#429 - How to Get Fluent in English in 2025 — Even If You’re BUSY
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Do you feel like it's become impossible for you to improve your English because your life has just gotten too busy? And then years come and go and you're still at the same level? If so, you'll want to stick around because by the end of this episode, you have learned three lessons that'll help you finally start speaking English like this, like I'm doing right now, over the next 12 months, even if you're really busy.

Awww yeah, RealLifers, global citizens. This is Izzy from RealLife English, where it is our mission to guide you beyond a classroom to speak English confidently and naturally, to connect with the world and to actually use your English as a doorway to your greatest life.

All right, so today we're going to do something really special here. Ethan and I have been really looking forward to doing this. We have these three lessons that we'll discuss that are not some crazy ideas that we came up with. These have been validated by science. These have been proven by science and they work for any person really. So we discovered that when we read the amazing book Atomic Habits. And that's what we're bringing to you today. Three lessons from Atomic Habits.

Each one revealing a groundbreaking idea that you can implement to become successful in this day and age of hustle and bustle and hyper productivity. Yeah, I really loved preparing for this episode, Izzy, because I think it's perfect timing when we're recording this in January. So we've already been thinking about our objectives, things that we want to achieve in 2025. I'm sure for you guys watching this, you've probably at least thought a little bit about some resolutions, right? And

Atomic Habits is fantastic for this. It's definitely one I like to come back to regularly because it really helps you to look at what are the strategies that are really going to help you to not just give up by mid-February on the things that you're wanting to achieve and then have a mediocre year, right? So you can, by applying some of these things, maybe have the best year of your life so far.

And I wanted to point out some of the advanced vocabulary that you mentioned, Izzy. So you said hustle and bustle. What is hustle and bustle? That's the agitation of modern day life, right? I think of with that, the typical footage of New York City, you know, during rush hour where there's just like huge crowds.

what's the word for that? Just like huge crowds of people crossing at the intersections and so on. It's kind of like you're trying to compete with everyone to get to work on time. And you said hyper productivity. So this, it's an interesting prefix, hyper. What does it mean when you add hyper before another word? It's like super, but even more, I would even say, right? Even technically, I think that's what it means. Hyper is more than super. We often say that kids, when they eat too much sugar, they become hyperactive.

jumping up and down and they have all this energy and they're driving the parents crazy. You also mentioned groundbreaking. What does that mean, Izzy? So that's when something is very new and it's also a big change from the way things are usually done. And then finally, there was an expression that you used, day and age, which we just mean to say like the modern day, but I think it's nice because it has connected speech. So this is how we cut and connect our words in American English and I think actually all English is

But with the word and, oftentimes natives just reduce it to un. So it's day and age. Day and age. Almost like it was just one word, right? All right. Now, if you guys listening and watching us right now on YouTube, on any podcast platforms, if you want to learn and remember forever, some of these expressions that we're using on this podcast, we're going to use so many more of these because this naturally comes up for us like a,

we've learned how to speak fluently. Myself, Xenia, who are non-natives, and Ethan, who's a native speaker, use these expressions naturally. But if you want to actually internalize these and use them later in your own conversations in English, the best place where you can actually achieve that is on a real-life app. If you use a real-life app, you'll see that all these expressions are saved

So you can practice them later and you get to practice with the lessons with chapters. So for example, in this lesson, we have three smaller lessons, right? We have three chapters that we're going to do today and you can practice one by one. So that's a more doable way for you, especially if you don't have so much time, right? I would say too.

What a great way we're talking about habits today, right? If you could create a habit where every day you're consuming one small chunk of an English lesson and studying a few pieces of vocabulary and adding them to your long-term memory, it's like your English is going to be so much more phenomenal by the end of the year. So yeah, guys, unlock this lesson for free by clicking the link in the description below. You can unlock it on the app so you can get all these amazing resources or you can simply search for RealLife English on your favorite app store. But the link in the description will take you straight to this lesson over there.

All right, Ethan, let's jump into the first lesson that is forget about setting goals. Focus on your lifestyle instead. So this is one of my favorites that I try to remember every day. So basically prevailing wisdom says that it's best to achieve what we want by setting goals, right? People just think I'm gonna set a goal and that's what I'm gonna drive me there. But you know, the thing is,

That never happens. Every year, same thing. Set a goal, don't achieve it. So what's happening there? Well, the thing is that if you read the book and if you just think about it too, goals are good for setting a direction, but they don't help you make progress. What are good for making progress are systems or a lifestyle, as I like to call it. That's what's best for making progress, right? Yeah, for sure. You said...

you mentioned that maybe you don't even achieve the goal but sometimes you do achieve the goal like uh example for me personally is i've ran several half marathons but what always happened to me is i would do all the training so that's great i had these systems you know for getting up to being able to run 21 kilometers and so on and then i participate and i finish the race and everything

But then inevitably the next week I would give up on those good habits. I'd be like, oh, you know, I want a break from running. And so I would lose those good habits that I built up. And then eventually at some point I'd have to sign up for another half marathon to kind of get the motivation to do it again. But what would be better in that case, I think, is to...

reduce the scope. So kind of like keeping the system, but reducing the scope. So what does that mean when I use scope in that way, Izzy? It's everything that you're trying to focus on. So reduce the amount of things that you're focusing on. A scope in more concrete ways, like I think it's, for example, like binoculars are scopes, right? So you're focusing on a thing, you're looking at one thing. Yeah. And in this case, it's maybe the amount of kilometers that you're running. So

When you're training for a half marathon, there's a lot of time that goes into it. You know, it's maybe needing to run for an hour and a half when you're getting closer to the race to be able to do enough kilometers so that you're prepared on race day. But it would have been better just to keep up that I already had the days that I was putting on my shoes, getting out and going running. You know, I could have just done a lot less kilometers and, you know, not spend so much time, but still keeping the habit. So it would be more having that lifestyle and identity as someone who runs every day or a few times a week rather than

just having that goal and then reaching it and then stopping those good habits. And I think the same can happen with learning a language, right? Is,

I think too, when I studied, I studied for the C1 for Katzalan, it's kind of, I had made these really good study habits that then once I did the exam, I kind of lost those. And there's this expression that we use all the time that if you don't use it, you lose it. So it's like, maybe you have this objective for your English, but it's not enough just to reach an objective of getting to a certain level, getting to fluency, whatever the case is, because even if you get there, the work's not done.

You need to learn your entire life, really. You need to be a lifelong learner. It's like your case, right, Izzy? Sometimes we're talking and maybe still there's an expression that you haven't heard of before that might come up and you'd be adding that. Or even for...

even for a native speaker. You know, sometimes you come across a new word or expression. And this points to a problem that you have when you focus too much on your goals. And there are other problems too. But this one I like to call the yo-yo effect, right? Because it can go up and down. Like you go in and come back, right? To where you were. Now there's other problems too. You know, if you think about it,

Just focusing on the goals, not that goals are bad because you need goals to set a direction. I said that without the goal, you don't have a direction. You don't have maybe the inspiration or the vision, but in order to actually do it, to make progress, you need a system. So the other problem that I think you may have when you're just too focused on goals is that

everybody may have the same goal. Let's say, for example, that you're taking a test to apply for a job. So everybody who's applying for the job, they have the same goal. So if they just think, you know, just focus on the goal, that's not going to help them because only one person or a handful of people will get the job. So what will differentiate the people who get the job and the people who don't are different things. What are these things? It's the lifestyle, it's the goals, the habits, right? They do every day. What's underneath the surface?

you know, there's a tip of the iceberg and then what's underneath the surface that not a lot of people see. You know, you see somebody at the gym working out hard and you think, oh, I want to be like that person. And you try and copy their moves, their movements and everything. Well,

That's not going to help because they have a whole lifestyle that actually supports that. So go and look like maybe that person is going to bed at a certain time. They're eating something specific. You're meditating. I don't know. But look at the habits that are more foundational. So I think that's why this is one of the pillars, I'd say, of achieving goals. I think that's interesting what you say, too, because it makes me think about something I tried to remind myself of.

Sometimes I'm in the gym and I see someone who has a body that I admire, you know, like the place where they're at. And...

And sometimes that can be helpful to actually see, like, is it even the right objective for me? Like, is having that, that like muscular body the right objective for me? Because they're there when I arrive and they're there still when I leave. That means they're spending a lot more time at the gym than I am. I don't want to spend that much time at the gym. Like, I kind of go for a more, you know, functional to be in shape and everything, but I don't want to spend half my day at the gym. So I think it's important to know, like, okay, is that even...

the right objective for me is that really what i desire am i willing to put in the hard work to get there and the answer might be no and that's okay and it just helps you to coming back to this word it helps you to like lessen the scope to something that fits more with your life and you know what you ultimately want and are willing to do to achieve it just to give you guys the next action for each one of these lessons we're going to give you something to think about to do next

And actually implement these. So choose a goal, do pick a goal, but then stop right there and reflect what are the daily actions that I would need to build as habits to create this lifestyle. So to show that real quick, I just wanted to do a challenge with you, Ethan, to demonstrate, you know, how to do this.

I want to give you a goal that people normally set. And I want you to give us some habits, maybe just one habit that would be a nice way to create that lifestyle that would help them achieve that goal. So let me give one example first. Imagine that you are a coach of a soccer team. So the goal for that coach or all coaches would be to win the championship. That's the whole team's goal. Focusing on the goal there is not going to help.

What would be a lifestyle that would help? How about sleeping early, going to bed early, getting up early, practicing every day early as well? These may be, if you look at the best teams, these may be the practices, you know, that they apply and recruiting players every week, you know? So it's just one example. Now, let me give you one goal and you give me one example of a lifestyle. Losing 10 kilograms.

so i think that the most typical thing people think when they're like oh i want to lose weight is signing up for a gym but i think that that's for a lot of people it's going to be the typical thing that they get their membership and then they give up on so i think an even better thing is to get in the habit of tracking calories so you actually know how much you're eating and when you do this you can actually go a bit deeper there's calorie

calculators online so you can see, okay, with my current weight, my body type, how much do I need to eat to lose weight? But yeah, it's just this habit of using a calorie tracker like MyFitnessPal. Nice. So yeah, in terms of lifestyle, I think that is thinking I'm the kind of person who tracks calories, tracks all my calories. Just thinking I am that kind of person. That mindset will lead you to achieving that goal. How about this goal here? Get a new job.

What would you do? What's one habit, one thing that you would do or one could do? Obviously, it depends so much on the job. But the first thing that occurs to me is something related to learning. So maybe it's reading every day. And I think for we'll talk more about this. Right. But I think for a lot of people, it's they think it's really difficult to read a whole book.

But I think the important thing is more that you're doing just a little bit every day. So even if it's just like five minutes, you're reading five minutes every day, you're learning something new, you're gathering some new skills, and ultimately it's going to make you a candidate who stands out more. Yeah, choose a great book right in your area. And I think by reading it every day, it'll make a tremendous impact in your

next job interview believe it or not like it's just yeah crazy and there's what you said before it's having a small habit like that where you're reading every day then you start seeing yourself as a reader right and then over time maybe you'll you'll get more interested in that you'll expand it and you'll be reading more than five minutes all right so final goal watch movies in english without subtitles so you can understand them like 100 what can you do if that's your goal i think watching a learning tv lesson every single day

That'll help you to get to the point where you can understand without subtitles, not to toot our own horn. Exactly. I mean, I'm saying exactly because if you do that, then you're going to learn vocabulary, right? You're going to learn corrective speech, which are the foundation for understanding natives without subtitles. Not kidding. Like I'm not biased here. All of these thoughts about being the kind of person, I am the kind of person who does this. I'm the kind of person who does that is really great. And that leads us to lesson number two, which is,

This is a quote from the book, just like the previous one. The first one was forget about setting goals, focus on your systems instead. I said lifestyle, but the quote is focus on your systems instead. Lesson number two is every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. So what's really great about this one is that it reveals how to build habits that stick, you know, because we just talked about the importance of building habits, but how do you do that? Well,

Research says from the book that you need to focus on creating a new identity first because your behaviors, they come from your beliefs, your sense of identity. Now to change your behaviors, how do you do that? Right? Because you have your beliefs about who you are, but if that stops you from building habits, that begs the question, how can you change your identity?

I wanted to comment first, you said habits that stick. This is a really nice collocation. What do we mean when we say stick in this kind of context? So there's the literal meaning of stick or sticky. If you throw something on the wall and it sticks, it's going to be on the wall. It's not going to fall down, right?

There is even an expression to throw spaghetti on the wall. No, is that it? Yeah. Is that it? What does that mean, by the way? I think it's like throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. I think it's like when you're just trying different things without any sort of strategy or process just to see what might work. But it's not such an effective strategy. The story behind that expression is actually that

that's how they say that you should check if spaghetti is done. So you throw it at the wall. If it doesn't stick, it's not done yet. As soon as it sticks to the wall, then it's done. Very nice way of testing it. So figuratively, it's just that. It's when you start doing something and it stays with you, you keep doing it, it sticks, right? It's like when you study the vocabulary flashcards in the RealLife English app for these lessons.

The vocabulary is actually going to stick you're not going to forget it. Anyway, so all this explanation of how to build new habits that you got to change your identity I said that begs the question How do you do that? How do you change your identity? So we touched on this right a little bit before that if you're Reading for five minutes every day, even though it's not very much you do start seeing yourself as a reader or for example if you

are tracking your calories or you're having a healthy diet, you start seeing yourself as someone who who cares about their nutrition or who cares about how much they eat. And this is a lot more powerful than just having a goal of like, I want to lose 10 pounds. It's like, no, I'm trying to I'm developing identity as a healthy person and then starting to see yourself as, OK, I'm someone who eats healthy. I'm someone who cares about their diet. You're trying to think what kind of person am I?

And when you define that, it becomes so much easier. So lesson one and lesson two are deeply connected here. In this case, the next action that I would give you guys and that I try to implement too is first decide the type of person who you want to be. And second, prove it to yourself with small actions, just like you said, right? So the small actions are the key here.

Because people, again, they try to optimize already for time and do things for 30 minutes, one hour. That's not going to help you start it. But then as the quote says, every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. It's not every big action. It's every action. Even if it's just one minute. There's a very nice story from the book also that a guy tried to apply this quote.

in a really extreme way, he decided to go to the gym and not work out and come back home for 30 days. So by the end of the month, he had developed a habit of going to the gym, not even working out, developed a habit to go to the gym. So once he was there,

Well, you know, in the second month, it was like, I'm here already. Let me just do something. Right. So then he started doing, then he started working out. But again, he didn't need to make that a big thing. So start small. That is how you can start to shape your identity because you think, okay, I really am the kind of person who does that every day. It's not about how much time you spend on doing it.

Yeah, we did an episode not so long ago, Izzy, where we shared, you shared how you learned English, right? And I think that this was a big part of that. The last couple of years, I've been focusing more on my Portuguese, for example. And I think that these kind of things are really important for me is the fact that I'm making Brazilian friends here and we get together and we speak Portuguese together. You know, I listen to a lot of Brazilian music. I watch series. I read Brazilian books. And yeah,

for learning a language, it almost is like I'm cultivating a Brazilian part of my identity. So I can see this version of myself that's like my Brazilian Ethan, my Brazilian identity. And I think that for learning any language, so you guys learning English, it's really important that you start kind of seeing that English or American, like whatever, that sort of like English speaking version of yourself, right? Very good point. Yeah. Because that's the thing.

We're talking about behavioral psychology here and how that's important for you to learn English. If you become more aware of how your mind works, how you work, that your habits will influence your identity. And then your identities will influence your habit back. They've got to start somewhere, right? Start with what's more actionable. Start with the habits, make them small. And what you're saying makes a lot of sense because when I, when I started learning English, I was all about like, I want to be the kind of person who lives and breathes English, you know?

And that led me here. But I wasn't thinking I want to be fluent. It was just about getting really immersed in it. I was more concerned with, am I getting immersed in it? Maybe not even concerned, but I was more inspired by that idea. And I think that's the difference between someone who is a successful English speaker and...

an English learner, the successful person, we were talking about systems, right? Like they're more focused just on English as a part of my life. It's not really something I think about. It's just something that I do because I have all these things that I enjoy. I have my English speaking friends. I have maybe job, like whatever it is for you in your case. And then like the English learner is just so focused on, I need to get fluent. I need to study. I need to learn grammar. I need to pass this test. So they're more focused on

These different achievements that they believe is going to reflect that they have reached some level rather than just focusing on like, okay, let me immerse myself in the language all the time. And then just as a consequence, I'm going to get to that point where I'm an English speaker. Success is a byproduct, right? As a consequence. Totally. What does it mean a byproduct of something? Yeah, it's when you attempt to do something and you end up creating something else.

but not with the goal of creating that. It happens a lot in cooking, right? Like when you make pasta, you end up having pasta water, which is a great ingredient for cooking as well. I don't know if you know that. We're talking a lot about pasta today. But anyway. It's almost lunchtime. Yeah. So for a next action, how can you implement this? Here's the two steps. First, decide the type of person who you want to be. And second, prove it to yourself with small wins.

So let me give you one example. A few months ago, I decided that I wanted to become a better teacher, a better presenter on this podcast and just in life. So just having a goal wouldn't help. And I wanted to have the sense of identity. You know, I want to be kind of person who can speak clearly, not get lost in my own explanations and stuff. So what's the small wins that I need here?

the habits that I need on a daily basis. Improv, started doing more improv. Vlogging, just talking to the camera, listening to other podcasts. That alone started to become a space where I was getting immersed in. And then suddenly I started to improve as a consequence. So lifestyle.

Amazing, Isaiah. So I'm looking forward to hear what is the third thing that people should focus on, the third quote. This one is, you don't have to be the victim of your environment. You can also be the architect of it. So people probably know what an architect is, but when you use it in a sort of figurative sense, what do you mean being an architect of your environment? Another word that comes to mind is be the designer of it. You can design it, you can create it, be the creator of your environment. The one, the person who

define it exactly how it should be. You might also hear being the victim of your circumstances, which means that there's two perspectives you can have. You can either say something happens to you and you can either say,

You can complain about it, right? You can say like, why does this happen to me? It's not fair, these kinds of things. Or you can be proactive and say, okay, this thing has happened. What am I going to do about it? What's next actions can I take? What can I learn from this? How can I get support from others to overcome it, right? So I think that that's a really big thing is if you don't want to just be a victim and have this, what we call victim mentality, then you need to shift your thinking to always looking for how can I use this? Where oftentimes we talk about

There's a really great book and notion that comes from Stoke philosophy that the obstacle is the way. So actually seeing challenges that come up in your life are more like opportunities, things that can teach you something and can help you to achieve and grow. And being the architect of your environment is when it comes to talking about habits that we're talking about today,

Your environment has such a huge effect. So one thing that he talks about a lot in this book is smokers, for example. A lot of people find that to be a really hard habit to kick.

when we say to kick a habit it means to stop a bad habit right and obviously your environment is going to affect you a lot if all of your friends are smokers and you're trying to quit and you're spending time with the same group of friends who all smoke it's going to make it really arduous really difficult to kick that habit so you might find if you can

spend less time with those friends. I mean, you don't need to completely alienate them, but at least in this period that you're trying to quit, you can spend less time with them. And maybe you join a running club and you're hanging out with people who have a healthier lifestyle and, you know, eat well and don't smoke and so on. And that's going to start

comes back to the identity factor as well, right? Spending time in this new environment, a community is a type of environment, right? It's going to help you to develop this identity as I'm not a smoker, I don't smoke, and I take care of my body.

Mm-hmm. That's amazing. Because like really, we need willpower to walk the path, right? That we want to walk. But we can design the path too. Like it doesn't have to be hard or so difficult. Design your path. This reminds me of even another quote. I don't know who said this, but it's like, life doesn't happen to you. It happens for you or even maybe by you.

If you think about like you're the author of your life, like it happens by you. So it doesn't matter where you are right now. Start from where you are. If you're trying to become fluent in English, have that goal in mind in getting immersed in a lifestyle that actually is what we call lifestyle English, right? Live and breathe English and design your path, design your environment. So that helps you. For example, so I can...

I try to get more focused at work by leaving my phone far from me. And if you're noticing that you're trying to get more focused practice done, you know, on your computer or somewhere else, and you're not being able to because you're getting too distracted by your phone,

do the same, you know, get rid of the cue, the thing that triggers you to get distracted. We're going to talk about the behavioral psychology in this, that is the habit loop. So with any habit that you have, bad habit or a good habit, the same four steps will happen. First, there will be the cue, then the craving, then the response, and finally the reward. So let me give you one example of how this happens with a bad habit of eating cookies.

Say you get home from work. There's a jar of cookies on your table. Always get one and eat it. It's a bad habit. How do you stop it? How do you use the science here of the habit loop to prevent that from happening? Well, first, think about it. The jar of cookies on a table, that's a cue. That's creating that trigger for you. You see it and you want a cookie, right? Is another way of thinking about that. So you see it, you want a cookie. So...

You get the craving. Craving, exactly that. I'm using this example with food because it's quite literal. A craving is the feeling of wanting to eat something really bad, really wanting it. So you get the craving. When you get the craving, what follows is the response. You act, right? And finally, the response will connect it to the reward. You get the taste of the cookie and be like, oh, this feels great. A sugar rush. Yeah.

Exactly. Which then connects us to the queue. So the queue links you to the reward. When you see the cookie on the table, you immediately start to feel the reward already. Like, I want that reward, you know? So get rid of the queue. It's that easy, right? At least when you're trying to stop

bad habit like this. Which in this case, you might do by putting the cookies on like a really high shelf or somewhere where you're not seeing it, right? Not out on the counter. Exactly. So that's what the habit loop is. I think we can give a few more examples. But going back to this idea of life doesn't happen to you, it happens for you or by you. There's an amazing clip that Steve Jobs reveals one of his secrets of life.

I just think it's fascinating and it helps you remember these ideas and it helps them stick with you. So let's check it out. When you grow up, you tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world. Try not to bash into the walls too much. Try to have a nice family life. Have fun. Save a little money.

But life, that's a very limited life. Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact, and that is everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it. You can influence it. You can build your own things that other people can use.

And the minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know, if you push in, something will pop out the other side that you can change and you can mold it. That's maybe the most important thing is to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you're just going to live in it.

versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it. Once you learn that, you'll never be the same again. So easy. That clip, other than just being great advice, it was absolutely packed with advanced vocabulary. I took note of at least nine advices

terms that I think would be useful for most English learners. So you guys can learn all of those in the app, but let's talk about a few of them that I thought were interesting. So you talked about, I think, bashing up against life. What does that mean if you bash up against something? Yeah, to bash up against the walls, right? I think it even says like a... So yeah, so you can picture like fishing. You can...

fishy fish, right? And when it gets on your boat, it starts to bash against the walls of the boat, you know, because you didn't grab it. So it's just like hitting forcefully, in this case, the figurative walls of your life, right? So what he was saying there is like, some people say, try not to do that. To move too much, to try to do too much, to change your life too much, because life is the way it is. So his advice was,

Don't follow that. Life can be different. So he uses a lot of very nice expressions to talk about how you can have an influence over your life. This is something we were talking about as well, right? As being the architect of your life. But he says that you can mold it. What does it mean to mold something? So literally when you're cooking, for example, not pasta this time, but a cookie, maybe you have a mold, right? The object that's called a mold where you put the batter in it, the ingredient that is going to actually be the cookie itself.

And that's what a mold is. And as a verb is to give something shape. Then I think you said something towards the end about there being a lot of erroneous concepts or erroneous ideas. That's really nice advanced term. What does that mean? Ideas that are considered wrong or wrong.

That you view like this is not right. It's not correct. It's erroneous. Anyway, so there were other expressions that we're not going to explain right now because we need to move on. But some really interesting ones like to poke life or something will pop out on the other side to make a mark upon something. Really nice storytelling there. Amazing. And so how does this apply to learning English? I think that we talked about, for example...

Smoker should spend less time with their smoking friends. That's if you're trying to quit something, but if you're trying to Learn English for example, and you don't have any friends or family members like no one around you speaks English I think it's you're you're kind of in an uphill battle. That means that you're doing something that is unnecessarily challenging and

That's why I think you kind of need to find your tribe of people who do that thing that you want to learn. So who speak English or who are also learning English. It doesn't need to be a native speaker. It's extremely motivating just to have other people who are going through the same difficult adventure of trying to learn English because you can practice together. Like Ksenia talked about, she's from not that big of a town in Ukraine and they have an English speaking club. So maybe there's something like that.

And even if you're from a small town or there's no opportunities like this in your city, look for opportunities online, right? So I think that you can be proactive there in shaping an environment, either in person or online, that really helps you to flourish those skills that you're trying to build. For sure. Yeah, flourish. It's a nice word. What do you mean by flourish the skills here?

Something flourishes...

I think it comes from like a flower, right? It's like, you know, flowers, if they're in a rich environment with good soil and water and so on, they flourish, they grow really healthily. And so you can say that too, that, you know, if you're in the right environment, you're going to flourish. Like those skills that you're trying to build, they're just going to come up in a really nice way, in a really productive way. And that makes me think also of some other tips that I could give. So for example, we talked about developing small habits first, small actions first.

And the idea of a habit stacking comes to mind. It's another concept from the book. It reveals that the habit loop can work for you to create even other habits. For example, at the end of the habit cycle, when you finally finish doing something like breakfast, you always have breakfast, right? How about at the end of it, it's for five minutes.

you practice it a bit. I already mentioned on the app, on the real life app, you have chapters now. So these lessons, even though they can get long, but you can consume them by parts, right? Five minutes at a time, 10 minutes at a time and practice already the vocabulary. It's a great habit to have. And if you always do that after a certain activity that has already been implemented in your life, like breakfast, like a meal, it's going to be much easier for that to work as a cue for a new habit. It's like finish breakfast and

It's practice time. It's funny you say that. I actually have that one for myself, but it's when I go to the gym, I listen to a podcast usually in Portuguese. So it's kind of like arrive at the gym. That's an established habit, right? Throw in my headphones, put on a podcast in Portuguese. So like it's something I was able to build on something that I was already doing. I think another great example that he shares in the book is like if you're trying to get a running habit, it's good to put out your running shoes at

at night so that you go, they're already ready for you to go in the morning. You don't have that extra resistance on top of it. It makes it easy, right? And this phrase, make it easy, it is one of the steps that he says referring to the habit loop that for each one of those steps, you got to improve that somehow. So with the first step, if you want to create a good habit, Q, what do you do if you want to create a good habit? Make it obvious. As you said, make it obvious, but your shoe is right there. So craving, make it attractive,

Right. Leave your shoes clean, I guess, you know, and also maybe put your socks there. You know, that's that's attractive. Like you can easily do it. For me, I think it would be more like the two. If you're going out on a run, you have like that playlist you always listen to when you go out on a run, you know, because it's the one that gets you psyched up. So it's you're looking forward to listen to that or whatever.

Even for me, I don't really like going to the gym, but I do look forward to listening to a podcast in Portuguese. I think your example is better. Anyway, so for the response step, make it easy. So in this case, yeah, reduce the scope. Run for five minutes. That makes it easier for you.

And reward make it satisfying. So these are all connected too, because you said like if you listen to a podcast that makes it attractive, but also satisfying. But some people do implement that good old tactic of eating something they enjoy a lot at the end. That gives them that sense of reward. That works too, but make sure that it is rewarding the habit they try to create. I think a big thing too that you'll find that happens with learning a language is

For example, if you listen to this podcast and you're studying the vocabulary flashcards, right? What's going to feel really satisfying is later when you get into conversation, it's like, oh, I got to use that new word that I just learned. Like, I love that anytime that happens that I learn a word in Portuguese and then there's opportunity to use that in a conversation because it's like, oh, like I get to use this new word, this new expression. And this reminds me of a message that we received from one of our learners, from one of our students yesterday.

and users of the app that they're talking about English learning and vocabulary learning as something that is fundamental to them. And they use the app to do that. Let's now do a shout out to this person called Jill.

All right, so Jill says, this app is really helpful to memorize new words, expressions, and idioms by the method of flashcards. It works. I can use them if I have to wait at my hairdresser or my dentist or wherever I have time. Plus, every single week, there's an interesting topic. The teachers encourage you to use your English without fear. I've been excited to listen to the next podcast.

- Oh yeah, Jill. So what I really love there is it's a great representation of what we were talking about earlier about lifestyle too, right? So designing that lifestyle that, you know, when I have to do something boring, like wait at the dentist,

I can study my English. And like suddenly it's something that becomes more satisfying for you, right? And again, the RealLife app helps you do that because you don't have to think like where I'm going to get my English, where I'm going to get my English practice, right? So again, the link is in the description if you guys want to try that out. And I'm going to go straight to this lesson by clicking it. And you're going to practice all the amazing vocabulary that we used today. All right, Ethan, this was amazing. Like I already said, I love this book, Atomic Habits. We keep talking about it. Maybe if you guys are fans, if you've listened to us talk about it,

Many times it's because it's so foundational for changing your life, transforming. I know you guys are here exactly for that, right? If you're here, you're thinking, my life is a certain way right now. There's a status quo. I want to change that. Just like Steve Jobs said, I want to live a different life. I want to improve it. I want to get a new job. As we say here, I want to use my English as a doorway to my greatest life. So...

Start here. Start with small habits, right? Or atomic habits. That's called atomic habits because it's literally like super micro habits, right? But also really powerful. Oh yeah. And if you're enjoying these lessons, a free way for you to support us is of course, if you're on YouTube, hitting that subscribe button and the bell down below and also the like button because this helps YouTube to know that you are getting a lot out of these lessons so it can recommend it to more learners. And that way we can all have fun learning together.

Likewise, if you are listening to this on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or any other streaming platform like that, be sure to follow us so you don't miss any new lessons and give us a five-star review for the same reason that other people can take their English to the next level with us. And finally, to get the absolute best experience with these lessons, be sure to download the RealLife English app for free by clicking the link down in the description below or searching for us in your favorite app store.

All right, Ethan, thank you so much for joining me today. And thank all of you guys who are watching and listening to us. And as we always say on this podcast, no matter what divides us, that which unites us is far greater. One, two, three. Aww yeah!