Hello and welcome to the English Like a Native podcast. I'm Anna, and today I want to talk to you about something that's been on my mind recently. Not just about English, but about progress. Let me take you back around four years. I had a toddler, Jacob, and my babe in arms, Caspian. And I remember feeling really unhappy. Because as a perfectionist, as a minimalist, as somebody who likes order, harmony, and beauty, I looked around my environment, the place where I spent most of my time, and all I saw was chaos and clutter and mess. My environment didn't match my expectation of what life and home should be. And so feeling frustrated at the time, I decided that I would do something about it. And I thought, I can't do many big things, nothing dramatic. I can't go knocking down walls and replacing windows and things like that. But I did have the power to do little things regularly. So I thought, well, I'll set myself a challenge of trying to improve my space, my environment, a little bit every week. A 1% improvement every week. And over time, that will be a huge improvement. Now, fast forward four years, and my house is shaping up to be a home that I love. And I wonder when we get to the point of selling the house, will I ever want to leave? Will I be happy parting with this beautiful home that I've worked so hard to build? One example of an improvement I made was putting up a herb shelf in my kitchen. It sounds so silly, such a little thing, but it made such a big difference. I spend an extraordinary amount of time in the kitchen preparing meals from scratch, and I'm often reaching for my herbs and spices. Now, in the past, the spices and herbs were kept in a little drawer on the opposite side of the kitchen to where my hob is. So where I would be preparing my food and cooking on the hob, the herbs and spices were behind me on the other side of the kitchen. So installing a herb rack right next to the hob was just such a big change, and it's something that still brings a smile to my face. Having everything I need to hand makes life so much easier. Even though it's just a small change, it made a big difference. Another change was implementing an art bucket, or you might say an art bin. My children bring home so much artwork from school every day. They're like little artists. They have reams and reams of paper spilling out of their rucksacks, and they are so proud of the work they've done, they can't bear to see it go straight into the recycling. So we have an art bin. And I say, please put your artwork into the special box so that we can go through it at a later date and decide what we still want to keep and what we're going to recycle. And the children are happy with that, and it means that I don't have art all over the house, unwanted art all over the house. And so that was a little change that was easy to implement that has made such a big difference. And another thing that I love to do is to rearrange furniture. We have a large conservatory at the back of our house, and this room is the heart of the home because it's the room that gets so much natural light and it looks out onto our beautiful garden. But because there's lots of glass, in the summer at certain times of the day, it can be a little bit too exposed in terms of the sunlight, and then in the winter it can also be quite cold if you're close to the windows. So over the years I've rearranged the furniture in there a number of times to find the best setup for each season, and now I've cracked it. So when it starts warming up, I move things to the summer setting, and when it cools down and the nights get darker, I move the room back into the winter setting, and this makes me very happy. None of these changes were huge. I wasn't taking out walls, replacing roofs, building extensions. I didn't take days off to do them, they were small. But every time I did one of these small things, I noticed it. I still notice it, and every time it makes me smile. I have this quiet sense of ah, that's better. Things feel calmer, easier, and I feel more in control. And that's what got me thinking about how improvement works. I'm not just talking about in the home, I'm talking about in anything, in your English. But most people, when they think about progress, they think about big things, they think about breakthrough moments, they think about a sudden jump from one level to the next. But in reality, it's much more subtle than that. It's small changes stacked up over time, just 1% better day by day. Now, let me really link this directly to your English speaking because I see this all the time with learners. Most of the people I work with directly, my students, they are hard working. They watch lessons all the time, they listen to podcasts daily, they have lists of vocabulary that they try to learn with their flashcards and their apps on a regular basis. And I understand that that feels productive, but they still have a nervousness when it comes to speaking. They hesitate, they feel stuck, they feel like they can't be themselves. And the reason is quite simple. It's because they're focusing on acquiring knowledge and not enough on application. There's a really important idea here. Learning something gives you a little boost, that feeling of, ooh, I'm improving, I'm doing something. But if you don't use it, then nothing actually changes. So if I had 30 days to improve my speaking, I'd focus on my growth cycle. The growth cycle is a loop. It's something I repeat every single day. And it goes something like this. You try something, you look at what happened, you make a small adjustment, and then you go again. That's it. And it might sound a bit underwhelming, but this is where real progress happens. So the growth cycle is broken into three parts. Number one, try and apply. Number two, review and reflect. And number three, plan and improve. So let's bring this into your English first. Try and apply. This is the bit most people avoid because it means actually speaking. Without preparation, without hesitation, not thinking I'll do it later, just speaking. So you would pick up your phone, perhaps, you would open up the recording voice memo application that every phone seems to have in built. You'd press record and you just start talking. You could even video yourself. Set yourself a topic, it might be what have you done today, and then just speak. And you might say, This morning I wake up late, I make coffee, I go to work. Is it perfect? No. Does it matter? Also, no. Because this step, try and apply, this step is all about breaking the habit of only consuming English. This is all about using English. So then we move on to the next step. You have your recording. So now we go on to step number two, review and reflect. And this is where things get interesting. You pause, you watch the video, and you think about what's just happened. Where did you struggle? What didn't sound quite right? What felt difficult? Maybe you notice the tense. I wake up. Ah, it should be past tense. I woke up. So that's a tiny moment of awareness. Even that, just noticing your own mistake, that's progress. That's you improving. Picking up mistakes, becoming aware of errors is a huge step. And what's really interesting, and this comes straight from the idea of reflection, is that sometimes just noticing something means that next time you will automatically be better. So then we move on to that next time. Now that you've reflected and reviewed, then we're on to step three, plan and improve. So you take one small thing, just one, and you improve it. Not everything is important that you don't try to fix everything at once. You just focus on one item. Maybe today you'll focus on your tenses. Maybe tomorrow the pronunciation of something. And the next day, maybe you'll focus on reducing your filler sounds and your filler words. And this is important because most people try to fix everything at once and end up fixing nothing. So then you go again. You've done one growth cycle. You tried and applied, you reviewed and reflected, and then you plan and improve. You speak, you notice, you adjust, you speak, you notice, you adjust, you keep doing cycle after cycle. I do it all the time with my content. Many of the short form videos I put out on platforms like Instagram look relatively effortless. Like I've picked up the camera and just said a few words when in fact I've probably repeated that recording 20 times. I record it, I review it, I think I can do better, so I change something, I record it again, I review it. I don't like something else, so I make a plan to improve it. I try again until I end up with a final version that I'm happy with. So every piece of content that I put out has usually gone through many cycles. And here's something I really want you to take away. Something that I really love. This idea of mastery, to master something. It isn't something you really reach. It's not something you finally get to and you're done. It's something that you live. It's continuous. There is no finish line. It isn't a mountain with a peak. It's a mountain that you climb and you look out, and you're in a range of mountains with many peaks. It's a continuous thing, and you keep going around this cycle, improving each time, getting better and better. We are all perpetual students. And suddenly this becomes exactly like improving your home. You don't do everything in one day, you just keep making small upgrades, and then one day you look around and everything feels different. And you remember four years ago, you were in exactly the same spot and you were unhappy, but now you've made real progress. Now you're happier. Your English knowledge is the same, but the activation is different. You didn't just wake up one day and feel fluent, you made slow, incremental improvements. Now, if I had only 30 days to improve my speaking, I would not focus on learning more. I would focus on activation. I would focus on my growth cycles, making sure that I was activating the knowledge that I have every single day for 30 days. If you do this for 30 days, you'll notice you hesitate less. You find words more easily, and you feel more confident because you've done at least 30 cycles. Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, yes, Anna, this makes sense, but I also know I won't do this every day. And honestly, that's most people. Most of us like the idea, but lack the push, the motivation. Well, then I've got something for you. I've teamed up with Teacher AI to run a 30-day speaking challenge, and it's built around this exact idea. You don't just learn, you apply, you reflect, you improve every single day. So you don't have to think, what should I do today? You just show up. I will give you the structure, I will guide you and help you to build the habit. Now, if you do want to join me and the others, then you can. The link is in the description. Now, if you click on this link and find that you're too late to join the challenge, don't worry. You still have the opportunity to practice speaking, and there will be future challenges for you to get involved with. But if you are quick and you join the challenge with me, then just focus on showing up, not being perfect, just showing up. Because those small daily improvements really add up. Alright. That's all from me for today. I'm going to go and rearrange my herb shelf. I'll speak to you again very soon. Until then, take care and goodbye.