About false beliefs, comfort zone, complex challenges or in other words - why everyone should learn the Hebrew alphabet

Those who have been in my network for a while already know that I often write posts with technical content, but that my LinkedIn articles are almost exclusively of an inspirational and reflective nature. So according to the motto, what I can do, you can do too and the more people believe in themselves and their strength and uniqueness, the better. In addition, I live with these articles my artistic freedom ??.

Every now and then on social media you get the feeling that everyone is super, that life is all highlights and accomplishments and when we take on something it's to make it a success. So, if you're expecting such a smoothly polished story now, I have to disappoint you. I do have rough edges, because I have personality. And I am self-confident enough to say that not everything is polished, because that's life, real life, turbulent life, authentic life - the only true life.

Every attentive reader is surely already asking him or herself - and what does all this have to do with the Hebrew alphabet?

We will get to that in a moment - I promise. Let me start. Well, we start with the rough edges ??

I would analyze myself as a person for whom constant development and constant learning and growing has a very great importance. In areas of personality, character, maturity, education, cultural openness, parenting, friendships, health, spirituality, lifestyle - actually in all aspects of my life. When I then compare myself to my younger self, I realize: yes, I am super satisfied with my path and still I have a lot in front of me to learn.

In so many topics I leave my comfort zone super easily in order to grow, I quickly make good decisions in order to evolve and I just do it! Actually, one can be satisfied, or not? I was very surprised when I realized that I have some kind of 'false beliefs' to leave my comfort zone in certain areas. You can see how I write this - "some kind of ?false beliefs'" - I still can't believe it.?

In short: I have thought for a long, long time, too long actually - in fact my whole life so far - that Hebrew alphabet would be too complicated and so different from everything I know so far. But what do I know so far? Where do I put mental limits on myself? Well, I was born and raised in a Russian-German family. So I know Cyrillic letters in Russian, since it is my true mother tongue, and I know Latin letters, since German became my second mother tongue. All other languages that came later into my life also have Latin letters. Even when I ventured to learn Chinese, so far all the courses were based on Pinyin, that is, writing the Chinese words with Latin letters.?

Whenever I saw Hebrew - and I see it often through my many contacts with the brilliant startup nation of Israel - I always thought "wow, that looks different". When I saw a similar letter to the Latin script, I asked what sound it was. As you can guess, it was never a similar sound ?? And so "wow, that looks different" slowly turned into "wow, that looks complicated"! Too complicated to dare to do it. And besides, you write from right to left - so my confusion was actually complete ??

And then I saw this book with the cheeky title ?Learn to read HEBREW in 6 weeks“ by Miiko Shaffier. Say this book claimed - there are people who would learn Hebrew alphabet in 6 weeks! Wow, my curiosity and - let's face it - my sense of competitiveness was awakened. Given the choice 'Fight or Flight' 99.9999999% of the time I choose: Fight! So, challenge accepted.

I ordered the book and a short time later I was sitting there holding the very thin book in my hands. 116 pages. Hebrew, huh? In 6 weeks? Well, let's see.

So there is still the question of time to be clarified, so how much time can one invest in the learning process? To that I must add, I am a very busy person - I am a mom of a 3.5 year old boy, I manage Elite Experts Conferences, I do sports every day, have active social life and have hobbies that would be enough for 10 people. So, time is scarce and the most precious commodity of all!

And then I realized something quite wonderful. The book is written in such a wonderfully positive and motivating way, as if it could have been written by me. ?? Those who know my posts know exactly what I mean ?? The second surprise was that the author used pictures and memory triggers and as someone who has strong visual memory - a huge advantage. The third surprise was that Hebrew seems to be a very phonetic language, meaning each sound is read as it is written there. In addition, there is no capitalization, there are hardly any exceptions and you quickly get used to reading from right to left.?

And so I sat at it for almost 45 minutes every day - 30 minutes learning new things and 15 minutes repeating the letters from previous chapters. And that for a week! After one week I was completely through with the book and the alphabet - yes, I now know all the Hebrew letters. No kidding!

What do I personally take away from this story?

1. ?? Never think that something is complicated if you haven't even tried it yet

2. ??Dare to try new things - just try, test, be curious!

3. ??The power of small but steady steps is simply magnificent - THAT is the real magic!

4. ??The sentence ?you have nothing to loose‘ is a very positive and powerful one. If you try and it works - brilliant, and if not - so what? Next try!

5. ??For reflection and analysis: are there other areas that I consider to be too complicated and that I don't dare to tackle? Don't dare YET? Maybe in my case - programming languages???

I'm going to figure it out! And I hope you will, too ??????

Learning the Hebrew alphabet has taught me so much more than just the alphabet. The reminder not to take old and ultimately false beliefs for granted is worth its weight in gold. There are no coincidences - this reminder will be very useful to me for other projects!

And as I always say at the end of our Elite Experts Conferences’ technology podcast - see you very soon in the next episode … uhm, I mean in the next article ??

Take care everyone and thank you for reading,

Ludmilla

PS: What's next? Well, as you know I finished that first book and then I found out some very hard facts about Hebrew. In modern Hebrew, the vowels are omitted because 'everyone' knows what vowel goes there anyway. ?? Stop, nooooo! Not EVERYONE - I don't know! ?? And now? Giving up? Never!!! ?? Now I take the next step - as it should be grammar, rules, exceptions, vocabulary, the whole package - just for fun. Of course, with the next book - thank you, Benyamin, for organizing me the Russian-Hebrew version ?????? Yes, admittedly this second book has no more time indications in the title how long it would take to really speak or understand Hebrew. I think I know the reason for not including a time. ?? It could be very very very long weeks, months and years. But so what? Those weeks, months and years will pass anyway, so I might as well put them to good use. New challenge accepted - ready, steady, go! ??????

PS2: Dear Miiko Shaffier, thank you very much for making learning to read Hebrew such a pleasant and entertaining experience. Should you ever need a highly enthusiastic review about your book I am there to help. Your book is just brilliant - thank you so much for that inspiration well beyond just learning a new language ??????