So, it’s 2021, and this is the year you’ve decided to improve your English.
In this free lesson, I give you 4 steps to setting and achieving your English goals in 2021.
Have you ever said “This is the year I’m going to improve my English,” but then it never happened?
Do you find that you know what you have to do to make your English better, but you can’t seem to actually do it?
Or maybe you’ve just decided to become more fluent in English in 2021.
In this Lightning Lesson, I share with you the 4 steps I’ve found make it much easier to achieve my goals. I’ve applied them to learning English, and shared them with you. You can watch the video or read the text underneath, but whatever you do, put it into action!
- Clearly identify your hopes and dreams
- Picture yourself as the person you need to become
- Create habits based on that person
1. Clearly Identify Your Hopes and Dreams for Your English
“I want to be better at English” is not a clear enough goal.
Get a clear picture in your mind of what you want to be able to do with your English, and what your life will look like.
Do you want to feel confident participating in meetings in English?
Do you want to improve so that you can have easy conversations with English-speaking colleagues?
Do you want to write emails without using Google Translate and Grammarly?
Maybe you want something completely different, or a combination of things, but whatever you do, get a clear picture, and then write it down (in English, of course!). Use your journal for this!
2. Picture Yourself as the Person You Need to Become
You aren’t going to do the work it takes to reach your goal if you can’t picture yourself as that person.
You have to truly believe that it is possible and that you can achieve that goal, otherwise, when things get tough, you have no motivation to keep going.
The road to improvement is not a straight line, and you don’t always see your improvement right away.
Sometimes it takes weeks of practice before you notice you’re getting better.
Sometimes you have to spell a word wrong again and again before you get it right.
If you can’t imagine yourself doing it right, you won’t practice every day, and you’ll just get mad at yourself for doing it wrong.
Take a few minutes now and list the things you want to be able to do with your English. Say them out loud (in English, of course!). Then, write them in your journal.
3. Create Habits Based on That Person
Now, imagine that you are already that person, and start doing what that person would do.
Think about what your goal person would do in everyday situations.
If you were a fluent English speaker:
What language would you write your shopping list in?
What would you read while drinking your morning coffee?
What YouTube videos would you watch (without subtitles of course!)?
What language would you use on social media?
Of course you would do all those things in English! So go ahead and do them! If you want to become that person, you have to do the things that that person would do. Then, you have to keep doing them every day.
To start with, you can write a journal in English. To make this easier for you, I’ve made a collection of journal prompts that you can use to get you moving towards your goals. Download them below.
Join the Lightning Practice Facebook group, and share your progress with others who are trying to improve their English, and help each other reach your goals!
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