How to find your motivation to practice your English and get ready for the CELPIP

How do you keep going when all you want to do is just give up? How do you get yourself to study and prepare for the self-hip or to practice your English when you don't feel motivated to do it anymore? Today, I want to share a message that came in from one of my clients that really resonated

with me. He says, I lack motivation to practice. I feel like I'm struggling to stay motivated. I can't even find a way to practice anymore.

How can I encourage myself to learn and keep on going? This resonated with me because it voiced exactly what I have also been struggling with the past few weeks. A strong feeling of I'm just not motivated to do much of anything right now other than

curl up under a warm blanket and read or watch Netflix. Yeah, I feel where my student is coming from. Just not feeling motivated these days. That got me to thinking about this a lot. And I begin to wonder why is this lack of motivation happening in the first place? It's not how I normally feel, though lately

It sure has been feeling like the normal thing I feel. But where is it coming from? And can I do something about it to get my motivation back? And I was thinking about you too.

I know you struggle with this as well. Days or weeks where you just don't want to practice. You just don't want to think about speaking tasks or reading skills for the self-hip.

And not only do you not want to think about it, you simply check out of your practice sessions for days or weeks at a time. I bet you know the feeling, right? The initial excitement has faded and now practice feels like a grind.

And maybe, just maybe you find yourself wondering to yourself if maybe you should just quit. Or where did my motivation go? I've lost it. I know I've been feeling those words these past few weeks. And so ever since my student voice, what I was thinking, I started researching to see if I could find some ideas

to help me and you, us, through these dips, if there is anything at all that we can do. So today, if you're dealing with a lack of motivation, I hope what I'm learning about can help you. And to be totally honest with you, I'm learning about this for me as well. Hi, I'm Aaron. Welcome to the self and success podcast. This is the podcast for motivated

English learners just like you learn how to speak English fearlessly, and practical tips and strategies to conquer the self-pity. Okay, so the first thing I want to share with you today comes from being surprised by what I've found as I've researched for today's episode.

That first surprise is this. Motivation, according to writer James Clear, and contrary to common opinion, including my own, is not something that we should wait for in order to act. to this quote from James Clear. And I quote, What are the most surprising things about motivation

is that it often comes after starting a new behavior, not before. We have this common misconception that motivation arrives as a result of passively consuming a motivational video or reading an inspirational book. However, active inspiration can be a far more powerful motivator. Motivating Motivation is often the result of action, not the cause of it.

Getting started, even in very small ways, is a form of active inspiration that naturally produces momentum." Now, that was an aha moment for me, and I'll be linking to his article in my Shunos today if you'd like to check his workout.

Aha for me was don't wait for motivation to come to you. You can act your way into being motivated. Motivation is a result of action taking, not the cause of it. And now that I think about it, I've seen this idea in action quite frequently. Maybe you have too. Even in the creation of today's podcast episode, the one that you're listening to right now, it happened. Like I

I share before I've been feeling rather down on things lately. Before I started working on today's episode, I knew I needed to do it. I knew the topic I wanted to cover, but I didn't feel up to doing it. I thought I didn't feel motivated to sit down and work out what I wanted to talk about. But once I got up, moved upstairs to my bedroom office

and started typing, I felt my excitement flow back in. And I'm definitely motivated to share what I'm learning about with you. My motivation came from taking action. Have you noticed this in your own life? And that leads to James James Clear's next idea. Once you get started, it's easier to stay in motion. He calls it the physics of

productivity. This is Newton's first law but applied to habits. Objects of motion tend to stay in motion. And when it comes to taking action on something you know you need to do, but you don't feel too motivated to do it, just getting started can be all you need because nearly all the friction you're facing comes mostly at the start or at the beginning.

That moment when you have to get off your sofa, turn off Netflix and begin to practice. In my case, to come upstairs, sit down here at my desk to prepare this episode. The friction was at the start when I was still on the sofa watching TV. Once you're moving, it's easier to keep going until you finish.

Here's a takeaway for you. waiting to feel inspired to study or to prepare for yourself of exam. Focus instead on just getting started. Growing up, my favorite hockey team was the Montreal Canadians. I was a massive fan. My

brother and I even collected hockey cards together. We had thousands of them and I And I don't even want to think about how much money we spent on those cards. And the Montreal Canadiens, well I had everything on them. But there is this one player in particular that I loved to watch.

His name was Patrick Wah and he was the goaltender at the time. He was my hero. And one of the things that I loved watching was his pre-game ritual. Every single game, while the other players were out skating around the rink to warm up,

he did something completely different. He did several stretches, and then skated back and forth between the two goal posts of his net, hitting the post with the flat part of his goalie stick.