If you keep putting it off, it will NEVER become easier.
My experience in Brazil
In 1995, I went to Brazil on an 11-month student exchange.
I’d done a very short ‘Introduction to Portuguese’ course about a month before I went, which, it turns out, was just long enough to forget virtually everything I’d learned.
Those who know me might want to sit down for this revelation… I was virtually silent for the first couple of months I was there!
Why? Because I didn’t want to make a mistake. I didn’t want to mispronounce the right word, or use the wrong word.
And that was a huge handbrake on my language learning, and on my ability to connect with those around me.
One day, out of sheer frustration, I unleashed a torrent of words on my poor host family, trying to explain how isolated, sad, and alone I felt.
Turns out, that was the best thing I could have done.
By expressing (or at least attempting to express) how I was feeling, I got over my fear of saying the wrong thing – it was more important to get my thoughts and feelings across than it was to get things exactly right.
And from then on, I got to talking, and everyone around me responded with enthusiasm, teaching me the language, and correcting my mistakes with good humour.
Even with all that support, learning Portuguese was HARD.
The change
But within nine months, I had to show my foreigners’ identity card to Brazilians to prove I hadn’t been born there.
By the time I returned to New Zealand, I spoke with a Brazilian accent, and made lots of grammatical errors, as I was thinking in Portuguese and translating to English on the fly.
What was once one of the hardest things I’d ever done had become so easy that it overtook my mother tongue!
And even now, nearly 30 years later, I can still carry on a conversation in Portuguese with very little effort.
How can you take one step today towards that difficult thing you’ve been putting off?
