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Success is a Mindset

When most people think of success, they tend to think of the past and present tense; what they have accomplished and what benefits are they reaping right now. For me, success isn't something tangible, nor is an accomplishment I've already made or a reward I'm enjoying at this very moment. For me, success is a mindset, and it's taken a lot of hard failures for me to realize this. Success in a language, or in anything for that matter, starts with your mind. You can't get anything accomplished if you don't put your all into it, and you won't put your all into it if you don't think it'll be worth it. It's more important than your method you use (as you can see, on this site I advocate them all, so long as they work for you), and it's more important than what book you use, what blog you read, or what website you're engrossed in.

Growing up, the people around me and my own experiences taught me the greatest false lesson ever: never get your hopes up. I've always been a staunch pessimist, and I my infrequent ventures into optimism typically resulted in sorrow. Looking back, this was probably the result of that little downer voice inside telling me not to get my hopes too high. Well, I think now that we should, because nothing will get accomplished if we don't.

Your mindset has a huge impact on everything in your life, from your health to your wealth, and if you want to learn a language, you have to first believe you can. Everything else comes second, regardless of what those pesky linguists think. You see, they think that language success is dependent on a certain age, and more and more research is showing that it isn't. Your first language is largely influenced by age, but second language acquisition isn't. The only way you won't learn is if you don't think you will, kind of like my mom.

You know those people who are millionaires or billionaires and they insist that it's possible for anyone to do that kind of thing if they want? Yeah, most of us just roll our eyes. If someone came to me today and told me that he was going to go make $1 million, I'd probably laugh at him, and maybe even tell him he's crazy, just like how sometimes people tell me that Japanese is impossible to learn for such and such bogus reasons. Still, people do go out and make that kind of money. How? Well, they get that kind of mindset, and before you know it, you can't deter them from that path. They really want it, they research what they need to know, avoid the scams (probably only after being scammed a lot), and rise triumphant, having never let failure stop them. Some of them even pretend they have that kind of money before they do, which leads me to a post by Khatzumoto about pretending to be Japanese even though you aren't. It's the same thing, like a self-fulfilling prophecy, to borrow his words exactly.

Now, I wouldn't know what to do with that kind of money, but I'm a language learner, and I can say that the same thing applies to us. If you want to learn a language, avoid the nay-sayers and set out to do it. You might fall down flat, get scammed by bogus software, and hit that intermediate stage where you think to yourself, "When will I get good?" but if you keep at it, I promise you won't fail.

Japanese isn't hard, if you don't let yourself think it is. Really, it's just different, and thinking that different = hard will make sure you don't ever achieve success. You won't ever put that kind of effort into something that you feel is too hard for you, and some people, like me, run from those kinds of challenges. I like different things, but difficult things?

For example, when I was in fifth grade, my teacher required us to spend a week on foreign language. I'm not sure what this was supposed to accomplish, but that was idea. We had to speak an hour a week sitting in front of Rosetta Stone (ugh!) and learn either French or Spanish. Now, my teacher, though well-meaning, decided to let us know that French is much harder than Spanish. I immediately got it in my head that French is hard, and since I don't like hard, I should stick to Spanish. Guess what? I still can't learn French. I'm 25 and French seems difficult to me, and it's all because of that teacher. I enjoyed that teacher, but for any teachers out there, do not tell your students that something is hard, because the ones who think like me will never get it.

Getting your mindset to think successfully isn't a recipee for disaster. In fact, it's the only reason anyone has ever accomplished anything in this world. If we all thought, "I shouldn't get my hopes up," or, "That'll never happen," then it won't. Granted, there are plenty of times when I thought like that and good things still managed to come of it, but so many more things didn't happen because I wouldn't allow myself to consider being successful.

Don't let bogus research, teachers, or nay-sayers get you down. If you want to learn Japanese, you can and you will. You just have to believe you will. I know this was a sappy post, but this is seriously the very best piece of advice I can give you before I go continue on my way of reviewing different language learning tools.

Good luck!

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