Hello all! Lately I have been struggling to feel inspired, even for daily recurrent tasks. What do you do to get inspired? My most effective method is to listen to music but that has not been working. Let me know your suggestions! ☺️
Last week was a really stressful one as a lot has been changing in my personal life and I noticed how deeply it impacts me when it comes to language, whether it be while speaking, trying to explain something or writing. I also noticed it happened both in English (which is my second language) and Spanish (which is my native one).
How does stress affect your language skills? Let me know!
I have been thinking a lot about intrusive thoughts and how they try to condition the way we live and we execute things. Thoughts like never being or doing enough was something really recurrent for me and I tried several techniques to avoid them without success. As I'm ending phase 1, I'm really looking back and discovering those thoughts are less recurrent and I have been trying to no judge myself for lots of things that I cannot change nor control: such as the way I learn, the way I express myself and the way that external experiences affect me. This is being quite an exciting journey and I'm so excited to keep going!
I have tried Drops for learning vocabulary in Russian, but it does not include a lot of verbs. Is there a way to memorize verbs that feels dynamic and it's just not a long boring list?
I was watching this video and realized that overthinking is a huge factor when it comes to developing confidence in our language learning. There is a quote in the video: "My life is full of terrible things... that never happened" and I feel like this happens a lot: "What if I'm not fluent enough?" "What if I'm not learning fast enough?" "What if..." We keep worrying and going through the same thoughts again and again. Sometimes we just need to step back, take a deep breath and start over.
Also, in this video there is a recommendation that I think it may seem obvious but it is indeed pretty logical: if you have a big goal and you feel overwhelmed, dividing the goal into bite-sized tasks would make you feel more confident and help you accomplish more without that stress being a burden.
Do you have any hacks of your own to overthink less? Let me know!
Hi! My name is Linka, I recently turned 25 and I'm from Colombia. I have been passionate about reading and learning about new cultures since I was a kid and that led to being interested in learning new languages. I have tried a bunch of languages but I'm still a little bit far from confident. My target language in this moment is Russian and I really look forward to achieving a lot in this learning path.
I have not stopped thinking about kindness and the difference it makes for others and for ourselves. Really working in being kind to myself as much as possible!
I was just watching Jamie's video in Spanish which is my native language and I have a really nice feeling in my chest, like, she sees herself as technically fluent but I see her as absolutely fluent. I really think that if you are able to understand and make others understand you, that's it, you're fluent. This led me to another thought: why do I have such kindness with other people's path in language learning but don't show that same kindness to myself?
Boom. That's a game changer for me. Conclusion: I will learn to respect myself and my process and to be kind to myself through this journey towards my goal.
