That voice in your head
Okay, so Goddess Vybz is not actually just a playlist to get you through the day. 🤭 I’m here to talk about something far more important: that voice in your head. You know who I’m talking about!
One of the biggest challenges that I’ve seen language-learners face is their own inner voice: that very loud, annoying voice of self-criticism. And it breaks my heart. 💔
Ideally, language is a form of communication, it brings us closer to others and closer to ourselves. It can even take us on journeys through time and space! It helps us play with ideas and understand the emotions we feel through picturesque metaphors, devastating poetry and catchy song lyrics.
It connects us with people from the past and lets us explore worlds far beyond our own… worlds that may not even exist anymore… or that never did. We can even make up languages if we really want to. A little known fact is that J. R. R. Tolkien didn’t actually hear Elves talk while he was writing The Lord of the Rings. 👀 He just made up his own Elvish languages and put them inside beautiful worlds full of colorful characters.
And that’s the way it should be! That’s what language is for!
How amazing, right? We’re truly blessed as a species to have the gift of gab.
But for many people, just studying a new language —or, you know, actually using it in front of other people… human people, let alone elves (😱)— can be particularly nerve-wracking.
It can make you feel like you’re taking a test and that your worth as a person depends on how well you conjugate verbs and remember vocabulary. 🙈 Sound familiar? I know! I’ve been there!
I moved to Argentina with just a year of high-school Spanish under my belt and decided to —get this!— study Anthropology here at the university. Yeah, I still remember that “one” time that I stayed up all night. It was to write an essay for an Economics exam, and I was fixated on making sure all my adjectives agreed in gender and number with nouns like el proletariado and la burguesía.
Anyway, what we’re here to talk about is that voice in your head. Let me share a quote real quick. It’s a question that I heard some time back and that I still find quite useful:
“Do you want to be perfect or do you want to be free?”
It’s not a rhetorical question.
Take a minute to answer it if you like.
