The arrogance of believing YOU can’t do it (but 400 million others can)

This year I introduced affirmations into my coaching. These are mandatory morning and night practices for all my students.

I coach people to reduce their accent and speak like native English speakers. But it doesn’t matter how good my coaching is, or how perfect my syllabus is or even how well you understood my lesson. If you don’t believe you can achieve your goal, you won’t.

This is so basic.

You want to speak like a native speaker so much. Your desire is strong. But you don’t practice. Why would you practice if you don’t believe you can achieve your goal? That would be pointless, wouldn’t it?

The fool who truely believes they can climb the mountain will sell his home, suffer frostbite, risk never coming home, sweat and bleed for his goal. Will he make it? He might. He might not. But he might. And with that effort I would bet on him.

The clever man who wants it but judiciously concludes he’ll never make it, that he doesn’t have the legs for it, will just look up at the misty peak and camp out at the base. To be honest he probably won’t leave his house.

I’m a painful realist.

Success is never guaranteed. But if you don’t believe you can do it, if you think YOU are the problem, that your ears, your brain, your mouth precludes uniquely you from success, then failure is guaranteed.

So morning and night I want you to say, “Although I am unique and special, I am not uniquely incapable. I can do what others can do. My mind is capable of understanding the theory, my ears are supremely designed to hear the tiniest details, my body can create any sound other humans make. Native accents are a natural way of speaking, and everyday I am absorbing the patterns, relaxing and sounding more natural. This is what I want, and I am doing it. And I love it.”

It’s just the truth. Why believe anything else?

Seriously, there are 400 million people who speak English this way. Some say it is just arrogance to think you are so special that only you cannot do it.

Daniel