Essential Step 6

Hi, this is AJ from Effortless English and Learn Real English. And it’s time for the next step, Step Number 6 of the 7 Essential Steps for Change and Leadership. So you’ve learned five quite powerful steps, going from very general steps to very specific. And we’re getting more and more specific now. Now in the last step, Step Number 5, you learned the importance of destroying and scrambling old patterns, old behaviors, old habits. You’ve got to destroy those old ones first, very, very important.

However, if you only do that, you’re probably not going to make the big improvement, the big change, that you want. And if this is a leadership situation, if you only help someone else do that, you only help them to break the old behavior but you don’t help them with this step, again it’s probably not enough. They may change a little bit and then go right back to the old behavior. Or, the worst thing is, you change that old behavior but a new one replaces it that’s also bad, right?

So what we have to do for Step Number 6 is create empowering beliefs and a vision. Create an empowering belief structure and vision. In other words, we’re now going to add in something very positive and empowering, right? We scrambled and destroyed the old pattern and now we’re going to add in what we want. But it’s very important that when you add something in that you have to have the beliefs that will really make you do it. You’ve got to really believe it deep down that, yes, this is real, this is true, this is going to happen. I can do it. I will do it. That’s very, very important. And then, of course, you also need to decide and identify the exact specific behavior that you want to do instead of that old thing. Alright, so again, we’re going to replace those old behaviors now and those old beliefs, consciously, with specific new ones. That’s Step Number 6, right? Create empowering beliefs and behaviors and vision.

Okay, so how are we going to do this? Let’s just kind of go step by step, an easy way. There are many techniques that we can use for this but I’ll just teach you something very, very simple.

The first thing you want to do is you just want to sit down sometime alone and just imagine five years into the future. Five years into the future, imagine into the future, and you’ve already made the change that you want. You’ve already accomplished the goal that you want. It’s already happened. It’s real, it’s done. Okay, so you kind of…let’s say, your, again, simple goal of speaking English effortlessly, easily, fluently, very, very clearly, quickly, all of those things.

So you want to sit down. You imagine yourself five years from now in the future. And you just imagine yourself speaking English perfectly, or however you want to speak English. And you would really make this a very strong image. Number one, you would see yourself doing it. You would see the benefits of this behavior. Number two, you would actually hear yourself. You would hear other people complimenting you, for example. You would hear yourself speaking really well. You would hear and experience what’s happening. And then most importantly, you would feel the benefits of this change. So in other words, you would feel the pride. You would feel the confidence. You would have that wonderful feeling having accomplished something, of having accomplished something, right? And probably that’s the most important step. So you’ve really got to imagine. It’s already done. It happened already. I did it.

Wow, I feel fantastic because of this. Okay, so you want to get that clear vision in your mind. That’s the first step, the first piece of Step Number 6.

Now the second thing is you have to establish new beliefs about yourself. What does that mean? Well it means, okay, if that’s true, if it’s real, it’s already happened, what would you need to believe about yourself? Or what would you believe about yourself after the change has happened? Again, let’s imagine that you imagine yourself and you’re speaking English extremely well. Well, what beliefs would you have in that situation, in the future? Well, you’d probably believe, well, I am a fantastic fluent English speaker. That might be one of the beliefs you would have. You might also have the belief of, oh, speaking English is easy and fun. I love it. I’m great at speaking English, right? These are all ideas. They’re all beliefs that confident English speakers have.

Of course, because I’m a native speaker and I learned it as a baby, these beliefs are very deep within my mind, right? I believe that English is super easy and natural. Well, it’s effortless. Of course, you have the same feeling about your own native language. Well, if you want to really speak super confidently, you’ve got to have those beliefs, too. And the tricky part is you actually need those beliefs before you make the change. Because those beliefs will help it actually happen.

So you see, you imagine it. Then you identify some beliefs that you want to have or need to have. And you write them down. A good way to start is just put “I am…” I am, and then write out what the belief is. I am a fantastic English speaker. I am a confident English speaker. Whatever you need to do. Okay, so that’s the second part of this is to identify the powerful beliefs that you need.

And then finally, third is you need to identify the specific behaviors, the exact very specific behaviors that you need to make the change happen. So what would those behaviors be? Using the example of speaking fantastic English, well obviously one of those behaviors would be listening to English every day, maybe an hour, maybe two hours. And maybe part of that, too, would be listening to English every day and enjoying it, smiling, laughing, having a good time, really enjoying it thoroughly. That might be an important for you. I don’t know.

You need to identify the very specific habits and behaviors. You can even get more specific. You might identify the exact time of day that you want to listen to English. You might see yourself immediately waking up and turning on, y’know, an English lesson or an audio book or something, as soon as you woke up. Or you might see yourself going for a walk with your headphones on, listening to English. Or you might see yourself doing it before bed, the more specific the image, the better, because you really, really, really want to find specific behaviors. These are going to replace those old ones, right?

Instead of watching TV, you’re going to listen to English and you’ll be smiling while you do it. Instead of sitting on your butt in front of the computer, you’re going to go out walking with your iPod listening to English. Whatever it is, identify those very, very, very, very specific behaviors that you need to establish every day to reach your goal, to make that change. And if this is a leadership situation, you need to identify the very specific behaviors that your people need to do every day in order to reach the goal that you have for them, so that you can communicate those specific behaviors. You want to certainly help them change their beliefs, but you also, of course, need to tell them exactly what they need to do. People need that if you’re in a leadership situations.

So, what’s Step Number 6? Very clear, very simple…create new empowering beliefs, a new empowering vision of the future, and new specific behaviors to replace the old habits. Now when you get those specific behaviors, it’s not enough just to identify them. You’ll write them down. But then what you need to do is every day, several times a day, you want to imagine yourself. See yourself actually doing those things.

So you might sit down and close your eyes for a minute and see yourself listening to your iPod while you’re walking. And you’d see yourself again doing it. Then you’d repeat that image again and again and again in your mind, maybe four or five minutes. And then later in the day you might sit down again and you just see that image of yourself with your iPod, listening to English and going for a walk. And you would repeat that imagine again and again and again and again, several times in the afternoon and then maybe again at night.

And you do this for several days for several weeks. Do it every single day for several weeks. And this way, you’re kind of programming your mind with the new behavior. And if you do this enough, your mind will actually accept that programming and you’ll find yourself wanting to do that. Kind of automatically grabbing the iPod and going for a walk. Especially if you followed Step Number 5, if you got rid of and broke the old habit. And now you’re programming in the new one by imagining the new behavior constantly, all of this will happen more easily and effortlessly and very, very powerfully. That’s why this works so well. But you’ve got to follow the steps and you’ve got to do them in order. And you have to do every one of them. Okay, so again, Step 6, create the new empowering beliefs, the new empowering vision and the new specific behaviors that you want to do. There’s just one more step left. And, of course, that will be Step Number 7 for the next webinar, the next video.

Okay, have a great day and I’ll see you for that one. Bye-bye.