A few days ago I was watching a guy picking wilberries, he was waist deep in the thorny bushes all sweaty under the scorching sun. He didn’t mind getting all scratched and sunburnt. I spoke to him about the quality of the berries and he admitted having picked only dry or unripe ones as none was actually sweet or ripe.
Why am I telling you this?
well, cause that is an example of commitment, of doing something for the sake of it. He liked it despite all the discomforts of the environment.
There are many of them out there, fishermen spending hours waiting for a catch, Knitters spending over 50 hours just to make a jumper, people training dogs, so many of them putting hours in, dedicating their time to something. It does’t really matter whether the fish they catch is tiny or the jumper is too tight or the dog just learns a coupe of tricks.
Any result is satisfying and worth the effort.
So my question for you is, why are you actually doing it?
Why are you here? why do you wan to learn it?
It might be a simple question, and it is, but it is not an easy one to answer.
This does not only apply to learning a language, anything you set your mind to.
You see, when doing something, learning something, we have a goal, a project or we do it just for fun, to please ourselves, to entertain ourselves.
Well, my piece of advice is, find the reason why you are doing it.
If you don’t know it yet it’s probably because you’re not doing it for fun…
In these years of teaching I have had many students obsessed with the quality of the berries, the size of the fish, the beauty of the jumper and the tricks they could teach their dogs.
Let me tell you they were not happy with the results, they kept being hard on themselves for not being good at what they were doing.
My point is, you don’t have to be great at what you are doing to enjoy it.
So get out there and just do it.
