Welcome to the Listening Time podcast. Hey everybody, this is Conner, and you’re listening to Episode 49 of the Listening Time podcast.

We’re almost at Episode 50! I’m very excited that we’re about to reach this milestone. In English, the word “milestone” refers to some important event, or phase, or time in your life or in some process. So, reaching Episode 50 is a big milestone for this podcast. And I want to thank you all for listening. And I hope you’re enjoying these episodes and that this podcast is helping you with your listening comprehension skills.

Remember that for Episode 50, we’re going to do a special episode, a Q&A: questions and answers. So, if you’re listening to this podcast right now, and you want to ask me a question that I might answer during Episode 50 or during a future episode in a future Q&A, then become a Listening Time Member today so you can send me a message and ask me a question. So, of course, we have different levels of membership. There are Listening Time Members, Super Members and Family Members. And of course, each member receives different rewards every month, like extra episodes, Listening Practice Seminars, Sound Training videos, things like that… just depending on which level of membership you have.

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Okay, so today we’re going to talk about personal development. This is a very popular topic nowadays. I think that it’s all the rage nowadays. The phrase “all the rage” means that something is very popular. People are really interested in it, or people are talking a lot about it. So, personal development is all the rage nowadays. It’s a very popular topic. And many people like watching videos or listening to talks about this subject, because it can be very motivating for people. So, I think that this will be a good topic for us to talk about today.

Before we start, remember that you have access to the transcript for this episode. A lot of people send me messages asking me where the transcripts are. Every transcript is below each episode in the Episode Description. So, if you look below, you’ll see the link to the transcript. So, you’ll find that underneath every episode. So, if you need help understanding what I’m saying, then click on that link and you’ll have the transcript, and you can read while you listen. Alright, so let’s get started.

Okay, so what is personal development? Well, the definition that I have here is the following: a lifelong process to improve yourself in many areas so that you can realize your potential, achieve your goals, and live a fulfilling life. So, with this definition, we can get an idea of what personal development is. I think that in a nutshell, personal development is maximizing your potential in life. In English, the phrase “in a nutshell” is used when we are summarizing something in very few words. So, “in a nutshell” means: in a few words, this is what it is. So, I think that personal development is a very popular topic nowadays because almost everyone wants to maximize their potential, and they want to reach their goals, and they want to do great things with their life. So, that’s why this is so popular nowadays.

So, let’s talk about some of the different areas related to personal development. First of all, let’s talk about setting and achieving goals. So, of course, this is one of the pillars of personal development. When we say the word “pillar” in English, we’re saying that this is one of the foundational pieces, one of the fundamentals, one of the essential things. So, setting and achieving goals is one of the pillars of personal development. In order to become better in our lives, we have to be able to set goals and achieve those goals. So, this involves putting together a plan and following it. If you want to reach your goals, you have to have a plan… a plan of attack, a plan to actually reach those goals, reach those milestones, and do what you want to do.

So, if you have goals in mind, but you don’t create a plan to reach those goals, you’re probably not going to ever do those things. You’re not going to accomplish what you wanted to do. The verb “accomplish” in English just means to achieve something, to do something. So, it’s important to put together a plan to achieve or accomplish your goals. And specifically, in the world of personal development, a lot of people talk about making SMART goals. So when I say the word smart here, I’m using it as an acronym. In English, an acronym is where we use individual letters to represent words. So, if I say the acronym USA, this stands for United States of America.

So, the word SMART in this context is also an acronym. It stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. So, let’s talk about each one. When you set goals for yourself, you want your goals to be specific, right? You don’t want to just set a really general goal, because you might not ever realize when you actually achieve the goal, because it’s too general. You’re not going to ever feel like you’re actually achieving it or accomplishing it. So, if my goal is that I want to get good at French, this is too general of a goal, right? I want to make a goal that’s more specific, something that you can actually measure, which leads us to the second point: our goals need to be measurable.

So, if we can’t measure the goal, it will be hard to make a plan to actually accomplish that goal because we can’t really measure each step along the way. We don’t know how to get from step one to step two and eventually reach our ultimate goal. So, it’s important to make goals that are specific and measurable. So, for example, instead of saying that my goal is to get good at French, I could say that I want to be able to have a conversation with a French speaker without much trouble, right? That could be a goal that’s specific and a goal that I could actually measure. So, that’s the S and the M in the word SMART.

How about the letter A? Achievable. So, you need to set goals that you can actually achieve. For example, if I say I want to become completely fluent in French in one week, right, that’s a ridiculous goal that could never be achieved. So, that would not be a good goal to set. That would not be an achievable goal. However, if I say I want to be completely fluent in French in a year and a half, this is actually a realistic goal. Many people become fluent in a foreign language in just a year and a half. It’s not easy. You have to dedicate a lot of time and a lot of hard work to accomplish this, but it’s possible it’s achievable. Next, we have the R, which is relevant. You want to make goals or set goals that are actually relevant to your overall purpose or mission. You don’t want to set goals that have nothing to do with your overall purpose in life or your overall desires. In English, when we say that something “has nothing to do with” something else, this means that it is completely unrelated to that other thing. So, you don’t want to make goals that are completely unrelated to your overall desire. You don’t want to make goals that have nothing to do with your overall desire. I think that makes sense, right?

And lastly, we have: time-bound. We want to set goals that are actually measured in time. So, if I just say I want to get fluent in French in the future, this isn’t time-bound. I don’t actually have a deadline of when I should achieve this goal. The word “deadline” in English just refers to the date when you want to actually complete something. So, according to the SMART framework, our goals should have some time involved. So, for example: I want to become fluent in French in a year and a half. Right? I set a time.

Okay, let’s move on to another section, another part of personal development, which is self-confidence. So, self-confidence means believing in yourself and being confident in who you are as a person. So, many people nowadays are very self-conscious. This term means that you think and you care about how other people view you and you think that other people are judging you, and you don’t feel confident in what you do, because you’re worried about how other people view you. This is someone who is too self-conscious. So, once you become more self-confident, you probably become less self-conscious. You don’t always think about how other people are seeing you, and you realize that, for the most part, most people don’t really care that much about you or the things in your life. Everyone is worried about their own life. They’re preoccupied with many other things. The word “preoccupied” means that you’re worried or concerned or busy with something else.

So, in the world of personal development, self-confidence is one of the main points because if you’re not confident in yourself, in who you are, in your skills, and all of that, you’re probably not going to be able to achieve your goals and do the things that you set out to do. In English, the phrasal verb “set out” means that you start something. You start some journey, process, whatever. If you set out to do something, it means that you start doing that thing. Also, when you’re self-confident, this means that you value yourself, right? You don’t think of yourself as being bad or low compared to others. You actually value yourself, and you see that you have worth, you have value, and you feel better about yourself.

Okay, another area of personal development is knowledge and learning. Right? If you want to maximize your potential, if you want to achieve your goals and do great things, it’s important to always be learning, right? So what does this mean? Well, it doesn’t mean that you always have to be in college, or taking classes, or things like that. But you should always be trying to gain more knowledge in your field of expertise. Your “field of expertise” refers to the area in which you work, right? So, my field of expertise is English and language learning.

So, you should always be looking to gain more knowledge in your field of expertise, but also in other fields as well. If you work in one field, this doesn’t mean that it’s pointless to learn things about another field. The word “pointless” in English just means useless. So, it’s not pointless to learn information about other fields or to gain knowledge about other things, because learning always makes you a better person, in my opinion.

I think that it’s good to always be reading books, always be listening to people’s opinions about different things, and always discovering new things about the world. I think that this is important, and this will help your overall personal development journey. So, for example, all of you who are listening to this podcast are learning a language. You’re learning English. That’s fantastic. This is helping your brain. It’s helping you gain a new skill that will help you in your job, and it will also help you in other areas of your life. So, language learning is one good example of this.

Also… career skills. It’s good to not get too comfortable in your job. You should never feel like you’ve learned everything about your field. There’s nothing else you can do to improve, so you’re just going to sit back and relax and just do your job and collect your paycheck. I don’t think this is a good mentality. I think it’s good to always be learning more about your field, even if it’s not required. Even if your boss doesn’t tell you you need to learn more, you should probably be learning and improving your skills.

And of course, it’s good to learn about other things in general. It’s good to read books. I think that this is something that will really help everyone… if they’re always reading a book, if they’re always learning something, they’re always discovering something new, or gaining new information. So, I think if you try to read books more, if you try to learn from other sources, this will have a big impact on your life.

Lastly, let’s talk about good habits. This is another area of personal development. So, for example, it’s important to develop good habits related to your health. So, for example, exercise. You probably want to exercise regularly, and it’s important to get enough sleep. If you’re only sleeping five hours per night, you’re probably not going to be productive during the day and it’s probably going to have some negative consequences on your health. So, it’s important to get enough sleep every day.

And of course, it’s important to eat healthy, right? To eat good food from good sources. Of course, it’s not easy to just implement all of these habits for your health overnight. Remember that the term “overnight” means from one day to the next, right? Very fast or immediately. It’s not easy to implement all of these things overnight. But little by little, you can start to exercise more, eat healthier food, get a little more sleep each night. You can probably improve little by little with these things.

Another area in which good habits will help you is productivity. So, for example, if you wake up early every day, you’ll definitely be more productive. You’ll get more stuff done early in the morning when no one else is awake and you have nothing else to do. You’ll do things that you wouldn’t normally do if you sleep later. So, that’s a good habit that can help you be more productive and do more things. And another habit would be to do the hard things first thing in the morning. So, maybe if you wake up early, you can do that one difficult thing that you don’t want to do, that you’re not looking forward to doing. You can just try to get that out of the way first thing in the morning, and then the rest of your day will be a breeze. In English, when we say that something will be “a breeze”, this just means that it will be very easy. It won’t be difficult.

One other good habit to help your productivity is creating a schedule for yourself. So, if you schedule your week, if you write down the things that you need to do each day, this will make it more likely that you actually accomplish these things. The word “likely”, in English, just means possible. So, if you schedule your week, you make it more possible to actually do the things that you need to do. And lastly, it’s good to eliminate bad habits. So, if you spend too much time on your cell phone, on social media, or if you spend too much time watching TV or Netflix, or things like that, it’s good to try to get these habits out of your life and replace them with good habits. So, if you’re able to eliminate your bad habits and implement good habits, this will help you achieve your goals and do more in your life.

Alright, well, why don’t we stop there for today? Thank you all for listening. I hope this episode was interesting for you, and I hope that it was good practice for your listening skills. Remember to become a Listening Time Member at patreon.com/listeningtime so you can receive more episodes and you can receive my personalized training, right, my seminars and my training videos. And so, you’ll definitely want to become a member if you want to improve your listening even more. Also, remember to follow me on Instagram. I’m becoming more active on Instagram. So, follow me there. And remember to share this podcast with anyone else who might find it useful, and help this podcast grow. Also, you have access to the transcript in the Episode Description. So, just go down below and click on that link if you need the transcript. Okay, thank you for listening to this episode, and make sure to come back next time for Episode 50 of the Listening Time podcast.