Quick Chat and Questions

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

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You must commit. You must commit. Don't quit. You will succeed. EffortlessEnglishClub.com today. Okay, just going to answer a few questions today, and that's it.

Just do very kind of a quick show today. Honestly, I couldn't think of a topic. I was trying to think of a topic, thinking and thinking, and I couldn't think of one.

So I decided I'll just answer some questions, and that's enough. Also, Gab is down right now, so I could not announce this chat. So most of the members, supporting members, are probably, they might not even know this is happening. So let me just open up all the, I'm just going to open up the comments right now.

Let's see how we're doing. Yeah, one second. Mm-hmm. And I might turn on supporting members-only chat if I turn it back on in a little bit. We'll see.

But right now, I'll turn it off. Okay. And save. Okay. There we go. So, Russland and Vladislav, I'll turn it back on in a minute, the members-only chat.

So, welcome. So as I said, today is just kind of a random show. We're just going to answer questions, just chat with you all for a little bit. I've got a baby in there sleeping.

I'm going to answer a few questions and then I'll go. I was going to do a VIP show today, talk about VIP, but I thought I'll wait. I think I'll wait till beginning of next week, actually. So, you know, I'll answer whatever questions you have or comments or whatever.

Anyway, hope you're all doing well. Beautiful spring day. Ah, spring is really here, here in Japan. So it's quite warm now. Yesterday and today, very warm.

So I went out walking as usual. with my babies. And in the middle of the day, during the day, you know, it's been sunny and really hot, actually. We went to the playground and under the sun, I was sweating, you know, wearing just this long-sleeved shirt and kind of getting hot, sweating.

So, fantastic. I love it. Really, really great. So nice to get out. Vladislav, did you read my comment about Tony Robbins? What do you think? Yeah, actually, that's a good one.

I want to talk about that. So let me just kind of... Gab is down right now, so I can't pull up your comment and read it exactly, but I'll kind of remember the general... generally what you said, Vladislav. The idea, I think, was that Tony Robbins did an event in...

And some people were criticizing him, saying that they went to the event and, you know, they got very motivated, very excited. But then when they went, they went home and then and it kind of, you know, it, quote, it worked for a while, meaning they made some changes. They were feeling better. But then after a while, it's kind of stopped working.

working and they just went back to the old, their old way of life to everything the same. And then people were saying basically, Oh, it's a scam. He's just cheating us.

Well, my, my comment, I have, I've been to Tony Robbins events. So my comment about this is that that's a very passive mindset, right? Uh, because what these people are saying is that, uh, he didn't somehow magically change their lives. Um,

Right. I mean, they at least it sounds like a lot of them admit they say that, in fact, they did go there. They did have a good experience that the event itself was a very good experience. You know, they learned some useful things and they they got, you know, they left feeling very strong and motivated.

But then they went home and they didn't continue. And they blame Tony Robbins for that. And I've heard this before. And that's just crazy. I think it's insane.

Now, if they didn't like what they learned, whatever, that's okay. But to blame him because they didn't go home and continue doing what he taught them to do, that's their fault.

Right? People are so passive. It's like, nobody, nobody, nobody can change your life and nobody can change you. Nobody can do that for you. Nobody. You've got to do it yourself.

The most that a coach or a teacher can do, the most they can do is give you some strategies and some ideas and hopefully some motivation to make a strong effort and to move in the right direction. But then it's up to you. You have to do it. It's just like Effortless English.

It's no different at all. So I can give you some advice. I can give you a system. I can make the lessons for you. and i can do all of that to help you but in the end you every day have to listen to them right you have to actually follow the system and do it every single day you know two hours a day or more people who do that improve and have success as many of you know but people who don't

Well, guess what? No results. You're not going to get results if you don't like to do the work. You know, same with exercise, right? We all know this, right?

Like, you know, I read a great book by Jeff Galloway about running and training for marathons and watched a couple of his videos and got excited. So it'd be crazy for me then to go home and then not run, right?

Not train every day following the system and then blame him. Oh, I didn't finish a marathon because it didn't work, right? I listened to his videos. I went to his workshop.

I read his book, but I didn't magically run a marathon. Well, of course not. Of course not. You have to go home and you still have to run all those miles every day for months and months.

You have to train and train. He can give you the system. He can give you a training plan. All kinds of great advice. But you and I, we are responsible for our own lives.

We're responsible for making the changes. No coach can do it. People have this... I don't know why they have this idea. Maybe like there's some magical hypnosis, right?

That you're going and Tony Robbins is going to do some magical thing to you and you're going to leave and you'll be a completely different person somehow. But that's not how it works.

No. It's not going to happen. I mean, I think Tony does everything he can to change people, to give them a super powerful emotional experience, to give them some good strategies, simple things they can do when they go home to follow.

But that's all you can do in the end. In the end, once you go home, it's up to you, right? It's always up to us in the end, finally. Okay, we got... I might have to slow the comments down, actually, because they're coming in so fast.

Like Ruslan says, we are the masters of our lives. That's very well said. Yes, we are the masters of our lives, right? And, of course, I mean, isn't that how... That's the best, right?

Isn't that what we want, really? You don't really want... I know it sounds easy if someone else could do it for you, but on the other hand, then you're just like a...

You'd have to trust them completely if they could just, right? Because if someone can just change you that way, then it means they could also change you in a bad way, right? Without your choice. So it's best to be the master of our lives.

That's what we really want. Okay, let me just back up here and catch up in the comments. You guys are... William Khalid says it's very nice of you to share all this knowledge and love questions please do have a fixed timing for this program it's around this time it's a little late today it's you know it's it's not exactly because of my children my babies are I've got to wait till they get to sleep so it's somewhere usually between seven to nine in the evening and that's Japan time

And it hasn't been every night. But I try to do it as often as I can. Okay. So anyway, I like Tony. I think he charges a lot for his seminars. That's true.

But I think if you use what he says and really get into it, I think it's useful. Now, I will say that if you're interested in Tony Robbins specifically, just to follow up on Vladislav's question, that if you're worried about money, you can learn everything you need to learn from him from his books and maybe his audio program, which is excellent.

I can't remember the name of it. But anyway, go on his website. I think it's TonyRobbins.com. He's got an audio program. And, I mean, in terms of just the information, you'll get all the information from his audio program and his books.

What you get from the live... This is true, really, for almost for any live seminar. What you get is a powerful emotional experience to go with it, right? To get you really, really motivated.

Right. So people act like that's cheating people. It's just motivation. Well, what do you expect? That's exactly what a seminar is. If you just want information, just information, a book or audios or videos, right, are much more efficient for just getting information, right?

Like when you go to a seminar, you don't really get any new information. What you usually get is The one thing that's special about a live event is the emotion. It's the same with music.

It's the same with music. If you want to hear a really great, technically the best version of the songs, you just get the album, right? And you listen to it.

So why would you then go see the band live? What's the point? Well, the point is it's the emotion. All those fans together, the energy and the emotion is much more powerful in a live event.

And that's also true for speaking and speakers. So that's that's and it's the same for me when I do live events. I don't teach. I can't. I mean, I have nothing new to say in a live event.

You can just the information is things I've said before or that it's a lot. Most of it's in my book. But what is different is that there's a very high level of energy and emotion, which is powerful and does help you change. It helps to get helps your motivation.

So you just got to know what to expect from a live event and what not to expect. Zach says, I listened to your podcast, Evil English Teacher. I was starting last Monday. I'm very happy because no more evil English grammar.

Great. Renos says, we're almost at the end of our speaking challenge. I'll have to follow up on that next week too. How much time is good for shadowing per day?

There's no exact, you know, shadowing is kind of an optional activity unless you're really focused on your pronunciation, I would say. So it's up to you. There's not a, you know, what's enough. Probably 30 minutes, 20 minutes is good.

It's a good amount. Anything more than that is great. Can you list all the books you want to do for book club? Yeah, I have a list. I have to pull up the list and I can go through some of the, all the ones I've written down so far.

I got a lot of books, possibilities. We got a lot of possible books for the book club. Mm-hmm. How are things in Japan? Will you get money from the government during the pandemic?

I don't think so. No. Well, actually, will I get money from America? I wonder what they're doing. I don't know. Maybe. Are they just sending that to people's bank accounts?

Maybe I will get money from the U.S. government. It doesn't matter. I don't care. But everything's fine in Japan. The Japanese are not panicking. I think the Japanese know that this is not actually all that real.

Javad says, Oh, I read your article about Vipassana. Uh-huh. Can I do it myself without a mentor in my home? Is it necessary to have a teacher? I think it's useful with Vipassana to do the 10-day course.

You can do it at home. I mean, it's pretty simple. The technique's very simple. But doing the 10-day course or retreat is very, very powerful. I don't know why I'm wearing headphones.

Because... It's just so intense. You're meditating all day, every day. So you really get to feel the benefits of it and the power of it in a way. Like when you're just doing it at home for a little bit, it's still nice, but it's not the same.

Oh, Natish says, your PayPal works not. I know that PayPal's not working. It's because of PayPal. PayPal, their customer service sucks. We've had a problem with them.

I can't get anybody to talk to. I've tried talking to people on the phone. They never solved the problem. I'm pretty sick of PayPal. We may be switching to another something else.

Tired of dealing with them. Hmm Okay Why don't you read the book? You just summarize it in the book club because there are already audio books. Just if you want to if you want to listen to the whole book, then just first of all, copyright.

I can't do that. And second, just buy the audio book and you can do that yourself. GTN Mr. says, what do you think about discipline? I think it's always the key for success in all fields.

Yeah, discipline equals freedom. I think that's the quote of Jocko Willink. He's a former Navy SEAL. Yeah, it's true. Self-discipline is very, very, very important.

Okay. Okay. Russell says they're sending $1,200 to bank accounts in the U.S. So I guess I'm getting $1,200 then. I didn't even think about that. Okay.

Gosh, jumping around again. Let's see. What is the best country in the world? I don't know. Depends who you ask. I was like, what's the best food in the world?

Depends, right? On your taste. Let's see... Oh, okay, cool. Yassin says, I read the Iliad recently in my language, Arabic, but I didn't understand anything.

Oh, really? Well, you probably have a bad translation then. That means you had a bad translation. Um... Uh... You know... Especially, you know, the translations can vary quite a lot.

Um... I'll say, for example, in English, the Iliad, I've got a couple translations, and they are so different. They're very, very different. So probably what you need to find is a translation that's quite... How would I say it?

that's a little more simple and direct, right? Because, like, I've got, for example, I've got two translations of the Iliad, which, of course, was in ancient Greek, originally.

But I've got two English translations, and one of them is very, very poetic. It's written... It's an old translation. I think it was from the 1800s. And the...

It's quite beautiful. It may even be more direct. I'm not sure. But... But it's much more poetic, much more artistic, you know, emotional maybe, less direct language.

But therefore, it's a little harder to understand, right? Really got to, it's not quite so direct and clear for understanding the story. So really got to, it's much more reading poetry. And the other one I have, the other translation I have is more prose, like it's more kind of standard sentences structure.

Yeah. So, it's less beautiful, I'd say, but it's much easier to understand what's happening, you know, the story, because everything is more direct. So, I recommend try to find...

A translation that is more simple and direct. You might miss some of the beauty of it, but you'll get the story clearly. And then maybe you could go back to the other translation, and then you'll already know the story, and you might understand it better then.

Bahadir says, I've been learning English for two years, but I can't relax when I speak English. What's the reason? What should I do? I mean, that's an emotional issue, so I'd recommend...

This is why... If you read my book, for example, I talk about some NLP techniques for... practicing in a way and listening to English when you're feeling really like high energy and very excited and emotional, this kind of emotional part of it.

And the reason is for exactly this, to get you feeling excited and happy, relaxed, energized, positive as you listen to English, as you practice English. So then when you do speak, you can relax a lot more.

Should I watch movies with captions or without? You can do both. You know, you can use the English subtitles first. Just to help you understand if your level's a little bit lower.

And then you could try watching again and turning it off. You know, you can do that. You can do both. Someone's asking about writing. learning to write essays.

So the best way to learn to write essays, number one, is to read a lot of essays and even kind of, you know, read them and reread them. And then, you know, you could try even writing them again, like kind of writing them and almost copying them and then try to write essays yourself and give them just a teacher and have the teacher rewrite, you know, your essay using, you know, standard, correct, good quality English. So,

And if you do all those things, then this will help. The law says, why don't you talk about your teaching experience with foreign students? Yeah, I might talk about that sometime, some of my teaching experiences. You know, most of them were in schools before I started Effortless English, so I was kind of limited what I could do.

Hi, AJ, are you in Japan? Yes, but I'm not in Shiura. I'm in Osaka. Is your accent Australian? No. American. Okay. A couple more. Robin, thanks, as you deserve enormous respect for the massive service you are providing.

Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Sorry, guys. I'm using the YouTube commenting system, and it's just very fast, so it takes me a minute to read.

My other software is better. I'll go back to using it. Okay. Okay. Okay, here we go. How to develop public speaking, asked my Tom. That's a big topic, but I have a few videos about it on my YouTube channel.

Essentially, public speaking. Get Dale Carnegie's book about public speaking. It's very good. It's my favorite one about public speaking by Dale Carnegie.

I think it's called Public Speaking is the name of it. That's a great little system to use that he teaches. And then you've got to just practice a lot.

Do a lot of public speaking. Now, you can do this, like what I'm doing. This is public speaking. But this is an easier way to do public speaking, right?

If you're talking to a camera, I think for most people, talking to a camera is more relaxing than talking to a room of people. But it still maybe causes some people to be nervous, right, in the beginning. Right? So it does give you a bit of practice, especially doing it live like this.

So I recommend doing that. You can start by recording some videos. We've got some people who do that and send them, they post them on Gab and people watch them and that's really fantastic. And then the next step would be to do it live, do a live stream where you're, again, you're talking.

But you're doing it live. This gives you just you could just practice. You can do this every single day and then join some kind of public speaking group.

Toastmasters is probably the most famous one that is more or less free. They're cheap and they're international and give a lot of speeches. But the Dale Carnegie book is really good.

And the Dale Carnegie system, if you have some money, take the Dale Carnegie public speaking class because it's excellent. They've got a great course.

The Art of Public Speaking by Dale Carnegie. Thank you, Matam. Yes. Juan Olarte says, I've been learning English for years. I like the way you teach online.

I'm shy. I don't like to talk much. But I listen to you and I understand a lot of your talking. Thank you. Oh, that's great. Fantastic. Just, you know, as long as you're enjoying it, wonderful.

Wonderful. Fernanda, good to see you. My six-year-old son asks, how can you speak so much English? He's impressed. He likes you. His name is Germay. Nice.

Well, I've had 52 years of English, so it's kind of easy. Funny. Pretty cute. Yeah, I understand about some people pirate my lessons. We get them removed.

It just takes a little time. We'll remove them. We get them removed. Don't worry. Have you ever been to Iran traveling? Nope. Not yet. Have not. Uh, Imran says, I've been seeing you for years now.

You're a great teacher for this language. You're truly extraordinary. Thank you. Very nice. Vladisov says, back to coaches. I guess most of them sell information.

They claim to teach you how to make a million dollars, but they don't use methods they teach you. They make by selling their books or courses. Some of them.

Some of them. Tony's, you know, if you're talking about money-making, um... This is, again, the problem is nobody's going to teach you the details of how to build a successful business because every business is different, right? So you can learn general principles.

I think actually Robert Kiyosaki's general principles on money are actually very good, but they're very general, right? He doesn't tell you how to make a real estate deal. He doesn't tell you how to build a successful business. He gives you the kind of very big general overview, which I think for a lot of people is still very useful information.

A lot of people don't understand these basic general things that he's... And he gives a very good mindset about those things. And I think that's excellent. But, you know, I've seen people criticize him because, oh, he doesn't teach anything details, just these same general things.

That's really all you can do. And nobody's going to teach you exactly how to run a business. I mean... Why would they? They're just not. Number one, they don't want to.

They're not interested in doing that. And number two, it's too specific. It's too hard to do. Running a restaurant business is very different than running an online business, for example.

So... A lot of it, you have the general ideas and principles, but then most of it you have to get in there and figure it out yourself. And by doing, learning by doing, learning by doing.

It's the same with investing. Nobody's going to tell you, oh, buy a thousand shares of stock in this company anymore. on this day and then sell, you know, they're not going to do that, right? People who are doing that, they're professional traders.

They're not going to, you know, they make more money by just doing it than coaching somebody. So you're going to get a lot of books again on stock trading, for example, or trading in general that are quite general. Tony Robbins' book, Money, I think it's called, is actually very good in that area. But that's it.

People are going to complain, well, I don't know which exact stock should I buy? Nobody's going to tell you that. In fact, legally, in most cases, they can't even tell you that. And it's too impossible.

Again, it's too specific. So again, you have to get in there and you have to actually do it and probably lose some money and make mistakes and learn. So yeah, right? The coach can't play the game for you.

Your quote, read a book every week, is very motivational, especially when I get momentum, says Ruslan. Yes, read a book a week. Why not? Oh, nice. Muhammad Ali says, I'm thankful to you because my children have started speaking fluently and there's a big role from you because of you.

Thanks again. Fantastic. Congrats to your children. Okay. And Juan Olarte says, you keep me motivated on YouTube to learn English. I like your method over other ones I see on YouTube.

Well, thank you. That's one of my main things I try to do is keep you motivated. That's a big one. I know how important that is. Yeah, like Preeti says, the key to success in any field is practice, practice, practice.

You got to practice one thing that we can achieve in success in any field, right? You got to practice and you have to learn. You can't just practice the same thing badly, of course, but practicing, learn from your mistakes, practice, learn from your mistakes, keep going.

And yes, try to learn from people who are better than you. coaches and others try to get information from them but they're not going to do everything for you you know they're not going to tell you exactly step by step do exactly this and then this and then this and then this they're not going to do that they're going to give you some general things but you're going to have to figure out a lot of the details yourself through mistakes usually okay a couple more and then time for me to go

Oh, Antonio Lima says, Antonio Lima says, the main problem, Robert Kiyosaki does not speak clear English like you. Maybe you read his books. It's usually easier to read, you know, than if you can't, if you have problems with his spoken English, then try reading his book, books, one of his books, Rich Dad, Poor Dad, Cash Flow Quadrant.

Let's see. Do I need a YouTube channel to keep commenting on this live? I don't think so. You're commenting now. Okay, couple more. AJ, do you know the book Principles by Ray Dalio?

Did you read it? I think I have read that. And I believe that's the guy Tony Robbins interviewed and based his book Money a lot on that guy and his strategy. So he's got some good stuff on balancing things.

I think the one missing piece for a lot of the stock stuff is how to protect yourself from a crash using options. It's a little bit complicated, but...

It's good to do, I think. I don't trust the stock market at all. It's a casino. I'm learning. I have a certain amount of money that I'll put in there.

And I'm learning about options now so that I can do that, protect myself better. But overall, most of my money I keep away from the stock market. How are my twins? They're doing very well.

Thank you. There you go. Anastasia says, I started watching your videos every day two years ago. At first I understood 20%. Now I understand 90%. This makes me more motivated as it should.

Congratulations. That's very, very impressive. Abraham Ali, good to see you. Okay. I think that's about it, guys. I know, yeah, this is kind of a random show today.

Um... I don't know, the last few days have been, as usual, busy with babies and other things here. Actually, I guess I can chat about it a little bit. So we're thinking of, my wife and I are thinking of moving.

We're thinking of moving out to the countryside, leaving the city. We're thinking of building a house out in the countryside with some land where we can grow food and

So, we've been researching houses and land and all this stuff. So, I've been really busy doing that, plus taking care of the babies. So, I haven't had time to think of a topic. That's why today's topics are random, because all I've been thinking about is land and houses.

Although, maybe that's a good topic. I could talk about it next week, because it's called homesteading. You guys might remember, some of you remember, I interviewed a guy named David the Good. About growing food, right?

Growing like in either a garden or having land and what's called permaculture, which is growing food on your land, but growing in a way that it doesn't require a lot of work.

Because normal farming, traditional farming that we think of, it takes a lot of work. You've got to plant, and then the plants grow, and then you harvest, you take the plants, and then the next year you've got to repeat it again and again and again.

But there's another way of doing it called permaculture, meaning permanent culture. And this is the idea that you mostly plant plants, trees and bushes and other plants that grow all the time, all year, right? So, you plant them one time, and you use things that are really good for your area, you know, wherever you live, and And so the idea is that it's just always there and you don't really have to take care of it very much.

So like an easy example of this would be a fruit tree, like having a lot of fruit trees and maybe nuts, like fruit trees and nut trees. So once a fruit tree starts growing, it produces fruit. It produces fruit every year.

But you don't really have to do much for that. You just collect the fruit every year, right? You don't have to, you know... Chop it down and then plant it again and chop it down and plant it again.

If you plant the right kind of trees, then it just creates food for you for many, many, many, many years without too much work, right? You can do this with bushes like blueberry bushes, blackberry bushes, walnut trees. And then there are other lots and lots and lots and lots of plants like this.

And so, like we talked to David the Good about, maybe I'll have him back on the show since I'm getting interested in this topic quite a lot now because I'm planning to do it myself.

You can create what he, I think he called it a food forest, right? You create this whole food forest on your land where everything, you have all these plants and everything you can eat.

So, this is the idea. So that's what I've been thinking about. Maybe I'll share some of the, uh, some of my thoughts and some of my, uh, what I've been learning. Cause I've been reading a bunch of books.

That's what I'm reading about right now. I got, I bought like about 10 books on this topic, different topics about creating a homestead, creating food for us, uh, all living out in the countryside. Also just, you know, all these other kinds of topics. Um,

So anyway, I'll probably do some shows about that just because I'm interested in it. Okay. I think that's it. All right. We're going to go from there.

That's it, guys. So anyway, next week. Keep postponing, but this weekend or maybe it might be next week. We'll see. But we'll continue with the book club with The Hobbit.

Do the next two or three chapters. Probably the next three chapters. The dragon. See what happens with the dragon. and i'll do a show about the vip just answer questions and talk in detail about the vip program since i know a lot of people are joining now right now lots of people are joining so i know others want to join and have questions so i'll do that next week and maybe i'll do some shows about uh growing your own food and living out in the country all the things i'm thinking about now someday i hope i'll i'll do a show from my little house and farm

All right. So until then, lots of love to you. Have a great day. And I'll hopefully see you tomorrow. Lots of love. Bye for now.