S5E52: 1% better
Full transcript:
Good morning, happy Tuesday and welcome to the Language Confidence Project, the daily dose of language courage for people who love languages and those who really don’t, but have to learn one anyway. And today, if you’re struggling, with focus, with frustration, with anything at all, I want to tell you about a question that has massively improved my life in so many areas, far wider than language learning or productivity, and I really want to share it with you today.
And it came from the fact that up until I realised there was another way to look at things, whenever I was in a bubble of frustration, or panic, or sadness, or just feeling really unmotivated, my brain would go straight to “well how do we fix this?”.
And that was fine when there was an obvious, quick fix, but when there wasn’t, or the eventual solution was months or years away, it could quite often lead to a feeling of panic or hopelessness and cause a spiral rather than feeling productive.
And then I found this question, and it made all the difference.
What could you do to make this 1% better?
What’s one thing you could do, that takes five seconds or ten seconds at most, that would make this current moment 1% better? And it might be something like opening the window or turning a lamp on. It might be taking your sweater off or drinking some water. It might be clearing the things you don’t need off your desk so your brain feels less cluttered, or switching the music to something calmer or more uplifting.
It’s the really simple stuff that you’re so used to ignoring because you have to get stuff done. And no, it won’t fix everything you’re worrying about or bring you certainty in unstable times but what it can do, is it lets you reassure yourself that your needs will be taken care of. We are so used to being at school and switching our needs off until breaktime or hometime, we forget that as adults, we control the temperature of our workspace. We control when we eat or drink, we can take our blazer off without asking permission. And once we’ve solved one tiny problem, sometimes we have the strength to tackle some slightly bigger ones.
When the world, or our studies, or our lives feel too intense, there is so much power in being able to promise yourself that you’ll recognise the tiny needs that you’re so used to tuning out. To build that trust with your body and with your mind that the immediate things matter too. And the amount of times that just stopping that slightly grating music or taking that extra layer off brings a huge sense of relief. It can make all the difference to deal with the tiny things.
I use this question for everything. The big stuff and the small stuff. And it never fails to make things more than 1% better.
And before I go, word of mouth is the absolute most powerful way to show your support to a podcast, and so I would love to ask that if you enjoy my work, please share it with someone else you know. Send them episodes that make you think of them, recommend me to language teachers or language students, and help me to grow so that more I can support more language learners. And just in case you haven’t heard, you can now follow the Language Confidence Project on Tiktok to get even shorter, even snappier daily doses of courage. Follow me there at @languageconfidence.
Have a wonderful day, and I will see you tomorrow.