Feedback Hello my special VIP member, and welcome to this month s lesson. The topic this month is an interesting topic, it s an important topic, and it s a topic focused on success. Success; how do you get success in all different parts of your life? Certainly, with English. How do you get more success, better results with English speaking but also, in all other areas of your life in your work, your job, your finances and your relationships with your physical body, health and energy? We ve talked about some specific ideas for these topics, but we re going to talk about a bigger issue today. The topic for this month is feedback, feedback. You may know this word already. Feedback is information you get after you do something. You do something, and then you get some kind of result, something happens, and that information whatever is happening is feedback. It tells you if what you re doing is successful or not. That seems pretty obvious and pretty simple, but here s why it s important. A lot of people, I think most people, have the idea that success is a secret, like there s one big secret, one big action, one big strategy or tactic that if you find it and do it, boom, you will be super successful and then you re finished. Don t we have this idea, right? For example with money, that s an easy example. So many people think that all they need to do is find that one super great idea and then they will make tons of money, they ll be rich, and that s the end. If they re a little crazy they think they ll win the lottery. They ll buy some ticket and then they ll win, and after they win it s all over and they re finished and they can just be rich and happy the rest of their lives. We have this lottery mentality about success. We have it for everything. It s the same with our bodies, right? There s always the secret diet that s going to make you lose all the weight and then you ll be done, and you can stop the diet and go back to eating a whole bunch of crap again. I know you know that s not rational or logical and yet subconsciously that is what so many people believe. How do I know they believe that? I look at their actions; that s how they behave.

They re always looking for the one secret, the one special thing that s going to change it all in one month. There are of course great strategies that can make a huge difference in your life, that s true; but it s not a lottery. There s not a moment where you do just one thing and you re totally successful and then you just stop, and you can do nothing. Success is a process that never ends. That s what feedback is about. You need to stop thinking about winning the big lottery or finding the big get rich quick idea, forget that. Forget finding the super secret crazy diet that will do everything in one month and then you re finished; forget that idea. We have it with relationships too, right? Hollywood, movies teach us this; there s the one magical person that we will somehow meet, by total luck, we ll bump into them on the street or have some crazy event where we ll meet them, then there s instant attraction and that person will totally change our lives. They ll make us happy and we ll feel great and wonderful. There may be some little drama for awhile, but then we ll get together and live happily ever after, the end. Anybody who has had a real relationship with another man or woman knows that is bullshit. That is total, complete bullshit. It never happens that way, never. The real story happens after they say the end. That s when all the challenge happens, that s when the work happens that s when it s difficult. That s when you really have to learn how to have a good relationship. It s easy when you have that attraction in the beginning, but after that forget it. It s not like that. You re not going to meet this secret wonderful person who will change your life and make you happy forever and you don t need to do anything. We ve got to get rid of this lottery mentality, that s what I call it; the idea that from some kind of luck we re going to find the one thing that will open all the doors and give us total success, and then afterwards we don t have to work anymore. Forget it it s not going to happen. If it does happen you re going to lose it if you stop working, if you stop learning, if you stop growing, just forget that idea it s a fantasy and never happens. What s the reality? The reality is that success in any area of your life is a process that never, ever ends. You never arrive. I ll give you an example from my own life with business and money. I use business and money only because it s so concrete. It s very easy to understand, we can measure it. That s why it s very clear the results, that s why I m using it as an example.

I used to be poor and broke as you may know. I was working a lot and I hated all my jobs, but I had this idea in my head, this lottery idea, that someday I would find the wonderful perfect job, and then everything would be great. I never found it. Another time I thought okay, so I m never going to find the perfect job. I realized, I just don t like jobs in general. I thought okay, maybe I need to start a business. I need to find that one idea, that idea that nobody has thought of before. So many people have this idea that the secret to success in business is finding some magical idea that s so incredible nobody has ever thought of it before. You re going to do that, this incredible crazy product or service or something, and then you ll become fabulously rich. That s bullshit, it doesn t happen that way. Study people who have actually built real businesses. That s not how it happens. In fact if nobody has thought of your crazy idea before, it s probably because it s crazy and nobody is interested in it and it s not going to work. It s not about finding a crazy idea, it s about a process of building a business, giving more and more value to your customers, giving them something they need, solving problems that they have, and then improving and getting better and better at that, forever. You better pick something that you really enjoy and love, because you re going to continue doing it until you die probably. You get this idea, that it s a process. Success is a process. It s every single day, every week, every month, every year, every decade; it never, ever stops but it s fun. When you re doing it I don t want to make it sound like terrible drudgery, drudgery means unpleasant work, it s not. If you re doing the right kinds of things it s actually very enjoyable and you don t mind it. You enjoy the process. What is the process? I ve talked in the past about action, being decisive and taking action. That s the first step. If you just take action and that s all, you re not going to accomplish much. You ll never know which actions are better to take, and you won t learn and find new great actions to take. Step two is feedback, and this is so big. Again, you take an action but then the second step is feedback. What happens next?

Most of us, we just kind of say well it worked or it didn t work, but you have to be much more specific about that. You need to learn to be very, very attentive to what happens, to the feedback you re getting. You need to measure the feedback, measure it. Measure it and record it. In fact you need to measure and record what s important to you every day, daily. For example; if you re trying to lose weight, you re too fat or too heavy and you want to lose weight, some people say don t look at the scale. I say the opposite. Measure yourself every day, weigh yourself every single day and put it on a calendar. Each day write down your weight for that day. You ll notice it ll go up and down, depending on how much water you have in your body; there are a lot of things that can change, but it will be in a range. You ll quickly notice I m always in this range. Of course, then you have to take some actions. You just keep doing the same things, those numbers are never going to change or they re going to go up. You start to try some kind of exercise maybe, and then you keep measuring and after one month you notice something. What do you notice? I don t know, it depends on what kind of exercise you re doing. If you re just doing light yoga, you might notice the numbers did not change at all. Interesting. That maybe tells you something. That feedback tells you that maybe light yoga is not the best activity for losing fat. Maybe losing fat isn t your only goal. Maybe you just want to feel better and have more energy and just feel you know, more relaxed and maybe you re tight and your shoulders and neck hurt all the time and you want to feel less pain. You can also measure that, from one to 10. You could write a number down for how good you feel, your energy level 10 is super energetic and one is you re almost asleep. At the end of the day you could write down well today, I think my energy was generally a seven. Again at the end of the month you could look at that and see, is your energy generally going up or going down? You might notice that the yoga is actually helping your energy a little bit. It s not helping your weight but it is helping your energy, so maybe it is a good activity. Maybe it s making you feel less pain. You could write down how much pain you have each day, give it a number from one to 10.

You don t need to measure hundreds of things, but you should measure the one, two or three most important things for you, for your goal. That s feedback. It s every day you re getting feedback. This is important for two reasons. Number one, it s important because it forces your brain to focus on that every single day. If you re not doing this it s easy to forget about it some days. If you re weighing yourself every day and you re writing it on the calendar, deciding what your energy level is and writing that on the calendar, you re going to pay attention to that. You re really going to pay attention to that and focus on it constantly. You re always going to be thinking; what s my energy level? What s my energy level? What s my energy level? When you pay attention to something your brain naturally looks for solutions. Your brain realizes this is important, and I need to focus on it and do something and improve. Just the process of measuring every day will help you find better answers, take more actions, and get better results, just the measurement. You can t avoid it, you will be thinking about it all the time, at least once a day, but probably more. We have this saying in English, out of sight, out of mind. It means if something is not in front of you, then you don t think about it, it doesn t feel important to you even if it is really important. This is the opposite of that. You re putting it in your face every day, having to look at it every day. You have to look at your weight and say I m still the same and just by doing that you start to get more motivation. I need to change. I need to do something different. It s the same with that energy number. Maybe your energy is a three every day and then after three weeks you re still getting threes, threes, threes. Your brain, just your unconscious, will start to push you to do something different, to get those numbers higher, to start improving. Of course in manufacturing this is a very common practice. For example, when a Japanese company is manufacturing a car, they measure everything. They re making lots and lots of measurements. They especially make quality measurements. They want to measure the quality of different parts of the car. Each day they can look at it, and they can look at it for a month or a year. They can see; is the quality going up? Is it going down? Is it the same?

Just by measuring it makes the workers constantly focus on quality, quality, quality. Just the measuring they do other things too, but the measurement itself is very powerful because it s constant feedback. That s the second powerful thing about measuring and feedback. It helps you learn. You learn so, so, so much faster because you re constantly getting new information. You can compare it to your old information and you learn something new. Depending on what s happening it just makes you focus and really learn more, really see what is happening, looking at more of the details. That s why, for example, if you want to lose weight I highly recommend you measure more than just your weight. Measure your weight sure, but also measure your energy level, at least those two. I would add maybe a couple more things. You might measure how happy you feel, your level of depression or happiness. One could be super depressed, and one could be super happy. Every day you would give a general score for the whole day. That s also a part, you don t want to exercise or diet in a way that makes you tired or miserable all the time. Just by measuring those three things, you ll naturally focus more and more on feeling great emotionally, happy, having lots of energy, and of course losing the weight. It s the same in business. If you re advertising for example, let s say you re doing Google advertisements. Most people just make an ad and then they put it out there and people see it and respond to the ad, but Google lets you measure how good the ad is. You can try one ad, two ads, three ads, four ads and you can measure each one to see which one gets the most clicks. Obviously, that s the better ad. Just by measuring that and looking at that feedback all the time, you will learn how to write better ads. You ll see what works better and what doesn t work so well. That s feedback. It s the same in a relationship, right? Maybe every day, if your relationship is the most important thing right now in your life, you should start taking notes and measuring some things, like how happy is your partner? How happy do they seem to be? You could even ask them at the end of the day, how happy were you today on a scale of one to 10? It s just an idea. If you don t want to ask them, you yourself could kind of guess. You could write down other things. Let s say you have a goal to compliment or say something nice to your partner every day. You could write down how many compliments you gave them each day.

Just by measuring that, just by having to write it down each day, you will think about it more and therefore you will give them more compliments. You will say more and more nice things to them, and I m sure they probably will like it. They ll probably enjoy that. Just by getting the feedback, having to measure it each day and see the response, it will naturally get you improving and learning and doing better. You ll also learn what kinds of compliments seem to work better and which ones don t. Some compliments might make your partner really happy, some might be a little happy, and some they might ignore them. Of course, pay attention to that and give them more of the kinds of compliments they really love. This is the feedback process. People don t pay enough attention to the reaction they re getting. They don t pay enough attention to the feedback, so you want to focus on it and measure what s important every day, two or three very important parts of what you re trying to do. Do you understand that? I hope so. My challenge to you this month is to first pick just one area of your life. It could be your relationships, your job, English whatever it is. Pick one area of your life that you want to improve, then choose two or three things you want to measure. If it s English you might measure your study time, that might be one, but just studying a lot might not help you if you re feeling sleepy. Number two, measure your concentration level when you study. One means you re just kind of not studying hard, you re thinking about something else, and 10 means you were totally focused and concentrated the whole time. You might measure those two things. You could measure other things as well, but you get the idea. Pick one area of your life, then choose two or three things you re going to measure every single day about that topic or about that area. Get on our site and tell us your results. I guarantee you will see improvements after a couple of months, just by doing these measurements. All right, have a great day. I ll talk more about this topic in the audio commentary. Meanwhile, have a great day and a great month, I love you my VIP. See you again soon, bye-bye.

Feedback Mini-Story Text Hello VIP, this is AJ. Welcome to the mini story for this month. Let s begin. * * * * * There was a guy named Brad. Was there a guy or a girl named Brad? There was a guy named Brad. Brad had a sad story. You see Brad s wife Angelina divorced him. She divorced him. Who divorced who or who divorced whom? Angelina divorced Brad. Did Brad divorce Angelina? No, he didn t want to get a divorce. Brad did not want to get a divorce but it didn t matter, because Angelina divorced him. So Brad was lonely and sad. How did Brad feel? Lonely and sad. Who felt lonely and sad? Brad of course. Brad felt lonely and sad. Did Angelina feel lonely and sad? No, Angelina did not feel lonely and sad. Angelina immediately got a new boyfriend. Did Brad immediately get a new girlfriend? No he did not; he remained lonely for more than a year. How long did he remain lonely? For more than a year.

Who remained lonely for more than a year? Brad. Brad remained lonely for more than a year, but Angelina immediately got a new boyfriend. After more than a year, Brad decided to try to date again. Where did he go first? First he went to bars. First he went to bars to try to meet girls. Why did he go to bars? To try to meet girls. What did he want? He wanted to date women. He went to bars. What did he do at the bars? Obviously he drank, but other than drinking he also talked to women and bragged about himself. When he talked to women, what did he do? He bragged about himself. To brag means to say a lot of good things about yourself. I am great, I am wonderful, I am rich, I am handsome that is bragging, you say really good things about yourself. That s called bragging, the verb is to brag. Who bragged about himself? Brad did. Brad bragged about himself. Did Angelina brag about herself? No, she didn t need to. Lots and lots of men already wanted her. She did not need to brag about herself. Why did Brad brag about himself? Because he wanted to attract beautiful women. Brad wanted to attract beautiful women. What kind of women did Brad want to attract? Beautiful women. How did he try to attract them? By bragging. He tried to attract them by bragging.

Who tried to attract women by bragging about himself? Brad did. What did brad do to attract women? He bragged about himself. He said, I am great, I am wonderful, I am rich, you should date me. Were the women impressed by his bragging? To be impressed by means to really like or think it s great. Did the women think it was great, his bragging? No they did not think his bragging was great. In fact, Brad was rejected by every girl. Who rejected Brad? Every girl. Every girl he talked to rejected him. Who was he rejected by? Every girl he talked. He was rejected by every girl that he talked to. Who was rejected by every girl he talked to? Brad of course. Was Angelina rejected by every boy she talked to? No, she was never rejected by boys or guys. Angelina attracted lots of guys, and they all wanted her. She was never rejected by them, never, never, never. Who got rejected all the time? That was Brad. Brad got rejected all the time, by every single girl he talked to. Poor Brad. Did Brad get a lot of positive feedback or negative feedback when he talked to girls? It was negative feedback, negative results. He wanted to date them, he wanted to attract them, but instead he was rejected by them. Who was rejected by a lot of girls? Brad.

What kind of feedback was that? It was negative feedback, a negative result. It was a bad result, not what he wanted. Who got a lot of negative feedback? Once again, Brad. Did Angelina get a lot of negative feedback? No she got lots of positive feedback. When she talked to a boy or a guy he was attracted to her, he said nice things to her. That was positive feedback. All the girls that Brad talked to were repulsed by him. They were repulsed by him. To be repulsed by something means you really hate it, you hate it so much you want to get away from it. The girls were repulsed by Brad. Who was repulsed by Brad? All the girls he talked to. Who got rejected? Brad got rejected by every girl he talked to. He was rejected by every girl he talked to and all the girls he talked to were repulsed by him. Was he repulsed by the girls? Did he not like them? Did he think they were horrible? No, he was attracted to the girls. He was very attracted to these pretty girls, but they were repulsed by him. They pushed away from him they didn t want to talk to him. They thought he was horrible. Poor Brad got what kind of feedback? He got a lot of negative feedback. Was it positive or negative feedback for Angelina? For Angelina it was very positive feedback, good positive results.

For Brad it was what kind of feedback? Negative feedback for Brad. He went home and he thought about it, and he decided to try something different. He thought, Maybe the girls at bars aren t very friendly. I ll go to coffee shops and try again. He went to coffee shops next. He talked to lots and lots and lots of pretty girls. Each time he bragged about himself again, I am great, I am wonderful, I am Brad. What did he do at the coffee shops? He bragged about himself. He said great things about himself. Did he brag about his friends and say great things about them? No he did not brag about his friends, he bragged about himself. What result did he get? The same result, he was rejected by all of them again. He was rejected by all the girls at the coffee shops too. Did he attract one girl at the coffee shops? Not even one. He was rejected by every single pretty girl he met at the coffee shops he visited. Was Brad rejected by them or accepted by them? He was rejected by them. Was Angelina rejected by the men she talked to or was she accepted by them? She was accepted by them. They liked her, they accepted her. Who was rejected all the time? Brad. Brad got rejected by the girls he talked to all the time. Not only did he get rejected, but all the girls were repulsed by him. They thought he was terrible. It s the opposite of attracted. Attracted means you want to get closer, repulsed by means you want to move away or get away.

To be repulsed by is the opposite of to be attracted by or attracted to. I am attracted to him means I like him, I want to get closer to him. If you say I am repulsed by him it means I don t like him, I want to get away from him. Were the girls repulsed by Brad or attracted to Brad? They were repulsed by him. They were not attracted to Brad. They were repulsed by Brad. Why were they repulsed by Brad? Was he ugly? No, he was very handsome. Was he stupid? No, he was generally intelligent. Why were they repulsed by him? As you know, because of his bragging. They were repulsed by his constant bragging about himself. Did they like his bragging or did they not like his bragging? They disliked his bragging. They did not like his bragging. Whose bragging did they not like? Brad s. They did not like Brad s bragging, and so they were repulsed by him. Of course Brad felt very bad. He s like, What s happening? I tried in the bars and the women were repulsed by me. I tried in the coffee shops and the women were still repulsed by me. What am I doing wrong? He went home and thought about it again. He finally realized maybe it s because I m bragging all the time. He decided to try something new to hopefully get some positive feedback. Did he want to get positive feedback or negative feedback? Of course he wanted positive feedback. He wanted positive results from his own actions. Did he want negative feedback? No, he did not want negative feedback he wanted positive feedback, so he decided to try something different.

This time he said, I m going to give them sincere compliments. I m not going to talk about myself; I m going to give them sincere compliments. Of course a compliment is when you say something nice to another person about another person, that s a compliment. You compliment yourself and we cal that bragging. If you say I m great or I m handsome we call that bragging, it s saying great things about yourself. It has a negative idea or feeling it s just not usually good to say great things about yourself all the time. If you say nice things about another person, especially to them directly, that is a compliment and that is a positive word. He decided to give a lot of compliments we give compliments he decided to give a lot of sincere compliments to all the women he met. He went back to the bars again but this time instead of bragging he gave the girls sincere compliments. What kind of compliments did he give? Sincere compliments, truthful honest compliments. Did he give sincere compliments or did he give insincere compliments? He gave sincere compliments. An insincere compliment, meaning one that isn t really true, you don t really feel it, that s called flattery. We say to flatter someone, we say nice things about another person but maybe we re just trying to get something from them, we don t really feel it, we don t really mean it. We might say oh wow, I really like your clothes, I like your hair, but we really don t think that, we really don t feel it. That s called flattery. The noun is flattery and the verb is to flatter, it has a negative feeling. If you compliment someone usually the idea is you actually mean it, you actually feel it and think it, and that s a very positive word. Did Brad flatter the girls, or did he compliment them? He complimented the girls. He said sincere nice things to them. Who complimented the girls? Brad did.

Did he flatter them? He did not flatter them no; he told them sincere truthful nice things. He did not flatter them, he complimented them. What kind of feedback did he get after complimenting the girls? He got very positive feedback. He was accepted by them. Was he accepted by them or rejected by them? He was accepted by them. Who was he accepted by? All the girls that he complimented. He was accepted by all the girls that he complimented. Was this positive feedback or negative feedback for Brad? Obviously it was very positive feedback to be accepted by them. There was even more. He was not only accepted by them, in fact they were enchanted with him. They were enchanted with him. To be enchanted with someone or to be enchanted by someone, it means you have an almost magical feeling of attraction. It has an idea of magic. You are attracted so much it s magical. It s a very romantic word, enchanted. The girls were enchanted by Brad. They were attracted so much it felt like magic. Did Brad enchant the girls? Yes he did, he enchanted the girls. He attracted them very strongly. How did he enchant these girls? He enchanted the girls by giving them sincere compliments. Did he enchant them by flattering them or did he enchant them by giving sincere compliments? He enchanted them by giving sincere compliments. He did not enchant them by flattering them.

These girls loved Brad. Soon he had lots and lots and lots and lots of dates. He was surrounded by gorgeous, wonderful, beautiful women all the time. Of course he felt fantastic, and he was never lonely again. * * * * * That s the end of our mini story. We re working with passive in this story a little bit and we ve got maybe a little bit of subtle vocabulary, but anyway all you need to think about is answering the questions. Listen to the story, pause and answer, pause and answer. Make it a game so that each day when you listen to this mini story you try to answer the questions faster and faster and faster, and eventually you don t need to pause, you can answer very quickly. Listen to this story. Listen to all the lessons in this VIP lesson set every day for one month. Your English speaking will improve so much just by doing that. Have a great day, and I ll see you again. Bye-bye.

Feedback POV Text Hello very important person. This is A.J., welcome to the point of view stories for this month s VIP lesson. Let s get started. Our first version is going to happen right now. * * * * * There is a guy named Brad. There is a guy named Brad and he has a wife named Angelina. Unfortunately, one day Angelina divorces Brad. Does Brad divorce Angelina? No he doesn t, Brad does not divorce Angelina; Angelina divorces him. Brad does not want a divorce but she divorces him anyway. Of course, Brad feels very sad. He feels really, really sad. He continues to feel sad for more than a year. Finally, after a year s time, after a year of feeling lonely and sad, he decides to date again. His first decision is to go to bars. He decides to go to bars and meet girls. He goes to lots and lots and lots of bars and he meets lots and lots and lots of girls. Every time he meets a girl he brags about himself. He says great things about himself. He tells the girls how wonderful he is. He brags and he brags and he brags and he brags. Unfortunately, Brad is rejected by every single girl. He is rejected by every single girl he talks to. Of course, he gets a lot of negative feedback, tons of negative feedback. In fact, these girls are totally, completely and absolutely repulsed by him. They are totally and completely repulsed by him. That s a lot of negative feedback. Does he quit? No he does not quit, he goes home and thinks about his experience. He thinks about all these experiences, talking to all these girls, and all the negative feedback he got. He decides that maybe the problem is that bars are a bad place to meet women. He decides to try something new. He tries going to coffee shops. He goes to lots and lots and lots of coffee shops, tons of coffee shops, and he talks to ton of girls, lots and lots of girls. Unfortunately, once again, every girl he talks to is repulsed by him. Of course, they re repulsed by him because he brags about himself constantly. At the coffee shops he tries the same methods. He brags about himself, he says great things about himself. He brags and brags, but unfortunately they are repulsed by him completely. He is rejected by them every single time.

After trying this many, many times he goes home again and he thinks about all of this negative feedback. He realizes that maybe the problem is his communication style. Maybe he needs to do something different. He goes back to the bars again, but this time he gives sincere compliments to every girl he talks to. He gets very different results he gets a lot of positive feedback. He is accepted by all of the girls. In fact, the girls are enchanted by him. They re attracted to him. He begins to get lots and lots of dates and lots and lots of girlfriends. He s surrounded by beautiful women all the time. Of course, he becomes very, very happy. * * * * * Let s start our next version of the story. * * * * * Since the year 2005 Brad has been sad and lonely because he got a divorce in the year 2005. Brad s wife Angelina divorced him in 2005. Since that time he has been very sad. Since that time he has been very, very lonely. Since that time he has wanted to date, he has wanted to get a new girlfriend, but he has been too depressed to do it. This has been a very difficult time for Brad. Since his divorce in 2005 he has been a very, very unhappy guy. During that time he has tried to date. He has tried going to bars, for example. He has tried going to bars and talking to lots and lots of women. He has tried bragging about himself. He has bragged to every girl he met at the bar. He has bragged and he has bragged and he has bragged, constantly to every girl he met at bars since his divorce in 2005 until recently. Unfortunately he has been rejected by every single girl during that time. He has been rejected by every single girl he has met at a bar. Of course, he has gotten a lot of negative feedback. In fact, the girls have been totally repulsed by him. That s not the only thing he has tried; he has also tried going to coffee shops, lots of them constantly during this time period. He has talked to lots of girls at coffee shops, but unfortunately every time he has bragged about himself. He has bragged to so many different girls in so many different coffee shops since 2005 and until quite recently. He has gotten the same results that he

got at bars. He has been rejected by every single girl, and they have been totally repulsed by him. Brad has been a very unhappy and a very unsuccessful person during this time. He has gotten so much negative feedback. Finally one day he got a realization. One day he got an idea, a realization. He realized that maybe bragging was the problem. He went back to the bars, and instead of bragging he gave sincere compliments to all the girls. Of course, he got totally different feedback from this kind of action. Instead he was accepted by all the girls. In fact, they were enchanted by him. He got lots of positive feedback, and he got lots of dates, and eventually he got lots and lots of girlfriends. He became very happy and still today is a very, very happy guy. * * * * * That s the end of our second version. Now for the third version we go into the future and imagine this will happen in the future. Maybe we re dreaming it or maybe we re imagining it. * * * * * In the future we imagine there will be a man named Brad. He s gonna get divorced. He s not gonna want to get divorced, but his wife Angelina is going to divorce him. Of course, gonna means going to. You probably know that already, but I remind you every month. Brad s wife Angelina is gonna divorce him, and he s gonna become very, very sad. He s gonna become super depressed and lonely, in fact. For over a year he s not gonna date. He s not gonna date at all. Eventually, after a little bit more than a year, hes finally gonna decide to try to date again. First he ll go to bars. He ll go to lots and lots of bars, and he ll talk to lots and lots of women. Unfortunately, every time he s going to talk to them, he ll brag about himself. He s going to brag about himself constantly to every single girl he meets at the bars. Of course, he s going to get rejected by every single girl. They re gonna be repulsed by him in fact, the opposite of attracted. He s going to get a lot of negative feedback. Of course, he s not gonna be happy about that. He ll go home and he ll think about it some more. What did I do wrong? He ll decide that maybe the problem was he went to too many bars, and he s going to decide to go to coffee shops next, lots and lots of coffee shops. He ll go to lots and lots

of coffee shops, and he ll talk to lots and lots of women, but unfortunately once again he s going to brag about himself all the time. He s going to say great things about himself. He s going to brag and brag and brag about himself, himself, himself. All the girls are going to be repulsed by him, and he s going to be rejected by all of them. He s going to get lots and lots of negative feedback. Of course, he won t be happy about this situation so he ll go home again and he ll think about it some more. He ll finally realize the problem; he ll finally decide to stop bragging about himself and to instead give sincere compliments to all the girls that he meets. He s going to decide to go back to the bars again, but this time he s going to give a lot of compliments, sincere compliments. Every girl he meets he ll compliment. He ll compliment them with honest, emotional compliments. He s going to be accepted by all the girls this time, they re going to really like him. In fact, they will be enchanted by him. He s going to get lots and lots and lots of dates and then lots and lots and lots of girlfriends, and he s going to be super happy. * * * * * That s the end of our third grammar story. These stories are simple, they re supposed to be simple, but they help you get this grammar into your brain automatically. You already know the rules I know that. The rules are not helping you speak the grammar correctly automatically. You don t need to know correct grammar you need to feel correct grammar. By listening to these stories every single day you will begin to get a feeling for correct English grammar. The more you have the feeling the more automatically you will use it correctly, quickly and automatically every time you speak. All you need to do is continue listening to these stories again and again and again, every single day, and the other lessons too. Alright have a great day, I ll see you again. Bye-bye.

Feedback Commentary Hello my special VIP member, and welcome to the commentary. In the commentary I talk about this month s topic in a little more detail, a little extra chat, a little extra information and some extra ideas. In this topic we talked about feedback and measurement, measuring things. I know some people, maybe you I don t know, some people don t like to measure things. They re more artistic or musical and they don t like the idea of measuring things. You know what? I m one of those people too. I don t like measuring things either. I m not an engineer kind of person, and it s not something I generally do. With my business for example, I don t really enjoy the accounting part of the business and I pay two other people to do that part of the business. I just need to make sure I understand it enough so I can look at it and understand what the numbers mean. I don t like looking at all the little tiny details and measuring every single little thing, and that s not what I m telling you to do. I m telling you to just pick two or three very important key areas, key parts, of your goal and to measure those every single day. Anyone can do this. If I can do it you can do it. As I said, I don t like measuring things. Let me give you a small example from my own life. I am training, preparing for a couple of difficult physical challenges. I m going to go to Japan first and I m going to hike, I m going to walk in the mountains for 45 straight days, over 700 miles. I m also planning to go to Italy and bicycle around Northern Italy for probably four to six weeks. To get ready for that of course I have to get my body ready. I m not in good enough physical condition right now to do both of those things. I have a training plan, I have a goal and a training plan, but a very important part of the training plan is that every day I write down how many hours I walked. For example, for the Japan trip, I need to walk probably about seven hours per day, during my trip. That s my goal. Right now I m probably walking about three and half hours a day, sometimes four. Every day when I walk I come home and write down the time on my calendar. I can get a lot of good information from that. For example, sometimes I notice that my number of hours, my time drops a little bit for a couple days, because I feel tired and I stop walking so much. I need to cut short the walk. After doing this for about a month I start noticing a pattern. I start to see that I can walk two or three days very far and feel good, but then after that I really need one or two

easier days for my body to recover and rest. Maybe I need one day with no walking, another day easy, and then back to the hard days again. In other words, I m starting to see patterns and those patterns help me to improve my training schedule. I begin to see how my body responds, how much rest do I need, and how much can I challenge myself? Another good measurement for this is my energy level. For example, I could not only record how long I walked, but how good did I feel at the end of the walk? Was I still feeling energetic, or was I really tired? That could just be a number from one to ten again. Just those two pieces of information really will help me refine and improve my training schedule. I ll learn more about my body and how it responds to challenges and stress, and in this way I will develop a better and better training schedule and plan for these activities and events and any future goals and activities. It s very simple and yet very powerful. Of course the other powerful thing about this is, just by measuring it motivates me. Some days I m feeling tired and lazy but I don t like the idea of writing a zero on that calendar. I ll be thinking I don t know if I want to walk, I feel a little bit lazy today, but then I think oh God, if I don t walk I have to put that big zero on the calendar, and I don t like it. It just makes me feel bad. Sometimes I do, I ll put that zero, and then the next day I m feeling lazy again but then the idea of putting two zeroes, two consecutive zeroes, I really don t like that and so usually I will get myself up and walk out the door and go for a walk. Just the idea that I m writing it down every single day, it actually helps me become more consistent. It gives me motivation and gets me focused on it every day. That s also a very powerful part of the process of recording feedback, recording it. I think you understand this. I think you understand this idea of measurement and why it s important, but let me talk about another kind of feedback you can use that s more general, it s not about measuring so much, it s more about being aware and open and focused. That is journaling. Of course, journal is normally a noun. A journal is, basically, a diary but in American English, diary kind of has an idea of being for girls, like it s something that girls do. Girls write diaries. Guys, especially strong macho men like us out there maybe you re a woman so you don t care about this but strong macho men like me, we don t like to write diaries, we write in journals.

Of course, it s exactly the same thing, just a different word. A journal is, basically, a diary. This is also a great way to focus on feedback, to write in a journal every single day. I do this. Almost every day, I would say 95% of the days of a year I will write in my journal. I go to a coffee shop or sit down in my apartment and I write for 30 minutes, maybe an hour, if I have a lot of ideas I ll write for three, four or five hours sometimes. I m not just writing anything. This is the important thing how to use a journal. Some people use a journal and all they do is write about their complaints and their feelings oh today I feel tired, I m not happy, blah, blah, blah I went to see a movie today, that s what a diary is. A diary is more a record of what you did. Dear Diary, today I went to a movie and I met John. He s so nice and so handsome, we went and saw this movie and I liked it. That s a diary and its okay, I guess, especially for younger people, but it s not so helpful for what we re wanting. A journal is focused. A journal is a record of your own learning and your own goals and the progress you are making. When you write in a journal you re not writing about just any topic. You want to focus on those one, or two, or three areas of your life that are most important to you. Of course this can change. Right now you might be focused on your relationship, next year you might be focused more on work. That s fine just focus on what is important to you right now, the goal that you really want to improve right now, the thing in your life that s really difficult that you need to change now. Every day you re going to write about that thing, and you re going to write in a specific way. Number one, you re going to write about the actions you have taken already in that area. Each day you could write well yesterday I liked this girl let s say you want a date. You re single and you want a girlfriend or a boyfriend. If you re a woman maybe you say okay I really want a boyfriend, so the problem is I never go out. I m always at home. Obviously I need to take a different action and I need to go out and start meeting guys. Your first action is you go to the gym. You write in your journal; yesterday I went to the gym and worked out but I didn t talk to any guys. All the guys seemed really ugly and I didn t like them. You just start writing whatever thoughts come into your head. I ll keep trying the gym for another month but if it continues to be a disappointment maybe I need to try something

else. You just write and write about whatever ideas come to your mind, how you re feeling about it. You re focusing on your actions and really trying to see what the results were. What were the problems? What seemed to work? What other things might you try? Just let your brain come up with anything and write it down, write it down, write it down. This is the way you ll get really great new ideas, new actions to try. You ll also get great insights, you ll realize certain things. Maybe you ll realize by writing in your journal, all these ideas will come up and you ll realize the problem was I was in the weight lifting area and I like more sensitive guys, so maybe I should try the yoga class. You will be amazed at the kinds of ideas that come into your head, but you ve just got to write freely. Number one you ll focus on your main goal, your main area or areas, you can pick a couple, then you ll write about all the actions you have taken or are taking. Then you ll write about the results you re getting from those actions what s been good, what seems to be working, what you seem to enjoy and what seems to have potential just write and write, whatever ideas come into your head. You ll also look at those actions and you ll focus on and write down what has not worked very well, what has been disappointing, what has been really unpleasant, and you ll write and write whatever comes into your head. Finally you ll start writing down new ideas. What could you try differently? Maybe you could try doing the same action but in a little bit of a different way. Maybe you need to change your focus, or maybe you need to change your attitude as you do it. Maybe that action just isn t going to work and you need to try some other actions. You re just going to write and write anything that comes into your head, these ideas. The next day you do it again. The next day you do it again, and the next day you do it again. Maybe after one month what I want you to do is go back and re-read, read again, all your journal entries for that month. That s where you ll start to see patterns. Any one day doesn t matter so much maybe you were in a bad mood that day, maybe you didn t have good ideas that one day but if you go back and read all your journal entries for one full month, you ll start to see patterns. You ll start to see certain great ideas coming up again and again, and you ll realize maybe I should try that idea because I ve written about it 10 times and it might be a good one.

You ll notice other things; wow, I continue to do this one action and I continue getting bad results, yet I keep doing it. Why am I doing it? You ll see certain things that are not getting good results, and yet you keep doing them. You ll start to see in other words disempowering habits, or bad habits. Another thing you ll start to see when you read one month s worth of journal entries, you ll see certain beliefs you have that you maybe didn t realize you had. You might start to see a pattern for example that you always get really upset when you get rejected, and then you blame yourself. You might start to realize that you have a belief that men or women can t be trusted. You start noticing that in your journal entries you re always suspicious of men. Maybe a man comes up to you and he s really nice to you, but you re suspicious oh he just wants to have sex, I don t trust him. You might start noticing I seem like maybe I don t trust men, maybe that s a bad belief that I have. Maybe that s not helping me get the love I want. Of course, you may be focused on a different topic then love and relationship s, you might be focused on business. I use journaling for my business constantly. Every single day I write about Effortless English. What are the problems? What seems to be working? What actions have I tried? Are they getting the results I want or not? What are new ideas I have that might be good or might work or might be great? I m constantly doing that, every single day. As a result my business is constantly growing. I really want you to try this journaling idea. It s not quite as specific as the measurements. I want you to do both. I want you to definitely measure one or two very specific things like your weight or your energy level or whatever, if you re in business you could measure your daily sales and focus on those whatever it is. Pick two or three very specific things for your big goal, but then I also want you to do journaling. Journaling is not as specific, it s much more open, so the artistic creative members are going to like this activity more, but I want you to do both. Maybe if you re more of an engineer type and you don t think this way, this is your challenge to do this journaling. The challenge is just to write quickly, that s the number one thing. Don t do it in English, do it in your own language and write as fast as you can. Let the ideas pour out of you as fast as possible.

You don t even need to re-read it that day or even that week. Just wait until an entire month has passed and then go back re-read your journal looking for patterns, looking for good ideas, looking for insights, looking for limiting beliefs you might have, and also looking for empowering or strong beliefs you might have. You want to make those even stronger. You re going to do this every single month for the rest of your life. This is a lifetime assignment, to become a journaler, someone who journals. I want you to do it every single day for the rest of your life. How s that for homework? Do it and I promise you; I promise you you re going to see great results in your life. I know it seems simple, it seems kind of vague and doesn t seem like it s something that s difficult to do, and it s not difficult to do it s actually pretty easy, and yet it s very, very powerful. Do this, I promise you whatever areas of your life you focus on, they will get better. Not necessarily in one week, but over time, month to month you will see improvement. Journal about improving your English speaking, journal about improving your relationships or finding one, journal about your business, journal about finances and making more money, journal about your family, journal about your body and your health whatever it is that s most important to you, journal about it every single day, then reread those journals once a month. When I re-read mine, when I go back and I read mine I usually have a red or a yellow pen and I circle or I highlight all the really good ideas or insights or patterns that I see. That s it, that s your homework. What s your homework? It s two parts; part number one pick one area of your life, one goal, and measure two or three specific things every single day. Homework number two; get a journal and write in it every single day for the rest of your life. Not just about anything, focus on those areas of your life that are most important to you, those goals that are important to you. Focus on the actions you re taking, the results you re getting, the feelings you have about those actions and results, new ideas that you have, and then go back and re-read those once a month. Re-read the one from the previous month and look for patterns, ideas and insights, that s it. That s all. I hope you enjoy this. You know Dr. Steven (inaudible) said, the process of writing, the process especially of writing a journal, will make you more intelligent. There s actually research about this, that people who write journals are more intelligent.