good God. Hashtosh Kumar says, what is the meaning of agathococological? I don't know. Let's look it up. You guys giving me weird vocabulary words.

Let's look it up. What does this mean? It is a real word. What do you know? It means composed of both good and evil. Now see, here's a good example of academic talking.

If you were trying to talk about this idea that something has both good and evil in it, like you might, I don't know, whatever, some situation or some person or something, and you say, are they good or are they evil?

And you were going to say, well, both. They have both good and evil. You could say, well, this is an agath... Is this an adjective, probably, right? Let me look.

You could say, well, this adjective is agathocological, if you wanted to sound very impressive and intelligent. But of course, nobody's going to know what the hell you're saying. Because almost nobody knows the meaning of this word. So you're just trying to impress everybody, right?

Instead, you can just use the very simple words good and evil. And you would say, well, it has both good and evil, right? That would be the... If you're talking to most people...

You would use the simple words, okay? Because this idea, you don't need this long word that's hard to say. You can just say, oh, it has good and evil. That's a simple, it has good and evil.

Those are all common words, short words, easy to say words. So just use the common, simple, easy language. Let me see if I can say it. Agathococological.

There's no reason in the world you ever have to use that word. Okay? If you see it somewhere in a book or something, just use a dictionary and look it up. Ah, and see what it means.

But I've never seen or heard that word before, and I've certainly never said it, as you can tell. But anyway, kind of funny. Thank you. Thank you, Kumar.

It's kind of funny. Interesting. All right, I'll take just a couple more. It's time to go, and then I've got to go. It's getting late here. Composed of both good and evil, yes.

All right. All right. Gothococological. I got it now. RCCI says, do you have your favorite BJJ or MMA fighter? BJJ is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. MMA is mixed martial arts.

I'd say MMA would be Brian Ortega because he, uh, he, uh, is with Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. He trains with Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, so he's part of my same group. And, uh,

In terms of, like, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu fighter, just jiu-jitsu, yeah, the guy I like best, his style, because I can do it, is Hodger Gracie. Hodger Gracie has, or had, I don't know if he's still fighting now, but anyway, he had a very...

what looks like a simple, some people will say an old style, just old jujitsu, right? But, of course, he made things, he could do things, but then they'd look simple, and he would win, but then you try it, or I try it, and we can't do it, right? So, his technique was so good,

he was doing things maybe that were hard to see, but anyway, I like the way he would fight, and I've tried to, you know, I use some of his, I don't say I use his techniques, but I, I, I kind of, I do use, I watch some of his videos and try to learn from some things he did, because, um, Hodger, Hodger wasn't jumping around and doing

super difficult athletic things, right? He just had like perfect technique and a very simple style, but perfect technique. And so anyway, I really like Hadra Gracie. I really like his style of fighting.

All right, we'll just end with that one. Why not? So anyway, the final reminder here is just to be joyful at the end of the year, right? That's our topic for today.

Be joyful. Be happy. Focus on happiness. Focus on goodness. Focus on gratefulness, gratitude, right? A few people brought up money. Oh, I don't have money.

So what? If you focus on that this year, this week, at the end of the year, then you're just going to complain, I don't have enough money. Or maybe you have another problem. Maybe you have a health problem.

That's much more serious than money. Money problem is not serious. A health problem is far more serious. If you ever get sick, you will know. If you ever have a real health problem, you will wake up quickly and realize that

This is much more important than money. Most people, if they have a serious health problem, will give away all their money to feel better. Right? Like if you got something terrible like cancer, you would spend all your money to be cured.

Right? You realize right away health is far more important than money. So, if you're healthy now, be super grateful. And if you don't have much money right now, well, that sucks, but

You can improve that situation. The point is, don't focus on the problems right now. The rest of the year, you can focus on your problems. We have one week right now.

Just focus on the good things this week. Take a break from your problems. Take a break from the negative thinking. Take a break from all of that. Just remember all of the wonderful, great, beautiful things in your life.

I guarantee you have a lot of them. All right, lots of love to you. Join my VIP program at EffortlessEnglishClub.com, and I will see you next time. Bye for now.