Hello, this AJ Hoge again. Time for the vocabulary lesson for “Beliefs.” As always, be sure you’re standing strong. Good posture, big smile. Deep breath, move your body. Let’s begin.
In this lesson I used a few difficult words. Maybe difficult, maybe not, I don’t know. Let’s talk about them. Number one is the word trauma. Now trauma is a noun. Trauma means an injury or a deep hurt. Now it can be physical, for example, if you break your leg that is a physical trauma. It’s a physical injury. It’s a deep physical hurt. Trauma can also mean a deep emotional hurt.
So something very painful in your life, you feel very, very sad, for example. Very, very angry, that is also a trauma, a very painful experience. A painful, emotional hurt, trauma. So again, that’s trauma. So we have emotional trauma and we also have physical trauma.
So, of course, in this lesson we’re talking about emotional traumas, hopefully nobody hit you when you’re learning your English, so probably it was emotional trauma. You felt a lot of stress perhaps when you were learning English in the past or maybe just boredom. But for some students, I’d say probably for most students, there are a lot of negative emotional feelings and beliefs about English learning and altogether I call these English trauma, English pain, English hurt. And so really what this entire lesson pack, all of this power English lesson pack is about is healing your English trauma.
Okay, another word we talked about in this lesson, incantation. Incantation. Incantation is a phrase or a sentence that you repeat again and again and again. So, for example, “Every day my English speaking is better and better. Every day my English speaking is better and better. Every day my English speaking is better and better.” That’s an incantation. You saying it again and again and again. And it has a little bit of a magical idea, that these words are magical. And you know, actually they kind of are magical because they change your emotion. They change your feelings about English, in this case.
So saying that again and again, every day, saying it with emotion, saying it strongly, “Every day my English speaking is better and better. Every day my English speaking is better and better. Every day my English speaking is better and better.” That actually is a little bit magical because it changes your feelings. Your feelings about English will improve. You will start to believe this. You will believe your English is getting better.
And when you believe it, it will be true. You will be getting better and better. So there is kind of a magical idea about incantations. By repeating these things again and again with power, that you are changing your mind and you’re changing the situation. Almost like magic. So that’s incantation. It’s the actual sentence that you say again and again.
Another word we use a lot in this lesson is empowering. The verb is to empower, to empower. So, of course, power is the basic word, power, strength, right? Power, but to empower, empower means to give power to someone or to cause power to grow in someone. For example, maybe you have a child, a small child, and every day you tell the child “You are so smart. You are intelligent.” You tell them again “You’re intelligent, you’re smart, you’re intelligent, you’re smart.” You tell this again and again and again, every day for years and years and years.
You are empowering the child. You’re giving them power. Because they will believe it, after some time they will believe it. They’ll think “Oh, wow, I am intelligent. I am very smart.” Right? So you’re giving them power. You’re making them feel more powerful. You are empowering the child. You’re giving power to the child. So to empower is to give power or cause power in someone else. So in this way, these beliefs empower you. The beliefs give power to you. They cause power in you. So we call them empowering beliefs. We add the “ing” it becomes an adjective. Empowering beliefs.
And the opposite of an empowering belief is a limiting belief. And in the lesson I talked about, limiting means stopping. A limit is something that stops you. It’s kind of like a border, a boundary. You can’t go past it. So a limiting belief is a belief that stops you. It prevents you from doing something. So in this case limiting beliefs prevent you, stop you, from speaking excellent English. The belief stops you. You could speak excellent English but you have these negative beliefs, you have these limiting beliefs, and so you are stopped, you are prevented. You cannot do it. So it’s limiting, limiting beliefs.
Our next word is complicated. Pretty common word, complicated. It’s similar to complex, complex and complicated, very close in meaning, very similar. And they are the opposite of simple. So simple and complicated are opposites. Complicated means not simple. It means there’s a lot of little pieces, alright? If something is simple maybe there’s just one piece. It’s very easy to understand. But if something is complicated, there are many little pieces to it, part of it. It’s difficult to understand all of them.
So some people think English is complicated. Oh my god, nouns and verbs and the past progressive and the future tense and past perfect progressive and all these grammar terms and they “Oh my god, it’s so complicated.” And it is complicated if you learn that way. If you try to memorize, if you try to think about all these little grammar rules then absolutely, yes, it will feel complicated. But luckily it’s not necessary. You don’t need to do that. English can feel simple.
Finally, we have the word reference. Reference or references. A reference is an example. It can have different meanings in different situations, but here it means an example, a specific example of something. So you have this belief “English is painful.” And then you have references, you have examples, that prove it. For example, “In middle school my teacher made me feel stupid.” Right? That’s the reference, that is the example, the specific reference, the specific example. And then you have another reference, “I failed my high school English test.” So now you have two references, your middle school teacher made you feel stupid and you failed your high school test. Two references, two examples of the belief “English is painful.” So most beliefs have all these little references, these little examples. You use the references to prove the belief.
So if you question the references you can destroy the belief. So again a reference is, in this case, a reference is an example, a specific example of something. And references support beliefs, references create beliefs.Okay, that is all, a very short and easy vocabulary lesson for this one. That is all of the vocabulary lesson for “Beliefs.” Listen to it a few times. Read the transcript, if necessary. But focus most of your energy on the main speech and on the mini‑story.
Those are the two most important lessons. Those are the ones you need to listen to very often, repeatedly, and learn them deeply.
Okay, I will see you next time.
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