- Your friends, peers, and co-workers,
who speak better English than you,
are irrelevant.
Here's why.
Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls,
I'm Julian Northbrook from DoingEnglish.com,
here with another quick two-minute
English learning tip for you.
I always say that and these videos are almost
never two minutes long though, are they?
Whatever.
Very common thing that comes up
in my conversations
with potential clients, clients,
all kinds of people trying to fix
and improve their English and overcome
their speaking challenges.
They have friends, peers, and often co-workers
who are much, much better at English than them,
and they can't help but compare themselves
to that person and just feel frustrated about it.
One person, in particular, told me
about a co-worker that he has,
who he often has to go out with
for sales meetings, negotiations,
or to meet overseas clients, all kinds of things.
He works quite closely with this person.
And he gets frustrated because this co-worker
speaks exceptionally good English
to the extent where overseas clients come over
and say to him, and this has happened more than once,
"Wow, your English is really good.
"Did you grow up in an English-speaking country?"
And no, actually he didn't.
He's just gotten really, really good at English.
My client said he feels pretty frustrated
about this and why can't he reach
the level that this person is at.
And he looks to this person as something
that he can never aspire to become.
You can't compare your insides
to someone else's outsides.
I forget who first said that.
It doesn't matter
because it's true.
We look to other people and we see
what they have become.
But we can only ever see the shell,
the surface level stuff,
the stuff that is only outside.
What we never see is everything
that is going on inside and what has gone on
to get that person to the point where they are.
We don't know how long
they've been putting in and how much effort,
what they've been doing.
We don't really know anything about that person.
We don't know anything about their circumstances
and we don't even know if they are telling
the truth when they tell us that
they did or didn't do something
to get the result that they've got.
Therefore, it is irrelevant.
What is happening with that person
is never gonna happen with you.
Each and every individual person is different.
And although what we will do to improve,
for the vast majority of us,
is gonna be 80% the same.
When I work with people most of what we do
with everybody is exactly the same
and then there's just the extra 20%
that is really quite custom
to each and every person
because each and every person
is slightly different.
But the only thing, the only person
you can compare yourself to is you.
That is, the you of then with the you of now.
In a year's time you'll be able
to look back to the you of now
and compare yourself with that
to how you've changed.
That is the only comparison worth making ever.
It's always really only ever a question of
is what I am now better
than what I was yesterday.
And if the answer is yes, then you're doing fine.
Keep going.
Yes, we can speed up the process
by changing the things you can do
and making sure that you are following best practise.
But ultimately, that is the key,
that is the most important thing.
Each and every conversation you have
should be better than the previous
and if you can keep on doing that,
sooner or later, you are gonna be there.
You aren't gonna be in the position
where that co-worker or friend or peer
that you aspire to be is already in.
But just looking at them now
and comparing yourself to them
ain't gonna work.
Rob Lowe.
That's who said it.
The Hollywood actor, pretty boy,
somewhat of a ladies man I believe.
You can't compare your insides
to someone else's outsides.
And you get it eventually.
You get the idea.
This then is me, Julian Northbrook,
signing out from another video.
Head over to DoingEnglish.com/FreeTraining
to check out my free training
where you will discover the five key changes
you need to make to see real rapid improvement
with your English speaking.
I'll see you in the next video!
Buh-bye.
(bright music)