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Welcome to your English Toolbox, your Slow EnglishPodcast, where we train your ears step by step.
I am Martin. And I am Julia.
Friends, before we say anything else today, I wantyou to notice something.
Right now, at this exact moment, there is a radioplaying inside you.
You did not turn it on. And you cannot remember asingle day when it was silent.
It plays while you work. It plays while you eat.
It even plays at three in the morning, when allyou want is sleep.
And here is the uncomfortable part. The volume istoo high. The presenter is not kind to you.
And the station was chosen by somebody else.
Today, we are going to put your hand on the dial.
In this episode, we are bringing together ideasfrom four of our previous conversations
and turning them into one single strategy.
A strategy with three simple moves. We call themthe three dials.
First, a 30-second practice that quiets your mind,and we will do it together inside this episode.
Second, a small question that can disarm theharshest sentence your mind ever says to you.
And third, a daily protocol so simple you couldwrite it on the back of a bus ticket.
Ready?
Let's meet the radio. Friends, here is a strangequestion.
Why does your mind feel exhausted when on a daywhen your body did almost nothing?
That question has a real answer. And the answer isabout how we are built.
For most of human history, danger was short.Something appeared. You ran or you fought.
And then, this is the important part. The dangerended.
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The body received a clear signal. It is over. Youare safe. Stand down.
Modern life almost never sends that signal.
The emails do not end. The news does not end. Thecomparing does not end.
So the radio inside you keeps broadcasting onemessage all day long.
Stay alert. Something is wrong. Keep running.
And a mind that never receives the all-clearsignal becomes a very tired mind.
If that sounds like your life, stay with us.
Because the three dials exist exactly for this.
Dial number one.
Volume.
You cannot fix a radio while you are running awayfrom it.
The first move is always the same. Stop.
In a world that worships speed, stopping feelsalmost illegal.
But listen to this image. Your mind is like alake.
When the wind blows, the surface breaks and thewater turns cloudy.
When the wind stops, the water becomes still. Andsuddenly, you can see all the way to the bottom.
Stopping is not laziness. Stopping is how thewater clears.
So, let's do it right now. Together.
For the next 30 seconds, we are going to turn thevolume down.
Take one slow breath in. And let it go.
Slowly.
Now, just listen to the silence between my words.
There is nothing to solve right now. Nothing tocheck.
Welcome back.
What you just felt, even for a few seconds, wasyour hand on the first dial.
Dial number two.
Voice.
Once the volume is lower, you can finally hearwhat the radio is saying.
And for many of us, the presenter is not a friend.
The presenter says things like,
You are behind.
You always get this wrong.
Everyone else finds this easy.
Here is the crucial fact.
Your brain treats repeated sentences like facts.
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Say something to yourself every day for 10 years.
And it stops feeling like an opinion.
It starts feeling like the truth.
So, the second dial has three small moves.
Move one.
Catch the sentence.
Do not fight it.
Just notice it.
Like a fisherman watching the water.
Move two and ask it one question.
Is that true?
Where is the evidence?
And move three.
Rewrite it.
If your radio says, I cannot follow nativespeakers,
you add one small word at the end.
I cannot follow native speakers.
Yet.
That one word turns a wall into a door.
Dial number three.
The station.
And this is the dial almost nobody talks about.
Here's the question.
The thoughts that repeat inside you day after day.
Who chose them?
Many of the loudest opinions in your head wereinstalled by other people.
By your school.
By your family.
By a thousand hours of scrolling.
You did not choose that station.
You just never changed it.
Think about what you feed your mind every day.
If you plant weeds, you cannot expect roses.
So, the third dial is a choice.
Every day, choose at least one thing you put intoyour mind on purpose.
One book page instead of one more headline.
One long conversation instead of 50 short clips.
Ten minutes of silence instead of noise you neverasked for.
Your mind is a territory.
And only you have the right to govern it.
Now, friends, let us show you what the three dialslook like in one real life.
This is the story of a man we will call Tomas.
Tomas is 41 years old.
He was born in Poland and for the last nine yearshe has delivered parcels in Manchester.
His English was what he called good enough fordoors and signatures.
But inside his head, the radio was extremely loud.
Route timers, delivery lists, numbers.
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And underneath all of it, one sentence, always thesame,
whenever he had to say more than five words inEnglish.
That sentence had lived in him for so long, hethought it was simply a fact, like the weather.
Then, one Tuesday evening, something smallhappened.
His daughter Zofia, eight years old, born inManchester,
was practicing her Polish at the kitchen table.
She mispronounced a word.
She laughed at herself and tried again.
And in that second, Tomas felt a correction risingin his own throat.
Sharp, cold, ready to cut.
And he froze the sentence in midair because herecognized the tone.
It was not his voice.
It was the voice of his English teacher from 1997,
a man with a red pen who read student mistakes outloud, so the class could laugh.
Your English embarrasses people.
The sentence was never his.
It was installed, a station chosen by somebodyelse,
almost thirty years ago, still broadcasting in hiskitchen.
That night, Tomas did something he had not done inyears.
He sat in his parked van, in the dark, and didabsolutely nothing for ten minutes.
Dial one. Volume down.
In that silence, he could finally hear thesentence clearly.
So he asked it the question,
Is that true?
Nine years.
Thousands of doors.
Thousands of conversations.
Nobody had ever laughed.
One man did.
Once, in 1997.
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So Tomas rewrote the sentence.
My English opens doors every single day.
Literally.
Dial two.
And then he changed what he fed his mind.
On his delivery rounds, he replaced the angry talkradio with slow, calm English in his ears.
Three minutes of silence in the van before everyshift.
One chosen input.
Every single day.
Dial three.
Three months later, there was a meeting at thedepot about the new delivery routes.
The room was full.
Tomas raised his hand and spoke for two minutes.
His voice shook at the beginning.
Nobody laughed.
His supervisor nodded and said,
Good point.
That is the whole ending, friends.
No fireworks.
No Hollywood.
The radio inside Tomas still plays.
But now, he is the one holding it.
So let's give you the protocol.
The version you can write on the back of a busticket.
We call it 3-1-1.
Three minutes of real silence every day.
No phone.
No sound.
Just the lake becoming still.
One sentence caught and rewritten.
Catch it.
Ask if it is true.
Change it.
And one input chosen on purpose.
One thing you put into your mind because youdecided it belongs there.
Three minutes.
One sentence.
One choice.
That is the entire strategy.
And friends, notice something beautiful.
That podcast by the slow way we speak, the pauses,the space between words,
is itself the first dial.
Every time you listen slowly, you are practicingthe volume.
And every time you choose this show over noise,you are choosing the station.
So here's the truth we want you to carry thisweek.
You are not the noise in your head.
You are not the radio.
You are the hand on the dial.
And that hand is getting stronger every singleday.
Thank you for training your ears and your mindwith us today.
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I am Martin.
And I am Julia.
We will see you in the next journey through theEnglish language.
Step by step.
Word by word.
Until next time.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
