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BRAVE Blog

10 Tech Things I no longer have time for in 2015

We were told that the brave new digital world will give us all the time in the world – to learn a language, to prepare for what’s ahead, or just to kick back and chew the cud. Well, readers, we were lied to. Here are ten things I find myself not using any more – things that, for a learner / polyglot / tech aficionado like me, used to be commonplace. See if you agree with any of those?
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BRAVE Blog

5 Psychology quirks which meddle with your language learning

psychology in language learningThis blog usually praises language learners for all the hard work they do. And with good reason: learning a foreign language is a wonderful hobby and a great project to undertake. Today’s post is a bit more devious. Are there things happening to language learners which are perhaps not so productive? And is there something in their psychology which bilinguals should be wary of?

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10 ways to a good life – with an egg timer.

A freebie arrived in the post some time ago: a four-minute hourglass. We didn’t use it much until recently. Now it occurs to me that this might be one of the smallest “secret weapons” in your happiness projects. What can you do in 5 minutes to be happier?

This is not a complete list, but I had fun writing it. The focus is completely different from what a life coach would do. Instead of careful planning, there’s instant action. Instead of exploring how to set up great goals – just doing something. In many situations, this is what you need – life coaching can help with the big picture, but here are 10 ways to just start doing something!

1. Get up and walk somewhere. This can mean walking downstairs to make yourself a cup of tea – or walking to the printer to pick something up. The key is to do this every minute, for at least two minutes. Think that’s not enough? Some scientists are reassuring us that it’s a good start.

2. Write some 5-sentence emails. This kills two birds with one stone: you’re keeping tabs on the email monster, and you’re also making sure your missives aren’t too long. Here’s how (and why) to do it. In five minutes, some messages you’ve been meaning to send can just get crossed off a to-do list. Speaking of which…

3. Make a list (any list). Shopping, projects, calls to make, meal ideas, weekend plans – these things can grow if you set aside a solemn afternoon just for “planning.” Keep it short, though, and the discipline will make you focus on what comes to mind first. As soon as it’s out of your mind and in your trusted system – you’re a bit more free to do what makes you happy.

4. Cross a small thing of your list. Five minutes can mean two quick calls. Or cleaning one spot. Or ordering one thing online. Paying one bill. Pushing your big project one step further. Think back to step 3, above: if you know that you’ll do some work in 5-minute bursts, your lists will change to include more 5-minute steps. So you’ll feel better about making (and conquering) them!

5. Don’t just do something – stand there! This one is counterintuitive. But I bet you had moments like these. You don’t need a life coach to tell you this: sometimes just taking a break, watching the world go by, is all you need. If you find that this is helpful – use your timer for this. If you haven’t got one handy, use headphones and your favourite song!

6. Call your loved ones. Don’t text them, call them. Listen to their voice, tell them something nice. Have that good connection, then move on and notice how that made you feel.

7. Learn something exciting. 5 minutes is enough for a thorough work on 5 new Spanish words, or 5 really good lines of code, or one super-quick (and possibly super-bad!) game of chess. Don’t get me wrong: you need to set apart long stretches of deliberate practice to become really good at something. But a break in which you return to the thing that really moves you – that’s something motivating and refreshing at once.

8. Drink a glass of water, slowly. Combine with point 5 above for a good, calming break.

9. Send a thank-you message. I spent most of yesterday sending emails which were meant to get things done, chase things up, move things around…there wasn’t much joy in it. But in the evening, I had the chance to write a short message saying how grateful I was for something. This really made the difference. Shouldn’t we be doing this more often?

10. Clean up. Yes, 5 minutes is enough to make a difference! You become a tiny, super-charged cleaning monster in these few moments. Do this often enough, and you won’t need to spend an afternoon on housework quite that often.

Hungry for more ideas? Here they are: for 5 minutes, 2 minutes and 5 minutes (again.)

Hope you enjoyed it. Can you see a five-minute routine in life coaching at all? Would you benefit from doing these? Let us know!

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BRAVE Blog

A Language Learner Once Again (feat. Vicky Loras)

Wiktor’s introduction: Dear bilingual wannabees, it gives me great pleasure to feature Vicky Loras as a guest author on my blog tonight. I’ve known her blog about education for a long time, and I admire the creativity and enthusiasm she shows when running The Loras Network – an English teaching enterprise. Language learners, meet Vicky: I think you’ve got much in common!

11124538_469194829902439_1536684498_nI love languages. I love learning them.

But first, I will give you a bit of my background. I grew up bilingual, as I was born in Canada to Greek parents, who emigrated there for a better life. My dad, when he was 15, and my mom later on, when she was 22. My first language was English – my parents spoke to us in English ever since we were born. If you ask them why, my dad will say that it was the language that came to him naturally at that point, and my mom because she was afraid we might have difficulties in everyday Canadian school, if she spoke to us in Greek – which she admits now, was a mistake. I don’t know if it was a mistake, but I surely did not take it well when suddenly one day when I was about 8, she switched to Greek, started sending us to Greek school every Saturday…and we had the dreaded back then, afternoon Greek notebook. The notebook was the worst: she had us copy long texts in Greek every afternoon, and when our handwriting was not good, she would rip out the page and we would have to write it again. And when we answered in English to her Greek questions, she would answer: ‘That is NOT the language of your ancestors and pappou (grandpa) and yaya (grandma) will not understand you if you say that to them!’ We all laugh now but it was horrible then. As an eight-year-old, you wonder, why do I have to learn a second language? And a hard one too? I did learn it and I am happy I did. It was an uphill road, though!

Then in university, we could choose another language so I chose Italian – I loved it because it sounded so beautiful to me, when we heard our Italian neighbours in Canada call out to one another! My then football player crush Alessandro Del Piero was also Italian, so that was another reason – a silly reason, but when you are eighteen, your choices are made on things you deem important then 🙂

I learnt Italian pretty well, but after that I did not try to learn anything else.

Until I moved to Switzerland six years ago.

Everyone told me, oh don’t worry – Zug is an international city, everyone will speak English with you – you won’t even need to learn German. And I rested upon that thought – very silly of me, I think now. I was just worried about other things, like work, adjusting that I thought, I don’t need to learn the language, I have too much on my mind right now.

Most people did speak English with me, and we got our messages across. One day, I went to a public service and the lady there spoke only German. They brought me someone who spoke English and I could get my social insurance. Then one day, I went to the supermarket and I asked a lady where the toothbrushes were. She looked at me and with a sweep of her hand said, ‘Nein. Nur Deutsch.’ (No, I only speak German.) I remember being very idiotically shocked that she spoke no English.

I left then and took a walk by the lake and I thought, that lady does not speak English. She does not need to. I came to her country and I am obliged to respect it. So then and there, I decided to learn German. I thought: what kind of teacher am I if I am not constantly a learner? And I love books. How many German books will be unread because I cannot read? And what if I am in an urgent situation where no one speaks English? (As I was three years later, when I needed police intervention after I was followed home and almost threatened by a stranger.) I started learning German and I still am today. I absolutely love it that I can now read the newspaper and sort of get my way through the news, or talk to people on the train that are kind enough to correct me and applaud my efforts –people here literally clap for you! I can go to public services and get the documents I need and whenever someone picks up my accent in German and try to switch to English, I kindly ask them to carry on in German. I will never learn otherwise, right?

I am so happy Switzerland happened to me for many reasons and the language is one of them. I feel I understand my students better, with regard to how they learn, why they make some mistakes they do, where they have difficulties and what they find easier. I am a better learner and a better teacher I hope – all because of them and I thank them so much for everything they teach me!

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BRAVE Blog

Coaching lessons from “Gone Girl” and public shaming

I sometimes like to think about coaching as happening mainly in clients’ heads. Whenever I catch myself doing this, I know that sooner or later something will happen, something will change and I will remember to think about life coaching as a process which involves bodies as much as minds, ideas and emotions. Here’s what happened recently.

The first book: “Gone Girl” and the importance of all five senses

If you haven’t read it yet, you may be in for a treat. “Gone Girl” is tense and thrilling – read the blurb to decide if it’s your thing. Then go for it if you fancy such stories. I enjoyed it a lot, not only because of the skilful way in which relationships are built in the book.
On a few occasions, the characters’ actions are described in a particular way. The act of drinking a sip of whisky and then smashing the glass against a wall, for example, evokes all five senses within one sentence. When I read it, I thought it was a neat little way of drawing the readers in. For coaches, writers and anyone who works with words, this kind of language awareness helps. But I didn’t spend much time on it (I was keen to find out the ending, after all!)

The second book: “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” and the loss of all five senses

Jon Ronson’s book sounds daunting: it’s a story of big mistakes and stupid jokes that became public. It is not daunting. It reads just as well as “Gone Girl,” which lately is high praise indeed coming from a guy who thought he could not handle complicated reading after some busy time.
There’s a lot to cover in the book, but one thing struck me in relation to senses again. A review for the book (which you can read here) mentions this as well: the feeling of shame is actually an anti-feeling, a numbness, a state of being “mortified” – dead-like. Shame makes you feel nothing.
The book is a great read for those interested in psychology, in modern digital storytelling and in ways of building online personalities. It’s also great for those who could use some self coaching and want to start with questions of self-esteem.

Connecting the dots: from pain to joy, or from numbness to all senses

One of the tools which a life coach can use works on the basis of a simple visualisation: it lets clients imagine the pain of staying in a current (unwelcome) situation, along with the joy of changing to a more desired state. This pain-joy duality then works to motivate client to changes.
This is strong, and I’ve experienced the motivating kick of this tool on a few occasions. But reading these two books lately made me think of another tool: the numb-alive process. Let’s have an example to explain it.
Imagine a smoker who is ashamed of his habit. He is alone when he smokes. His health deteriorates with every cigarette. He becomes more and more distant. This is the “numb” part.
Then, some time after deciding to quit, he takes a walk in the woods. He sees the green trees, hears the birdsong, feels the wind on his face. He can smell the fresh air and the picnic he brought along tastes much better. This is his “alive” moment.
A good life coach will know how to help their clients do three things: first, imagine and re-live the “numb” moments that cut them off from reality (boring work, bad times in a relationship, pain problems etc) – second, find and carefully recreate the “alive” times which help the client feel connected with what’s around them – and lastly, identify the best way to move from “numb” to “alive.” Effective life coaching (in business, relationships, or in productivity) will operate with “pain-joy” as much as with “numb-alive.”