Another Mistake or failure with your English? Don't give up!

My last podcast episode, the one where I was talking about the mistakes I had made on an earlier episode was once again, much to my dismay, not the way I wanted it to be. There were still mistakes, but these mistakes were not because of something I said. It was a mistake in the way I edited my work, and then a mistake in the way the software I use processed that work.

Some of the errors you might have heard My words getting clipped off at times to the sound of being a bit weird at other times came because I was trying to shorten some of the pauses between my words. Another one of the times came because I needed to insert some new audio because I realized that what I had said the first time wasn't exactly clear.

And instead of re recording the entire episode, I re recorded the few words that were not the way I wanted them to be, and then tried to add them in where they belonged. The result was a mismatched audio quality. It just didn't sound right. Now you're likely thinking something along the lines of, okay, I don't care about podcast editing or dealing with audio levels.

I care about getting better on the CELPIP and improving my English. I hear you stay with me. This is related. I promise. I've been wrestling with these sound issues for the past several weeks, maybe even a month, but each time I've not been getting the objective that I've been looking for. A helpful podcast for you that sounds great to listen to.

To be honest, lately I've felt like the audio mistakes have been noticeable enough, at least to me, to make the podcast not as helpful as it can be. Not that they have to be perfect. I know they aren't, and I'm not aiming for perfection. But not with mistakes that make the episode harder to listen to and enjoy.

Wrestling with mistakes with your English that seem to keep appearing. Persistent ones. It's an awful lot like what I've been working through. You're trying to improve. but you don't get the results you're looking for. Not once, but multiple times. Now, if you're anything like me, the results of multiple screw ups and repeated setbacks and failures tend to be awfully demotivating and discouraging.

So today, if you're feeling discouraged because of repeated mistakes or repeatedly not getting the results, you're working hard to achieve, then, You're in the right place. We're going to sit down together. I've got a cup of coffee with me. If you can, why don't you grab one for yourself or something you enjoy drinking and let's talk about this together.

Failing. Mistake making. And then picking yourself up after. That matters. A lot. And we don't, as humans, I think, talk about it enough, and I want to fix that today.

  📍 Well, hello there, and welcome to the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. This is the podcast for motivated English learners who want to speak English fearlessly, and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP exam. I also love to feature encouraging interviews with regular people. Thanks People just like you who are working towards becoming fluent in English so we can learn from their experiences together.

Who am I? My name is Aaron Nelson, and I've been an English teacher for over 17 years. And I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes.

So let's get it right out into the open, shall we? Failing at something totally sucks.

And when failure or making mistakes seem to stick around like gum on the bottom of your shoe, it can leave you feeling so demotivated and maybe even like giving up. After my last podcast episode came out and I heard the sound mistakes hanging off of it, it sent me into a spiral of overthinking.

Should I switch my podcast editor? Maybe I need to go back to our previous editor that I loved to use. Then I remembered how much that editor sucked at transcribing, and I ended up deciding against it. And what about the video editing? My current editor handles both audio and video and transcribes like a champ, meaning it does a great job.

And actually, that's why I've been experiencing so many errors in the last few weeks and months. I've been trying to record my podcast both in audio and in video. And that new medium, that's me stepping into something new. That's me trying to do something differently. And because of that newness, I'm making all these mistakes.

So my thoughts spun around those few points. Should I switch my editor again? Should I go back to that editor that I love so much, but sadly, it doesn't transcribe things very well.

And also sadly, it doesn't do video. Should I just forget about my experiment with doing video podcasts and just stick with the audio one? Oh, I was going around and around in circles all. And frankly, by the end of the week, like yesterday, which I mean, today's Saturday, yesterday, Friday, by the time Friday afternoon rolled around

I was in a funk. You know what that means? When you're in a funk, it means you're feeling down and discouraged. So that was me yesterday. I felt down and discouraged about this podcast. And frankly, I had a few moments of even wondering if I should keep going. And I'm not trying to be dramatic with you when I say that I was honestly having a moment of wondering if I should give up.

I felt like giving up. I really did. And to top it all off, I'm also in the middle of a big transition from one website to another for the CELPIP Success School. And that transition? Moving my courses and all the content from one space to another has been driving me crazy.

So yes, I've had moments this week, and lots of them, where I've felt like giving up because I couldn't see a way through all the obstacles I've been wrestling with. Does that ever happen to you? Maybe you failed on more than one occasion on the CELPIP and you're scared to try again because, well, what if you fail again?

You're not sure if you can handle something like that. Or maybe you've just made another mistake in English in front of a group of native English speakers. And you just want a hole to open up underneath of you so you can vanish inside it. Or maybe you've been working so hard on your English for such a long time and it just feels hopeless.

Like no matter how hard you push, you just can't seem to move forward. That's what we need to talk about today. facing failure and pushing through it. I don't think I talk about failure enough with you. I don't think our society in general talks enough about it. And the result is that we have such an incomplete way of thinking about it.

To me, and I've said this before, failure often seems like something tabu. That means something that you shouldn't be talking about. It feels like something you should avoid doing at all costs. And when you do fail, you need to keep it to yourself because of the shame or the embarrassment that seems to drip off of it.

And because few to nobody talks about their own failures and shortcomings, we tend to think a few things. The first one, we tend to think that I'm the only one who messes up. Everyone else has it all together. The second thing that we think, I suck at this. I suck at English. For me, the things that I was thinking about, I suck at podcasting.

I just can't get it right. The third thing, maybe I should just give up. I just keep messing up. That must mean I'm never going to get this right. I should just let it go. I sure had those thoughts this week. Number four, I can't talk about this with anyone because it's just too embarrassing or shameful for me.

And the result of those four things working and working and circling around in our hearts and in our minds is that we stay stuck and isolated. I get down and so discouraged that I think about giving up. Does that sound pretty accurate to you? It's exactly how I've found myself thinking many times this week.

What about you this week, as I shared a few moments ago, I faced things that didn't turn out the way I wanted them to. I failed to turn out a podcast that was exactly the way I wanted it to be and I ended up overthinking about it and then found myself feeling quite down and discouraged about making podcasts at all, which is really strange for me because I love making this show each week.

It's one of my favorite things to do. But that's just the way discouragement works, isn't it? If it sticks around you long enough, it will kick you down until you find it hard to get back up again in order to work through these past few days, here's what I've been doing. Maybe it will help you too. Number one, I've been taking my own medicine. I have shared repeatedly in this podcast that mistake making is a sign of progress. If you're making mistakes, that means you're actually trying to do something.

You're in motion. If you're not making a single mistake, it's likely because you're not doing anything new with your English. Or what you're using it for has become so comfortable for you that you're not challenging yourself anymore. Remember this. Mistakes mean you're taking risks and trying to use the English you have to communicate.

With my ongoing podcast mistake situation, I had to tell myself this repeatedly this week. Making mistakes with my podcast means I'm still making progress. And I am. I'm trying to step into a new way. of reaching an audience. I'm trying to not just do audio, which has become kind of easy for me. And instead I'm trying to do something new and more difficult for me and scary for me, which is creating these video podcasts.

That for me is hard. That for me is scary, just like I'm sure you find using English in different situations hard and scary for you. So when I'm saying this, that mistake making is actually a sign of progress. I really believe it. I'm not just spouting something off that I heard somewhere and I thought it was something good to share.

No, I really do believe with all my heart that when you are making a mistake, it's because you're trying to do something that maybe nobody else is trying to do. And when you make those mistakes, We need to remind ourselves, Hey, I'm trying, I'm doing something. And because I'm doing something, of course, I'm going to make mistakes.

It's normal. It's natural. And when I'm doing something that I've never really done before, How else can we make progress? I mean, there's just no other way to move forward, is there? You've got to fall down. You got to pick yourself up. You got to fall down again and pick yourself up. I don't know anybody who is able to do something the first time without any mistakes or without any errors or without any failures.

In fact, the majority of people that I know They only make progress as they fall down and get back up again and fall down and get back up again. And you know what I'm talking about. Mistake making means you're making progress. It means you're in motion. It means you're doing something. You got to tell yourself that.

And I needed to tell myself that repeatedly this week.

So yeah, I'm going to continue to grow and get better. If I keep going. So will you. I had to change the things I was telling myself instead of, Ugh, I suck at this. Maybe I should just give up. I had to change that soundtrack in my head to be, I'm making progress. I'm making mistakes because I'm trying something new, and if I wasn't trying something new, I wouldn't be growing and developing my skills.

I had to keep telling my myself that this week and change the sound in my head. Maybe you need to do that. as well. The second thing, what can I learn from my mistake? You know, even as I say this out loud, I realized that it sounds so cliche. It sounds so cliche. You can learn from your mistakes. I know, I know it does sound cliche, but you know, something cliches usually are based on something that is actually true.

I've started thinking seriously about why the mistakes I noticed in my last few podcasts were happening. And I've already figured out a few things that I can control and change. And I won't bore you with what those things are, but I bet. If you look at what you did that led to your mistake with English or a lower than hoped for score on the CELPIP, I bet if you look hard enough, you can spot a few things that you can do that are in your control, that you can be working on that will help you to fix the problem for the future.

Mistakes can help us by bringing focus on what needs to be improved. If we ignore the lesson that a mistake can give us, we'll end up repeating it down the road. What can your mistake in English teach you? For me, my mistakes are pointing me towards needing to learn a certain feature inside of my podcast editor.

It's, I know exactly which one it is, and I also know which feature I need to use less of. After thinking about it, I realized that I was overusing one of the features to help, one of the features to help reduce the spaces in between. Some of my words because of that reduction in space. I think this is my my hypothesis.

I think that those reductions of space were kind of clipping or cutting off my voice in places. So I've decided that I'm not going to use that feature so much in the in the next few episodes, and I will see if that creates the result that I'm hoping for. The third thing is this get around people who are working towards the same thing as you.

It's so helpful to be able to hear another person's story of struggle as they are working towards something similar as you. This week, podcasts on purpose, all about podcasting and entrepreneurship. I looked for the content. to try to surround myself with people who are doing the same thing as me. The hosts that I found were sharing about some of their own failures and challenges that they've been working to overcome.

I'm also part of a creative community, a community of entrepreneurs who are trying to build their online business. I pay to be a part of that community. I pay so that I can surround myself with people who are trying to do the same thing as me. I don't have many friends in the real world, Who are trying to do this, so I needed to go and look for it myself, and I'm in this community so that I can share my struggles.

I'm in this community so I can learn from their successes. I'm in this community so I can share and help someone else, and being a part of that community has helped me grow. as a business person, as an entrepreneur, as someone who's trying to build and develop a business and a podcast. I've learned a lot from them.

And I've been greatly encouraged from being a part of that community. I think that that's something that's important for you to

when you move to Canada, you started you're basically starting from zero, aren't you? You don't have very many friends around you. Probably. You probably don't have a huge network of family that you can rely on. Everything is from zero and you're trying to build your life up from that beginning point. And it's not always easy.

In fact, it's usually pretty hard, pretty challenging. And if you're going at this on your own, it can be so much more difficult. I know when my wife and I arrived here, we were blessed in that we had my family. Not much else. We had to start building our network of friends around us because we didn't live close to our family.

I still had to build, we still had to build friendships. We still had to find a job. We still had the network. We still had to build up a community around us so that we can succeed. And I don't know of anyone who can do well all on their own. And so that's what I want to encourage you with as well today.

If you've been struggling through your developing your English skills, if you've been struggling to try to set up your life here in Canada, don't do it alone. Look around you and see if you can begin connecting with other people who are trying to do the same thing as you. It's so encouraging to know that there are people just like you who are working towards the same things as you.

It will help you to feel less isolated. It will help you to feel understood because their story seems pretty similar to your story. Maybe not exactly the same, but the troubles and the struggles that they're facing and overcoming are very similar to you. And it just helps you to know, Hey, I'm not alone.

I'm not the only one struggling with this. And maybe I can learn from their experience. situation as well.

I mean, for me, when I heard the stories that I was listening to on the podcast, and when I was, uh, was getting involved in the community that I'm a member of for entrepreneurs, it cheered me up. It helped me to see my situation in a different way. And I didn't feel like I was the only one going through this anymore.

So my question for you is, who do you have around you? Who can cheer you on? If you're feeling discouraged and like maybe giving up on your English or your CELPIP goals is the thing to do.

Finding that support community can be tough, especially if you are a newcomer to Canada. And if you're looking for that community where you can be encouraged as you work towards your CELPIP or English goals, and if you're tired of trying to figure out what to do to get ready for the CELPIP on your own, then come and join the CELPIP Success School.

Not only will you get access to practical courses that will help you develop your skills for the exam, but you'll also get friendly support and feedback from me through weekly live classes. You'll also get to meet other students who are working towards the same goals as you, so you can begin sharing your experiences, your struggles with them, and get encouragement and feedback from them as well.

Stop trying to do this on your own. Join a community of other newcomers to Canada who are working towards speaking English fearlessly and conquering the CELPIP exam. To join, go to celpipsuccess.com/listener and you'll get a 25 percent discount when you sign up. So, what I want to leave you with is this.

Failure doesn't make you a failure. A mistake means you're making progress because you're actually trying to use your English. Don't let that mistake tell you something that isn't true. We need to hear this repeatedly. I need to hear this repeatedly so that we remember it when we need it most. So that's why I'm sharing this with you, not to be repetitive, but to encourage you, because I know that some days you just need someone to tell you, you're not a failure, keep going, you can do this.

Don't give up. Don't stop. Keep pushing. You'll make it. You can do this. That's why I'm sharing this episode with you today. I hope it's encouraged you. I hope it's lifted you up. If you felt like giving up today and thank you so much for listening. And like I said, just a few moments ago, if you're looking for that supportive community where you can practice your English skills, get ready for the CELPIP exam, and also just be around others who are trying to do the same thing as you, then

join the CELPIP Success community today. It's at celpipsuccess.com/listener. And if you join, you'll get a 25 percent discount. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back again next week. Have a great week. Bye bye.