Step Out Of Your Comfort Zone To Build Your CELPIP Skills + PODCAST Update

Foreign hi, I'm Aaron.

Welcome to the CELPIP Success Podcast.

This is the podcast where motivated English learners just like you learn how to speak English fearlessly and learn practical tips and strategies to conquer the CELPIP examination.

Today I want to share with you a couple of things that I've been thinking about related to how you can be working to improve your English skills and your skills for the CELPIP exam.

And just to share a little bit about some of the ways I'm trying to put these ideas to work in my own life.

And the base idea of this, the thing that I really want to encourage you to be doing in order to be building your skills in general in English and to be helping you to get ready for the CELPIP exam is to do the very unsexy, the very probably not very fun thing of stepping out of your comfort zone in conversation after conversation after conversation with people.

Over my 17 years of being an English teacher, I have found that probably the number one thing that either holds people back or propels people forward with their English skill development is how well they do at stepping out of their comfort zone if all they do is stay where they feel safe.

What I have found is that people's growth with English just doesn't happen as fast as they want it to.

But for people who are willing to step out of their comfort zone and take risks, I have seen that yes, they do make mistakes versus the people who don't.

The people who don't step out of their comfort zone generally don't have a lot of mistakes to deal with.

Generally they are, you know, pretty safe because they're staying inside of their zone of comfort.

But you know what?

The mistakes are part of the learning process.

If you are making mistakes, it means that you're trying to use the English that you have.

And if you're not making mistakes, chances are you're not trying to use the English English that you have, or you're only using what you already know how to use.

And in order for your skills to grow, you have to be stepping out of that comfort zone and trying new things.

And those new things could be something as simple as meeting somebody new who only speaks English, or it could be something as maybe scary as sitting with an English speaking co worker at lunch and actually trying to engage with them in conversation.

If that's not something that you're normally used to doing.

If for you, your idea of an ideal lunch is for you to just like close the door to your office, open your lunchbox and just Sit there and eat quietly all by yourself.

That's not giving you any opportunity, really, to practice your English.

Right?

Instead, what you should do is grab your lunch, go out down the hall and find somebody who's having lunch who, who speaks English, sit down with them and just try to ask about the day, try to ask about how their weekend went, or just listen to the conversation that's happening around you.

And if you.

And if you can find a space for where you can jump in and join in the conversation, that is stepping out of your comfort zone, especially if it's something that you haven't done before.

So that's what I would encourage you to be doing.

Step out of your comfort zone.

Don't stay inside it.

If you want your skills to improve, you need to be stepping outside of that comfort zone.

Now, this is how I have been trying to put that to work in my own life.

I'm not trying to learn English like you are.

I'm not trying to get ready for this help up exam.

But there are some things that I am trying to do in my own life that are requiring me to step out of my comfort zone in order to improve on them, in order to get better at them.

And the first one has to do with this podcast.

In fact, most of the things I'm going to be talking about today have to do with my podcast.

The very first one is maybe you've noticed it actually as you've been listening to the introduction over the past couple of days.

Past couple of weeks, sorry.

I've been trying a new name.

In fact, not trying.

I have changed the name of my podcast.

It used to be the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

Now it's the Celpip Success Podcast.

And believe it or not, it took me a long time to gather up the courage to actually make this change.

I think I probably figured out that I might need to change my name.

Probably six months, maybe even longer than that ago.

Because I realized as I've been listening through all the.

All the episodes along with maybe you, I've been noticing, you know, what the title says, the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

But the things that I talk about inside of the podcast usually have a lot to do with getting ready for the CELPIP exam.

There's like a disconnection between the title and the content.

And I've been thinking to myself, that might be frustrating for somebody who wants to only focus on speaking English fearlessly.

And then they listen to the podcast, hoping that the content is going to be around that topic.

And then they discover this guy just keeps going on and on about the CELPIP exam and about getting ready for this or that part of the test.

That's not what I wanted.

And just as a parenthesis, I'm still wanting to talk about how to improve your confidence when it comes to speaking English.

I still want to be, you know, talking about strategies that will help you to speak English fearlessly, just like what I started off talking about today.

I still want to be talking about things that will help you to build your fearlessness when it comes to speaking in English.

And I still want to be interviewing people that will hopefully inspire and encourage you as you are going through your journey of becoming a fluent English speaker or becoming a permanent resident here in Canada or working towards your citizenship here in Canada.

I want to be interviewing people that will help you along in that process.

Just like what I was hoping to do with the Speak English Fearlessly podcast.

But the majority of my content is going to be focused around helping you prepare for the SELP of exam.

So I just wanted to make sure that my name, the name of the podcast matches the content.

And like I said before, it took me a long time, like probably easily six months for me to work up the courage to actually do it, because I was scared, honestly, that I was going to break my podcast.

I was scared that once people started hearing the new name, that maybe they would stop listening, that maybe, you know, somehow just the exam, the.

The.

The podcast would stop being something interesting for you all because I changed the name.

And so I didn't.

I just sat there overthinking it, wondering if I should.

And actually, one of the podcasts that I enjoy listening to, who is farther along at this than me, he's been in this for years more than me.

He just went through a similar process where he realized that the name of his podcast had very little to do with what was going on inside of the content of the podcast.

And what he was saying in one of his episodes was that he was wondering, how would somebody know from looking at my title what the content of my podcast was about?

There was just no way of knowing how one was related to the other, which is what caused him to create a new title, which was more in line with what he did.

And he was just sharing how that process went and how well it worked for him, and that it hasn't broken his podcast at all.

So that kind of gave me the encouragement to.

To try to.

Which is why I actually went out and did it.

I changed the name of my podcast so that was the first way that I'm stepping out of my comfort zone.

And it wasn't easy.

It took a lot of being afraid and a lot of overthinking and finally just having to pull the trigger.

It was hard, let me tell you that.

So I totally empathize with you.

If you struggle with stepping out of your comfort zone to use English, it's.

It's not an easy thing.

And it does take a lot of guts and a lot of pushing yourself to do it.

The other way that I am getting ready to step out of my comfort zone has to do with the frequency of how often I publish this podcast.

Up until today, I've been doing it every week, every Tuesday.

It's been coming out for the past two years.

And this idea is also based on the same podcaster that I was telling you about before, who just changed the name of his podcast.

He has been publishing his podcast every other week, so every two weeks.

And he goes into a long explanation as to why he's doing it that way.

And I thought to myself, you know, that makes a lot of sense.

And one of the reasons why I'm also considering doing this is that I want to have more time to one, to take it easy a little bit.

I need to rest and relax a little bit instead of always feeling like I'm having to produce something new, to be honest with you.

And I wasn't even imagining or planning that I was going to share this, but I found myself lately feeling like I'm on sort of a treadmill.

Like I just can't stop creating content.

And I feel like it's kind of like feeling more like a machine that I need to be putting out something new each week, and I just don't have time to rest anymore.

It feels like.

And let me put a giant parenthesis around this and say, I have absolutely loved producing these episodes.

I do.

I really enjoy doing it.

And based on the feedback that I get from you, I think you enjoy listening to it as well.

But I've been noticing lately that I'm feeling tired and I think I need to take a bit of a break.

So this is what I'm going to do.

That's not even what I'm thinking about doing.

This is what I'm going to do after this episode goes out, for the duration of the summer at least.

So for the next two months, I'm going to be publishing every other week.

Every other week.

Not every week.

Every other week.

Just to try to give myself a bit of a breather.

Just to give myself a bit of a rest, enjoy a bit of the summer.

Hopefully that allow you to enjoy a bit of the summer, too.

But my hope is that I'll be able to rest a little bit and even maybe improve the episodes that I put out every other week.

Because I am trying to do a couple of new things.

One of those things, maybe you've noticed it already, is I'm trying to copy a style.

I've mentioned this podcast before.

It's called Front Burner.

I've noticed that.

I really like the way that they do each episode.

I like the way that they transition from one topic to another topic inside of the same episode.

They use music to transition to go from one thing to another thing.

And I thought I really kind of enjoy that.

I enjoy the way that the music kind of gives a little bit of a mental reset, or it just gives me a break to kind of process some of what I was listening to.

And I was thinking to myself, I would like to try that too, in the way that I build my episodes.

But you know what?

It's complicated.

It's not that easy to find music and to put it in at the right spot.

It takes a little bit more time, is what I'm trying to say.

And I would like to get a little bit more time so I can focus on building out each episode and make it hopefully better.

So saying all that, I'm just trying to explain why I'm thinking that I'm.

No, not thinking why I'm going to be running an experiment with myself and with you.

Because you are listening to this.

But over the next two months, in July and August, starting now, I'm going to be publishing every two weeks.

And just to see how that affects me, if it helps me to produce better material, if it helps you as well, so that you're not feeling like you have to listen to everything that I put out.

Maybe things are starting to pile up for you and you have a lot of episodes that you need to listen through.

I don't know.

I think this is maybe mostly for me.

I just need to slow down a little bit, recharge, reset.

And by the way, I think that you should do that too.

If you've been working really hard towards your celpip goals, if you've been working really hard to improve your English, sometimes you need the rest too.

And take a little bit of time just to calm down, a little bit of time to reset in your mind, a little bit of time to enjoy what's happening around you.

We have nice sunny days here.

At least here in Victoria, in British Columbia, where I live, the days are sunny and bright.

As I'm recording this, I'm looking out the window on a nice sunny afternoon.

And, you know, you need to take some time to enjoy what's going on out there.

At least that's how I am feeling about me.

I need to take a little bit of time to.

To relax.

So those are just some of the ways that I am also trying to step out of my comfort zone when I share with you that I think that that's the best way for you to grow as an English learner.

And as you're getting ready for the CELPIP exam, I also think it's the way to get better as a person in general.

No matter what skill you're trying to improve, you need to step out of where you're feeling comfortable.

And all those places for me that I've just been talking about my name, the podcast name, I mean, that was my podcast name for the past two years, so you can bet that I was feeling mighty comfortable saying it.

And in fact, I think it was the episode before last one.

I actually made a mistake in reading the name of the podcast to you, and I decided to leave it in there and change and let that be the opening of the podcast, letting you know that I'm making a change to my podcast name and that I was so used to using the old name that I made a mistake.

Even though I had in my head the purpose of changing the name and read and using that new name in that episode, I made a mistake because I was so used to it.

Yeah, I needed to step out of my comfort zone there.

And I'm also stepping out of my comfort zone in trying to publish episodes in a less frequent frequency because I need to take a bit of a break.

And I think it might even work better because it might give me more time to build stronger episodes and promote them more once they are published.

And also I'm taking the risk of trying new things inside of each episode.

I'm trying to use music more in each episode to try to transition from one idea to another one.

And I'm also trying to incorporate more interviews with people that I think will be interesting and encouraging for you.

So those are all things that are outside of my comfort zone.

They're causing me to do things that I'm not comfortable with.

And I think that, and I hope that that's going to help me to become a stronger podcaster and you be the judge you let me know what you think about this podcast as we go along.

I would love to get your feedback on this, but what I can do differently to make this podcast even better for you.

If you'd be willing to share your feedback with me what you think about what I'm sharing with you tonight or today, whatever time of day it is that you're listening to this.

If you'd like to share with me what you think, I would love to hear from you.

And I would also love to hear your suggestions on what I can include going forward in future episodes.

And if you'd be willing to share that with me, just go to celpipsuccess.com survey.

That's celpipsuccess.com survey.

There are just three questions.

It will probably take you less than a minute, and I would just really value your feedback if you've been listening this far, my friend.

Thank you so much.

I really, really appreciate you listening all the way through and not giving up on me.

As I've gotten stuck in what I'm saying, I'm speaking right now.

I'm doing another thing that's outside of my comfort zone.

I guess I could have shared that before, but hey, this is for those who are willing to listen all the way through.

You're going to get some bonus stuff that, well, I didn't know I would be sharing about.

But right now I am speaking.

Maybe you've noticed it.

I'm speaking without a script.

I've just got some bullet points in front of me that I wanted to cover.

That's another thing that I want to practice doing is getting better at just speaking off the cuff without a lot of, you know, scripting behind what I'm saying.

For sure I'll still use scripting, but I want to practice speaking without every word written out in front of me.

I want to get better at doing that.

So that's another way I'm stepping out of my comfort zone.

I'm speaking to you right now without a script and another one.

And this is again, for those who were brave and willing to listen all the way through this.

I've got kind of a secret that I'm working on, and I've been thinking about this for a really long time, even longer than the name change.

I've mentioned in my podcast several times that I'm working on a novel and I've been thinking a lot about turning that novel into like a serialized podcast where each, you know, I don't know how frequently I'll be doing It.

But maybe every two weeks or every week, however it is, I would like to read a chapter of the book that I've been working at to you if you would like to listen.

I've been reading it chapter by chapter to a writer's group that I'm involved in.

And we've been having such a good time listening to each other's stories and talking about what we've been working on.

And I would like to see if that would work here too, where I would read a chapter and then if someone wants to talk about it, that we would get together and talk about it.

But most importantly, what I have in mind is just taking a part of the podcast, maybe the last part, to read a chapter and then have like a, like a listening comprehension activity at the end.

If you want to practice your listening skills based on what the book is all about as I go along, if that's something that would be of interest to you, let me know in the survey that'[email protected] survey.

Just write in there.

Yes, I want to hear what this story is all about.

And if I get enough people that are interested, I just might do it.

Or I might start a whole new podcast all about it.

You see, that's my problem.

I'm adding things to my busy life already and I'm trying to remove things.

But anyway, that has been something that I have been thinking a lot about and it is definitely outside of my comfort zone to be reading my story story to a group of people in the writers group.

That was challenging enough.

But reading my story for you, that's scary.

That is way out of my comfort zone.

Not you.

I'm glad that you are here.

But reading it to people that maybe I haven't met before, I mean, I've been able to meet some of you before because we've been working together to get ready for your CELPIP exam and we meet together during our weekly live classes.

For you, I would feel totally happy, happy to read my story too, because I know you kind of.

But for those of you that I haven't met face to face, well, that's kind of nerve wracking for me to be able to read my story to you.

So that's something that is definitely outside of my.

Outside of my comfort zone.

Okay.

I think that this podcast has gone on way longer than what I thought it would.

Again, the whole idea of this is to be stepping outside of your comfort zone if you want your English skills to improve.

And I'm sharing with you how I am stepping out of my own comfort zone in ways where I want to improve, where I want to get better.

And yes, it's quite scary.

I know what that feels like.

I feel nervous and scared to be making all these changes.

I really do.

So I know where you're at.

I know where that, what that feels like when it comes to trying to use your English.

And it can be scary.

It can be so scary.

Anyway, thank you so much for listening to today's weird and extended episode.

Again, if you've listened all the way, holy cow, do I ever appreciate you.

And I appreciate everyone who's listening.

But if you've gone all the way, that that is really exciting to me and I would love your feedback one more time.

It's at celpipsuccess.com forward/survey.

Please let me know what you think about everything that I've been sharing here with you today.

And if there's something that you would like me to include in the podcast in the future, let me know that, too.

Or if there's something that you'd like me to stop doing, please let me know that, too.

I would really love to know so I can make this the best podcast possible for you.

All right, Have a great week and I hope that you'll come back in two weeks, not next week, but in two weeks when I start publishing every other week, at least for the duration of the summer.

Thank you so much and we'll be in touch.

Bye.

Bye.