I've noticed that people like to spend time talking about something they should be doing. For example, someone might think that starting a part-time business is a good use of their time and improve their financial situation. But instead of starting that business they're so excited about and have a great vision for, they're just talking about it.
They talk about the how it will give them another form of income and how that will help with a lot of things like paying off debt, accumulating more savings, and having some extra fun money. They're excited about it. But they don't put any of it into action. That type of thing really confuses me.
I think one of the biggest factors is that they are scared to fail. And that is understandable. I think everyone at some point are scared to fail at something. I know I'm scared to fail at many things. It's a natural fear I think.
If my understanding accurate, then there is a problem. The problem isn't the fear of failing. I don't think it's even the failure. The problem is that people allow fear to paralyze them.
That is not healthy because they haven't even failed yet. Or they haven't even tried.
I think that a lot of people get to a point in their language learning where they experience failure. And it's because they failed that they are afraid to try again. Because they are afraid to fail again.
But failure in language learning is the most natural part of language learning. Most people don't realize it but they have failed numerous times in learning their first/primary/native language. When we were acquiring our first language we always failed.
We might have tried to use the common form of a verb with an irregular one. Or we didn't know the meanings of certain "big" words (unless you were studying for the GRE but you probably crammed for that). And there are words we still don't know. Our spelling tests were probably not all perfect. And with the advent of autocorrect and texting shorthand we still probably don't know how to spell a number of words. We know how they look but we don't know how to spell them.
Yet despite all those failures we continued on acquiring our primary language by hearing it, reading it, writing it, and speaking it. Notice that those are all actions. And action is what it takes to learn a language to proficiency. The level of proficiency that someone would like to attain is different for every person. But I imagine that most people who learn a language desire to be at least conversational in a decent way.
So the recipe for overcoming the fear of failure – or even failure itself – is to continue language learning. We've been doing that all our life with our native language and we still continue to do so. Just continue hearing, reading, writing, and speaking on.
They talk about the how it will give them another form of income and how that will help with a lot of things like paying off debt, accumulating more savings, and having some extra fun money. They're excited about it. But they don't put any of it into action. That type of thing really confuses me.
I think one of the biggest factors is that they are scared to fail. And that is understandable. I think everyone at some point are scared to fail at something. I know I'm scared to fail at many things. It's a natural fear I think.
If my understanding accurate, then there is a problem. The problem isn't the fear of failing. I don't think it's even the failure. The problem is that people allow fear to paralyze them.
That is not healthy because they haven't even failed yet. Or they haven't even tried.
I think that a lot of people get to a point in their language learning where they experience failure. And it's because they failed that they are afraid to try again. Because they are afraid to fail again.
But failure in language learning is the most natural part of language learning. Most people don't realize it but they have failed numerous times in learning their first/primary/native language. When we were acquiring our first language we always failed.
We might have tried to use the common form of a verb with an irregular one. Or we didn't know the meanings of certain "big" words (unless you were studying for the GRE but you probably crammed for that). And there are words we still don't know. Our spelling tests were probably not all perfect. And with the advent of autocorrect and texting shorthand we still probably don't know how to spell a number of words. We know how they look but we don't know how to spell them.
Yet despite all those failures we continued on acquiring our primary language by hearing it, reading it, writing it, and speaking it. Notice that those are all actions. And action is what it takes to learn a language to proficiency. The level of proficiency that someone would like to attain is different for every person. But I imagine that most people who learn a language desire to be at least conversational in a decent way.
So the recipe for overcoming the fear of failure – or even failure itself – is to continue language learning. We've been doing that all our life with our native language and we still continue to do so. Just continue hearing, reading, writing, and speaking on.
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