Don't Lose HOPE

Welcome to the Effortless English Show, with the world's number one English teacher, AJ Hogue, where AJ's more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all, without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills. Here's AJ with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly. I'm AJ Hogue, author of Effortless English Learn to Speak English like a native. Our topic today, don't lose hope, don't lose hope. Right now, I am live, live on YouTube, it's been a long time, been a long time. Just jump in, come back and answer chats, answer questions, and discuss why I've been gone so much lately, hey Vladislav, good to see you, as always. Alright, don't lose hope, so a little bit of heavy, serious topic today, and this topic was inspired by actually a couple of things, but one was a story from my wife's extended family, it's not really close, but still a sad story about there's someone in the family and their kind of young teenage daughter killed herself, which was, you know, it's sad, it's tragic, and then as a parent, it's just a terrifying thought and idea, just so, so, so sad. And then, you know, I'm just, then just reading about, you know, this kind of thing happens, you know, where young people, especially, completely lose hope and, you know, the worst situation, the most sad situation is when they kill themselves, right? But even, you know, even kids that don't kill themselves, I know, I'm going to talk about my own story today, just, you know, I hope that it might be encouraging to some people, but there are a lot of people who just, maybe they don't kill themselves, but they are just depressed and sad and miserable for very, very, very long time, you know, and some people they, people lose hope, a lot of people lose hope, because it's very tough, it's very tough, you know, most of us can handle a bad time, a tough time in life, we expect that, but when the tough time is more than one year, you know, it's two years, five years, ten years, then it starts to feel like a hopeless situation, and that's where people, when you're miserable and very, very, very unhappy for that long, yeah, it's, it's definitely possible to start losing hope, you know, there's a good word in English, despair, despair, and despair means that feeling of having no hope at all, like it's more than just depressed, it's more than sad, like everybody gets sad, okay, we have sad things happen in life, that's normal, it's everyone that happens, but despair is when you just, you completely have no hope at all, and it's a very sad situation, I think it's especially tough for younger people, because, you know, when you're older, one good thing when you're older is that you have more, you know, a bigger view of life, and you know, things go up and things go down, and you have hard, hard times, and you have better times, but when you're younger, you know, especially very young, like 13, 14, 15, 18, 20, even, you know, it just feels like forever, if you've been miserable since you were 12, maybe some people have very bad families and very painful family life, so some people, some people, they're sad and have a very hard time right from the beginning, and then they're 12, 13, 15 years old, and it just feels like, forever, you can tell them, hey, it's going to get better in five years, but five years feels like forever, okay? I also know, you know, a lot of my listeners are in the ages of 20s and 30s, and a lot of people get into their 30s, this happens a lot too, where, you know, maybe they're 30, 32, 35, and life is still great, and not great, rather, not great, and, you know, maybe their career still isn't going, they're not making much money, like they just feel like a total failure, and then they start to feel this pressure, like it's too late, it's too, oh, I'm already 35, you know, all these, all my friends, my other family members, they're, they've got these great careers, they've got families, everything's going well, and I'm doing nothing, and this is another time where people can really, really, really lose hope, and it's, you know, it's brutal, it's sad, and people do some terrible things when they're miserable and unhappy, when they despair. So my show today is really talking to those people, especially, or anyone else that might know someone like that, and to help you, um, one second, to help you maybe help someone else as well, right? So first I'd like to tell kind of story of my own life a little bit, when I was young, and the reason I want to tell it is just to show that, you know, life can be very, very tough when you're young, and that even when it's bad, it's still possible to change, right? It's never too late, it's never too late, as long as you're alive, it's not too late, as long as you're alive, and your body is functioning, and your, and your mind is, you know, functioning decently well, it's not too late. So, you know, actually, I'm 58 now, so now looking back, you know, I look back and I realize that, you know, I was pretty miserable, very unhappy, clueless, confused, for, you know, pretty much my entire youth from teenager to through my 20s, and through most of my 30s as well. I was bullied, bullied, bullied like crazy, like terribly, in middle school and in high school, you know, and I, before that, I, you know, everything was great, I had really nice childhood. But my family moved a lot, my dad moved us around because of his job, and when I was middle school age, right at the beginning of middle school, we moved to a different part of the country, and we went up to the north part of the country, and I always grown up in the south. And so I had this strong southern accent, and so when we moved to the north, and I was kind of a geeky kid, small kid, skinny, kind of quiet. So when we moved, you know, everybody started bullying me because of my accent, because I sounded, I had this strong accent, and this, you know, it's kind of, they thought it was, you know, kind of like a, it's like a country side accent, right? These, they thought they were kind of like the cool big city kids, and I was this, you know, weird kid from the countryside. So I got bullied, bullied, bullied, and it got really bad, it was like groups, these groups of boys really mean, and it was terrible, and I felt, you know, horrible at that time. It was really terrible, terrible experience, and then it continued into high school. So really terrible, and I kind of became even more quiet and introverted, and geeky nerdy, I don't know what's the word now, geeky nerdy, I guess, are still common words, right? So I'd like, I guess nowadays, people who like gaming, video games, manga, anime, we didn't really have a lot of anime when I was a kid, but I was, is that kind of stuff, right? I was in the Lord of the Rings and all that kind of thing, you know, then, you know, like then from my teenage years and through my 20s and through my 30s, I had, I was totally clueless and confused and incredibly unhappy with dating and girls' women, like really, really, really terrible, and, you know, I had, like, you know, I was, you know, betrayed by a couple of girlfriends, which was like horrible, you know, like, oh, you know, if you've had it happen to you, it's brutal, and I didn't know why, and I didn't understand why, and oh, I tried to be such a nice guy, nice guy, nice guy, and any of you guys out there who are, who try to do the nice guy thing when dating, you, you know how it often turns out, not very well, because you don't get respected, you don't get respect. So I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do, what I'd been taught in terms of how to deal with girls and women and all this, and I was absolutely miserable. I look back now and I realize, like, I was so, so, so unhappy in this part of my life, and I let myself be treated so badly, so badly, so disrespectfully, and, you know, just, and I felt, I'm not quite despair, but felt miserable in this area of life, and I tried to date, or I'd stay with girls who treated me like crap, he treated me so badly, it made me feel miserable, but I was trying to stay with him because I thought I couldn't do better, and it was horrible, horrible, and this, like I said, all through my 20s, and until I was about 38, 39, 40, is when that started to change, I'll talk about that in a minute, and then the final piece in my 20s and 30s, while starting it, I guess, 18, 19, 20, was money and work. I hated jobs, maybe I'm a lazy person, I don't know, but I hated jobs. I was always so poor, especially in my 20s, I graduated from university and couldn't find any decent jobs, I got a, the only thing I could find was a part-time security job, right? But it was part-time, it did not, it paid like minimum wage, at that time minimum wage was really low, and I could barely, barely pay my rent. I had to, I started using credit cards and borrowing money just to eat and survive, and then, you know, later I got a little better than that, but still I was always kind of unhappy at my jobs, I could never find jobs that I enjoyed, but I really didn't enjoy working for other people in jobs at all, maybe that was my problem, I don't know, but that was the case, so I was miserable financially and broke all the time, like poor, I was absolutely miserable with relationships, dating, girls, and not just miserable, the worst part about the dating part is I was confused too, like I was unhappy and I didn't really understand why, why I had such problems, I couldn't understand why was it so bad, why couldn't I do better, why, why was every time I tried to date or have a relationship, why was it always so miserable and unhappy, then I couldn't understand why, which is a terrible feeling, at least if you, if something is in your life as bad, if you at least understand why, if you understand what you're doing wrong or what you could do better, you have some hope, but if you don't, then it's really terrible, right, then it feels hopeless, so that is how horrible it was, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, then finally at the age of, I was really at the age of 38, suddenly, like my life started to turn around and the first improvement was financial, where I started a business that became successful and actually in a very fast, a very short time after all those years of suffering, suffering, suffering, suddenly I was financially free and financially independent and I didn't have to work a job anymore and, and it was kind of a surprise to happen, a little bit late in life, but it was a fantastic, fantastic, and then the second thing, from there, I also around that age, really about the age of 40, but pretty late, guys, 40, age of 40, which for a lot of you guys probably seems old, some of you maybe not, but a lot of you guys probably think, oh, he's kind of old, and it, it is kind of old. I finally, you know, I kind of got red-pilled as the phrase we use, but I found some things online and books and things I started learning about, kind of like the reality, the truth of, you know, dating and men and women, and I, and when I started, I, it was like my eyes finally were open, like the light came from heaven, heaven, oh, and I could finally say, ah, so the first thing was I just finally understood, now I understand why I'm so unhappy, why I'm such a failure in this area, and that was, it was like in the matrix Neo taking the red pill to suddenly, whoa, nothing is like I thought it was, everything is completely different, so I started to change that, and things started to get better, you know, my whole life didn't change in one year, but the process, it started to change and slowly get better and better and better, and better. So, and, you know, the final part, the physical thing, I still had these kind of when I was really even all the way into my thirties, I think I still had a lot of doubts and insecurities and low confidence because of the bullying and everything, so at, at a kind of late age, actually, age of 50, 49, I started doing jujitsu, so again, very old to start doing something like that, but I did jujitsu and, and, you know, did it for about five years, got purple belt, and that completely changed, like it kind of was, is better than therapy, it completely healed all those feelings, gave me great, you know, really improved my, my confidence, my confidence also improved by doing things like public speaking and a lot of other things, but jujitsu was the final big one that really changed how I felt about myself and having that kind of deep, strong confidence. And so, from basically from age 40 to 50, my life internally, how I felt and thought, and externally, you know, all the things happening in my life completely changed and transformed, and now of 58, you know, barely old for a lot of you, 58 years old, but now my life is the best ever, much better than when I was 20, much better than when I was 30, much better than when I was 40. You know, I have a very happy with my family, my wife and my two kids, business with everything. So, what's the point for you? The point is that, see, things can turn around even at a late age, okay? It's not too late, even if you're 28 years old and you've just been miserable and unhappy and everything in your life has been bad, you know, maybe you were bullied, maybe you are still poor and your career's terrible, you're not making any money, maybe you are miserable and dating or, you know, what doesn't, if you're a man or a woman and you haven't found anyone yet and every time you try, it's always disappointing and terrible situation and things go badly. It's not too late, okay? It's not too late, don't lose hope, don't lose hope, don't despair because maybe it's when you're 40, maybe it's when you're 50, everything can change, everything can turn around and you know, there's some good things about that. Sometimes the other thing I would recommend is don't envy, don't be jealous, don't envy people who have easier lives than you. It's easy to do, but don't do it, okay? And there's a few reasons to do that because number one, sometimes people have a very, very easy life in the beginning, like everything's easy for them when they're young. Let's say, let's take a girl, like a girl who's just super gorgeous, like a model, okay? 10 out of 10, super, super beautiful. Yeah, her life is super, super easy when she's a teenager, when she's in her 20s, right? She gets tons of attention from guys and, you know, men will give her things for free and do anything to date her and her life is just, you know, everything's easy, easy, easy. She doesn't have to try much to do anything, she doesn't really need to develop a good personality, nothing, it's all super easy. But if you read up on what happens to them when they get older and by older, I mean, like 35, everything changes because that is a young, young, young person's career and a lot of these like super models, they hit 35, they're already old, they're considered old women, right? They're, they, they, they're used to life being easy and men just doing anything for them. And suddenly the 35, they don't have kids, they're not married yet. And suddenly, like everything becomes very hard and a lot of them can't deal with it because they didn't have hardship earlier. All the hardship you might have in your life, especially when early in life, when you're young, all these problems, being miserable, all these problems will make you stronger. In fact, they are already making you stronger. You are dealing with all of this and it is hard and it is terrible, but you're still surviving. And then later in life, things get a little easier, things get a little better. Well, now you can really just do amazing things. You're not used to life being easy. You don't expect life to be easy. You know you have to work. You know you have to improve yourself. You know it's not going to always be easy. So you can handle all of these things. When difficulties come, you're prepared. You've dealt with tough things in life already. But people who have everything easy in the beginning, later in life, when they have some hard problems, some things change. A lot of them fall apart. They fall apart and they can't handle it at all. So you have to think of all your problems, all your misery, all these terrible things are like they're training your soul, your spirit, your mind and your emotions to be stronger and stronger. And this is going to help you as you get older. I promise you will. So don't envy people who have had easy because you know as Buddha, as Lord Buddha said, life is suffering. In other words, suffering is always going to come in life. It might come early. It might come late. You never know how it's going to come, but it will always come. So don't envy someone else because they're going to experience suffering too at some point. It might not be the same as you, but they will. So let me just finish this with just some practical points, especially again, like like I said, the story, the stories of these young people killing themselves just kind of, you know, affected me strongly. And so, you know, I like to give practical advice, like a few things to do. I think the number one mindset, the thing that keep in your mind when you're really having a hard time in life, and especially if you're young and if you're feeling like without hope and it feels like, oh, it's, well, it ever get better. It's to really focus on that Japanese idea of Kaizen, which means tiny little improvements. Tony Robbins, he, in English, he translated it as constant and never-ending improvement. The key point about this is that you focus on making little tiny improvements. Because see, the truth is in life, what I've found, and I, a lot of other people too, if you're just getting a little better, if you just feel like you're improving in some part of your life a little bit, you can handle tough times. So, you know, I like to think of it as, you know, each year I'm going to improve 5%. Just 5%. So, or do you have to, so you're not going to change your entire life in one year. It's unlikely. Some people do it, but that's very hard. It feels impossible sometimes, but you can improve 5%. And I, I recommend you focus on a few areas, especially when you're feeling almost hopeless in life. I recommend you first start with your body. Why, why start with your body? Because you have the most control. You control your body. You have control over your exercise and what you eat. Sometimes emotions are hard to deal with. If you have a lot of pain, a lot of terrible experiences and a lot of emotional issues, you can heal those you should, but that can take time. It's complicated and it can be difficult. But your body, you can do it, okay? Even if you're in terrible shape, or if you're in okay shape, you can be 5% better in one year. You can be 5% stronger, 5% better endurance, 5% healthier, in terms of your eating. And that will make you start feeling better. So I recommend start an exercise program. Start an exercise. You feel hopeless. You feel down. Life is really terrible. Focus on the first thing you can easily control and that's your body. Get in the gym, work out at home, train and run a marathon. Even if you're never ran before and you're lazy in one year, you can run a marathon, okay? You can do a very slow step-by-step training program in one year. You could finish a marathon. That's a big improvement. That's more than 5%. If you're not doing it now, you want to focus on strength instead. Find, go to the gym or at home and you start lifting weights or doing pull-ups and push-ups and body weight stuff. You definitely can get 5% stronger in one year, probably more than that. And if you need to lose weight, if you're kind of fat, again, you can do some kind of diet and very gradually lose weight. You could go low fat or you could go like ketogenic keto, either one, they both work. And gradually in one year, you could easily lose 10 kilograms, 20 kilograms without anything not too tough to do that if you just stick with it. So those are big changes and even if everything in else in life is terrible, when you feel like your body's getting better and healthier and stronger, it gives you some hope, it will give you some hope. You'll feel like okay, something in my life is improving. And it sends a message to your brain also that I do have some control. I do have some control. I do have some control over my life. Right now it's just my body, but I can make my life better. And you start physically. The second thing you do, you do need to focus on your emotions. There's something called emotion. What is it called? Emotion first. Emotion focused therapy. You don't need to go to therapy. I don't recommend it honestly. But you can find some books on this topic. You can do the you can do this by yourself in your home. So if you've got some issues, if you've been betrayed by a girlfriend or boyfriend, for example, if you had some kind of abuse in your life, all these things, and you definitely need to deal with that and heal it, start that process. Start doing it. Start reading books on that topic. Check out emotion. I think it's called EFT. There's some good books there that I think are helpful. We're looking at other methods. It doesn't matter. Just start dealing with it. And that's that's going to take years probably. Okay. That's more of a five year program at least rather than one year. But you just feel a little better if you heal a little bit. It's enough to keep it'll give you hope. If we have hope, if we feel it's meaningful, we can endure a lot of suffering. We can deal with a lot of pain and suffering. If we feel that we have a purpose, if we feel there's some meaning in our life, and if we can feel that we are getting better, even if it's very, very, very slowly. Number three, mentally, you know, learn, you're already doing it, learning English. Just, you know, exercise your brain. Learn new things. Constantly be learning. This is the thing that helped me get through my 20s and 30s and teenage years, is that I was just always trying to learn new skills. I was always trying new things all the time, all the time. And, you know, little by little year by year, I started to gain more confidence and get better at things like teaching English, like public speaking, like business and all these things. It took a many years to do this, but little by little. And I started to learn, yeah, I was so introverted, started learning how to be more social and talk to people. All of that, little by little by little. So mental, develop your mental thing, mental thinking, again, little improvements every year. It's all you need. And the final one, I would say spiritual, I think this one's very important. I would especially when you're suffering, especially when life is very, very tough. And you're feeling really down and hopeless. You need a big view. You need meaning and purpose at a deep, deep, deep level. And that means what you can call it, spirituality or call it religion, either one. And I'm not here to convert anyone to a specific religion, okay? So, you know, it could be synophonodharma, it could be Buddhism, it could be some form of Christianity, it could be some form of Islam, Taoism, Shintoism, okay? You can decide that yourself, but what a spiritual or religious practice gives you is it gives you a much bigger view of life and the meaning and purpose of life so that your own suffering starts to make sense. You start to understand it. And then the final thing would be for social to work on your social life a little bit, your social skills. This would include dating. If you're having a lot of pain in the area of dating, marriage, relationships, then by if you're a man, by all means, red pill, get on YouTube, there's a bunch of channels just put in red pill, man, and a bunch of channels will pop up, start watching them. And if you're if you haven't already watched these things, your eyes will probably be opened and but this is good. You need to do this. You need to understand reality because we're all programmed with a bunch of lies, you know, by romance movies, Hollywood, sometimes by our parents, you know, our parents often don't understand because they don't understand that it's much, much harder now. Like I it was easier for me than it is for you, but it was still hard for me. My parents and my grandparents, you know, their generation, it was totally different, dating and marriage and all that. They didn't have super high divorce rates. They didn't have TikTok and all this stuff and social media. Okay, so man, I feel bad for young men though and young women too that I mean that the situation for dating and marriage and you know, around the world now is so terrible. It's tough. If you're having a tough time in this area, it's not your fault. Okay, it's it is tough. So you're gonna have to really learn some things and figure it out because yeah, life is harder now than it was when I was younger and you know, it was still tough when I was young, but it's harder now for all for you guys. It's harder for jobs and and money. It's a it's more tough for relationships and dating and marriage. Very tough. So don't feel bad if you're having a hard time because yeah, it is tough. It's really tough now. So anyway, get on there and young women, you know, same thing. You probably wouldn't hurt you to watch some of these videos. They might make you angry, but I think they might open your eyes because women get lied to a lot too. They get lied to and they think, you know, maybe things are going great in their 20s and women are kind of lied to young girls really or are lied to that, oh yeah, just keep having fun. Go out there. Oh, you can wait, you can wait and suddenly, man, they they're 32, 35 and suddenly like guys just are not so interested in them, especially the best guys, the really good guys and then they have to choose maybe guys that are not so great anymore. And they're like, what happened? They think it's going to last forever. They think they're going to be young forever. No, you're not. All right. So work on these things, make these and then the thing you can do socially is you can there's a good YouTube channel called Charisma on Command. They also have a book, which is a nice book, Charisma on Command, but they got a lot of great videos. So this is especially if you're kind of an introvert, maybe you don't feel great talking to people, you don't know and what it doesn't matter if it's guys or girls or in your job, watch those videos because they've got they they really teach a lot of great skills about some people called soft skills, communication skills, Charisma, really, really helpful. And again, you don't need to change completely in one year. Okay. Don't put too much pressure on yourself, just a little change. But if you do it every year, then 10 years from now, you'll be a very different person and a much happier person. Okay. So that's that's my final message of hope is that however bad it is, just focus on these areas of life, make tiny improvements, tiny improvements and just don't give up. I promise you, I promise you, five years from now, everything's going to be much better. 10 years from now is going to be huge. You'll be a different person with a different life. It's just like investing, right? You know, you invest with interest. And you know, in one year, your money doesn't grow a lot. But in 10 years, your money might double or more, right? So it's the same idea. Don't lose hope. And the final thing, of course, is if you're really feeling terrible, don't do something foolish, like hurting yourself, talk to someone that loves you. Maybe a parent or both parents, maybe a brother or sister, an uncle, an aunt, a cousin, a true friend, just talk to somebody. You're not alone, okay? There's millions, right? Billions of people in a similar position who feel the same. So you're not alone. It's not you. You're not worthless, okay? Not at all. Not at all. I went through all that. Many others have. Many. And you will too. All right. Let's get to our questions and comments now live. Just my camera here. And hey, Abraham, good to see you. What's new, AJ? Can you give us some updates? Are you still in the USA? Really miss you a lot? Yeah. So, you know, I know I kind of disappear for the last six years. I've, you know, I've done some videos and audios and I'll do some and I disappear. So look, the truth is this, guys, it's my children, especially my son. You know, he's has three heart surgeries and been in the hospital more than that for other tests and other things. And then also he's needs a lot of therapy. And, you know, I'm doing all that. I'm his therapist. I'm his full-time therapist, speech therapy, physical therapy, neurological brain therapy. You know, I do it all every day. My wife, of course, helps too, but I'm the one who's researched it and plans it and and and design all the therapy that we're doing and constantly learning. I feel like I don't have an official degree, but I feel like I could be a therapist at this point because I've learned so much and I've been doing it with him. And he's doing great. It is working. He's just doing so much better. It's wonderful. But it does take a lot, a lot of my time and my energy. And also, I'm also doing, you know, we're doing homeschooling, so I'm teaching both my children, you know, to read math, all that. In fact, we're reading Lord of the Rings right now. We started, we read The Hobbit this summer. And then now I'm reading to them. They're not, they, it's six. They can't read this by themselves, but I'm reading it to them. And now we're reading Lord of the Rings. We just, we just got to the part where Frodo gets stabbed in the shoulder, but the black rider. So that's what I've been doing. That's why I'm not, so consistent here on YouTube. I'm a little more consistent. I do more audio podcasts now, but I've also, I've been gone for what a month or two months now. I just got busy doing it with all the therapy stuff. So that's what it is. I missed you guys. I love you. And I'm gonna keep trying to do them. That's why I'm back now today doing a show. I'll keep doing them. I don't, I can't promise to do them, you know, every day or every week, but I will continue doing shows, especially, you know, get a podcasting app and subscribe to effortless English podcast, because I'm doing more audios. It's easier for me to do them sometimes. Gladyslop says, oh, just missed. Let me read his comment. Here you go. Probably you've noticed Gen Z seems to be waking up. They refuse to work hard for low wages. If they don't like their job, they will leave good. They don't spend money on things they don't really need. Yeah. And good. You shouldn't. Yeah, I support all that. I was the same way when I was young and everyone told me I was crazy, you know, because I was like, weird, because, but that's why I always hated jobs, because yeah, they just want to work you to death and pay you the smallest amount. And, you know, they have a lot of these companies have an attitude like, you know, you shouldn't have your own life, like go, your life should be their company. But as soon as they, money's tight, they'll cut your job in a minute, right? As soon as they want, they'll cut you and oh, bye, sorry. And then you're unemployed. So, yeah, don't give loyalty to a company, you know, do your job so you can keep it. And, yeah, don't work. Do a good job for sure. Do that. But, yeah, don't give sacrifice your life to some company. They don't care about you. So, you know, they're paying you some money. You do good work for them. That's all. You don't owe them anything else. And if you can find a better job, leave. If you could buy a better job that pays you more and gives you better benefits and you'll be happier at, leave immediately. You should always be looking for a new job. Always be looking for another job. Yeah. So, Gen Z, I hope that is true because, yeah, yeah, man, you guys have it tough. It's hard. I don't know if I could, I don't know if I could handle being in Gen Z because, you know, you've got, and now we got AI is coming. So that's going to take a lot of job. So it's, yeah, man, it's tough for young people. It's tough dating situations really hard for you guys, worse than when I was young. And I suffered terribly in that area. So, yeah, man, don't let old people tell you, oh, you just need to work hard and everything will be better. Like I did in my day. Well, it's different. Like those old people, they're not trying to be mean to you. Okay. And, you know, it might, it might even be your parents, right? And they love you and care about you. But, you know, a lot of them just, they don't understand. They just don't understand that it, it's not the same now as when they were young, right? Like dating is nothing like it was when they were young. And they, a lot of them just don't understand, especially if they've been married a long time, you know, if your parents were, you know, met when they were young and got married and they've stayed together, they have no idea what it's like now. They don't know how terrible it is. Okay. So, you know, they're not trying to be mean, so try to be patient with them. But, you know, just, they just don't understand. They don't understand. And they same with work, you know, like my dad and his ideas about like work and he worked for these big companies and he worked for one big company such a long time. And he always used to criticize me because I would just jump around jobs all the time. But I was like, you know, it's not the same. When he was young, people would get a job and they'd stay at one company their whole life and then retire. I'm like, they don't, that's not true anymore. No, he found out the hard way because eventually they forced him to retire early. So I said, I told you that. I told you. Okay. User has a lot, okay, user name. It's like a rose. It looks like for the profile and user and a bunch of numbers, EK31, it says, when one of your closest people tells you you're zero, you start believing it. Be careful about, yes, you're right. And there's no hope left. It's a tough time for me. Yeah, man, it sucks. If you're having a hard time and then someone that's close to you, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife, a parent, a friend is not really a friend. If they are just cutting you down even more, criticizing you, then man, that just, it's terrible. Yeah, I know. It's horrible. And I went through this with dating especially. And like it starts messing with your mind and you think like, you know, like you're having a hard time. And then suddenly this person, you're dating is like, for example, you know, it was just attacking you and criticizing you. And you're lazy. And you know, for example, if you maybe you lose your job instead of supporting you, they're just attacking you about it. Yeah, then you start to feel like zero. You start to feel that way, right? But you're not. Don't don't believe them. And you know, it depends. If it's a parent, you can't really get rid of them. But, but if it's a friend, I'm using quotes with my fingers, that means they're not really a friend, right? Because a real friend won't do that. A real friend will support you. But, or if it's a so-called girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe just they're not a good person for you. This is a good test of relationships when things go bad. Everyone's great when everything's wonderful, right? But if you're in a relationship with somebody, dating somebody, and you go through a tough time, like you lose your job as a good test, and then they start attacking you and cutting you down and criticizing you, get rid of them. They're no good. They're no good. They're not going to get better. There's nothing you can do. I'm speaking from years and years of painful experience. Just get rid of them. I know it's, you know, especially if you're like a nice guy and you're trained to be that way or a nice girl. And, you know, you want to hold on to them because you actually love them. And maybe you're afraid you're going to end up being alone. You're not going to get someone else. And yeah, I know. I know all those thoughts and fears. And I did that. I tried staying with people like that. And it just, I look back and I'm like, what, what did I do? It was, you know, but so my advice is get rid of them. If it's a parent, you're just going to have to set a strong boundary when you become an adult. Sometimes you still love your parents, but you sometimes have to be a little tough with them and just say, enough. I don't want to hear your criticism anymore. I'm having a hard time. You're not helping me. I'm feeling bad. And if you're going to criticize me like this, I just don't want to talk to you for a while. Not forever, right? But say, I'm going to take a break. I'm not going to talk to you for a couple of months until you start being more positive because I need you to be more, it's hard sometimes to do that, right? Because you're used to being the little kid and your parents are up high. But once you become an adult, you have to kind of change the relationship. You're both adults now. And you know, if you have understanding parents is great, they might be able to give you nice advice. But if you have a parent who's not, and some people do, have parents who kind of cut them down, then you might need to be a little stronger with them and just say, enough. Sally Smon says, you don't look like someone who faced such things. You inspire people with your confidence and strong character. You're raising, thank you. Well, yeah, right? Because it was year by year. If you'd seen me when I was 30, I mean, I go back and I look at, there's like a couple videos and some pictures of myself, I don't know, it's 25, let's say. And I think of memories of like things that happened when I was 25. And I just have this feeling like, in English, we say cringe, you know, like, I just get this horrible, terrible feeling inside. And I just think like, why did I let myself be treated that way? Why did I just keep doing the same foolish things again and again. And I was ignorant. I had no idea, you know. And I was, you know, I had all this kind of emotional pain from being bullied. And in all that. And you know, I see it now. But at the time, yeah, I still think of that. I just think, I was such a weak foolish idiot. But, you know, like I said, just keep making little improvements, little improvements. And then, you know, you can do 10 years from now, you can look back and laugh at yourself. What's the difference between slow English and power English? Flow English was made, I don't know if it's available anymore. I made that course with a guy named Chris Moses, who I went to school with. I did a master's program with him. And then after effort of English, I wanted to help him, you know. And so I suggested why don't I help you make a course. And that's what we made. I went to where he lived and we recorded that course together. But it's his course. I don't own it. It's not mine. And I thought I saw it. Let's see. I don't know if it's still available. He may have finally stopped doing it. Let me just look at the website, flowenglish.com. Is it still there? Yeah. See, I don't think there's a website. Nope. It's done. So he's not doing it anymore. It was, and it was flow English was a more of a low, like a high beginner course. More of a beginner's course. Power English is more intermediate. But if you're, uh, you're listening to me now and you understand me now, power English is the better course. Flow English should be too easy for you. Uh, so just get power English on my website effortlessenglishclub.com. It's on the screen there. I saw him saying I'd like to take a one on one course with you. Unfortunately, I just don't have time to do it. I don't do one on one. Because as I was saying earlier, I'm now, especially I'm so busy doing therapy and teaching and homeschooling with my children from that, uh, I just, you know, hardly have time to do these videos. So I'm sorry. But just get my course and use my course. Get power English. And I think you'll enjoy it. This is, uh, another one was an AV-6Rs. As we missed you. Please don't forget us. Make a live once a week. I'll, um, Japanese say "Gonbarimasu!" means I'll, I'll try my best. Oh, do my best. What did you experience? Did you fitness? Hey, good to see you again. What did you experience at the turning point of your life? So here's what it was. You know, sometimes you'll hear stories. People talk about like their life's one way. And then one big thing happens. And then their life changes completely, right? That does happen. People, that happens to people. I'll kind, there's a guy named Brennan-Bershar. He's a motivational guy. And his kind of main speech he talks about his life was one way. And then he had a car accident and almost died. And then that changed like his whole life, how he saw life. He realized he could die. And then he started doing everything in his life differently. That's not what happened with me. Okay, that's, I was, I'm just, what I'm telling you today is this Kaisen approach. What it was more like for me is like compound interest. It's just that through my, especially my 20s and my 30s, I just kept trying to improve myself. Right? Like I would, physically, I would do exercise and some martial arts. I was just reading lots. I knew I was not happy and working. I had this dream of starting my own business, but I wasn't ready. So I would just, I would, but I was reading books about business and studying it just by myself a lot year, every year, little by little. And then, you know, with relationships and dating, I was also doing that. Now, unfortunately, in the beginning, I would, I read all this stuff that was basically written by women. And or girly men. I don't know how to say it. Okay. And, you know, they, they weren't trying to hurt anybody, but maybe it was, they had good advice for women. I don't know what to tell women about dating. Okay, because I'm not a woman. But I just know that that nice guy, kind of girly boy, super kind of feminine approach does not work for most men. It's a, it'll, it'll, I tried it. I tried to just be more nice and, and touched with my feelings. I'm already very in touch with my feelings. Okay. So I tried doing all that. And it was a freaking disaster. Okay. It actually made my life more miserable. It made sure that women respected me, even less treated me even more badly used me more badly betrayed me more. It was terrible. But I kept trying to improve even though I failed badly in that area. I kept looking, kept looking. And then around age 38, 39, I found, you know, this red pill stuff. It didn't exist. At least I didn't know about it online. It wasn't so easy. So easy now. It's out there everywhere. But it, so it changed everything. I suddenly, like, it's open my mind. So that was probably one big turning point. But still, it took me many years after that to change because I'd spent all my life thinking and acting one way. And it's like super sensitive kind of, you know, feminine type of way, honestly. And so it took me, you know, many years to shift and change that. So it wasn't like a, what it basically was is all these little tiny improvements added up, added up, and then suddenly like around age 38, 39, 40, they all added up and that is what created a big change. Like suddenly my life did kind of click and shift. It felt like it happened suddenly. But the truth is it's like compounding interest, right? It's just like an investment. It's just like, you keep adding money and saving and investing. And then suddenly one of them takes off, it feels like it happens suddenly. But really, it's something that has added up over a long time. And then it was, finally, it all adds up and you start to see big changes. You know, it's a many, many years of tiny, small changes. And then finally, you'll start to see the big changes. So that's what happened with me. It wasn't like one thing, like a car accident, or some one thing. It was a whole lot of little things. We'll cut 2026. If you're going to be there, please mention this. Where is World Cup 2020? Is it America this year? I'm in America. So that's someone in Abraham was asking me, I'm also, I'm in America right now in Indiana. We're going to Japan next month. We're going to go visit Japan for probably about six months. I think five months we're thinking we have, because we've been gone from Japan for a while. So we're going to go back and stay in Japan until the summer, I think. But we'll spend Christmas here. In fact, we have snow right now. Here in Indiana, we have snow. Yeah, I missed you too, Abraham. Good to see you. Take off my jacket. I'm getting warm. Okay, Dee Dee says we shouldn't lose our hope. We should be prepared prepared for the opportunities ahead. Exactly. That's exactly. We need to improve ourselves and stay away from bad habits. Well, that's right. That's part of it too, is that by improving yourselves, by not losing hope. Okay, things are bad. Things are bad. Things are bad. But eventually, you do get opportunities in life. If you're hopeless and depressed, you won't do anything. You'll have an opportunity, but you won't act. You won't do anything because you let yourself give up. But if you can just keep your motivation up, you just make these small improvements. Then when finally opportunities do come, bam, you jump on them. You're ready. Good point. I like your tie. It's new. Thank you. Spanish access says what a lovely surprise. I was worried about you. I didn't see more of your live streams. I know. I've just been busy with my kids. That's all it is. It's good. It's a good kind of busy. Yeah, ABR6 says my words about life don't envy jealous people because if they offer their problem, they'll prefer staying your side. Yeah, just don't envy. You know, especially now, envy is a problem because of social media. It's a bigger problem. It's always it's human nature, right? It's always been a problem, but it's bigger now because people go on social media, Instagram and Facebook, especially. And you see all these pictures, maybe even of friends or people you went to school with or just influencers, whatever that means. And they're showing this perfect life. Here's me on my vacation in Thailand. Ah, you know, and here's me with my perfect, my great car and and they, you know, they're putting everything they're like perfect, perfect, perfect. So sometimes it's easy people think, Oh, well, no, my life's not perfect. I have a lot of problems. I'm struggling. I'm not making much money right now. I'm not happy in my job. I'm single. I can't find anybody. And so you start either feel bad and depressed because you're comparing yourself to their social media or maybe feel a little jealous. Like, ah, why can't I have all that? Well, that, listen, that's fake. It's fake. They're putting, it's marketing. They're marketing themselves. They're only showing the very best things. You don't really know what their life's like. Maybe they're married, their marriage is terrible. Maybe they just scream and yell at each other and they're super unhappy. But they put this super happy photo on Instagram. Ah, we're so happy as a family. And then that right after they take the picture, they're screaming and yelling again, you know, you don't know. Don't go by social media. Social media is fake. Instagram, all those videos and things now. They're all staged. They're not real. Now people are using AI to create them or to, they put filters on their face to make themselves look, you know, younger or prettier. Right? People are commenting. You look older. Yeah, I'm 58, guys. You get older. I'm not going to use any filters or anything. It's ridiculous. I mean, it says, are you still in America? Yes. Well, you go back to Japan. Yeah. So in January, I'll do some streams from Japan again. I also want to ask him, will you do an engineering course? Yes. English for engineers. It's still one of my ideas. Just waiting to get the time to do it. Hi from Brazil. How can I not lose hope after five years of studying? You again, you know, everything I was saying today is you just got to just focus. I find it's best to focus just on like one year at a time or even one month at a time. And just, you know, you're studying for a reason. I assume. So, you know, eventually you'll be done. You will be done eventually. And at that point, hopefully, things get better if you're not enjoying the studying part. Yeah, well, Solab says, what about dealing with stress and anxiety? These things make people lose hope. For sure. Well, yeah, exactly right. I think it's another benefit of focusing on your body as the first step because exercise helps with stress helps tremendously with stress. Anyone who's works out or runs, you know, the feeling you might, you're feeling terrible thinking about all your problems, you feel stress, and you go to the gym, and you do a hard workout, and you just forget it all because right? And the stress just kind of goes away where I get that with martial arts too, you know, like jujitsu. You know, the stress, go to jujitsu, start sparring. I can't think about all that junk in my head while someone's trying to choke me. So, you know, it just gets gone, and then you feel you leave there feeling much better. And of course, there's also physical things that happen that with your brain chemistry that help you deal with stress. So and you could also just go for a run, you know, a long, nice, wrong run, or even just a long walk. So a lot of stress stresses a physical thing, right? It may start in your brain, but it comes out in your body, right? Tension and all these, you know, chemical reactions in your body. So deal with it with your body first, and that'll help you deal with the stress better. The best thing you can do when you're feeling super stressed is move your body. Get out and go for a walk, a long walk, or a run, or a hard workout. Yeah, see, like, uh, va, hit, gari, I can't remember. I remember when I was young, I really wanted to learn English. I used exactly the method you're suggesting right now, and it really worked. Great. Okay, let's Hey, Jay on social media, some videos are made by AI and some are real. We can't compare them. Yeah, some are real, some are AI, but even the real ones sometimes are kind of fake, meaning they, like I'll tell you a trick that, for example, there's, uh, there are people who sell like business courses or investing and, you know, how to be successful. And a lot of these guys, you know, you'll notice it's kind of a similar website and similar pictures on their social media, like there's always been standing in front of like a private plane with a suitcase or something or standing in front of a Ferrari, right? Now, if they actually really are rich, maybe that is their plane. Maybe that is their car, but a lot of them, it's fake. It's not their plane. They just went out there. Maybe they paid some money or they had a friend, so they just to go out and take pictures in front of it. That's not their private plane. They're not flying on that thing. And the same with the Ferrari, they could just take a Ferrari, they could just go for a test drive. They could go to a dealer and do a test drive of the Ferrari. Take a bunch of pictures of themselves, right? They put them on their website, they're in front of a Ferrari. And then everyone thinks, oh, wow, they drive a Ferrari. They've got private planes. They, right, it's not real. It's fake. The pictures are real. I mean, they're not AI, but it's not their real life. (laughs) Your hair's grown. I remember you were bald. Almost always I shave my head in the summer, it gets hot, and then I let it grow, start letting it grow more in the winter. What's your advice for someone who has a big dream to achieve? Says, red, dad, these are names are really hard to read. Same advice for someone, if you have a big dream, get excited about it, that's great, but sometimes when people have a big dream, they can start to feel unmotivated because it feels too big, right? Because it feels, well, now, my life, I'm nowhere close. It's so far away, and feels impossible. So again, I would say focus on those little, you need to break your big dream or your big goal into very small pieces, and then just focus on, okay, what do I do now? What do I need to do this month to get one step closer to my dream? Let's say your dream is, I don't know, I'll just use money because it's easy, it's numbers. I want to have a hundred million dollars, let's say. So, and now you've got $20, right? It seems impossible. So if you don't just think, I'm going to make a hundred million dollars this year, that's crazy because it's almost impossible that's such a huge jump. Maybe it could happen, but most people will feel less motivation, they'll think, ah, there's no way I can do that. So you may just think, oh, this year, I want to save a thousand dollars. That's a step closer. You're nice making money, right? And then the next year, each year, you change, you add your goals and adjust and try to get closer. Maybe you never make it to a hundred million, but maybe you get ten million, you're still going to be in good shape. Why do people keep trying to bring you down? Well, that is a good question because there are just, you know, it's either there are bad people in the world, a lot of them, and there are also people who just have a lot of emotional problems, and they're not necessarily bad people, but they got, but all that emotional, those emotional problems cause them to bad, do bad things. And either way, sometimes they don't like, they can, it might be jealous or envy, like you start doing better than them. Like there are some friends, bad friends, fake friends, who will try to pull down other friends when they start succeeding, right? Women do this a lot with their friends, right? One woman gets married and has a happy marriage, and suddenly all her single friends start giving her terrible advice that hurts her marriage, because they're kind of jealous. They're trying to pull her down, bring her back, right? And guys do this too. So, you know, if you have people around, you're trying to bring you down, you need to get them out of your life. I can't always do it like if they're at your job. You might be forced to deal with them for a while, but maybe that's a sign to get a different job. But that can take time, right? But as much as you can, push those people out of your life. If they're in your family deal with them less, or start, like I said, start being more direct with them, telling them to stop. I'm stressed because my country's becoming a dictatorship. What's funny is I have no idea what country you're talking about, but probably a whole lot of us could say this. All right. So, here's the thing. Do you have control over that? No. Do you have any power to change it? No, probably not. So, you just have to deal with it. Don't let yourself get depressed about things you cannot control at all, right? Like politics. It's all the show. It's a big lie. Don't get all stressed about it. You know, if you can do something, find do something. But if you can't, I'm just going to have to adjust and deal with it. How's your kid after the surgery? He's doing fantastic. This is code with Shadok. He's doing very, very, very well, especially this year. We started a whole new kind of therapy with him. And wow, this is, he's doing great. So yeah, like I feel like a huge weight coming off my shoulders. So yeah, a long way to go, but much better. Your handsome again says mine, Boston. Well, that's nice. Thank you. Usually people say you're getting older. I need to change my pictures on my website. I haven't done pictures like, uh, like, you know, professional pictures for the website in a long time. So all the pictures on my website are me of me at least 10 years ago, I think. Have I had surgery? No, not me. No, no, no, no. This is a very good question. Mohammed says, Uber, Mohammed says, what if you keep getting brought down by everything in life? Yeah, I know, right? Family, friendship, relationships, careers and hobbies. Nothing was inspiring anymore. How would you find hope again at that point? Start with one thing. I know I, this was my, this was me when I was younger. Everything. I didn't mention family, but my parents got divorced when I was in university. So on one hand, that's it was good. I wasn't a small child because that's the worst parents divorcing when the kids are little, but it still affected me, right? I was 20 at the time, 21. But yeah, like suddenly, like my, and it was not a nice divorce. They never talk to each other ever again. My mom and my dad and my sister got all, it was crazy. It was terrible. So my family terrible. At that same time, my first girlfriend cheated on me with a married guy. It was horrible. That shattered my whole world about like dating and women and I really, ooh, I went crazy for a while after that. I had a bunch of fake friends who weren't real friends and they ended up showing that when I needed them. They just disappeared. They just wanted to have fun and kind of have a good party time. They didn't want to deal with anything real or difficult in life. So relationships I told you was a disaster. Career, I graduated from school was super broke. I mean, broke broke. I had to borrow money on credit cards just to survive. And I had no hobbies. So I lived this. I was right there, Mohammed. It's exactly what you're talking about. What did I do at that point? Actually, what I did, I focused on one thing, which was the money part career. So at that time, when I was 20, it was really more like 22, all those things happened in a few years. But I graduated. I was miserable. I know I was so broke and it was stressing me out. The money that stuff was really, everything else was bad. And then plus I was so stressed and going into huge debt. I couldn't pay the debts. So I decided, okay, I just picked one of these things. You can pick any one of them. I picked career and I thought, I've got to go back to school. I decided I was going to go to grad school. I'm like, you know, this degree I have is useless. I was just playing around and undergrad and didn't think about money or school or work at all. My fault. That was my responsibility. But I decided, okay, I'm going to go back. I decided to become a social worker. And so I so I started studying for the GRE, you know, the test you have to take and started applying to schools and, you know, and I got in and blah, blah, blah. But so that helped. That helped. In fact, that definitely my life got better when I got into grad school. That was a couple of years in grad schools. A nice time. I had a good time at grad school. And afterwards I was able to get some jobs with enough money. Not a lot. Social workers don't make much money, but it was definitely better than before. It was enough where I could, you know, I didn't have to borrow money. I didn't have to use credit cards. I could have a apartment and food and, you know, basically not, not stress if I live simply. So I say to you, you can't change, you know, changing everything totally at once in a short time. Not going to happen probably, but you just pick one thing first. Like I said, you can always pick your body. If there's nothing else, get into great shape. You know, just go to the gym and work out like crazy and run with weights or just become a great, great physical shape. You can always do that. But if not, you could maybe focus on career first. Pick one thing and then, but try to improve everything, but you can maybe focus a lot on one thing. And then you start seeing, you start getting some success in that one thing and it'll start making you feel better. And you start realizing, well, okay, I did it with my money. Maybe I can now I can do it with other things too. And you can start little by little building up. Sinmila says, how to create a good friendship, a good relationship with your children when you live far apart. Well, I don't know yet because my kids are still small. You know, I always joke. I tell my kids that I'm going to follow them. I'll say, because I'll say, I'll just follow you live where you want. I know, I'm going to follow you and I'm going to live in the same place you do. So, you know, I guess I could think about it as a son. I was very close to my mom. Even though I always live far from her, because after that divorce, I mentioned my mom left. I was in Georgia and she moved back to here, actually, Indiana. But then I was always I was traveling. I lived in Japan. I lived in Thailand. I lived in Korea. Japan again. San Francisco. But you know, I talked to my mom on the phone almost every day, probably four or five times a week. And now we have video. Then it was just phone, you know, like there's no video. And well, in the beginning later, obviously Skype came along and then I would do video calls with her. So that helps a lot. And my wife does that right now, you know, like just this morning, my wife and my kids. It's not quite it's maybe like once a week. They or maybe twice a week, probably twice a week, two times a week they call Japan and talk to my wife's parents and, you know, my kids' grandparents. And it really does help. It keeps that connection. I think that the frequency is important. Like I think it's important to have a frequent communication. So, you know, at least once a week, I think more than once a week is even better. And I told I remember telling my mom, I said, you know, especially when my kids came, like, you know, I'd love for just talk to you every day. We can just talk five minutes. Just let the kids see that you can see the babies and say hi. So I'd say build that kind of habit with your kids. And now it's so great because we have this is one of the good things we have now about technology is these video calls and see their face. It's nice. My kids, Mary Poppins, ask, how old are your kids? They're six. Six twins. All right, I'll do a couple more. I'm going to lay long today. Thank you for your lessons, AJ. You have very good diction. Thank you. After your lessons, it's hard to understand those who don't, oh, yeah, sorry. So saying I have good pronunciation diction, but that, but after listening to me, sometimes hard to understand other people who don't have good pronunciation. Yeah, well, you know, I can even have problems understanding English with bad pronunciation or just weird accents and things like that. So you'll get used to it. You just got to listen to it more often. But it's best to learn with good pronunciation first so that you will speak well. And then later you can get better at understanding people with accents or with not good pronunciation. Let's just say. Yeah. Zubar Muhammad. Good luck to you. No worries. All right, let's see. Code with Shaddik says, hope is a good thing. Maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies. That's a quote from the Shawshank redemption. Very, very, very, very good. Do I speak American or British? American, American, American. Vladislav says, thank you for your show. After a long time. Great topic. Hope you never give up. I won't. I'll keep doing it. It might not be as much as we like, but I'll keep doing this. All right, guys. I think that's all. It was great to get back with you live here. I'll put the audio here on my audio podcast. Please follow my audio podcast. You can use any podcast app and then just search for effortless English podcast and subscribe. All information about my courses is here effortlessenglishclub.com effortlessenglishclub.com. Lots of love to you. Don't lose hope. I promise you things can and we'll get better. And I'll see you next time. Lots of love. Bye-bye.