Live Your Life Fully

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, the author of Effortless English, Learn to Speak English Like a Native.

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Happy New Year, 2020. Happy New Year. I took a break a little bit, a few days, a little bit of a New Year's break. We're back. The New Year has begun.

Let's kick ass. To kick ass is kind of an idiom, right? It means let's do great. Let's do great work. Let's be super successful. Let's kick ass this year in 2020.

We're all going to do that this year. Today's topic comes from Dawud Ibrahim. Dawud Ibrahim on Gab suggested today's topic. He sent me, on Gab, he sent me this quote from Benjamin Franklin.

It's a very nice quote. And he said, can you do a podcast about this quote, please? And that's what I'm going to do. Thank you for the suggestion. It's a very nice quote.

Benjamin Franklin, famous American patriot. And it's a great topic, so we're going to talk about it. The quote is, I'm going to read the quote. I'm reading from Gab now.

Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. And he says that quote comes from Benjamin Franklin. So, very nice. We'll talk about that. So, dying...

It means dying inside, dying emotionally, dying mentally, dying spiritually, before you die physically. That's what that quote is about. And indeed, it's a common thing.

So we'll talk about that. So happy new year. Lots of people saying there's Dawood Ibrahim is in our chat today. So good. I'm glad you could join live today since you suggested the topic today.

Thank you for the topic. A really good suggestion. I like when you guys suggest topics to me. And sometimes I don't always choose them, but I am happy when I do.

Siracha, good to see you. Good to see all of you. Ilana Khan, good to see you as well. Lots of our regular folks and also new people joining for the Happy New Year.

Great guys. Welcome, welcome. Those of you who are Orthodox, Orthodox Christians, continued Merry Christmas to you as well. I'm going to research some Orthodox Christmas traditions because as my children get older, I want to celebrate Christmas.

I would like more traditional celebrations for our family and Not just the modern, you know, buy lots of stuff. Not the consumer, the more religious and spiritual celebrations. So I will be kind of borrowing, I suppose, some traditions from different cultures.

I'll be looking at some of the old American traditions of Christmas, going back to like the Virginia colonies. And, of course, some of the older European ones, both Western, like British, of course, since that's my family background. But also, I would like to learn more about the Orthodox traditions as well.

All right. Oh, VIP members. I forgot. I almost forgot. VIP members, I have great news. The movie club lessons. Remember from the matrix, the recordings.

Everything's always a little slower than I hope when we're doing anything technical, when we're doing something with our website, when we're adding a new course. It always takes a little longer than I expect, but that's okay. Because finally, the...

course, the Matrix, for the Matrix movie course, that movie lesson course, the recordings are almost ready for you, for VIP members. Those will be free, a free bonus, a free extra for VIP members. So I just got a message today from our programmers. It's basically ready.

We just need to turn it on and send an email to VIP members just to let you know that you So, if you're a VIP member, then you will get those lessons for free. Just an extra bonus for you. Everyone else, I will sell those recordings, the movie lesson.

You can learn all the vocabulary, most of the vocabulary, from The Matrix, the movie The Matrix. And we had some great discussions about some of the messages, some of the deeper meaning in that movie. Some of you joined it live and enjoyed it, which was great. But...

As I said, the recordings will be available free for VIP members and for sale for everyone else. Not a high price, though. It won't be too bad. Don't worry about it.

So anyway, VIP members, watch your email. If you're not a VIP member, now's the time. Join at effortlessenglishclub.com. You will get that. I'm calling it the Red Pill Movie Course.

The Red Pill Movie Course. You'll see it in the menu, VIP members. You'll see it in the menu, Red Pill Movie Course, and it'll be free access for you.

Red Pill Movie Course, we'll call it. And finally, a few more announcements for the new year. We will be restarting, finally, restarting our movie course next weekend, continuing with Jerry Maguire, finally, which is great. And we'll be starting with, we'll be finally doing probably the most famous scene of the whole movie, the show me the money scene, certainly the most famous phrase from the movie.

And book club. We will start book club again next week. And we are doing The Hobbit. One of my favorite books. The Hobbit. I have a lot of great memories of The Hobbit.

I'll talk more about My childhood memories of The Hobbit. But basically, I was introduced to The Hobbit the first time. I didn't read it. The first time I heard the story of The Hobbit, my fourth grade teacher.

Her name was Miss Milam. I actually can still remember her name. I don't remember many of my teachers' names because they weren't that great. But she was fantastic.

She was one of the... A few really great teachers I had growing up in school. So see, they're not all bad. Anyway, Ms. Milam was really fantastic. And she read The Hobbit to our whole class.

The entire book, she read the whole thing to us. And it was really great. That was my introduction to The Hobbit. That was my introduction to Tolkien.

So I loved it, loved it, loved it as a kid. And then later, of course, then I decided I needed to read it myself. So I read it myself. I read Lord of the Rings, the other books.

And it got me into, you know, Tolkien, actually. So, Miss Milam, thank you. So, The Hobbit. The Hobbit. So, go ahead. Get The Hobbit. Get The Hobbit. You can get an e-book.

It's probably the easiest thing to do. For English learning, e-books are best. So, go ahead. Find a copy of The Hobbit somewhere. An e-book copy of The Hobbit.

Kobo.com Amazon.com I don't know. There are many others. Get the Hobbit. This weekend, we'll do an introduction. This meaning next weekend, next Saturday.

We'll do an introduction for the Hobbit. We won't start the book next week, but I'll just talk about the book in general, tell you some stories about my experiences reading that book as a kid. And then the following week, two weeks, two weekends from now, we'll actually start reading the book. So it gives you plenty of time.

And Mohamed Siddiqui says, please do some book about persuasion. That's a really good idea, Mohamed. Maybe our next book, you know, our next book will be non-fiction. So, that's not a bad idea.

I'll keep that in mind. Let's talk about our topic, suggested again by Dawood. I'll put it on the screen here, just to show you on Gab. This is my Gab, but you can see if you're watching on video, there's Dawud Ibrahim on Gab.

He says, some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. Benjamin Franklin, can you do a podcast about this quote, please? Yes, indeed. Let's talk about it.

It's a good quote. And it's something I think we've all seen. Another way to say it, You can hear in English sometimes, some people are old before their time, right?

They're old before their time. They die before their time. What is Benjamin Franklin talking about in this quote? What he means is that, you know, some people, they become, they lose their love of life.

They lose their enthusiasm. They lose their desire to learn. They lose their gratitude, right? long, long, long before they actually die, right? You can meet, I've met many actually, young people, people who are 18 or 20 or 25, who, like they've already, already they've lost their adventurousness, they've already lost their love of learning, they have already lost their curiosity, right?

They're enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a great word with a really great root meaning. But enthusiasm, it's kind of love of life, enjoyment, excitement for life. The Japanese have a great word, Genki.

Genki, which includes some of this. It means health, it means energy, it means a kind of enthusiasm. Like little children are very Genki, they say in Japanese. But enthusiasm in English, we'll say.

And... People become very closed-minded and kind of negative and not flexible, right? And some people can do this at a very young age. At a very young age, they already are kind of fearful and closed and tired, you know.

I remember this when I was teaching in San Francisco. I was teaching English in San Francisco. It was my last job at a school, conversation school. So most of my students were in their 20s, around age 20, right?

20 to 25, something like that. Like most of them, they finished university and then they came to our school. Some came to our school before university. So somewhere in there, 18 to 25.

So young, they're pretty young. And I was kind of shocked that... there were always a few who seemed so old already, so tired, so bored of life already. You know, like you imagine maybe like some 90-year-old person who's tired of life.

But they were like this at age, you know, 22. And physically, also, I... I always joke about this, but it's kind of shocking to me. So I was about 38 at the time, I guess, when I was teaching at that school.

And I remember we did a field trip one time. So our school, the director, he encouraged us. He said, you know, take the students out, show them San Francisco, show them the city, and you can talk about... The places you visit in English.

It was fun. It was nice. So there's a nice cathedral called Grace Cathedral, like a big church in San Francisco. It's on top of a hill called Knob Hill.

San Francisco is quite famous for these very tall hills downtown. And so on top of one of those hills is Grace Cathedral. And it's very nice because on top of the hill you get these amazing views. It's a very nice neighborhood, kind of a rich neighborhood up there.

And there's a quite beautiful church up there called Grace Cathedral. So this was not so far from our school. Our school was basically down the hill at kind of the bottom in the valley there.

So next to Knob Hill was our school. So I decided, let's go to Grace Cathedral. I'll take my class to Gate Grace Cathedral, get out of the class a little bit, get outside. They can see the nice views of the city.

We'll see this nice church. We can have lunch out together. Kind of a nice day, something new, different for the students. So we did it. So I said, all right, let's go.

And they're like, yay, let's go. And so... I said, we're walking. We're going to walk. Let's go. So we started walking. We walked a few blocks to the bottom of the hill.

And then we started to walk up the hill. And I was absolutely shocked at how tired and weak my students were. They all, well not all, probably about 70% of them complained. Oh, it's the hill.

It's so big. Oh, I'm tired. Oh, do we have to walk? And just complaining, complaining. They sounded like old people. They sounded like, you know, 80-year-old people.

Oh, complaining because we had to walk up a big hill. And I was just shocked. I'm like, what is wrong with you guys? You guys are like 20 years old. You're 22 years old.

What's wrong with you? You know, I'm 15 years older than you. I'm not complaining. It's no big deal. It's just a hill. So I was quite shocked that already they were...

complaining and whining like old people for just a little physical exercise. This is kind of what Benjamin Franklin's talking about. This is a physical example. But then also there were mental examples.

I remember I asked, what is your hobby in class one time? Quite famously, I joke about this all the time with my wife, but... A couple students said, sleeping, my hobby is sleeping. And their whole attitude was just, they were always just kind of, their whole attitude was kind of negative and tired and bored all the time.

And they were like 20, you know, 22 years old. And they said their hobby was sleeping. In other words, they had nothing they were interested in. Nothing they were interested in.

Nothing they were excited about. Nothing they were enthusiastic about. They already were old in spirit. That's what we say in English. They were old in spirit.

Their bodies were young, but they were old in spirit. And obviously this is a negative thing. Life is a gift. And it's a blessing. So we want to appreciate...

and enjoy and use that blessing for the whole time we have, right? For the full time we have. Now, of course, there's a very positive side to this because on the other side, we all know, and I have met and I know,

People who are old physically, but in their spirit, they still have a kind of youth. They're still kind of young in spirit. They are still enthusiastic about life. They're still happy.

They're still positive. They're still curious. They still love to learn. They still smile and joke. Both of my grandmothers are like this. So my one grandmother is 100 years old.

She's 100 years old. She's still teaching classes, little exercise classes for other old people. She still likes to cook and make things. She still has this youthful spirit, even at 100 years old.

My other grandmother is 95. Also, she's always joking, joking, joking. She's kind of funny, you know. She tells the same stories again and again, but she always is trying to joke and trying to make jokes all the time.

It's kind of funny. And, you know, they're not always funny jokes, but it's very cute. But she's kind of got that smiling, laughing, joking personality, and she's 95. She, in many ways, has a younger spirit than those students I was teaching in the past.

And so what this shows us with this quote from Benjamin Franklin, the quote from Benjamin Franklin is kind of a warning. It's a criticism and a warning. And what old Ben Franklin is saying is that, you know, don't die in spirit.

That... You have to continue always to learn. Ben Franklin was quite famous about this. He learned. He was self-taught. He was an independent learner.

A very famous American independent learner. He taught himself how to write, for example. He ended up... becoming a publisher of a newspaper but he was a bad writer he couldn't really write and he taught himself how to do it by studying other people other people and reading a lot and even like copying other writers and he just taught himself he had this whole you know training that he did at home just him

So he learned a lot of things. He was a homeschooler, but he taught himself independent learning. He was a very famous independent learner, and he was curious about so many things, about science, about reading.

He helped in the early days of the American Revolution. He helped to create the American government, the first American government. He became an ambassador.

to France, I believe it was, for America. When America finally became independent, he was one of our first ambassadors. So he was learning, learning, learning his whole life, and this kept him youthful, even though his body was not youthful, his mind, his spirit was youthful.

And this makes, you know, for one reason to do this is more enjoyable. Life is more enjoyable when you are learning. Life is more enjoyable when you are enthusiastic, when you are interested in different things, when you are curious.

When you keep that youthful spirit, even as your body gets older, but you keep that youthful spirit and you age better. It's a better way of aging instead of being 60, right? Some people are 60 and it seems like they're 200 years old, right? They're just, oh.

They're already physically, they're weak because they never exercise or do anything. Mentally, their life is boring because they do exactly the same thing every day. They're not learning. They're not curious.

They have no vitality. They have no enthusiasm. But then you meet another 60-year-old the same age and they're totally the opposite. They're very physically active.

They're exercising. They're walking. They're out. Maybe they travel or they read books or they're always learning new things and they're so enthusiastic and energetic.

especially mentally and emotionally. And it seems like these two people are the same age in number, but in their spirit, totally, totally different. They seem like, you know, they're a hundred years apart.

And so, what Ben is saying is, you know, stay alive. As long as you're alive, live. Live. Live your life. Don't just do the same thing forever. Every single day.

We have routines. Those are nice. We need those. But stay curious. Always be learning. Always be learning. And always be appreciative. I think that gratitude is a great way to stay young.

That, you know, as we get older, as we live life, we have disappointments. We have failures. You're going to have a lot of failures in your life. A lot.

And painful things happen. So, it can be easy to become more and more negative and bitter. Because you're just focusing on these failures, these problems, these bad things that happened.

So what's the antidote, what's the medicine for that, to stay young and alive? The medicine is to focus on gratitude, because the truth is also during our life, as we get older and older, we're going to have a lot of wonderful things happen, a lot of blessings, a lot of grace will come into our life.

And... It's easy. I think a lot of times we don't appreciate it enough. Because many of these things might seem quite small in the moment, at the time.

But then when we look back, we realize they were actually the best things in life. Right? Like I said, just being able to look out at the clouds or see a beautiful sunset. That's amazing.

We have to focus on that and appreciate it. Right? And not only appreciate it, but actually be grateful. Right? Thank you. I'm so grateful that I'm alive and I can see this beautiful sight.

Or just walking in a park. Children. Your other family members. All of these kinds of things. Every day, every week, every year. The more you appreciate these things, it keeps you young.

It keeps your spirit young and positive. It's medicine for the disappointments, which also come with life. The other thing, the other one that is important is learning, lifelong learning, to continually be learning, learning, learning. When some people there, again, I saw this with my students at that school, some of the students at 22, they thought they already knew everything.

They thought, of course, they were completely foolish and wrong, but they thought, oh, I know everything now, right? They thought they were so smart, so educated. They thought they just knew everything, right?

And so they closed their minds. They didn't want to learn more, right? They didn't want to learn something that would go against their own beliefs. They closed their minds because...

Often with learning, we have to first unlearn. Right? It's usually and very often the first step, especially as adults. For children, maybe not. But for adults, often when we're learning something, we unlearn first.

It means we have an idea. We think we know. We think we know something. Oh, I'm sure about this. But... We get new information, new experiences. And the first step we have to realize, we have to admit, we have to say, oh, I'm wrong.

I thought this was correct, but I'm totally wrong. Actually, the truth is different. And that's, you know, you have to let go of some ego to do that. Some people don't like that.

They like to be sure. They want to, in their mind, they want, oh, I know, I'm already sure 100%. And so they close their mind, and then they can't really learn anything new. And a lot of their beliefs are wrong.

This is always true. We're human, so we can never know 100%, right? So it means right now you have some strong beliefs, and they're wrong. And so do I.

Right now I have some strong beliefs, but they're wrong. We just have to understand this. It just means you have to be open for new learning. You have to be open for new experiences.

And you have to be open to change your mind. I've changed my mind about many things. I can look back 10 years ago. I had some ideas. And now I have a totally different idea.

Because I have more experience in life. And now I realize, oh, well, I was wrong. I was wrong. But this is part of keeping your mind young, is to... Be willing, be willing to be wrong.

Understand that what you learned in school, what you learned from the media, the fake news, most of it's lies, most of it's bullshit, most of it's wrong. So we have a lot of ideas in our mind that come from schooling, that come from the media. We don't realize it even sometimes, but we have a lot of these ideas and they're totally wrong.

And if you are open, when you have life experience, real experience, life, not media, but real life, well then you will learn from real life and you realize, ah, that's wrong, that's wrong, that's wrong. So a lot, a lot, a lot of life is unlearning.

It's very Taoist, the Taoists talk about this all the time, that The way to become wise, the way to become a wise person as you get older, is not really so much learning, it's actually unlearning. It's unlearning all the false beliefs that you have. And it's hard to do sometimes, but to let go, let go, let go, let go, to unlearn.

But it keeps your mind young, keeps your spirit younger, more alive. All right, so thank you, Dawood, for the suggestion of today's topic. Let's just go ahead and discuss it now. I'll get in here and see your questions and comments.

Leonardo from Brazil says, the mainstream media is purely Marxist in Brazil and in the USA. Correct. 100% correct. And in Europe, I'd say the whole world.

The whole world. Everywhere in the world. It's Marxist propaganda. You're correct. So it's lies. It's just lies. Turn that stuff off. Oh, this sounds wonderful.

Sriracha says, Today in Thailand, the sky is a bright blue color and the clouds are white. Ah, that sounds wonderful. This is the cool season. This is a wonderful time in Thailand.

It's a great time to visit Thailand. It's the cool season. Of course, it's still hot. It's always hot in Thailand, but it's less hot and less humid. Really great.

Yeah, like All About Burmese says, the more we get old, the more we face disappointments and we lose curiosity and enthusiasm. But we don't have to, is the point. We don't have to.

But yes, this commonly happens because people focus too much. You know, the disappointments are painful, right? Failure is painful. It's emotionally painful.

So the danger as you get older is that you focus too much on the emotional pain. that you focus too much on that because it does hurt. But you don't focus enough. You don't balance it.

You don't focus enough on all of the beautiful things, all of the wonderful things. And many times the wonderful things, the beautiful things, they're there all the time. You just need to notice them, right? It's easy to not notice.

But if you just pay attention and you focus on them and you notice them each day, then those disappointments become less, less, less painful and you become more grateful.

And then you don't lose your curiosity. You don't lose your enthusiasm. I mean, these are the most wonderful old people are the ones who are still curious and enthusiastic, right? They're wonderful because they have all that life experience, but they're still alive.

They're still full of happiness and energy and enthusiasm. It's a great combination. Kind of magical, really. Yeah, like Dalal says, this is also true.

Nowadays, youngsters lack the curiosity of learning, and it's because of school. Intensely depend on tech for looking up information and for entertaining themselves. Yes. So we have... Why?

Why were those guys, those students I had, those 22-year-olds, the 20-year-olds, why were they so... Not all of them, guys, but many of them. Why were they so...

bored and tired and everything. And this is, I would say, number one is school. Why do they lack curiosity of learning? Well, the school kind of destroys it.

Because foolishly, in their mind, they think school equals learning. Right? This is what happens. Most people, most young people, this is the connection in their mind.

They think, ah, well, learning... Education, that's school. Because in their whole life, that's what they have had, right? Their whole life, they go to school, they think that's learning.

It's not learning. It's bullshit. It's propaganda. Learning is what you do outside of school. Learning is what you do in the real world. Learning is what you do at home.

Independent learning. That's real learning. And that comes from curiosity, right? So the school system, it's one of the reasons, it's one of the purposes of the school system is to destroy this natural love of learning, to destroy natural curiosity.

They don't want you to be curious. They don't want you to learn independently. They want you to just shut up, do what you're told, be bored, be tired. You're easier to control.

And then the tech is a constant distraction, right? Looking something up on Wikipedia is not learning. Wikipedia is bullshit, guys. It's also Marxist.

They do some research. There are lots and lots of censorship, lots and lots of just Marxist political propaganda on Wikipedia. The information on Wikipedia is not trustworthy. You cannot trust it.

It is often completely wrong. And yet, so many people just, oh, I read it on Wikipedia, so what? It's bullshit. Here's the opposite. Christian Salas has a very fantastic attitude here.

Be happy and enthusiastic even during bad times because nothing is permanent and better days are coming. And that's a... that's a powerful, strong mindset. And this is the kind of mindset you find in people who are very strong, who can handle difficult situations in life and get through and be successful, is they have this kind of mindset that even in the bad times, they keep their mind positive, focus on positive things.

So, it looks like Christian Selass is a martial artist. He's got, that's quite a kick he's got in his profile picture. Sandy24 says, AJ, how do you forget bad things that happened in the past? Well, I think you focus on the present.

You just, I mean, what's the point of focusing on bad stuff from the past? It's gone. It's done. It's finished. There's no point. It's not doing anything.

You try to learn what, learn what you can learn from it, right? There's probably some lessons in there. Maybe you couldn't have avoided it. Maybe you trusted too much.

Maybe, I don't know, you made some bad decisions. Maybe you were unlucky. I don't know. But anyway, try to learn what you can and then just let it go.

It's gone. Why waste your time? There's nothing you can do about it. Focus on now. How do you let go of it? You focus on now. You focus on right now. What's good in your life now?

Focus on being grateful now. for the good things in your life right now. Stop looking back. Looking back is pointless. It doesn't help. So you focus on the now and you make plans for the future.

Focus on your goals, your positive goals for the next year. That's how you forget the stuff from the past. Yeah, like Sarah sort of echoes the same point about the technology. I agree.

I think cell phones are... I think overall... Not cell phones, smartphones. I would say overall smartphones are negative. Right? I think we're better without them.

They have some conveniences, but overall I think they are a negative influence on our society. Right? Anyway, Sarah says, unfortunately nowadays I think technology causes this problem to the new generation. They're always sitting and watching the screen.

They don't do any activities. I know. They sit together. I see it outside. I'll look out on a playground sometimes. I see three kids. They're all standing in a circle looking at a phone, looking at their phones.

They're not even doing anything with each other. They're not talking to each other. They're not interacting. They're not running around. Now, of course, I see other kids who do run around and play, so it's not all kids.

But with my own children, a very strict rule, no screens. This will be for their entire life in our house. No screens, no TV, and no cell phones, and no iPads.

Well, this is a good question from, let's see, Vaibhav Goswami says, how to maintain eagerness or enthusiasm every day? Hmm. How to maintain... I'm trying to think how I do it because I have a lot of enthusiasm.

Um... I'm just trying to think if there's a way to do it. I don't know. I just get excited about new things. I think that's the thing is learning, to enjoy the process of learning.

Actually, I have a couple ideas. One of the key elements, I think, for being enthusiastic, for keeping your eagerness, your enthusiasm, especially in learning, is to just learn for enjoyment,

with no pressure on yourself, no performance pressure. So this is one way that schools kill enthusiasm. This is one way schools kill curiosity. Why? Grading.

The whole grading and testing system... destroys eagerness, destroys enthusiasm, destroys curiosity. Why? Suddenly it creates performance pressure. Now you're not just trying to learn for enjoyment.

You're not just learning, exploring. No, now it's a performance. You're going to be tested and graded. The whole thing becomes stressful. And so... I quite just like to learn and explore different things in life without any pressure to perform.

And so many times I will learn something or try something for just a short time. I don't have to become good at it. Maybe I'll just try something or learn something and I just try it for a week or two weeks and then I...

then I'm done with it. I'm finished. I don't need to keep going and going and become really good at it. It doesn't matter. I just have fun just trying it.

Other things I will become interested in and I will actually become, you know, maybe... I'll become good at it just because I enjoy it and I do it more, right? So, I don't know, a few examples, like golf. I'll give you an example.

Golf is a good one. Like, I'm terrible. I'm terrible. I don't have enough time. I don't have enough opportunity. Golf is something you have to practice a lot.

And I play golf maybe one time, I don't know, a few times a year. Maybe. Sometimes I don't play at all. I live in a city in Japan, so I don't play golf in Japan.

I play golf when I visit my family members in America. So I play with my cousin, Philip, and I play with my dad. And so it's not enough time. I'm really, really, really bad, but I don't care.

So what? I don't care. See, I don't worry about the performance. I'm not trying to win tournaments. I don't care. I'm doing it purely for enjoyment. I just like going out there.

It's fun. And so I keep my enthusiasm about it because I don't put pressure on myself, right? A lot of golfers, they lose the enjoyment of golf because they become so serious about this game. It's just a game.

But they become so serious about it. They're watching videos about it. They're taking lessons, which is fine. It's fine to try to become better. Nothing wrong with that.

But they become stressed about it. And so when they're playing, they're... constantly stressed about their performance. If they make a bad shot, they get so upset and angry.

And so the whole process of playing golf becomes stressful. And they lose the enthusiasm. They lose the love of just doing it for enjoyment. And it kind of kills the enthusiasm.

And this can happen in all different areas of life, in all different things. Even language learning. I put zero pressure on myself about language learning.

I guess for that reason, my performance is not very good. But I don't care. I don't actually have to learn languages. There's really no pressure on me to do it.

I don't have to do it. I do it just for enjoyment or just for basic communication. And I relax about it. And so for that reason, I'll keep doing it and kind of like it.

And I recommend this attitude with English. Don't pressure yourself too much because then you lose the enjoyment of it. Okay. Yeah, like Ken. Hi, Ken.

Keep curiosity on the things you don't know. On the things you do know, it can help you get enthusiastic to learn something every day. It's just fun. You know, kids, this is natural.

So it's actually unnatural. To lose your curiosity is unnatural. It takes years of school and boring work to make you that boring. Because the natural state you can see with any child is curiosity.

We live in a mysterious world. None of us really know. We don't have the answers to everything. The really big questions in life. are a mystery and always will be.

But this makes everything quite magical, quite amazing. It's fun to just, like at night sometimes I just look at the clouds and the stars and it's kind of mysterious and beautiful, right? And nature and life in general. So there's always, always, always, number one, just to learn and also just to appreciate.

So that's how you do it. And you can bring it back to life. If you lose it, it can come back. well this is very nice from Pervez says there's no denying the fact I have improved exponentially by watching your videos nice vocab there

I wish I would have come to know about your channel long ago. Well, thank you, Pervez, and congratulations to you. Keep going. Great job. Doesn't seem...

DPS says, have you climbed Mount Everest? I have not, and I will not be climbing Mount Everest. I read that book, Into Thin Air. It's quite fascinating.

I could see myself someday doing the hike to the base camp. That sounds interesting. I like hiking. I don't like mountain climbing. I don't like high places, number one.

And... You know, plenty of people die on Mount Everest and other mountains. It's just not interesting to me. I prefer to mount, you know, a little more, I don't know, lower level of hiking.

But it would be cool to do that. You can do what's called a base camp hike in Nepal where you, I think it's quite long actually. I don't know where you start exactly, but you hike and you walk all the way to the bottom. It's called base camp.

It's the bottom. It's the camp at the bottom of Mount Everest. It's the camp where the serious mountain climbers start. But it's still a hard walk because these are the tallest mountains in the world.

It's no joke. But you can do, I think it's two or three weeks, a hike, and you go to the bottom of Mount Everest. So you can see you're right there at the mountain, and then you go back.

but nepal is a beautiful beautiful country and the mountains are absolutely stunning and amazing i've done uh let me think i've done one hike in the himalayas in nepal my wife and i and my cousin philip we went to nepal and we did a hike i can't remember the name of the area it was not we were not in the tall tall mountains uh but it was still amazing in fact our guide was constantly joking these are not mountains these are just hills

But, of course, they were mountains for us. Anyway, Nepal is beautiful. Nepal is one of my favorite countries, honestly. I like a lot of places, but Nepal is kind of special.

I'd love to go back again. My Mustafa has a very good comment. I think a good diagnosis of a common problem. I believe we always seek entertainment all the time because schools and jobs take all our energy, take all the energy inside of us, which makes us want to run away and hide from boredom and disappointment.

Exactly. We talked about this a little bit in the book club, Your Money or Your Life, where... The jobs, of course, it takes time going there, coming back. But jobs also take a lot of our time and our kind of emotional energy because we spend a lot of time recovering from the jobs.

I know I did. I did. I can look back and some of the, especially some of my worst jobs where I was working 40 hours in an office, 40 hours a week. It was so difficult.

Boring. So horribly boring for me that it did do something like what Maya is talking about. I mean, physically it was easy. Right. I mean, in some ways it seems strange.

It was easy. I was not using any energy, but I was like a prisoner there for 40 hours a week. And it was so, so boring that it kind of sucked out my emotional energy. So I'd come home.

I had no energy to do anything. I had no curiosity, no enthusiasm to do anything. I would just watch videos. Right. Just kind of lazy and like just to kind of, as my saying, kind of to recover, to kind of to forget about all of the boredom from the job.

But of course, then I'm watching media and I'm wasting even more of my life. because these videos don't really give us enthusiasm or curiosity. They actually make the problem a bit worse. They distract us.

We forget about the problems for a while. That feels good short term, but long term, it actually makes the problem worse. And so it was terrible, terrible. I did this for a few summers when I was in college.

And it was so terrible, I decided never, ever, ever, ever to do that kind of job again. But that's exactly right. That's a lot of what entertainment is. And the reason we use it so much is because our lives are not great.

We're bored with the school or we're bored with... work and so we use the entertainment as a distraction which also makes things worse the solution is make your life more interesting become curious leave those terrible jobs and live your life yeah Gustavo Marquez with a very nice saying one great way to think when bad things happen is sometimes you win sometimes you learn

It's a very, very good attitude. Gustav was right about this, that when you fail, when bad things happen, that instead of saying this is bad in your mind, say this is learning experience. This is a learning. When you fail or have problems, look at that.

It's an opportunity to learn. And indeed we do. We usually learn more from our failures and mistakes than from our successes. That's where your opportunities are to improve, is in your failures.

So it's a good positive mindset to have, I agree. Ah, this is a great question. Ibrahim Sahib says, Hi AJ, what's your advice for those who can't escape thinking too much instead of facing the outside real world?

That's an excellent question. It's a tendency, it's a problem I had myself. Because I love to think about things. And it's a danger for people who like to think.

Thinking is great. It's really great to think about your life, to be deliberate, as Thoreau said, so you make good decisions. But the danger is that you just think, think, think, think, think all the time and you never do anything. There has to be both.

That's kind of the ideal. If you don't do anything, then you're only thinking about thinking about thinking. You're just thinking about thoughts. And it just becomes, it can make you kind of crazy.

So it's fine to think, but you want to have real life experiences. So then you're thinking about real experiences and you can learn from them. So what's the solution? You've got to push yourself.

You've got to jump in, I would say, at certain times. Not always, but you just need to choose certain times in the year and push yourself to do very big, new, difficult experiences.

Throw yourself into the world. For example, I did this with my, I finally, until I was probably 20, 26, I guess it was. I was just, I was a thinker. I was always thinking, thinking, thinking.

My whole life I was in school, right? First university, then grad school. And I finally was, I realized, oh, I'm sick of just being in school, thinking and writing papers about things. Bullshit.

And I have no life experience at all. So I finally decided to travel. And so what did I do? I chose to go to a place that would be very difficult for me.

That would be completely new and different. Right? So being an American, a lot of Americans choose to go to Europe as their first trip. But, you know, Europe is, you know, America came from European, specifically British culture, so it's less different.

I chose India. I had lots of problems. I was in the hospital for a few days with a serious illness. All kinds of things happened. Great and terrible and in between.

But it was just pure life experience. I didn't have time to think much. I thought about it later when I got home. So that's a lot of what you need to do is you push yourself to do some big challenge, something really new to get those life experiences.

It can be anything. It doesn't have to be travel, but that's what I recommend, Abraham. Leonardo, thank you about the offer to translate. I accept. Thank you very much.

Very nice. Dawood says, I think this is happening because if everything is feeling very easy, we look back, everyone was very positive about learning and searching and books, not the internet. The internet makes people lazy and passive. It does.

There's no doubt about it. These things come with a price. We have to be careful. I use the internet all the time, obviously. I'm on the internet right now talking to you.

That's great. Lots of great things about it, but... There's a price, and the price is that if things are too easy, too quick, we become lazy and passive. Exactly what Dawood said, exactly right.

That is the huge, huge danger, not just the Internet, in life. As I said, in America, we can see the huge number, more than 50% of the population is big and fat and unhealthy. Why? Because life is too easy physically.

They can drive everywhere. They can just sit on their butt all day. They never have to do anything difficult physically. I see it in my family. Many family members are like this.

They sit on their butt in the house, watching TV or whatever. And what do they do? They walk a couple steps to the car. They sit on their butt in the car and they drive everywhere.

And then they come home. They're just sitting around. Everything's too easy. They can just type on the computer and everything's delivered to them. They can call on the phone and the food comes to them.

Everything's too easy and it makes them weak and passive and fat and unhealthy. It's bad. Too easy is bad. Too much convenience is bad. It makes us weak.

Also, there's a lot of bullshit, a lot of lies, a lot of nonsense on the Internet. If you're too passive, you just accept it all, then you're actually getting a lot of bad information. So quick and easy is not the same as good. A lot of the best learning comes from old, old, old books, right, which you may not find on the Internet.

You can probably buy them on the internet, but you're not going to see them in a YouTube video. You know, read the Iliad, read the Odyssey, the Aeneid, you know, on and on and on, right? These great old, old books.

So, right. So what do we do? We live in an age, we live in a time where this is the challenge, right? In the past, they had the opposite problem. In past times, they had the opposite problem.

Life was maybe a little too hard, right? Too tough, too dangerous, very, very hard. And many of them died young because life was so hard. I don't want that.

You don't want that. That's not good either. So every age, every time in history has different challenges. And in our age now, our challenge is the opposite side.

Everything's too easy. Everything's too easy. So what do we do? We have to choose difficult things ourselves. Since the environment, the society or whatever, does not force us to deal with these hard things, we have to choose it ourselves.

In some ways that's more difficult, but in some ways it's actually great because we have to be responsible. So physically, you can be super fat and lazy.

Definitely you can. You can sit and do almost nothing physically and still live, no problem. What it means is you have to choose to do difficult things physically. That's what exercise is, right?

200 years ago, farmers in America, or anywhere really, they didn't have to exercise. They didn't have to go to the gym. All day they were working physically, right? They were strong and tough because they were doing hard physical work all day just to live, right?

They didn't need a gym. They didn't need to go jogging. They didn't need any of that stuff. But we do. Nowadays, because we live in this very easy physical and mental society, we actually have to choose it.

We have to force ourselves to do difficult things. You have to go to the gym and lift heavy weights. Or you have to do push-ups and pull-ups. You have to go jog or swim or bike.

You have to force yourself to do this because you don't have to now. But you still must do it because we need difficulty. We need challenges. And it's the same with learning.

Yeah, you can just click on the internet and get a bunch of stupid stuff from Wikipedia, which isn't true. But we have to push ourselves to learn a little more, right? Get those old books. Read some of those old books.

It might be a little difficult. The vocab is difficult. The sentences is a little bit old, a little old style. It's a little harder to understand. But...

That's how we get stronger. So we have to take these and accept these and even create these challenges ourselves. But we get a big reward when we do that.

Yeah, Scott Anderson says, I find the number one reason people don't engage in something new is fear. I agree. Fear of what? What are people afraid of?

Often it's just fear of looking bad, fear of failure. But what is failure? It's fear of looking bad, right? Like I said, there's this performance mindset.

So I'll give you another example I've talked about before. When I lived in Hawaii, I learned kite surfing at age 40-something, 45 or something. I'm kind of old to learn kite surfing. It wasn't easy for me.

Quite honestly, I was terrible for a long time, constantly crashing, crashing. I needed a lot of lessons. Meanwhile, a lot of the people who grew up in Hawaii, some of these guys and girls...

They learned kite surfing when they were 10 years old, right? They've been doing it for a long time. And they're doing these amazing tricks and all this stuff. And I'm crashing and crashing and crashing, right?

And so I think a lot of people, especially people as they become older, they become embarrassed. They don't like to look bad, right? Because as a beginner, you look bad.

And maybe you feel ridiculous, because you're just, you see other people doing really well, and you are just, you know, doing really, really badly. Same with golf. You know, I started, I learned golf in my 40s. I think, again, it was like at age 45 or something, when I actually started playing golf, right?

Jiu-jitsu, I started doing jiu-jitsu when I was 48. Um... And yeah, was I really good? No. Kind of sucked. Not very good. But it was fun. So I think that, yeah, that fear of failure, the fear of embarrassment, this is one way that people get...

They kind of get this old spirit because they're so worried about that appearance and that fear that they stop doing new things because of that, right?

So if you don't care about that, then you just keep trying stuff. I guess the good side is I get bored easily, and so I always want to try new things. So I'm always doing new stuff.

And yeah, usually I'm not good. Usually I've got to stink at it. And sometimes I quit. Like I tried, some of you may know, if you've listened to me a long time, I've tried to learn bass guitar, playing guitar.

And ah, man, it was not good. And I got just... I don't know. It's just not for me. It was kind of fun to do it, but I just didn't have the determination to keep going.

So sometimes I'll do that too. I'll try stuff and then I just quit it then. That's okay. It keeps you young. Just try stuff. It doesn't matter if you're good.

It doesn't matter if you quit later. It doesn't matter any of that stuff. It doesn't matter if you look kind of foolish. So what? It just keeps your brain active and alive.

It's fun to just explore things like that. Beautiful Daffodils. What a nice profile name. Says, Hi Jay, thanks a lot. When I listen to you, I feel optimistic.

I try... to do English, but I have a problem when I listen to someone who speaks English. I understand about 80%, but I can't speak well. Well, again, don't worry about that.

It's totally normal. If you understand 80%, that's excellent. So, great. Continue listening. Join our speaking challenge. Next month, February 1st, we're going to do a speaking challenge.

That's a great time where you can all... try to overcome. This is another one. This is one I have. This is a problem I have. Speaking a foreign language where you become nervous about it, right?

Because you know you're making lots of mistakes. You can't think what to say. You just have to overcome it. It's weird for me that in some ways, like I know a lot more Spanish, much better in Spanish, but

Strangely, I'm much more nervous about speaking Spanish. Maybe because I learned it in school, in the beginning. When I say Japanese, my level is quite low, but I'm kind of, I'm much less, I'm much more fearless about, like I'll just use Japanese badly. I don't care.

I'll just, I usually speak in like one or two words, right? And the grammar's wrong. I don't care. I'm here in Japan. I just want to communicate. I have, and so because of that, I enjoy it more because I just, because I don't care about the performance.

I enjoy it more. Good to see you. Thanks for joining. Thanks again for the suggestion for today's topic. Appreciate it. Leonardo Rodarte says, We need always to be developing our spirits, our mind, and our bodies.

Yes. I'm loving learning English. I do many things. Jiu-jitsu. I'm a drummer also. Exactly. Exactly. That's great. That's one of the great things. Jiu-jitsu, I highly recommend at any age.

Elio Gracie one of the great founders of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Very famously, you can see pictures of him in his 80s, I think maybe even 90 or something, where he was still teaching and practicing Jiu-Jitsu. Was he winning tournaments?

No. But he was still doing it. It's fantastic. Really great. And we like you said, you can just you could just learn to be you could learn a new musical instrument now, even if you're 70.

Why not? Why not? It's just you do when you do things for enjoyment instead of performance or instead of others opinions, then a lot of things become quite enjoyable. A lot of things.

Then you want to do a lot of stuff. A couple more in time to go. Shriram asks, have you ever tried to learn Sanskrit? No. Interesting you asked that question.

It's sort of in the back of my mind to try to learn a little bit. Mostly for the Gita. I don't know that I'll ever study it seriously. But I would like to...

I have... a nice copy of the Bhagavad Gita as it is. And what I like about that version, that translation, is it has the original Sanskrit in it. Prabhupada includes the original Sanskrit first, and then he shows you his word-by-word translation to English, and then he gives you the English, the full English translation.

So that's really great, because you can actually learn at least some Sanskrit vocab And you can really see how he's translating. It's a very nice translation.

Yeah, well, Oscar Otero has a very good attitude. It's a good point about the Internet. The Internet is a tool. If you use it wrong, it's bad. If you use it in the right way, it's amazing.

Your decisions should be right or wrong, right? Another way to say it is we have to use our own self-discipline. Self-discipline is the key, right? These are tools, right?

Like food. Food. Is food bad? No. Is food good? No. Or possibly yes. It's how you do it, right? It's our self-discipline that decides this. If you eat pizza and cake every day without control, food becomes bad.

Food becomes a major problem. It causes you to become very unhealthy. If you have self-discipline and some self-control with food, you do some fasting, you generally eat healthy. You can eat cake sometimes.

You can eat pizza sometimes. But generally, you're fairly healthy and you're exercising. Well, then food's now a good thing, right? And so it is, you're right, it's how we use these tools.

But the thing is that as the tool becomes more and more powerful... and perhaps easy, convenient, then we need even more self-control, right? So the cell phone, for example, some of you have noticed that you have said, well, it's a powerful tool. It's a super powerful tool, these things, right?

You're walking around. I mean, this would be magic 100 years ago. People would say this thing is some kind of magical device, right? This was science fiction just 50 years ago.

You see on science fiction shows, maybe they have some little thing like this. So on this thing, I can call my family on the other side of the world doing a video call, right? There's all these things I can do. So in that sense, it's super powerful.

We forget how powerful it is because it's so easy. But that's also what makes it dangerous. And so when something is very powerful and very easy, then...

Again, what do we need to do? We have to use even more self-discipline and self-control. When we use this with a lot of self-discipline and a lot of self-control, it's a powerful tool.

If we don't use self-control, if we don't use self-discipline, it becomes very destructive, very negative, very terrible. Just like the food right now. Why are people so fat? We have so much food that is cheap and

that is easy to get, that is not healthy, but is high calorie. You're not going to starve to death in America. Nobody's going to starve. Even homeless people aren't starving in America.

In fact, a lot of them are fat. So, the food, the calories are super easy to get, right? Super, super convenient and easy. That means now you need even more self-discipline to use the food properly.

In a healthy way, right? I mean, on one hand, it's great. We're not starving to death. We don't have to worry about that. That's nice. Absolutely, that's great.

None of us want to be starving. Worry about starving to death. But, on the other side, because the food is so convenient, it's so easy, that power is a bit dangerous. It's easy to overuse it.

And then it becomes extreme and very unhealthy. And so it's exactly the same with the internet, with the phones. The more easy it is, the more powerful it is, the more we have to be careful. The more we have to use our self-discipline so that we use it in a good way and then we stop.

Put it down. Turn it off. Leave it at home. You know? Okay, I think it's almost time to go. Well, this is a very sweet comment, so I'll end with this one today.

Ahmed says, Kirbawi, I believe. I have watched many English teachers and self-help coach programs about personal development and language. During the process, I have never met or come across one more beautiful than A.J. Hogue in Effortless English.

Well, that is an extremely nice comment. Thank you very much, Ahmed. I really appreciate that. Thank you. And you know, we have such a great, great community here.

Wonderful. So I'm very, very blessed with all of you. I'm grateful for all of you for sure. One of the things I'm very grateful about. Actually, I'm going to finish with Mehdi because he's one of our great super leaders in our group and good to see you, Mehdi.

Mehdi says, Nothing is like going out for a walk in the sun, listening to your many stories every day. That's the way I could get rid of all those acids and toxic thoughts in my mind and body.

Meditation. Exactly. These are simple things. Put on the mini stories. They're funny little stories. You go outside. You go for a walk. You enjoy the sun, the sky, you know, maybe hopefully some trees.

It's wonderful. Simple. Appreciate these wonderful, simple things. Okay, then. That's all for today. Back again tomorrow, hopefully. EffortlessEnglishClub.com.

Remember VIP members, you're getting the movie lessons, finally the recordings, probably in about a week. So watch your email for VIP members for those free recordings of the Matrix movie.

EffortlessEnglishClub.com. Lots of love to all of you. I will see you next time. Bye for now. Thank you.