931. Overcoming Fears 😰 with Zdenek
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You're listening to Luke's English Podcast. For more information, visit teachaluke.co.uk. Hello, listeners. Welcome back to Luke's English Podcast. Hello. How are you doing today? I hope you're doing fine.

Now, a brand new episode, and this one is another conversation episode for you to give you some more listening practice and the chance to pick up vocabulary in the context of a natural conversation. My guest today in this one is Zdenek Lukas, back on the podcast once again. Zdenek's been on this show a few times, but just in case you don't know him, Zdenek

He is an English teacher originally from the Czech Republic, currently living in Vietnam. He was first on this podcast in episodes number 569 and 570 when he talked about his story of learning English, living in the UK and becoming an English teacher.

He is a podcaster too. He does Zdenek's English podcast and also, more recently, his show about learning English with football called The Footglitch Podcast. You can get it wherever you get your podcasts. So this conversation with Zdenek today is all about fear. This is our topic, fear.

fear, things which give us fear or have given us fear in our lives and overcoming those fears. So yes, fear, being frightened, being scared, feeling anxious or nervous about things. So we talk about moments when we've been scared or felt very anxious. What happened, how we dealt with them and what we learned from them.

This contains anecdotes from our lives, so little stories and descriptions of things that have happened to us, and also plenty of language for talking about this whole subject. So there's definitely a lot of vocabulary for you to pick up from this.

I should say, kind of a little disclaimer, we talk about fear and overcoming fears, but neither of us are experts in this area. I mean, we're not psychologists or professionals in the area of cognitive behavioral therapy or anything like that. We're just two blokes talking about our experiences. And the aim of this episode is...

really is just to have a natural conversation on the subject and let you notice the way that people talk about this topic in English. So watch out for vocabulary as we go through this. That's hopefully what you should always be doing when you listen to these conversations. It should be a chance to notice and pick up bits of English. So watch out for vocab

And that means the language we use to directly describe frightening experiences, but also other idioms and expressions around the subject. So obviously, you've already heard me say the word fear, to have fear, to experience fear, to overcome your fear or your fears, like specific fears. But also, we talk about things being scary or being scared of things, being afraid of things, etc.

Being nervous and being anxious or having nerves or experiencing anxiety. These are all words relating to fear, but also lots of other things about dealing with fear and learning from it. For example, being thrown in at the deep end.

or fight or flight responses, and lots of vocab that comes up. Now, you'll hear us explaining some of that vocab as it comes up. You know, we stop and sort of recap some of the things that we've said. But also, you can check the episode PDF for this episode, which is available on the episode page on my website. How many times did I say episode then? Four, I think. But anyway, you can find the PDF for this, which contains lots of the

notes for things that we say and other details to help you build your vocabulary with this. PDF on the episode page on my website, link in the description. We're ready to start in just a second, but there's just one more thing I need to say. As you listen to this conversation, you might hear that my voice is not as clearly recorded as usual. This is because, annoyingly, I had the wrong microphone selected

during the conversation, which we recorded remotely. I had the wrong microphone selected. So I was recorded not by my normal microphone, but by my laptop's inbuilt microphone. I didn't realise that was happening.

And this is why my side of the conversation sounds quite roomy and it's less clear than usual. I think it's okay, you can hear me all right, but that's why I sound a bit different this time because I made the schoolboy error of not double checking my sound settings before I hit record. But you know, you live and learn. Thankfully my laptop microphone was running and recording

So there was something, because that is certainly one of my biggest fears as a podcaster, recording an episode and then realising that you didn't actually set it up properly and the audio was not captured. And then when you review the file or the recording, all you have is just silence.

You know, that's just the worst. That's the sort of thing that gives me nightmares, to be honest. It's the sort of thing I wake up in the middle of the night, like in a cold sweat. Oh, God, I forgot to press record. Oh, God, the wrong microphone was selected. Oh, my wife's like, are you OK? It's like, yeah, God, it's just a dream. And she's like, it's just, you know, it's just a dream. It's just a dream. Luke, are you all right? The microphone. So that's normally a nightmare anyway.

Without any further ado, let's get started then with this episode. And here we go. So why have we decided to talk about being scared of things? I suppose I suggested it to you. We were thinking about what we could talk about and...

Well, I'm in Vietnam and it's absolutely a completely different culture from, let's say, Western Europe. So obviously there were a few moments that I had to deal with or overcome or get used to, you could say. And fear is definitely part of what I experience here. But to be honest, I'm making it sound very dramatic. Yeah.

Because Vietnam is a lovely place, of course. It's not like a scary place or anything. No, not at all. I know what you mean. When you go to a place that's totally different, yeah, there is that feeling of being out of your comfort zone, but

But just because you don't necessarily know all of the customs and all the ways of doing things. I know exactly how you feel when I've moved to different places, even moving to France when it's not that far away from England or that different, really. But just the fact that people speak a different language. When I first moved here or first times I visited and let's say when my girlfriend was at work and I was just like knocking around,

trying to find a place to eat or just, you know, going to cafes and things like that. Yeah. There's that sense of nerves of kind of like, Oh God, that's right. I hope I'm doing this right. You know, I don't want to sit, I'd walk around the city looking for a place to sit and have a coffee and I'd walk past cafes and

And I just kind of go, no, I don't like the feel of that one. I don't know why. Because it's different. Like in England, you go to a pub, you just go to the bar and order your drink and sit down and the waiter leaves you alone. In France, you can sit down at a table, the waiter comes over, you feel like you need to have a little chat or something. So I would often sort of avoid all those moments. I'm a bit better these days. It's like a little bit of a culture shock, basically, right? But for you, it must have been...

Like not that hard considering you have lived in Japan when you were, when you were younger, right? So you, you went to Japan and we know all the stories like sick in Japan on Luke's English podcast. So I just want to ask you this question. Was it easier because of that? Because for me it was, because I have lived in the UK before and it felt like so much easier going to Vietnam after that experience, even though it's a different culture, but still, yeah.

It's like I've done it in some capacity, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Much, much easier coming to France. In fact, I was actually up for it, you know? Having, when I was much younger, gone to Japan, which is obviously much further away and so on, and going through that much more drastic change.

yeah, coming to, moving to France was almost kind of like, yeah, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm well up for this. Uh, but you know, when I moved to Japan, I've told the story before, but, um, just the, um,

I was full of confidence and thinking, "This is just wonderful. I can't wait to go." That feeling lasted all the way up until the moment when I got dropped off at the airport by my dad. My dad drove me to Heathrow Airport, a two-hour drive or something. I was fine in the car, thinking, "This is going to be brilliant." Then, bags out of the car,

and stuff and then I started to feel this slight feeling of nerves

coming in and you know we rolled the bags through into the main part of the airport you know the the arrivals area and then dad was like all right then well um look after yourself off you go at that point i was like yeah my stomach sort of like dropped out of you know just dropped completely and i was like oh god i'm oh wow this is real this is actually going to happen my dad's like daddy's gonna go now you know and off he went

we kind of said our goodbyes and he said, "Look after yourself, keep in touch."

And then I was like, oh God, I'm on my own now. And I just felt so unbelievably nervous in the airport. You know, that kind of airport anxiety that you can get when you're just sort of like going through check-in and there's that sense of like, oh, I'm going to be late. I better not be late. I've got to get the right gate. And then there's the flight. And then I've got my passport. Where's my passport? I've got to make sure it's in my pocket here. And I've got my bags and stuff. Getting things out of pockets and putting them back in, opening zips in bags. There's quite a lot of them.

Anxiety. There's a lot that can happen at the airport. And we haven't even mentioned the phobia of flying itself, right? So, you know, there are a lot of people who really... I remember my first flight, I was really uneasy about it as well. And whenever there are turbulences, it still is a bit like, ooh...

Yeah, but I can't say I'm scared of flying. For example, there was a football player, right? His name was Dennis Bergkamp. I don't know if you remember him, a Danish player. He used to play for my favorite team, Arsenal. Hello, this is Dennek and I'm talking to you from the future. I've just made a terrible mistake. Dennis Bergkamp isn't Danish. He is Dutch.

Apologies to all Luke's Dutch listeners. My bad. And he wouldn't travel to European games because he couldn't fly. So he only played the domestic league, the Premier League. And he was a really important player for Arsenal as well. A brilliant player too.

Yeah, amazing. And God, so Arsenal never did anything in the Champions League probably because of that. Is that right? It's an interesting assumption. Yeah, it could be. I don't know. It could be. I don't know. I don't know if they did. But I'm assuming that not having Dennis Bergkamp was a big disadvantage for them. But that's interesting, isn't it? People are scared of flying. People are very nervous about it. And it's not logical because...

Flying is much safer than a lot of other things. Driving to the airport is much more dangerous than the actual flight itself. But yeah, that's a phobia. People have a genuine phobia of flying, which is kind of an illogical fear. But yeah, on that flight to Japan, I felt awful. I just felt so uncomfortable and nervous. But it wasn't because of the flight. It was just because I'd been sort of knocked out of my normal...

Yeah, just sort of like knocked out of my normal life. And I like that you use that phrase, that feeling of being out of your comfort zone. So I actually wrote it down. I did my homework, listeners. Luke gave me that homework. He's a teacher after all, so he's just doing his job. We said that during the episode we could perhaps note down bits of language that we both use and point them out.

language learners out there, we're here to help. So yeah, I said I was out of my comfort zone, did I? - You did, yes. - Yeah, nice phrase, I suppose. - Out of your sort of environment in which you were comfortable, right?

Suddenly, that's hard because you have to just imagine you're somewhere anywhere on a desert island. And now the first thing you have to do is to explore the bits of islands to demarc. Is that a verb? To demarc your territory, so to speak?

Is it demarcate or demarcate? I don't know which one. Demarcate. Demarcate, yeah. Demarcate, set the boundaries to demarcate your territory. Exactly. So that's sort of, because you don't know what's waiting for you out there, right? So it's a bit scary. It can be a bit scary.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just, yeah, the feeling of the foundations of normal, your normal life that you just had never really thought about before. Yeah. Things that you just assumed as just being just normal things. Exactly. That were kind of gone. So that feeling of being on the plane actually was quite sort of,

symbolic in a way that I did feel I could really I was really aware of the huge gulf beneath me that there was obviously my feet on the carpet and then the fuselage of the plane or whatever you know and then below the the plane it was just so much space and then way way down at the bottom was like Siberia or something and I remember looking out the window and just seeing this kind of

I could see the Arctic tundra or whatever. It just looked like some frozen wasteland. Maybe it was even the canopy of the clouds I could see. I don't know, but I thought I could see the ground. And just, yeah, I just got this feeling of like the earth had just gone out from under my feet. And then as soon as I arrived, as soon as I arrived in Japan and got out of the plane and walked around, I felt absolutely fine because somehow I realized, oh, it's

It's okay. It's just, it's not that different. I don't know why I was expecting it to be so shocking. Yeah. But anyway, just to finish this point, yeah, going to, coming to France was, was much easier. Still not, not, not a walk in the park. Hey, there's another one. That's a good one. Yeah. Not a walk in the park, but easier than Japan because the first few weeks of being in Japan, I also felt very sort of,

Yeah, still out of my comfort zone. Just that feeling of the first few days of walking down the street, trying to find something, like trying to find a bank or a post office or a place to eat, and just being completely unfamiliar with the way the place works. For example, I didn't realize that you have to... I was operating like I would do in England. I was looking for a cafe like this, walking around looking for a cafe. I didn't realize you have to look up.

that there's, you know, all these different floors and a lot of the time places to, you know, get to eat or cafes and stuff will be up on the fifth, sixth, seventh floor or something. So I didn't know how to read the city felt very, very science, right? They were in Japanese as well. So you, I don't know, you probably couldn't speak the language at the time and

No, not at all. I felt very lost. How about you then in Vietnam? Is this a feeling... Because again, going back to the reason we're doing this episode about fears, you talked about moving to Vietnam. Although Vietnam is itself a lovely place, just the fact that you were in a different place, different culture, that brings a lot of anxiety and fear with it. What kinds of things have you experienced? I can't say that...

Okay. It's not that bad. Like I'm really, I'm really making it sound overly dramatic, but I would say one thing in particular is, is quite hard and that's roads. Yes. Um,

What happens is that basically Vietnamese people, they behave in a different way on the road. And also about 90% of them ride scooters or motorcycles. So there are cars here as well, of course, and trucks and everything and bicycles. But it's like the most common means of transport for Vietnamese people.

So I would say that, correct me if I am wrong, but for us Europeans, when somebody is a motorcyclist, they drive this vehicle or ride this vehicle for pleasure and for speed and just to enjoy themselves, right? But not as a transportation device.

Yeah, you think of those American movies where there's guys on motorbikes, you know, born to be wild. And they're kind of like riding along open mountain highways with the air, the wind in their hair and stuff. It's about speed. So they want to be fast and enjoy it. And I think, I'm not saying it's everyone, but I think most people riding motorcycles, maybe some of your biker listeners will agree.

prove us wrong, but I would say that it's like that. Whereas here in Vietnam, it's the most common means of transport. Vietnam is a developing country. It's a lovely country and it's developing bloody fast as well, but it is considered a developing country from the Western point of view. So it's actually the cheapest vehicle they can get and it's convenient as well because

Roads can get quite busy sometimes, quite crowded. And when you have a car, you are actually slower, much slower than on a scooter or motorbike. So that's one of the reasons as well. The second one is the price. And what this means is that everyone, like I said, 90% of people has a scooter, right? Or there's one scooter per family, at least.

And then what you see on the road is that everyone rides a scooter. So that's like, we're talking like very young children, barely, barely legally sometimes, you know, uh, then, um, uh, like old people as well. And then there's me, uh, with this irrational fear of, of, uh,

getting one for myself right so that's probably i think this is the main reason we were probably doing this this episode uh let me let the cat out of the bag i think now um because because uh

Because you talked to me before about the fact that you decided... Living in Vietnam, it's normal to have a scooter or motorbike. And you put this off. You put off getting one for a long, long time. And you said you had an irrational fear. I would almost call it irrational because I had enough time to get comfortable with it. I even had some people who were trying to teach me how to do it. And I wasn't even too bad at it.

But when it comes to getting one for myself and actually sort of becoming independent, right? It's my scooter or my motorbike, and I will ride it whenever I want. There's no one else telling me what to do or being there with me in case something happens. Yeah.

One of my friends was teaching me how to ride it, right? Let's say, but that was just one day for one hour and in a very quiet area without anyone there. So that was like kind of simple. It's almost like riding a bicycle, right? But anyway, so I procrastinated on this a lot and...

Ended up just using Grab, which is a very convenient taxi service where you just jump on the motorbike behind the driver and he will take you anywhere. There is an app which you can use and they come within one, two minutes. And it's affordable as well. Because of that as well, there was no need for me to really use it. But then...

What it meant was that I was not...

Doing what the Romans do, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And also doing it like that, you feel like a tourist all the time, jumping on the back of someone else's bike. And yeah, when in Rome, do as the Romans do. When in Vietnam, get your own scooter. So yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've been to Vietnam. I went there for a couple of weeks eight years ago.

for a kind of traveling experience. And I, when I was in Nha Trang, yeah. Right. Do you know that place? Yeah. Um, big tourist destination. Um, I rented a scooter for a day. I think it was. And, um, yeah, maybe I was a little bit, what's the word for it? Uh, uh, uh, blase about it.

I don't remember. I thought, yeah, I'll rent a scooter. I think the little hotel where I was staying was offering scooter rentals. I get the feeling it was like the girl who worked in reception had a scooter. And when she was in reception, she wasn't using the scooter. So they kind of let the guests rent it.

You know, that's the kind of way it works sometimes. You know, it's not like these are scooters which are just for rental. These will just rent out the scooters of the staff when they're not using them. So I ended up renting out this girl's scooter and...

She was like, okay, here's the scooter. There you go. And I sat down on it and it got the, I think, did I wear a helmet? I don't know. Maybe I didn't. I think I didn't. You don't have to. You are supposed to. You are supposed to. All right. So maybe I did. And the girl was standing there and someone else from the hotel was standing there and sort of like, okay, great. Put the keys in the ignition and started it. And then just, I'd never ridden a scooter before.

And I just kind of like, because you know, you learn to just gently accelerate and turn and then off you go. And I just put the keys in and just accelerated. The thing jumped forwards.

I nearly crashed it into a load of other scooters in front of me. Yeah. And we all kind of like giggled a bit, you know, and I kind of laughed nervously and they laughed as well. And I sort of like turn the scooter around and awkwardly pushed it forwards without, you know, nearly falling over. And then off I went and I went to visit a local temple on this thing. And the,

To pray. To pray for good luck. And I went off down the main road near the beach and it was okay, but it was pretty hair raising. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. It was quite hair raising. It's like scary, right? To the point that your hair...

Your hair or hairs? Are we talking about hair? Hair. We're talking about hair, the thing that you have on your head. Your hair on your head or the hairs on your arms. Which we could use in plural. Hairs, yeah. Hairs on your arms. Right. That's interesting. The hairs on your arms stand up, but the hair, hair uncountable, on your head sticks up. So...

I think it's sort of like both. I think it's the hair on your head and the hairs on your arms, or the hairs on the back of your neck. It depends if you have any hair, right? There are people who don't have any hair as well. True, true. I don't know what happens if you don't have any hair on your body, if you shaved it off or for some other reason. What happens when you get scared? Does your skin sort of still do that? Probably. You have goosebumps. What?

Right, that's good. Goosebumps. Yes. Yeah. So it was pretty hair-raising stuff because I had to like, you know, I was okay down the little narrow side streets with no other scooters on them. But then you get to a main road and there's like a sea of scooters all going in both directions and you have to blend in with them. And then there you are. There's lots of scooters very close to you. And then I got to the temple, parked the scooter, felt great.

And then looked around the temple and then on the way home, on the way back, the sun went down.

And it got to a point where it was like rush hour, the sun had gone down, and I was scootering along in the dark. Wait, I thought you were actually making that sound. No, it was the scooter making that sound. Yeah, that's right. No, you don't actually have to do that when you're riding a scooter. You don't have to make the noise. Does it help in some way, especially if you are a noob, if you are a beginner? It does help with the nerves. It helps to deal with the nerves, the anxiety. If you just go...

like that when you're doing a scary thing, it can actually help. And the hair. You will keep the hair raising under control as well.

Yeah, just... Anyway, so I was going along like this. The sun had gone down. And there's like trucks on the road as well and stuff. And it was like terrifying. Absolutely terrifying experience. It's like you're one second or one millisecond away from a disaster, basically. And you're aware of it, right? That's the thing. That's always that thing that's making it hard for me. But...

Yeah. Have you, sorry. Well, I was just going to say actually final thing, like it's terrifying, but then you realize I'm going like 10 kilometers an hour, you know, the whole time you're going almost at walking speed, you know, people are jogging past you.

Oh, God, this is so frightening. Yeah. I should also say, I wanted to say this earlier, that we're talking about fears and things. And you said that you're making it sound dramatic. It's not really that bad. And I think that we're probably, I hope that you would agree that with me when I say that I think I'm very lucky that I've never really had

a truly frightening experience. I've had some, and maybe we'll get to them, that have really scared me. And some health-related things and stuff too. But luckily, I've never really had a genuinely dangerous thing in my life, which is something to mention, I suppose. This is a difficult topic. There are so many different types of things that can happen to you. And different types of fear we can

could get into that but that would take us ages and i also want to say that we probably chose this topic because it's something that your listeners can relate to because i think we are all scared at some point we have been all scared at some point in our life for one reason or another so it's it's perfectly normal and also like to be honest it's it's a little bit embarrassing

to be scared of driving a scooter or riding a scooter but then again i'm sure that our listener why do i keep saying our listeners your listeners they are listening to us they're listening to us that's why yeah yeah but they are your listeners so you're listening some of them are yours too yeah true true and i i know for a fact some of them are my students too so hello

All right. Hello. He's the next student. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure they have their own fears and it's probably something different, right? So...

That's why I don't feel that embarrassed because I know that, yes, this is weird. A grown-up man, a man is scared of doing this. And yeah, there is a follow-up to this. I did take a motorbike course or enrolled in a driving school in summer, but I still haven't got my own scooter. Really? Yeah.

Now you need to sort that out. I think the initial scariness of doing it, I think is quite quickly replaced by a general sense of convenience. Yes. Because it's very convenient, isn't it? Having your own scooter. I'm looking forward to that, Luke.

And also I'm looking forward to making that sound. Do that. Yeah. It makes you feel better. Like that. No, I almost regret not doing that when I was taking my test. I was doing the exam.

Fries.

Fresh for everyone. Does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company, seniority, skills...

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How was the exam, by the way? Was it difficult? It was all right. I did really well. To be honest, when I started, it was tough. That guy, my instructor, he didn't seem to be that keen on having a 40-year-old doing the course. He even told me at one point, Zdenek, if you hadn't told me that you ride a bicycle, I wouldn't have...

I wouldn't have let you in. Maybe you don't need a scooter then, if you've got just a normal push bike. You just carry on with that. It's better for you, better for the environment. The thing is though, first of all, it's slow. Again, it's not such a big deal because I will probably be slow, as you said, when I get my motorbike. But I have a feeling it's a bit more dangerous because if something were to happen, God forbid, then

The bicycle will probably be in a worse state than any other vehicle, right? Because it's a bit like fragile, isn't it?

Yeah, at least with a scooter or motorbike, you've got a bit more weight to it. Exactly. If someone bumps into you, you're less likely to be knocked down. That's it. In Paris, they have these rental bikes, these e-bikes, which are actually very sturdy. They're almost like a scooter in a way. They're quite heavy and sturdy. I was riding the other day, turned a corner into a street, and a car was there.

on the side of the road and people were getting out of the car and one person opened their door onto me. So as I rode past the car, they opened the door and it hit the bike. And I was quite lucky. It sort of glanced my hand on the handlebar

my hand a little bit, but it was fine. It wasn't hurt. But it was lucky that I was riding one of these heavy e-bikes, these rental e-bikes, because the door just sort of bounced back off the front of the bike. And I kind of slammed into the door. The door went bam and bounced back onto the person who was opening it. So it backfired for him, yeah? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, he obviously didn't realise because he wasn't looking. Because he's just like, "Oh, just open my door without looking." He realised when he got smacked by that door, right? Later on. He realised, yeah. And I kind of stopped the bike and turned round, waving my hand in the air like, "Ow!" And feeling pretty shocked because I'd just been hit by the door of this car.

But yeah, I was lucky that it was one of these heavy bikes because the bike took the hit of the door. If it had been a lighter bike, I might have been knocked down. And I turned around and I was waiting.

for the apology. I was waiting for the, "Oh, sorry. I just whacked you with the car door." And no apology came. Wait a minute. I thought you were British, Luke. You should be the one apologizing, even if they do something to you. If you bump into someone on the metro or something, then usually it's the person bumping into someone that should apologize. But in the UK,

It's the victim that should apologize, right? Well, in other scenarios, maybe if it had been less serious, if it had just been bumping into someone in the street and, oh, sorry, then, yeah, naturally my inclination is to say sorry first, you know. Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. And we carry on. But in this case, yeah, I felt like it was significant enough and dangerous enough.

and careless enough on the part of the person in the car that I went into a different mode and I went into the, I'm going to be angry with the driver mode. But I still did it in the most British way. Because in Paris, people will, you know, they'll argue and defend themselves quite confidently and aggressively, let's say. You know, they'll say an insult or they'll shout at the person, you know, fair enough.

But I'm so British that I still can't quite do that. So I was there. I stopped and waited for them to... So this is how angry I was. I was like, "I will wait for you to apologize!" That's how aggressive I was. I just waited angrily. And then he... And the person... Yeah, nothing. Did he walk up to you and say, "Is your bike okay?"

No, not even that. No, no. There were a few other people in the car getting out and they all kind of looked at each other and didn't acknowledge me. And I said something, again, typically British and passive aggressive. I was like, well, excuse me. I think I said that, you know, which is almost equivalent to saying, well, sorry.

You know, where you shout sorry at someone because they haven't said sorry to you. So you sort of sarcastically and angrily shout sorry to them. And then I was like, well, excuse me. Or like...

Something like that. And then I, and nothing, I've got no response. So I just carried on and just angrily carried on and buried the emotion and feeling about it. The emotion. Yeah. Yeah. Until now, when I can tell you until now, wow, that it's been ages. Look, how long was it? Has it been?

I don't know. It's been a few months. It's been a few months for sure. I actually, I did tell my friends. So I was on the way to a band practice, uh, with an English friend and a French friend. And I told them, and the French friend was like, you know, really angry. You should, you should have said something. You should have gone over to them. You should have done this and that and the other. And I was like, no, I can't, I can't, I can't do that. I couldn't do that. Um,

So you said letting the cat out of the bag, which is sort of like revealing something that we perhaps weren't going to reveal. So not that it was a secret, but the reason why perhaps we chose to do this episode is because you were talking about your experience of riding a scooter and stuff. So by saying when you said, oh, Luke, I think you let the cat out of the bag, you meant that I

I revealed the actual reason why we chose to do this episode because of your scooter and motorbike experience. Hair raising, we've mentioned that already. You said if something were to happen, God forbid, is what you said. Mm-hmm.

Meaning, when riding a bike, if something were to happen, meaning if something happened, if something bad happened, if an accident occurred, God forbid, which is like one of those things that you add as a way of sort of saying, hopefully that won't happen. Exactly. You don't want to jinx it. If you didn't say that, then you would jinx it, which means it would sort of bring you bad luck, basically. Yeah.

Yeah, you wouldn't want to tempt fate, which is a thing. To tempt fate, like mentioning something like, oh, you know, riding a bike is totally safe. I've never had an accident. Oh, don't tempt fate because then, you know, the chances are that you're going to have an accident then. So, yeah, and you don't want to jinx it, which is the same thing. This is like we're on the ground. Yeah, it's like superstitions, basically, we are talking about. If you're superstitious, you might think that something like that works.

Even like a black, talking about cats, you mentioned a cat out of the back. So if there's a black cat crossing the road, I mean, I don't know if you have this superstition in the UK, but we have it in the Czech Republic and that shouldn't happen. Yeah.

Yeah, if a black cat crosses your path, yeah, that could be bad luck. And so you have to do something normally to kind of get rid of the bad luck, like you knock on, touch wood or knock on wood or something like that. Sorry, for some reason I...

For some reason, I thought you were going to say to get rid of the cat. But thankfully, you did not say that. You have to chase the cat down and put it in a bag and throw the bag into a river. No! And then you let the cat out of the bag. Yeah, exactly. Then you finally let the cat out of the bag. I don't know why we're putting cats in bags. Don't do that, everyone. So yeah, we say things like God forbid in order to make sure we're not jinxing something or...

tempting fate and bringing bad luck to ourselves. You mentioned our listeners being able to relate to the idea of just being afraid of things, even if objectively these are things that we shouldn't really be afraid of. We should talk about learning English. We should talk about...

sort of confidence issues and the fear involved in learning a language. What do you think about that? Is fear a part of the process? Absolutely. You know, and again, like fear, it sounds very, like a very super strong word. It's loaded, isn't it? Like, yeah, like dice or something. It's just very heavy, that word. But fear could manifest itself in all sorts of forms. So it could be anxiety or just something like

It's something that makes you nervous, but I guess there are all sorts of things that happen psychologically when you're learning a foreign language, especially because language, what's the aim of learning a foreign language or any language for that matter is to be able to communicate with people. So, yeah.

especially if it's like combined with also like you being an introverted person or having some sort of social anxiety, um, then, you know, uh, it could be a deadly concoction, so to speak. So basically it's, it can be tough, right? So I have to say I'm an extrovert, but even so it, um,

It was hard when I was learning English at first to communicate with people in English. You know, I've told this story on your podcast before. In 2025, I went to London for the first time in my life. 2015. What did I say?

You said 2025. Like what? You invented a time machine? I wanted to say 2005, sorry. 2005, yeah, sorry. Or 2005, I could say as well. And so, you know, I remember my first day, I had been learning English, I don't know, for eight years, but it was the school English, right? So I hadn't really used English.

used it much other than during my tests and exams and stuff like that. And then I was thrown in at the deep end and I had to communicate in that language. And I was already at B2 level, which is upper intermediate, which is very high level.

I'm sure some of your listeners are at this level and some people would love to be at this level and they are still intermediate. So I had a great level technically, but not in terms of my listening and speaking. It was more about my, I had good vocabulary knowledge and I knew very advanced grammatical structures. But then, so on my first day, I remember I was a witness to a

Actually, again, it's interesting. We are getting back to the road because there was an accident. I was walking along a pavement. I was walking along a pavement and then a few meters away from me and my friend, there was a little accident. The people didn't get injured, but I think it was a cyclist or a motorbike rider.

Yeah. Yeah. They, what they hit a car or something? They fell, they fell off the bike. And, and then there was a, there was police. I remember that very distinctly. And they were asking me questions about like who I am, what, what my data of birth is and, uh, what I was doing then and what I saw. And I was like, at first, I think I actually kind of liked the opportunity to, to, to use English. I sort of was kind of excited about it.

But then after I did all that, I realized that I hadn't been very good at English yet because I… Well, you gave them the wrong name, wrong date. Not really. Yes, my name's William Shakespeare, born in 1633. No, but that was too much of, can you repeat that, please? And I didn't get that. And, you know, I wasn't very fluent in…

And that was like an eye opening moment for me. You know, it was a wake up call and yeah,

I think, again, a lot of people can probably relate to this because I know a lot of your listeners have lived or are living in a foreign country, perhaps in an English-speaking country, and they have gone or are going through this now. So, yeah. Sorry, you mean that moment where your kind of, as you say, school English is suddenly tested by real-world English?

Where you're having to talk to a policeman, describe what you saw, understand the questions he's firing at you, and try to give your date of birth, which is something pretty simple, but in the moment you might be scared by it. By the way, William Shakespeare was not born in 1633, just wanted to add that, just in case anyone was like, um...

Blowing the dust off their fingers to correct me on that one. So yeah, real world English. Yeah, that can be a pretty frightening moment because you've come face to face with it, especially when you English. It depends on your relationship with English as well to an extent, doesn't it? Because if you're coming from a context where English is like this pressured academic thing, where there's a lot of pressure from different

different places like pressure from yourself pressure from school pressure from your parents to perform your peers as well peer pressure exactly you're comparing yourself to other people and there's this awareness that English is really important

Because you're told all the time, right? English is really important for your future, your career opportunities. You've got to be good at English. And everyone seems to make it really clear how you should be improving it. But then, you know, maybe you don't. No, you do. It's true. Everything is true. Everything that you said is true. It's just the pure fact that there's great proof. Just the fact that I'm talking to you right now.

It's the testament to that because like, how else would I be talking to you? Or how else could I teach English? I'm an English teacher too, as you know. So how else could I do it? How else can you function like internationally if you go to Vietnam?

I can't speak Vietnamese, right? They can't speak Czech. So... Oh, you mean, you're talking about just the importance, the simple importance of having a good level of English in your life, the doors it opens for you. I can't state that enough. It's something that's true. We can't play that down. Especially for you, because it's become your living and it's so important to your life, isn't it? Your English, it really opened huge doors for you. You

You can't play that down. I would say a gate, not a door. It's a gate. It's a massive gate. Really? Without English, who would I be? No one. A huge gate, which is like a big automated gate. AI-controlled. Well, yeah, everything. It's a massive AI-controlled gate at a border somewhere. We just have to decide, are we using...

There you go, Mr. Lucas. Off you go. And you walk through this huge, massive gate into this whole other realm. Exactly. Bits of language. You were thrown in at the deep end. Yeah. It's a nice expression where you're suddenly in a situation where it's a bit like being thrown in, learning to swim. Yeah.

You can spend ages in the shallow end of the pool where your feet are on the bottom and stuff like that, but maybe the best way is just to be thrown in at the deep end and you just have to sink or swim. Right, which is another one. It's another one. Sink or swim, right? Sink or swim. And you're just going to learn. So it's like thrown into a situation where you're sort of struggling and you just have to learn very, very quickly in that situation. Otherwise...

Otherwise you sink, which means you won't make it alive. You drown. Exactly. Don't do that, everyone. You said, I remember that distinctly, which is a nice phrase, to remember something distinctly, meaning you remember it very clearly. You said it was an eye-opening moment. So a moment that made you realise something. I mean, it's sort of, it's obviously an idiom.

an eye-opening moment, something that makes you realise or see something. Wow. And it was a wake-up call as well. Something like...

wake up Stenek, your English isn't quite good enough. Yeah. Yeah. For the real world. I faced the reality. It was a reality check is another one, right? Yeah, that's right. A reality check. Yeah. Um, and, uh, it's, it was an important moment and it's, you know, we, we shouldn't play that down, meaning we shouldn't make it seem less important than it is. Yeah. Um,

Yeah, so a lot of people have a lot of fears about opening their mouth and actually starting to use English. A lot of people study English, but they don't actually use English. And I think in a lot of people's minds, they think, I'm not quite ready yet. I just need to study a bit more. And then when my English is, when I've mastered it, then I'll actually start using it. Never works like that, right? Never works. It doesn't work like that, does it? No. And also, I was going to say,

For you, the fact that you overcame those fears or you came face to face with the reality, you had that reality check, probably allowed you to make progress, didn't it? It allowed you to get to where you are now. Exactly. And as you know, I have the Next English podcast and it was part of it because yes, I graduated from university and became a teacher.

but there's so much more you can learn. And there are so many teachers who, who are like teaching low level students, let's say somewhere at elementary school. But when, when they are sort of put in those situations when they have to,

in English, they struggle as well. And I'm sure I was one of those people too. But to be honest, you have to keep improving. You have to keep developing. So one of the things I did was I started Zenex English podcast, inspired by your podcast, as you know, because back in the day, in one episode, you said...

Maybe you should start your own podcast. For example, it could be called Jose's English Podcast. I remember that. It was like 2000. We are talking 20, 2013. It was in 2013. You said that 12 years ago. Time flies, right? When you're having fun. Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, so these were ways to push yourself out of your comfort zone and challenge yourself. Ultimately, you've got to come up against those difficult experiences, face those challenges, and ultimately learn from them. There's no pain, no gain. Exactly. There's another phrase. That's one I should explain, because I don't seem to be explaining anything these days. Okay, go ahead. No pain, no gain.

No pain, no gain. This one is kind of self-explanatory, isn't it? It is an idiom, but it's one of those transparent phrases because you've got idioms which seem to be like, oh, it's hard to really guess what they mean unless you know what they mean. But with this one, it's clear, right? Because it's evident what it means. No pain, right? So if you don't go through any pain...

no gain you don't gain anything you don't win or you don't achieve anything so that one is pretty clear yeah absolutely yeah um

So we've got other scary moments that I guess we can talk about, right? Yeah. I mean, so obviously for me speaking French, you know, I don't need to go into it because it's more or less the same thing as, you know, what we've just talked about that, you know, opening your mouth, you're worried about making a mistake. You're worried about making a fool of yourself. Exactly. And lots of other, lots of other things.

But as a teacher as well, and I've talked about this before on the podcast and lots of times that my first experiences of being a teacher, I...

This is a long time ago, and I was much younger. I'd never really had a lot of experience of talking in front of groups of people. When I was training to be a teacher, when I did my CELTA, I didn't have any teaching experience prior to that. Some people, they just start teaching. They just end up teaching for whatever reason. Maybe because, like you, they're in a place where people don't speak English.

And so, you know, they get to a certain good level themselves and they realize they can start helping other people and they get a certain amount of teaching experience. And then they do their teaching qualification, which is like the Cambridge certificate. And you're in a slightly better situation because you kind of hit the ground running in that context. But for me, I came out of university, didn't know what to do with myself. And I was a bit sort of lost and decided that I would train up to be a TEFL teacher, having the privilege of teaching.

having English as my first language, you know, that's an option. And so, you know, I went through the process and it was a training course and it was quite intensive. And part of the course, you know, you learn about teaching methods, you learn about linguistics and stuff. And a lot of it was new to me, you know, analyzing my own language, being able to explain my own language and also being able to facilitate other people learning it. All of that was a big learning curve, very steep learning curve for me. But the, the, the,

Really the most uncomfortable aspect of it was the teaching practice sessions and observed lessons. So every week we would have a certain period of time in front of a class and there would be the trainer training.

Not a football coach. You mean like a tutor? Yeah. I like the idea of a football coach. Come on, Luke. Come on. Like shouting encouragement at me from the side of the classroom. Alex Ferguson. Elicit! Elicit! Elicit! Instructions! Concept checking question.

Give them feedback. Don't forget about the feedback and homework as well. Give them homework. Monitor, monitor, monitor. What are you doing? Thankfully, not that monitor. That's a screen, Luke. That's a screen. And then you get substituted. Yes. Still better option than getting sent off.

This is true because you slide tackle one of the students who has used present perfect tens wrong and you just come in a bit too hard with two feet. You do tackle their problems though.

You do try to tackle their grammatical errors. You also have to anticipate it in the planning phase, which is very extensive when you do a CELTA or DELTA course, right? Oh, God, that's another part of it, that you'd spend ages working really hard on a lesson plan for just 45 minutes or even half an hour of a lesson, and you've slaved away over a hot lesson plan.

Trying to do it, studying all of the grammar and planning it down to the millisecond. And then you're in the front of these people doing it. And yeah, I would feel so awkward and uncomfortable. There was anxiety, a lot of anxiety and nerves, especially in the moments preceding the lesson.

The evening before, I just couldn't relax. The morning, I'd feel nervous. You kind of felt butterflies in your stomach. But then in the class, I found my anxiety was physical. It was like a physical thing where I felt completely trapped inside my own body. It was incredibly frustrating. It really, really bothered me a lot. I felt completely trapped. I know what you mean. I know exactly what you mean.

Because mentally you have to process a lot of things. You're processing the lesson plan that you're trying to do. You're processing the language point that you're trying to deal with if that's the moment in the lesson that you're doing where you're having to explain certain language points. You're processing all of the things that you've been told you should be doing.

the right ways of doing it, the wrong ways of doing it, not talking too much, keeping it simple. Um, you know, making it learner centered, making sure your board work is really clear and well organized. This is the most absurd thing. So making it learner centered. So you have to do all that while not talking at all. Almost. Yeah. Like you've almost got to be invisible. Yes. And yet, you know, because you can't be dominating the lesson. Yes. Uh,

So it's almost like a tightrope walk where just one step to the left and you fall. One step to the right, you fall. It's like this very slight thing. Plus all the students in front of you aren't aware

Because as far as they're concerned, it should be easy. They're just thinking, "Well, you just go up there and just tell us how to do it, and then give us a task and listen to us." We have seen the likes of you before. We have been taught before. Exactly. So why is this person bright red in front of me? Just do the job. I think it's even extra, extra emphasized by

By the fact that you are English, right? Well, you're British. So, so they expect you to just talk to them and they don't understand that there are challenges to, first of all, to being English.

able to teach, but also these sort of social, social blocks, like even being in front of so many people and talking to them. I don't know if I'm sure some, some of our listeners are your, our listeners are managers or stuff like that. And if you are a manager, you have, you know, people under you and you have to talk to them and give, give them instructions. And if you have never done this,

Maybe the only person you have instructed is your, like maybe your kids, your husband, your wife, your cat. I don't know. For me at the time I'd never instructed anyone. I mean, I couldn't even instruct myself, you know? And there I was suddenly in this position where it's like quite, there's a certain high status involved where you realize I'm the high status person in this situation, but I don't feel like it.

And yeah, you've got all these teaching principles and methods rattling around in your brain that you don't even fully understand yet anyway, because you've got no frame of reference for them. And then you know that the students in front of you who are from all these different countries, they have a preconceived idea of what the teacher does, looks like, and you feel like I am not living up to what they think I should be. And...

So all of this, it's like a lot of, it's like a computer when you've got an old computer and you ask it to do too many things. You've got loads of browser windows open and you open this, that and the other. And then the computer is just like, I can't do it. And everything slows down. It freezes at some point. Right. And so that's, that's what's happening to your body. As you said as well, like your body starts failing, your body language shows it.

- Yeah, you don't breathe properly. So I would lock up, my whole body would lock up and I would just suddenly become very uncomfortable. My throat would get tight.

And I wouldn't know how to stand in front of everyone and just talk to them. And the worst thing is that you know it in that moment, right? You know it. You're aware of what's happening to you. I remember the first time I was in the UK teaching English in 2019. It was right before COVID. It had been my lifelong dream as a teacher. It was like my...

sort of thing I always wanted to achieve in my career, like to teach English in England. Right. So I got that opportunity. I got the, there was a demo lesson. I had to give a demo lesson first though, as part of my, as part of the recruitment process and exactly what you've just described happened to me there. And I'd been an experienced teacher as well.

Right. I'd been teaching for eight years and I thought I was all right as a teacher. I had always had great feedback from my students. But there in London, in Oxford Street, that's the school is called Speak Up London. Suddenly it that that sort of.

Pressure got to me because it was like pressure that I exerted on myself. It came from me because I knew I, I wanted that so, so badly. Right. When you want something really badly, like let's say it could be a, um,

you see a very good looking girl and you want to chat her up or something. But usually when it, when she's really good looking, usually you become very awkward and you don't know what to say suddenly because, because it's something you, you desire so much. Right. So that kind of feeling, I had that during my demo lesson, doing something that was like bread and butter stuff for me at that point. Yeah. I knew exactly what I was supposed to do. And yet,

my body was completely failing me. So I remember being slouched, my shoulders like this, hunched. My head was between my shoulders and I knew I was like that. I was like, what's happening to me? I can't get out of that. I couldn't get out of that because there was an observer, the

The director of studies from that school was there observing my lesson, taking notes and deciding whether I was good enough, whether I was a good fit for their school, which was very prestigious. And...

For some reason, she hired me even after that. But it was just one of the worst lessons I've ever taught. Well, if she was a good director of studies, she would know that you were under a lot of pressure in that moment. And maybe we should put ourselves in the shoes of the observers in these situations and think differently.

they know that the person they're observing is nervous. And so maybe they're interested in seeing how we react to the nerves. And this is maybe, if we start talking about how to deal with these sorts of things, not that we're experts in it or anything, but it's probably worth talking about it, is how to deal with these things. Like first thing, you've got to remember that it's just a totally normal response. So what's happening is just a natural response in your body. And you talked about...

your body language changing and your shoulders coming up and your head going down. It's kind of like a defensive body posture that your body naturally assumes. Because you're kind of going into the fight or flight mechanism when you feel a challenge. The adrenaline kicks in, your heartbeat rises, and you go into defensive body positions and you want to run away or something. So that's just a normal response.

Also, you've got to think about, okay, so this is happening. How do I react to it? The way that you react to it is perhaps the most important thing. And the way to react is usually try not to panic, right? Try not to be too concerned about it. Just remember it's a normal process and you just have to take a moment to breathe, right?

Slow down a bit. Take a breath and just keep calm and carry on knowing that

what's happening to you is totally normal exactly it's easier said easier said than done right i have a good phrase for you luke um yeah you have to be brave in these situations right like and we all sorts of different moments could happen to us in our life like there are all sorts of challenges of all kinds and you have to be brave in order to overcome them to face your fears and

Basically, there's a phrase that goes like this. Bravery is not the absence of fear, right? It's acting in spite of it, which means that it's absolutely fine to be brave, to be nervous, sorry, to be afraid. It's absolutely fine to be afraid. What's not fine is if you just do nothing. So you have to do something, right? So...

You will probably not be perfect, but that's not the point. You just have to do it. You just have to do something. And that goes for everything we have talked about so far. My motorbike fear, the flying stuff, speaking to native speakers for the first time in your life, like anything we've just mentioned, teaching English, standing up in front of a lot of people for the first time. You just have to be brave in that moment. You don't have to be perfect.

Right. Yeah. And the fear wins if you do nothing. Absolutely. If you can't do this, if you give up and you do nothing. Yes. Yeah. You have to just carry on. You have to just push through it and do it in spite of the fear, knowing that next time it'll be a little bit easier because you've got to climb over this thing at some point.

These obstacles come in your way and you've got to climb over them at some point. It might as well be now, because if it's not now, it'll be next time. Once you've climbed over it, once you've done that thing despite the fear, you'll be a little bit better prepared for it the next time, and the next time, and the next time, until eventually you're swinging and you're fine. You go with it and you're doing fine.

If we compare me then, I mean, it's over 20 years ago. When was it? 2001. So it's like 24 years ago. Oh my God. And how nervous and horrible I was. And I used to think, I used to just...

I was so disappointed in myself that I wasn't better at it. And I just dreamed, wished that I could be more comfortable and confident as a teacher. But it just came with experience, that just doing it again and again and again every day, and I'd have sort of good and bad lessons. And for me, a bad lesson was just a lesson where I felt out of

out of my depth or out of my comfort zone. And you're just like, you've got no choice. You can't just like, well, that's the end of the lesson. I don't really want to do this. So we're going to stop 45 minutes early. You know, you can't do that. So you're forced to continue. And you just sort of like learn. You really develop skills in that situation. You develop a lot of skills. And now, these days, it's like I feel maybe...

maybe too comfortable as a teacher in class. Complacent. Yeah, complacent. I'm starting to think, wait, I'm not feeling anxious enough. Maybe there's a problem. You see, that's interesting. That's a good point because that can happen too, right? When you sort of think like you know it all or you're just so comfortable and it has happened to me before, I have to say. That also is dangerous because then

I think it can be good to be at least a little bit nervous, right? Because it sort of pushes you to perform better.

and keeps you sharp. And to explain that feeling again of like, "I'm too comfortable in this situation, and I feel like there must be things I'm missing. I must be kind of being, what's the word for it, negligent in some way about my teaching. And if that observer from years ago came back to me,

They might say, yeah, you're a lot more comfortable. This is great. But you're not doing these things that you were supposed to be doing. But actually, having said that, I think it's preferable to be cool and calm

Collected. Yeah, cool, calm and collected. It's just so much nicer. And I think I do a much better job now than when I was completely inhibited by nerves. I think you've been following your rule of seven P's.

Yeah. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. Was it six? I can't remember. Six or five, actually. But seven is even better, isn't it, really? I mean, nine, nine, maybe. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice. That's even better. Fair enough. Practice makes perfect, right. Yes. Any language that we could mention at this point? Yeah, yeah.

Basically, so you were referring to your experience of doing CELTA. And you said that all of the stuff you had to do there and you had to learn, it's a steep learning curve, right?

So we are talking about graphs, I suppose, mathematics. So what is it? And so it's really tough, right? It's like you have a lot. You have a mountain to climb to learn all of that. So if something is a steep learning, if something is a learning curve, it's really hard. It's really hard to learn it. Exactly that. For those of you watching this on YouTube, Lucas just showed a lovely, what is it? Is it sinusoid curve?

I don't know the graphs anymore. A line graph showing a steep learning curve where...

I mean, I guess it's time across the bottom and difficulty, I don't know what it is. Progress versus time. Or challenge versus time. X is X, X is Y, something like that. Yeah, X and Y axes. And the line is very steep, like a very steep hill that you have to climb. Exactly. Showing that the challenge is very steep.

Especially at the beginning. Yeah. I also like the phrase or verb you used when you were describing about your lesson planning experience. You said that you really have to slave away over your lesson plan, you said. So to slave away, to really work extremely hard in order to finish your lesson plan. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm so glad that those days are behind me, I have to say. I used to dread those observed lessons. You know, I really used to dread those things. Yeah, to dread, to dread, to...

be really afraid of something, to be super scared. Yeah, to have this low-level feeling of nerves, anxiety, or fear about something that's going to happen, to dread something. Like I'm dreading it. I've got a dentist appointment on Monday and I'm absolutely dreading it. Or I've got a big presentation to do in front of all

in front of the board of directors and i'm dreading it um yeah exactly it's like when you're absolutely not looking forward to something in fact the opposite you're really dreading it yeah exactly then you also said that you felt butterflies in your stomach i think you were referring to those moments before you had to teach i can't remember exactly but that that means that you were you were nervous basically if you have butterflies in your stomach like

That doesn't mean that your breakfast consisted of insects, right? No. That's right. It's just that feeling of being nervous. Yes. Okay. Do you have any, yeah, was there something else? Yeah, just one more. It's like you keep using this phrase flight or fight.

um, you, you, you, flight or flight. So you said, you said like that when you, when things happen and you, you are in that moment where you have to do something, um,

I can't remember exactly when you used it, but you used it several times. It's a mechanism, basically. It's like how our body responds when we are in danger, right? So we either flee, which is a flight. We flee, we escape, we run away, or we fight, right? So it's like the...

The basic response, the two things we could do. I think there's one more, I think, or freeze? I think there's freeze as well or something. Oh, it's freeze as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know because I've got a student, Helen, and she knows all this stuff. And I'm actually a little bit anxious about this myself now that I'm messing it up and she's going to tell me off during our next lesson. Yeah.

I've just Googled it, actually, and it seems that there's a few of these things. This is from WebMD, which is like a sort of medical website. Fight, flight, as we've said. Then also freeze. Yeah.

also flop and also there's fawn as well yeah which i didn't know about the fight and flight you've explained freeze is basically the inability to move or act against a threat not that teaching and not that being in a class was a was a sense of threat but maybe it is i mean any you know maybe that's part of the no the fear that we have naturally of public speaking you can apply it i

I'm sure you can apply it. There's a lot of people in front of you and maybe at a very basic elemental level, it's basically you realise that all these people could quite easily get you if they wanted to. You're standing in front of all these people. Well, yeah. Turn into zombies or something. Yeah, they might. They could easily just get you if they all decided to. It's like you're massively outnumbered. It sounds more like some

or something, Luke. Yeah, but I'm just trying to get to the fact that maybe this is why we have an intrinsic fear of public speaking, is that it goes back to very basic...

Instincts, yeah. Instincts, right, of self-preservation. Exactly. And knowing that if you are suddenly... If the attention of a large group of people is on you, and it's you versus them in any way you're facing them, then that's a potentially very dangerous situation. And you can imagine, you know, thousands, thousands, hundreds of thousands of years ago, you know, you can imagine...

You've seen it in animals, where animals gang up on each other and stuff. So that might be it. It might be an instinctive fear. In fact, maybe a lot of these phobias, so fear of public speaking, fear of certain animals, fear of heights, they just are really basic instinctive fears that probably go back a long way into our...

into our sort of genetic history. Yeah, absolutely. Which is basically, be careful of spiders because they can kill you. Be careful of rats because they can... Well, some of them can, right? So it makes sense in a way, right?

It's like genetic memory or whatever it is that we've just learned that we have to be careful of these things. If you see a slithery snake, even just the shape of it is repellent to a lot of us because we're just at a very instinctive level. We know that we should be wary of that. Similarly, other situations, being in front of a large group of people with them all looking at you, there's something deep inside you which goes, "Oh, be careful.

because they might all get you, you know? So, um, sorry. Yeah. Sorry, Luke. I just wonder what, like, so it's understandable, like flight, the response flight would be in that classroom that may, may, maybe, yeah, you just want to run away. You, maybe you get nervous, your body language, what would be the fight response then?

Right, come on then! You're not going to have a punch-up with your students or anything, right? No, but again, it's just an instinctive reaction. Your conscious mind, as we've said before, is aware that this stuff is happening. It's just like, these things are happening and I don't want them to happen. I want to be relaxed. I don't want to...

I want to control my body. I want to do the things that I intended to do in my lesson plan. Not sweat. But then all of these natural body responses are coming in, and mental responses too, because it affects your thinking. These are just reactions that we've learned through evolution. Yeah. So yeah, fight, flight, and freeze is

It's just where you just can't move, which is what happened to me. My neck freezes up and I can't look. I become stiff. I become stiff and I turn my whole body like, what do you think? Over here, what do you think? I become like a robot. And then flop is essentially to just collapse.

You flop your lesson as well. Like it's, it's a flop, right? Yeah. It becomes a flop. You failed the lesson most probably. And especially if it's an assessed, assessed lesson, this, this is an issue. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But in terms of what your body wants to do, you just want to kind of like you become a bit lifeless. And you just want to kind of fall on the floor or something or just sort of sit down or people might even faint, right, which is a response that people have they faint and they just lose consciousness.

because it all gets too much. You see this in weddings, right? Have you seen those videos on the internet of fail videos and stuff? Sometimes you see videos of people passing out

There's always someone at a wedding standing at the altar and you see them start to wobble and then over they go, slam. Overwhelmed with emotions. Let's hope it's not the priest, right? Because that wouldn't be very professional, I think.

You can imagine that in that situation, someone fainting at a wedding is very stressful. That's a response that it becomes too much and you collapse. Then fawn means that your behavior changes and you try desperately to please

Right, right, right. In order to avoid any kind of conflict. You give your students chocolate and sweets for doing well in school.

in their exercises. Yeah. I've seen it in, I've seen it in standup actually, where people are on stage and they've, you know, they're supposed to be making people laugh, but the nerves get the better of them. And you start basically kind of, um,

uh talking yourself down right you know it's that it's that desire to be like oh i'm i'm i'm rubbish thank you very much you're overly polite and thank you so much for coming this is so wonderful you're sort of like yeah

Yeah, you become very sort of, yeah, fawning in front of the people that you're talking to. And exactly, you kind of start playing yourself down and being overly thankful and stuff. So those are five responses. I wasn't really aware of the others, but fight or flight and fight, flight, freeze, I understand, but then also faint and fawn as well is interesting.

interesting stuff. Have you got any other anecdotes to end this episode? Well, I should also mention that crossing the road here in Vietnam, especially if you do it for the first time, it can be quite a tricky scene. Because again, it's a bit different here because I don't know how it is in France, but in the Czech Republic, there's a rule that when you are on the pedestrian crossing,

you have the right to go first. Of course, you have to look as well. You're supposed to look. Some people crossing with their phones, looking at their phones, that's also illegal. You can't do that. In Czech Republic? Yeah. If you're looking at your phone, then you're also responsible if something happens. So it's your responsibility to look.

But if you're there, and if the car hits you, let's say, God forbid, to use that phrase again, then it's their fault. Because you have the right to go first. Yeah, you have the right of way. You have the right of way, yeah. But here, it's different. So nobody cares about pedestrians here, basically. And...

What you have to do is to just enter the road. Like I say, nobody cares about pedestrians as if they hate, they hate them and they, they, they, they want to kill them. No, not like that. But like in the hierarchy, in the pecking order, pedestrians are at the low, at the bottom. Right. So when you, when you enter the road, basically the people will always go around you. So you, you, you're fine as long as you keep, keep an eye contact and you,

You don't run. Don't try to run. Don't accelerate. Just steady, steady pace. Yeah. And keep an eye contact. And then people... Eye contact with... With the people that are approaching you on the vehicles. Yes.

Right. So as if to kind of communicate, I'm here, I'm here, I'm here. You can raise your hand, make yourself bigger as well. You can do that. It's almost the same thing you would do if you were to face a bear or something. Just make yourself look bigger and just steady pace.

confidence. Yeah. Like it sounds weird, but it's exactly what you should do. Yeah. And then, yeah, sometimes you have to sort of stop. Like, it's okay to stop, but don't like, just don't make any jerky movements or anything. Right. Don't no, no, no, no. Just go slowly. And then ideally you, you get to the end of the road.

Because what you're facing there, for those people who've never actually experienced this, what you're facing is a road. It might not even be that wide, but it could be. It could be a four-lane road. It is sometimes as well, yeah. Inside Saigon, in Ho Chi Minh City, yeah. But not here in Da Nang. I didn't say that yet. I'm back in Da Nang now. You're in Da Nang again, yeah.

So it could be like four lanes of road or maybe just two lanes going this way and that way. And you stand there and it's basically, yeah, as I said before, a sea of scooters where it's just a huge, almost like a swarm of scooters. I don't know what the right word is for it, but a massive deluge of scooters. Just, you know, I don't know how it could be a hundred scooters all in a big group. All...

going down the road and you have to somehow cross it. Now there might not be a moment where the light changes and you get the chance to cross. It might just be a continual flow of scooters. And so, yeah, what do you do? And as you said, Stenek, rather than waiting for a gap, you just have to just step in. You do, you do. And do it slowly and slowly but surely and steadily. Or there's a second option. Just...

Just join someone like someone who is local and then you see, you see it on their face that they know what they are doing and just sort of, you know, attach yourself to them. Just follow them. Just shadow them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. Right. Wow. Yeah. It's, it's quite a step to make, isn't it? When you first have to deal with that. Yeah. Cause like plucking up the courage.

That's a good expression as well, to pluck up the courage, pluck up your courage, right, as well. So basically to be brave enough to do something. Yeah. You talked about the pecking order, which is quite a nice expression. And I've noticed that in Vietnam and similar places, also in India, that pecking

The roads are seemingly chaotic from our point of view.

But there is a system at work. So in India, basically the pecking order - and pecking order comes from animals, it comes from birds. If you imagine there's food, and there are various birds, there's a pecking order, meaning the birds which are bigger probably get to peck at the food first, and then it goes down the chain, down the pecking order, where you've got the biggest, most powerful, strongest animals at the top, and then the smaller animals at the bottom who

who are the last ones to be able to feed on the food. So it's like a hierarchy of power or dominance in a system of animals. But we can talk about pecking order in other situations, and this is a perfect example. So observing things in India, basically the pecking order is the larger the vehicle,

the larger vehicles have the right of way it's the same here so if there's a it's the same there's a big bus that comes through everyone gets out of the way of the big bus and it kind of goes in that order where the smallest which

which would be like a person on a little scooter, is basically having to get out of the way of everyone. This is the pecking order. It seems like such a chaotic system, but it's a sort of system. It's organized chaos. It makes sense. If everyone is doing that, it works. So...

I guess so. I never for a second thought, never did I think here in Vietnam that I was the one doing it wrong. I think it's also... They were the ones. Yeah, sorry. I messed it up. Yeah, I know what you mean. Because I think it's also the wrong kind of attitudes to have. And it's like if you're overconfident and there's a lack of respect for the culture. So I'm more like I'm aware that...

It's different from what I know. And it's a challenge. It poses a challenge to me. I'm aware of it.

I sort of respect that, but I'm not blaming them for doing something wrong because who would I be to tell them that they are doing it wrong? I mean, I'm in their country, right? So it doesn't work like that, listeners. It's just different. It's just a different culture, different environment, different rules. And it works. And it bloody works.

It's just, I don't come from that culture. So that's why there's a, there's a bit of a challenge for me. The culture shock in my experience is always a case of where you're sort of always between two feelings. Yeah. And one feeling is like, everyone's doing it wrong. How does this, how do these people live like this? Yeah. Yeah.

I do feel like that in France, even though, as I've said before, it's not drastically different, but it's just different enough for me to have those feelings in certain situations, like when I'm queuing to buy bread in the shop, in the bakery, and people don't queue in exactly the way that I think they should. I'm getting frustrated thinking, how do people live like this?

So you either feel like that, where you look at things being different and you get frustrated because you think they're doing it wrong, which you shouldn't feel as a person traveling. You should try to avoid that at all costs because you've got to remember that when in Rome you do as the Romans did. And you just have to be more open-minded, right? If you're not open-minded, it will be harder for you to make friends, harder for you to make progress.

And you will have all these negative, nobody wants to have negative emotions in them like that. It doesn't help you. When you're traveling, when you're traveling, when you're somewhere new, it's really important to just relax.

and just go with the flow as much as you can. And try not to get too tight. Just let things wash over you, and you just see how things are done differently, and you just kind of go with it and enjoy the difference. So either you're thinking, "How do these people live like this?" Or on the other extreme, you think, "Oh my God, I'm an idiot. I'm doing it all wrong."

I'm a complete loser and you feel so alienated and isolated by the fact that you're the one who's sticking out like a sore thumb. Oh, that's a good one. Doing it all wrong. And I, yeah, sticking out like a sore thumb. If you've hit your thumb with a hammer, what happens to your thumb? Don't do that, by the way. Yeah, we don't, we're not recommending it.

No, if you do it accidentally, you're hammering a nail into a wall and whack, you hit your thumb with a hammer, then the thumb will become very sore. It'll go all red and sore and it'll probably swell up. It will swell up. It will look different from your other fingers. So it will stick out. It will sort of be more prominent than your other fingers, right? Yeah.

become really obvious and look different. Exactly. It'll stick out like a sore thumb. So yeah, when I was in Vietnam on my own, walking down the street on day one, thinking,

I'm like a fish out of water. There's another one. I stick out like a sore thumb. I just felt like every single person in the street must be, I must be like, um, so obvious, you know, fresh off the boat, not that it was a boat. Um, and yeah, you just feel like you don't blend in at all. So yeah, that's the other extreme. So yeah, you just got to try and go with the flow. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, I think this is probably a good moment to bring the episode to a close, Stenek. But I think that we've talked about, I think we've achieved what we wanted to achieve with this, which was to have a chat about fears and facing fears and different types of fear. And there's been bits of language that have come up and stuff like that. And we've talked about the fear of speaking out.

in, in English. If it's not your first language. Yeah. All right. That's been good. I've enjoyed this. Job's done. Um, job done. Job's a good one. Um,

Tell us about what you're doing these days, though. So as well as living in Vietnam and stuff, you're still doing podcast things? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I still have the Next English podcast, although I'm not as prolific as I was in the past. So that's because I'm getting distracted by my other podcast that I recently started. And that's called the Food Grish podcast, which is about...

football and English. So I'm trying to teach English through football and I invite interesting guests. And I believe in one of the episodes, we also had Luke, someone who goes by the name Luke Thompson on the podcast as well. And we talked about, I think when there was the Euros, like there was the Euro 2024 in Germany. And we talked about the England team with you.

You are that person. That was me. We talked about it before the Euros and England's chances, and then we talked about it after. Oh yeah, we did too. You're right. We did too. England amazingly, and perhaps undeservedly, that's arguable, got to the final where we got beaten by Spain. Fair enough. Spain, obviously with a superior team.

And we talked about that as well. Yeah. So the FootGlish podcast, yes, an interesting concept. And I'm teaching English online. And so I do one-to-one lessons. I have the achievers chamber, by the way, thank you so much for mentioning it in your, what was it like the new year's eve episode?

The New Year episode, I think you did. Thanks for that. Yeah, the first episode of 2025. Yeah, I did mention the Achievers Chamber. Just quickly tell us what it is again. So it's a group, like a community where you can learn English. You are surrounded by several English teachers, including myself. And...

Basically, it's a nice group to develop your English, especially speaking. We're focusing on speaking mostly in a sort of lighthearted manner. Don't think like lessons where you have lesson plans. Usually there's a topic that we discuss, but there are different types of events. We call them events. They are 30 minutes long and they usually happen in the evening of Central European time. So

That could be a problem. Like we had a few people interested from Asia or South America, but they couldn't make it because they were either working or sleeping. So that's, that's unfortunate. Or ideally, ideally both working and sleeping. Cause that's the, that's the dream job, isn't it? Literally. Yeah. Yeah. I've seen some people do that as well.

Yeah, me too. Maybe we shouldn't have been. It's not us. It's not the two of us. We can't do that. Can you imagine sleeping in your lesson, Luke? Have you ever fallen asleep as a teacher, Zdeněk? Has it ever happened to you? I may have had one of those micro-sleeps that you can get behind the wheel as well. You know those three-second sleeps? It has happened to me. But that's the furthest I would go, yeah. Yeah.

This is maybe another episode for another time where we talk about sleeping and stuff. But I think I might have, my head might have dropped once or twice during IELTS one-to-one lessons. I remember back in the day. The dreaded IELTS, yeah. Dreaded IELTS one-to-ones. At the end of the day, this is when I used to teach eight, nine hours a day. And at the end of the day, I'd be there. The sun's gone down. I should be, by rights, I should be at home.

you know, watching telly, eating dinner. But there I am in front of someone doing some reading, IELTS reading paper two or something. And the head starts to drop and the eyelids start to sag. And I'm like slapping myself in the face. Come on, you got to get through this. Put yourself together, Luke. Yeah. Yeah.

So it may have happened. Anyway, the Achievers Chamber, which can be found, the link for that, the details can be found on your website. Teachersdenik.com. Teachersdenik.com and it's called the Achievers Chamber. It's not for everyone. I would say it's like for high levels, especially for upper intermediates and advanced students mostly. And we have some English teachers there too. So if you're an English teacher who lacks speaking practice...

Or even like I could, I could even, um, let you teach there if you want. Like it's, it's like, yeah, it's, I would say it's also quite affordable. Yeah. I need to mention this. It's not, it's not a free group because I had some people like wanting to join and they expected it to be free. It's not. Yeah. But it's not that expensive. Okay. All right. Details, teachers, denik.com. Yes. Okay. Brilliant. Thanks Denik. Um,

Let's get back to normal life then. Now I'll let you go back to your normal life. Have a nice evening. To my fears. Back to my fears. Sitting there. Phobias. Yeah, your fears and phobias of crossing the street and getting a motorbike. Just get it. Just get one. I will. I already had a friend who let me drive his motorbike here. I did it for 10 minutes. I even went into traffic for 10 minutes.

But still, I haven't done it by myself. I have to. It's on the to-do list. All right. Good. Wear a helmet. Take care. Yeah. All right. Nice one. You too, Luke. And thank you very much for having me again. Pleasure. Bye for now. Cheers.

So thank you again to Zdenek for this episode. You can check out his podcasts, Zdenek's English podcast, The Footlish Podcast, and also that community called The Achiever's Chamber. You'll find links in the description. Also, you can check the PDF for this episode because that will contain...

a lot of vocabulary that came up during the conversation. You can check it all out there. There'll be stuff there to help you remember it, to understand it, to learn it and stuff like that. So I won't talk. I won't ramble too much at the end here. I would just like to ask you to leave your comments, comments,

In response to this episode, if you made it until the end, so if you are still listening and you haven't dropped off to sleep or turned into a skeleton with headphones on, leave us a comment to prove that you're still conscious.

Perhaps you can respond to the general subject of the episode. Do you have any... What makes you anxious? What scary experiences have you had and what did you learn from them? Do you have any anxieties relating to learning English or using English? Have you ever sort of had to deal with specific fears and anxieties in terms of your learning of English?

what happened and how did you deal with them? Right. Have you ever experienced culture shock, living in a different place and felt like a fish out of water or feeling like you stuck out like a sore thumb? So if you've got anything to relate, let us know in the comments and use any fear related words to show us that you're still here. You haven't dropped off to sleep and you're not a skeleton with headphones that you're a

fully conscious and living human with flesh still attached to your bones and your head still attached to your head. I don't know why your head would fall off, but who knows after however many minutes it's been, um, let us know, uh, your experiences with fear. I think that's probably a good time to stop the episode now. Thank you very much for listening wherever you are in podcast land. Um,

And I'll speak to you next time. But I do hope you have a lovely, lovely, lovely morning, afternoon, evening or night. And I'll speak to you next time. But for now, it's just time to say goodbye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to Luke's English Podcast.

Fries.

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