This question can change everything for your CELPIP Prep

Speaker A: 00:00:00

This week I listened to a podcast interview with a fifth grade teacher who helped her underperforming students increase their reading skills from a grade two and three reading level to their target fifth grade reading level in just one year.

In the interview, the teacher talked about the amazing journey she and her students went on and all the hard work they put in to achieve that objective. She then shared a powerful question she would ask her students. And my friend, this question has been in my mind all week long.

It's been so helpful and encouraging for me and I knew as soon as I heard it that I wanted to share it with you because I think it will hopefully encourage and inspire you too. Do you want to find out what that question is? Keep listening and I'll tell you all about it.

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, people 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'm a certified CELPIP trainer and I now help students prepare for the CELPIP exam through online classes. Okay, so I'm going to get right to what that question was. Are you ready? It is. How did you show up for yourself today?

Now, in the context of the interview that I was telling you about, the teacher explained that because her students were so far behind in their reading, she had to often go back and teach them concepts she had never taught before, concepts that she herself had to learn first before she could pass it on to them.

She explained that oftentimes she had to learn about the topic she was going to teach a few days before she actually taught it, and she'd openly let her students know about it. She said, and I quote, I don't know this, so I'm going to make sure I go home and do the work and we're going to learn together.

She went on to share that it got to a point where students would be so excited to learn because they knew their teacher was putting in the extra work to learn to teach something that wasn't a part of what she normally had to teach. And when their next class came around, she said she would often encourage her students by telling them, hey, I did my part this weekend.

How did you show up for yourself today? That was the question that stuck out to me. How did you show up for yourself today?

Now there are many ways people use this question, but the definition I'm going to use here today, the definition that I've been thinking about and the definition that I think she that teacher was thinking about was this. Showing up for yourself means did you follow through with what you said you were going to do? In other words, doing what you say you'll do.

Boy, that's been a tricky topic for me over the past year. How about you doing what you say you'll do? And let me clarify even farther here with you.

What I'm thinking about right now as I share this with you is not about doing what I'll say I'll do with and for other people. That's not what I have in mind. Instead, it's doing what I tell myself that I'm going to do.

Keeping my word to myself as I was just sharing this has been a tricky topic for me in some areas. I think I do a great job of showing up for myself, of keeping my word to myself, doing what I tell myself I'm going to do.

I'm usually pretty good at doing that and this podcast is an example of it. This is now episode 97 of my podcast, almost 100 episodes in, and I'm so excited about reaching this milestone.

97 episodes is almost two years of showing up each week to record a new episode. It's also two years of me showing up for myself because this podcast is something I told myself that I needed and wanted to do in order to help you.

I've shown up for myself in other ways too, but this podcast is a big one for me. But there are other areas in my life where I haven't been showing up. One of those areas has been lurking in my bathroom.

Our tub has been having rust problems for over a year. It started small, but eventually the rust began to crawl along the bottom of the tub, taking over larger and larger areas.

My mother in law, who is an architect, said something to me one time when she came to visit. She said, you know that rust is going to eventually eat through your tub one day and it's going to cause a big problem.

It doesn't look like anything big now, but but if you don't do something to fix it, you're going to have a huge problem on your hands down the road. Of course I knew she was right. But you know what? I don't know how to fix it. I'm not that much of a handyman.

I do like working with Tools and working on things, but it's not something that I'm good at.

And because I wasn't sure what to do, and because I felt like I wouldn't be very good at fixing this issue, I kept putting the job off and telling myself, I can't do it today. Maybe next weekend when I have more time or this classic one.

This is going to cost a lot of money to fix, and right now we don't have that much extra in the budget to spend. Maybe next month will be better. Well, let me tell you something.

All that putting off all that excuse making and procrastinating has turned into a couple of years. Yep. I'll admit that to you, my dear friend, I've been ignoring a growing problem for years.

I know that rust is going to cause us really big problems one day, but I haven't done anything about it. Not because I didn't want to or didn't care, but because I didn't know how to do what I needed to do. And so the rust continued to slowly spread.

And every morning when I have a shower, the rest would be there waiting for me. Now, I know rust doesn't speak, but man, I swear I could hear it in my thoughts.

I could hear it saying, I'm getting worse, I'm getting bigger, and I'm going to give you big trouble. At what point I did try covering it with a special kind of paint, which did solve the problem for a few months. But you know what?

Eventually the paint began to dissolve because it wasn't the solution that it needed to be. The rust was starting to return. So I tried painting it again. But over the past few weeks, I've noticed that it was peeling off again.

And the rust has been whispering to me, I'm back, I'm getting bigger, and you can't stop me. Of course, my tub is not actually talking to me, but like I said, it sure feels like it. I know I need to do something about this problem.

And every day I'd see it. I'd tell myself, I need to fix this. I'm going to fix it. I'm going to find a way to fix it on the weekend when I have more time.

But each weekend would come and go, but I didn't do what I told myself I would do and what I knew I needed to do. And boy, that's a terrible feeling.

Have you ever been there knowing you need to do something, Telling yourself that you will do something, but you don't actually do it? Yeah, it's discouraging, isn't it?

At least that's how I felt Every time I went into that bathroom or had a shower, I look down at the tub and just feel discouraged.

Listening to the teacher I told you about at the beginning of this episode and thinking about the questions she asked her students was so helpful for me. As soon as I heard it, I immediately thought about the bathtub.

I knew I needed to finally follow through with what I've been telling myself that I would do. But this time I wouldn't do what I had been doing all this time, trying to paint over the problem.

So I started to research some more and found a different solution. And this weekend, the one that just passed, I decided that I would show up for myself finally and do what I've been telling myself I would do.

And you know what? I'm excited to say that I did it. I found the tools I needed at my local hardware store and it wasn't as hard to find as I thought it would be.

It also wasn't as expensive as I feared it might be either, and I went to work. It took me all Saturday afternoon to get the tub sanded down and prepped and finally covered with a special epoxy.

It's like a thick, very smelly paint like covering designed to repair this kind of damage. And at the time of recording this, I have only covered the damaged area of our tub with a first protective coat.

I will need to add another layer in order to really have it finished. But let me tell you something. I feel so excited and happy that I finally showed up for myself. I did what I told myself I was going to do.

It's such a good feeling because I know I'm finally doing the right things to fix the problem.

Now, I know this was a long story, but I'm sharing it with you today because I wanted to share that question with you because maybe you need to hear it. How have you showed up for yourself this week?

And when I ask you this question, it's not meant to be me pointing my finger at you or shaming you in any way. No, I want to encourage you with it. Just like I felt encouraged by it. For you to be showing up for yourself with what you are working on.

Maybe for you it's your English skills or studying for the CELPIP exam, which I know can feel the same way. My bathtub problem felt to me so big of a challenge that I didn't know what to do to solve it or to begin working on it properly.

Whatever your thing is, I want to encourage you to show up for yourself this week and make an agreement with yourself. I'm not going to put this off any longer, or I'm not going to continue doing things that aren't actually helping me solve this problem.

I'm going to show up.

And if you're already taking those important steps to be showing up for yourself with what you're working towards, I want to encourage you to keep going, to not give up, even if it feels like it's taking a real long time to achieve the objective that you're working towards. Because some things, like learning a language, for example, do take a long time of hard work and practice. Years of it. Same thing with podcasting.

By the way, the podcaster who got me into podcasting with his show has been producing an episode a week for decades, all on the same topic, helping people to learn about podcasting and launch their own show.

His show and his advice has helped me so much when I felt like giving up and he frequently shares stats that it takes a podcast about three years for it to find a solid audience. Three years.

He also points to stats that say most podcasts don't even make it past their seventh episode because the creator decides to give up after not getting instant results. Three years is a long time to be pushing in the same direction in order to accomplish something, isn't it?

But that's what it takes to achieve the results you're looking for. Sometimes years of showing up for yourself as you use your growing English skills, for example, each day. And if that's you today, well done.

Keep working towards your objective, keep using your English each day with the people around you, and keep taking the steps you need to be taking to get ready for your CELPIP exam. And let me remind you to be asking yourself the great question that sparked this episode off in the first place.

It's a question you can be asking often how am I showing up for myself this week? Thanks for listening to this week's episode. I hope it has encouraged you to keep going towards your goal, whatever it might be.

I hope you'll return next Tuesday for the next episode. Thanks for listening. Bye.