Daily Dose of English 71
Inspiration
Daily Dose of English 71
Intermediate
Hey everyone, my name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about inspiration. Inspiration. What a great word, honestly. I just like how it sounds and how it's structured, but also it has some interesting meanings. And I want to talk a little bit about them and my thoughts on them and how they relate to language learning and that sort of thing. So let's get into it. First, just the general definition of inspiration is generally when you have an idea and you want to use that idea or do something with that idea. And so you're feeling maybe inspired. And something that I'm pretty sure is true is that it comes from the root word. So a long, long, long, long time ago, hundreds of years ago, it was, I think, a Roman word, like in Latin. Actually, it could be Greek. I'm not actually sure. But I'm pretty sure it was Latin though. And it actually meant more like to inhale, to inspire, wasn't necessarily to have an idea or feel inspired in the way that we use it today, but was about bringing spirit into yourself or air into yourself is the same thing, I think. I didn't look that up before this, so I could be wrong, but maybe that helps you remember the word or is a fun story. Because in a lot of ways, I think that is how we end up using it. If you have something inside of you, whether it's air or more soul or spirit, which that word is almost directly in inspiration, when you want to do something or you're feeling like you have a new idea, And there's two general ways that we use the word inspiration or to inspire in the modern language. The first one is for having an idea and knowing what to do. So if you ask somebody what they want to have for dinner and they go, you know what, I don't know. I kind of want some new inspiration of what I should cook. That's basically saying they want new ideas and new things to make, to cook. And so it's a lot about that idea part of something, to know something, to have a plan or something you want to do. The other way that we do it is whether or not you're feeling inspired or motivated to do something. So maybe you do have the idea of what to do, but you're not feeling inspired. A really common example is language learning. A lot of people don't feel a lot of inspiration to continue language learning or to push forward with their English, for example. Even though they know that they should and they want to, they just don't have the inspiration to do it every single day. And that's the side of the word that I want to talk a little bit more about, because that sort of inspiration where it's almost the same as motivation or feeling like you want to do something, it can be a little bit dangerous in my mind, in my opinion. I might have talked about this before on the podcast, but I'm not positive, but The reason that I say that it's a little bit dangerous is that this reliance on motivation and inspiration to do things means that you probably aren't going to do things. Because doing something is way harder than not doing something. Not doing something is 100% easier than doing something. right? That's not my joke. That's somebody else's joke. But it's also true. You could stand up and go outside for a walk right now, or you could not. And that not means doing nothing. And you could justify this to yourself, which means to give an excuse or to give a reason why. Why you don't want to go for a walk is saying, oh, you know what? I'm not feeling inspired. I don't have motivation to go on a walk. and relying always on motivation and inspiration for things will mean that you're going to do things less. And so especially if they're for something that is important to you or that you do want to do, you kind of can't rely on inspiration. A very famous thing that writers do is have a minimum amount of words they write per day. because writing isn't a form of art, right? There is a lot of, it's difficult, it takes time, it takes inspiration in the first sense of the word. But, and so that's not always going to be there and ready every single day, every single moment of every day just to start writing. But almost everybody finds that once you start writing, that inspiration comes, right? It's almost like if you walk into the kitchen and say, oh, the water's not working. The sink isn't putting out water. And then somebody goes, did you try it? And you go, no, I just don't think it is. Right? That's a different thing. And so like that, bring this back to language learning, right? If you get up tomorrow and you go, you know what? I don't really want to language learn. I don't really want to practice my English. You don't really know that. You just sort of feel like that because you're kind of lacking inspiration. And so what I really recommend is doing something every day that will start you off. And if you decide that you really don't want to learn a language tomorrow after doing 10 minutes, that's fine, right? You don't need to force yourself to do something, but you checked. You went inside yourself, you did some language learning and you realized, oh yeah, no, I don't actually want to learn today. I would much rather be doing this other thing that I have to do or a project or something else, right? But you need to check, right? Our minds lie to us all the time to make our lives presumably a little bit easier, but they're often wrong. I'm not sure if you've ever had this experience with being hungry or having to go to the bathroom. A very common thing is before you get in the car to go somewhere, before a movie, people go, okay, go to the bathroom so that you don't have to go halfway through. And people say, oh, I don't have to use the bathroom. I'm not going to go. But parents especially will often say to their child, go try, because you often do have to go to the bathroom, you just didn't really notice it yet. And so once you try, you go, oh yeah, I can use the restroom really quick and then we can go watch the movie and I won't have to go again. The same thing goes for kind of everything in life in a lot of ways. And relying on inspiration and motivation can be a little bit of a problem. So that's part of the reason I do this podcast is because I want there to be something that's relatively easy and simple to do that will give you a base for your language learning. I'm not going to teach you all of English. I can't make enough content for that even if I really wanted to. That's a really, really big task that would involve a huge team and it probably wouldn't even be desired. There are tons of YouTube channels and TV shows and amazing movies that you can watch to learn instead of whatever other things that I have. But the stuff that I make is meant to be a really good base and a daily exercise in a lot of ways. And then I also have my other series that are a little bit simpler and have some visual context that can also be really great for learning new words in a way that other YouTube videos might not be. But I understand that. I'm not trying to be your entire English learning world because that would be ridiculous. I also use this, I guess, technique or tactic for recording all of these videos. I make all of these videos completely on my own, these podcasts and other videos, because I don't rely on inspiration and motivation. I set things up beforehand so that I just start recording, I just start doing things, and then I find the motivation. Very often, I almost always record after work, and I'm usually tired, and I don't really want to record. But I go, all right, I'll record right now. It's gonna be easy. I've got everything set up. I just need to sit down and record. And then when I hit the button to start recording, I find that inspiration and I actually start to really enjoy what I do and talk into the microphone and make something that somebody is going to learn to use to learn English. Somebody's going to use to learn English and that gives me more inspiration. And so I hope that you learn a little bit of something from this video or maybe it does give you a bit of inspiration to try something like this and really start to put what you actually want to do deep down in front of your daily inspiration and motivation to really make sure that you are achieving your goals and dreams with English or whatever else it might be. That's the end of this episode. I hope that you enjoyed. I know that I didn't really talk about inspiration, kind of twisted things, but that's how it goes. I'll see you again tomorrow. Have a good one. Bye.
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