Persistence VIP Hello, this A.J. and welcome to our lesson this month. The topic is Persistence, one of my favorite topics, one of my favorite values and perhaps our most important value in our program. We have a list of values for our program. In many ways I think of persistence as the heart of it all. The reason it s so powerful is that it s a strategy that anyone can use. It s a strategy that every single successful person in anything uses and has used. What does this word persistence mean? It s very, very simple. It just means don t quit, keep going, continue. That s the core of it. It s not complicated. It s not sophisticated. It s just a raw determination to not be defeated, to keep going and going and going. Just keep going. Let me give you the simplest and the most powerful example that I have for my own life. I have many examples of this from my own life but this one s very clear because it s a physical example. Sometimes I talk about that I have run some marathons in the past, which is a very long running race. A marathon is a good metaphor because it s a challenging, tough race. It s very long. It s 26 miles I can t remember what that is in kilometers and it s quite tough. The first one that I did, I trained for it of course but the memory that I have of that race was that it was the Atlanta Marathon and it was kind of chilly. It was in November and I kind of remember the beginning of the race, the first half, but not so clearly. What is stuck in my brain, the strong memory that I have of that race is the last six miles. It s 26 miles total but the last six is the memory that I have in my mind. It sticks in my mind, a very clear picture, a very strong emotional memory. Why is that? It s because it was right around 20 miles that I really struggled. The first 20 miles were really not so bad. I was running along and I had a nice pace. I m excited by the race and there are other runners there and it s my first marathon. Of course, little by little I m getting more and more tired. A lot of marathon runners will talk about this. They call it hitting the wall. It s this idea that you re going along and suddenly you hit the wall. What are they talking about? When runners say you re hitting the wall, it means suddenly your body starts having a lot of trouble. Suddenly you re really tired. Your muscles become really painful and tired.

Your energy drops because you ve used up all the sugar in your muscles, so you feel this big drop in energy in your muscles. That happened to me. It was around 20 miles. I m going and suddenly for me it was my legs and all around my knees. The tops of my legs and my knees were just killing me. It was so painful and became really stiff. It felt hard to bend my legs. Those last six miles felt just as long as the previous 20. What started happening is I m running and suddenly my neck was hurting too and my shoulders, but especially my knees. I started running slower, and this is the point in the race where you want to quit because suddenly it s not this fun adventure anymore. Now it s painful. You re exhausted and you feel a whole lot of pain. My legs had a lot of pain. My energy was gone. It was hard to focus my mind because my mind wasn t really very clear. At that moment, what could I do? I wanted to finish that race. No complicated running techniques would help me. There s only one thing that got me through and that s persistence. It s just this one single thought that I kept saying to myself again and again. Just keep going, just keep going, just keep going, don t stop, keep going. Almost like a crazy man, I was kind of talking to myself, saying this to myself not very loudly. I started saying it in my mind first, and then after a few miles I was actually saying it out loud a little bit just keep going, just keep going, don t quit, just keep going. I stopped thinking about the finish line. I stopped thinking about everything. I didn t have goals. I didn t have strategies. I didn t have techniques. There was nothing. It was just persistence I will not quit. I didn t worry about my time anymore. I didn t worry about anything else. I did finish and I actually did achieve my goal. I finished the race in under four hours, which was my goal. The powerful thing about this is that persistence is kind of like your last most powerful value or quality. It s like the last possible thing you can rely on. When everything else fails, when you can t do anything else, when you re too tired to do any new strategies and you can t figure out a new solution, when nothing is working or your luck is terrible and everything is going wrong, when you can t even do any little micro goals because you re so exhausted or you have so much doubt or worry or you re so stressed or distracted, when everything is falling apart you have this one anchor, this one thing. Persistence can get you through those hardest, toughest and most difficult painful times. You go back to this little center of strength and it s just that one thought I will not quit, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going.

You can chant it like a mantra. Keep going, keep going, just keep going, just keep going, just keep going. It s almost like a crazy person if things are really, really tough. That s the thing. Let s say you re trying to climb Mount Everest or some huge mountain. You re exhausted, you re tired and nothing else is working. You just keep taking the next step. Just keep going. That s the power of persistence. It s just raw determination and you can train it. You can develop it within yourself. That s why it s powerful. It s not something that you just get magically from Heaven. It s something that you develop. In fact that marathon really helped me develop my persistence because since that marathon I have been a much more persistent person. I constantly use that marathon as a metaphor in my life. Anytime I m facing something and nothing s working and I can t think of an answer, I ll remember the marathon and I ll use that as a metaphor. I ll think this is just like the marathon. I m just going to keep going. Maybe I m going to keep failing but I don t care. I m not going to stop. I ll keep going and keep going. Quite obviously mastering spoken English is a marathon. It s a long, long race. If you really want to master it, then it s a lifelong race, so it s years and years and years. What you do in one week or one month is not so important. What is super important for your English obviously is don t quit, keep going, keep going, keep going. Yes, some weeks will be very difficult. Some months will be very tough. There will be months and maybe there will be periods of three months or six months where you might feel very frustrated, bored, nothing s working and you don t seem to be improving. We call this a plateau. A plateau is a flat area. It s kind of on top of a mountain. When you re going up, up, up and you re improving, you feel great of course, but sometimes it s natural in learning anything that you hit a plateau where you kind of stop improving. You don t get worse but you don t get better. Those plateaus might be a week long or a month long. It could even be a whole year long. A lot of people will quit during the plateau. They get frustrated, they quit and they drop out of the race, so they never finish. Persistent people will keep going, keep going, keep going. They just keep fighting and talking to themselves keep going, keep going, keep going.

Eventually, I promise you, the plateau always ends and you start going up again. It s almost like it s some kind of spiritual or psychological test that we all must pass in our lives. This is true not just in learning English and not just in running marathons, but in most areas of life you ll be tested. Eventually we ll be tested to the point where only persistence will get us through. Successful people are persistent. They keep going when they re tired, when they re bored, when they re frustrated. They keep going through the plateaus. People who don t keep going and people who don t have that persistence, they re the ones who fail. I ve seen this in my own life on both sides. In the things I ve succeeded at very well, persistence was probably the thing that kept me going the most. I ve learned all kinds of interesting techniques and methods that I teach you every month. They re all helpful and they re all powerful, but persistence is kind of the thing that s underneath them all. If you quit, none of the other stuff is useful. None of the other stuff will help you. If you quit, you re done, so just keep going. That raw power has helped a lot of people, a lot of people who maybe have had less intelligence than you or who had less opportunity than you, but they had one thing. They did not quit. They kept going and going and going, and those guys succeed eventually. Finally, I want to point out that you have to choose your battles with persistence. It s not actually healthy or wise to be persistent in everything that you do. Sometimes quitting is good. Sometimes there s an attitude in a lot of cultures that quitters never win and you can never quit anything. That s just stupid because some things should be quit. I ve quit a lot of things in my life and I m very happy that I quit them. I ve had past jobs in my life that I didn t like, that weren t good for me, that I wasn t happy at. I m glad that I wasn t persistent and didn t continue in those jobs year after year after year. I m glad that I quit. What you need are priorities, obviously. In your life you have to choose what are the most important things? If you re in this program, English must be very important to your life somehow. English is an area where you want to develop persistence and not quit, keep going and going and going just like you re in that long race. Even when you re in pain and it s tough, you keep going with your family, with certain relationships, if you have a business I don t know, with your health.

There are certain areas in my life where I m going to be persistent. I ll never quit. I ll keep going, going and going as long as I m alive. There are other areas of my life that are less important where I may be just trying something new or I just don t care about it as much. I ll give you an example of that. I had this idea that I wanted to learn how to play the bass guitar. I would kind of play and practice and study it for a few months at a time. Sometimes I seemed very motivated, but then always when I would hit a plateau, I d reach a point where I would kind of lose all of that and I just wouldn t be persistent. I would just put it away and kind of quit. Then sometimes I d come back to it but then that same pattern happened again and again. Eventually I just realized that while I love the idea and the image of being a musician and playing well, the actual practice of it was not enjoyable to me. I just really didn t enjoy practicing it. I enjoy practicing teaching. I enjoy practicing public speaking. I started playing golf and I really like just practicing it. I could just swing the club and hit the ball 200 times not even playing the game and I like it. It feels good. It s just enjoyable to me. The process of playing the bass guitar for me in the end was not enjoyable, and so eventually I decided not to be persistent. I choose my battles, the things that are important to me. I m like a bull dog. I ll be persistent and never give up. Other things I m quite relaxed about and I encourage you to be the same. People who are too tight and persistent about everything have no relaxation or fun in their lives. They ve got to be high achievers in everything they do. That s not very fun. Sometimes you want to relax and play. You want to just try some things and maybe just enjoy them for a little while and then you don t do them anymore. It s okay. Here s what I want you to do this month: 1. Choose something in your life that s very important. It might be English, it might be a relationship or it might be your health, but choose something that is clearly important to you for your life, something you know you must be persistent in this area. 2. Choose something that s tough for you right now. Don t choose something that s really easy for you at the moment that s going well and you re improving quickly. You don t need persistence for that. That s automatic. Choose something that s important and also choose something that you re struggling with, that you re having a tough time with.

I want you to stop worrying about finding solutions for that. Stop worrying about trying to make changes in that area. Stop worrying about having any kind of goal at all for that tough thing. Just for this month and you ll change this later I want you to focus only on being persistent in this area. In other words, you re just going to say one thing to yourself again and again just keep going, just keep going, do not quit, just keep going, continue, continue, continue. I will keep going. Just keep going. You re going to say that to yourself again and again every day, thinking about this tough topic, this tough goal, this tough thing that you re working on. That s it. Just keep going and going and going. Persistence is powerful. It s hard for me to explain how powerful this is, but when I look at the big successes in my life, I see that that is like a core central thing every time. In every big success I had, there were many opportunities to quit. There were many times that I wanted to quit and I didn t. Because I didn t, I got through the tough times and then I started to improve again, and things got better and better and I achieved a really big success. This happened in my business and this has happened in other areas of my life. It happened with the marathon and it will happen with you too. 3. This month choose your tough topic, focus only on persistence and nothing else just for this month, and then go to our social site and share your stories of persistence. They re inspiring. Share it with other members and read what other members are saying about their own stories of persistence. This way, together we make ourselves stronger and stronger together as a community. I will see you next time. Be strong, be persistent and just keep going.

Persistence VIP Mini Story Hello, this is A.J. and welcome to this month s Mini Story. Let s get started. * * * * * There was a cat named Socrates. What was the cat s name? The cat s name was Socrates. Was his name Phillip or was his name Socrates? His name was Socrates. What was Socrates? A cat. Socrates was a cat and Socrates had a dream. Socrates wanted to win a World Kissing Championship. He wanted to win the World Kissing Championship, and so he practiced every day. He trained every day. What did Socrates want to win? The World Kissing Championship, which they have every year. Did he want to win the World Series, the baseball championship? No, he didn t want to win the World Series. What did he want to win? The World Kissing Championship. So, what did he do every day? Every day he trained and he practiced. He trained and he practiced every day. Was Socrates a human? No, Socrates was not a human. Socrates was a cat.

How did Socrates train for the kissing championship? Every day first he did lip pushups to make his lips strong. What did he do every day to make his lips strong? Lip pushups. He did lip pushups every day to make his lips strong. Why did he do lip pushups every day? To make his lips strong. What is a lip pushup? You know a regular pushup when for exercise you lie on the floor with your hands on the floor, and then you push up your body. Socrates would lie on the floor on his lips, and then he would use his lips to push up his whole body. What kind of pushups did Socrates do each day? Socrates did lip pushups every day. Why did Socrates do lip pushups every day? To make his lips stronger. Why did Socrates want to make his lips stronger? So that he would be a better kisser, so that he would be a stronger kisser and would win the World Kissing Championship. Every day Socrates did lip pushups. In the beginning, he could only do five lip pushups, but he continued to train and train and train and practice, practice, practice every day. Then after a few months, he could do 10. After a few more months, he could do 20. After a few more months, he got up to 50 lip pushups and then a few weeks later, 57. So, he trained and he trained. How many pushups did he eventually do with his lips? Fifty-seven. He eventually got up to reached 57 lip pushups. Very strong lips. What else did Socrates do each day to train and practice and prepare? Well, every day Socrates the cat got a lip massage. Every day he paid for a professional lip massage.

What kind of massage did he pay for? A professional one. A professional lip massage. Every day he paid someone to massage his lips and rub his lips so they would be nice and soft. Why did Socrates get a lip massage every day? To make his little cat lips nice and soft. Did he want his lips to be hard? No, hard lips are not good for kissing. He wanted his lips to be soft, strong but soft. How did he make his lips strong? By doing lots of lip pushups. How did he make his lips soft? By getting a lip massage every day. But that s not all. Each day Socrates rubbed his lips with coconut oil. What did he rub his lips with? He rubbed his lips with coconut oil every single day. Why did he rub his lips with coconut oil? To make them nice and smooth. Why did he rub coconut oil on his lips every day? To make his lips smooth, nice and smooth. Why did he get a lip massage every day? To make his lips soft. Why did he do lip pushups every day?

To make his lips strong. What kind of lips did Socrates develop? He developed strong, soft, smooth lips. So, he trained and he trained and he trained and he got his massages every day. He put on coconut oil and rubbed it on his lips every day, and finally there was the first kissing competition the Regional Championship. He had to first win the Regional Championship in North Dakota. North Dakota is a state in the United States. Where was the Regional Championship, the Regional Kissing Championship? The Regional Kissing Championship was in North Dakota, in the north middle part of the United States. Where did Socrates the cat go? He went to North Dakota. Why did he go to North Dakota? To enter the Regional Kissing Championship. He entered the championships and he had to of course kiss a beautiful woman, and the beautiful woman judged all of the contestants. A contestant is someone who enters a contest. Was Socrates a contestant in the kissing championship, the kissing contest? Yes, Socrates was a contestant. How many contestants were there in total? There were 20,008. There were 20,008 contestants entered in the Regional Kissing Championship. So, Socrates waited and waited for his turn. Finally it was his chance to kiss the woman. He came up to the woman with his strong, soft, smooth lips and he kissed her. Then he looked in her eyes and she said, blah! Your breath smells like fish! Oh no. What kind of breath did Socrates have? Socrates had fish breath. Oh no.

Did Socrates have onion breath? No, he didn t have onion breath. Did his breath smell like garlic? No, Socrates didn t have garlic breath. What kind of breath did Socrates have? Fish breath. Socrates had fish breath. What did his breath smell like? Fish. His breath smelled like fish. Did the beautiful woman like kissing Socrates? No, she didn t. Why not? Why didn t she like kissing Socrates? She didn t like kissing Socrates because he had fish breath. Who had fish breath, the woman or Socrates? Socrates the cat had fish breath. Did he win the Regional Kissing Championship? No, he lost and he went home and he cried and he cried. He was ready to quit but then he decided that winners never quit, so Socrates started to train again and he added one more thing. Every day he brushed his teeth with mint-flavored toothpaste, extra strength. Every day he continued to do lip pushups, and every day he continued to rub his lips with coconut oil, and every day he continued to get a lip massage. In addition, every day he also brushed his teeth with extra strength mint toothpaste. What did he use to brush his teeth with? Extra strength mint toothpaste. Every day he brushed his teeth, brushed his teeth, brushed his teeth and his teeth became more and more clean. His breath became better, so he went to

another competition. He couldn t go the same one again. He had to wait. There was one in Florida and he went to Florida. He drove all the way from North Dakota down to Florida and he entered another regional competition. He waited and he waited and he waited for his turn, and then finally he came and he kissed the beautiful woman. She said hmm, pretty good. Then he had to wait and sit and wait and sit and wait for the results. They announced the winner and it was not Socrates. Did Socrates win the Florida competition? No, Socrates the cat did not win the Florida kissing competition. Was he a contestant in the Florida competition? Yes, he was a contestant. He entered it but he did not win. He got second place. Did he get first place or second place? Socrates got second place in the Florida competition. Was he happy with second place? In fact yes he was. He was very happy because the top two winners, the top two places could go to the World Championships. Could he enter the World Kissing Championship? Yes, he could. He could enter the World Kissing Championship because he got second place in the Florida competition. Where were the World Championships? The World Championships were in Helsinki, Finland. So, he had to get a plane ticket and fly all the way to Helsinki. Of course he continued to train, and to get even better he added lip yoga to his training. Every day he stretched his mouth and he stretched his lips so they would be very flexible. What did he add to his training routine? He added daily lip yoga. Did he continue to rub coconut oil on his lips?

Yes, he continued to rub coconut oil on his lips. Did he continue to do lip pushups? Yes, he continued to do lip pushups. Did he continue to get lip massages? Of course he did. Of course, yes, definitely he continued to get lip massages but he added what? He added lip yoga to his training routine. Finally the day came in Helsinki and one by one the contestants kissed the beautiful Finnish girl who was the judge, one by one by one. Finally it was his turn. He walked up to the girl and he kissed her. She said oh very nice. Unfortunately, as he was taking his lips away, he tripped and fell and knocked down the girl. What did he do? As he was pulling away from the girl, he tripped, he fell down and as he fell he knocked down the girl. They both fell down together. The girl said oooh! How did he feel? Of course he felt terrible. He said I m so sorry. I m so sorry. I m so sorry. The girl said it s okay. The girl was okay. She stood up and then she continued judging the kissing contest. Finally the time came to choose the World Champion of Kissing. When they announced the winner, it was not Socrates. Oh no, poor Socrates. Did Socrates win the World Kissing Championship? No, he didn t. He did not win the World Kissing Championship. Why not? Probably because he knocked down the judge, the girl. Did he knock her down accidentally or on purpose? Not on purpose. He didn t want to knock her down. It was an accident. He accidentally knocked her down.

Because of this, he did not win the World Kissing Championship. Poor Socrates. All that training and practice. So, he had to go back home. Before he did, he went to the girl again and apologized to her. He said I m so sorry. I m sorry I knocked you down. She was very nice and she talked to him more. In fact they started to talk more and more, longer and longer, and he realized that he liked this girl and she really liked him. She liked cats and she liked him especially. They talked and talked for hours and hours. In fact they talked all night long, and he stayed in Helsinki and they began to date. Then after months and months and months, they got married. So, even though he lost the World Kissing Championship, he got a great girl in the end. That is the end of our story. See you next time. Bye-bye.

Persistence VIP Point of View Hello, this is A. J. Welcome to the Point of View stories. Let s get started. * * * * * We re going to play with a couple uses of the word would. There was a cat named Socrates. What would he do every day? Well, every day he would do lip pushups, and every day he would get a lip massage and every day he would rub coconut oil on his lips. Did he used to rub coconut oil on his lips? Yeah, he did. He used to rub coconut oil on his lips. Does he rub coconut oil on his lips now? No, not any more. Why not? Because now he s not training for kissing championships. Did he used to do lip pushups every day? Yes, he would do lip pushups every day. When would he do lip pushups? Well, he would do them in the morning usually and it was when he was training for kissing championships. That s when he would do it. Did he used to get lip massages every day? Yes, he used to get lip massages every day. He would get lip massages every day. Why would he get lip massages every day? Well, he would get lip massages every day so that his lips would be nice and soft. So, he got lip massages every day. He used to do that every day. He would do that every day. However, he doesn t do it now. There s no need now because he s not training for kissing contests. He went to the Regional Championship contest in North Dakota. Would he train every day for that event? Yes, he would. He would train every day before that event. Did he win that event? No, he didn t. He didn t win that event. He lost. Why did he lose? Because he had fish breath. He lost because he had fish breath. Then before the North Dakota event, would he brush his teeth every day? No, he wouldn t. He wouldn t brush his teeth every day. In fact, he wouldn t brush his teeth at all and he used to eat fish almost every day back in those days. So, he used to eat fish almost every day but he wouldn t brush his teeth. That s why he had fish breath and that s why he lost the North Dakota event. Where did he go next? Of course next he went to Florida. He entered the Florida event. Would he brush his teeth all the time every day before the Florida event? Yes, he would. He would brush his teeth every day. It was part of his daily routine. Does he still brush his teeth every day? Yes, thankfully he does. He still brushes his teeth every day.

He entered the Florida event and he didn t get first place, but he got second place, so he could qualify for he could enter the World Championship in Helsinki. So, next he went to Helsinki. Before the Florida event, would he do lip yoga all the time every day? No, before the Florida event he wouldn t do that. He didn t, but before the Helsinki event he added it. Before the Helsinki event, every day he would do lip yoga. Of course he would also do lip pushups. He would also rub his lips with coconut oil. He would also get lip massages and then he added lip yoga. So, he would do lip yoga every day too at that time. Did this help him win? Well, it helped him. He almost won but he tripped and he fell down and he knocked over the judge. Because of that, he did not win. However, later on he talked to the judge, a beautiful woman, and eventually they got married. * * * * * Now let s go to the next version. In the next version, we re going to talk about possible futures. We re going to talk about things that might have happened. Maybe these things could have happened but they didn t. Let s go to the beginning. We know that Socrates the cat did not win the North Dakota event. If he had brushed his teeth every day before the event, would he have won that event in North Dakota? Would he have won if he had brushed his teeth every day? Well, maybe, it s more possible. Would he have won in North Dakota if he had brushed his teeth every day? Well, we don t know for sure but maybe. It s possible he would have won if he had brushed his teeth every day. Did he actually brush his teeth every day before that event in North Dakota? No, actually he did not brush his teeth every, and so he lost that event. We also know that he went to Florida and we know that in Florida he got second place. We also know that he did brush his teeth before that event. However, did he do lip yoga before the Florida event? No, he didn t. He did not do lip yoga before the Florida event. He didn t train with lip yoga before that event. If he had done lip yoga before the Florida event, would he have won the Florida event? I think probably. Probably he would have won the Florida event if he had also done lip yoga. If he had also done lip yoga before the Florida event, probably he would have won. Probably he would have won the Florida event. I think he would have won the Florida

event if he had done lip yoga before the Florida event. Did he do lip yoga before the Florida event? No, he didn t and so he got second place. Finally he went to the World Championship in Helsinki, Finland and he had a great kiss because he did do lip yoga. He did all the other things also but he had an accident. He accidentally tripped and fell down and also knocked down the judge after his kiss, so he didn t win. If he had not done that, would he have won the World Championship? Yes, possibly, maybe even probably. I think probably he would have won. I think probably Socrates would have won the World Championship if he had not fallen. If he hadn t fallen, he probably would have won the World Championship. Probably he would have won the World Championship if he hadn t had not fallen down, but of course he did fall down and so he didn t win. But I think if he hadn t fallen down, he would have won the World Championship. However, if he hadn t fallen, would he have met his future wife? I don t know, maybe not. If he hadn t fallen, then maybe she wouldn t have talked to him afterwards. Maybe he wouldn t have apologized to her again and maybe they wouldn t have started to date, and then maybe they wouldn t would not have gotten married. Of course we don t know for sure, but maybe they wouldn t have gotten married if he hadn t had not fallen down. So, maybe it was good that he fell down because they did get married. That s the end of version two of our Point of View story. * * * * * We ll talk about version three in a little more exciting way because when we use the present, it s a little more emotional, a little more exciting and it feels like it s happening now, so it s kind of nice way to tell a story sometimes. There is a cat named Socrates and he wants to win the World Kissing Championship, so he trains every. He does pushups every day. Not with his arms. He does pushups with his lips lip pushups and he gets a lip massage every day so that they re nice and soft, and he rubs coconut oil virgin coconut oil on his lips every day. He trains and he trains and he trains, and he goes to the Regional Championship in North Dakota but he loses badly because he has fish breath. Lots of kitties have fish breath. Have you noticed this? Have you ever smelled a kitty s breath? A lot of them

have fish breath. I ve done this. I ve smelled kitties breath many times, and I m telling you that lots of them have fish breath. So, like many cats, Socrates has fish breath too. He has fish breath, so he decides to brush his teeth. He brushes his teeth every day and gets rid of the fish breath. Yay. Then he goes to Florida to another Regional Championship contest, and in Florida he gets second place. That s good enough to qualify for to enter the World Championship, so he s happy but he realizes that he needs to do more if he s going to win, so he adds lip yoga to his exercise routine, to his training routine. During the World Kissing Championship in Helsinki, Finland he has a great kiss with a woman. It s fantastic. The crowd is cheering and everyone s thinking he s going to win, he s going to win, he s going to win. But just as he s stepping back, he trips and he falls down and he knocks down the woman also the judge. Because of this, he loses the championship. He loses and he s quite sad. He feels bad because he knocked down this poor woman, so afterwards he goes and he apologizes to her again. I m so sorry I knocked you down. Please forgive me. Because he s so nice, the woman talks to him more and more. They talk and they talk and they talk all night long. They really have a great connection. They connect very well, so he stays in Finland and they start to date. They date for many months and then finally they get married. So, Socrates lost the Kissing Championship but he gained a new wife. That is the end of our third version. * * * * * In our three versions, we have some different points of view. When we say points of view, we mean we re looking at the story from a different point in time. That s what we re usually doing. You can look at a point of view in different ways. We can look at it through the eyes of different characters. For example, Socrates could tell the story himself through his own eyes. * * * * * Hi, my name is Socrates. I want to win the World Kissing Championship, so I m going to train every day. In fact, I am training every day right now. I m doing pushups with my lips every day because I want strong lips, so every day I do pushups. I do pushups with my lips, and every day I rub my lips with coconut oil and every day I get a lip massages.

That s one point of view. The time stays the same but we re changing which character is telling the story. In these versions, usually I m telling the story as if it s me, A.J., and I m watching it all because most of you already know how to say I, he, she or we. It s pretty simple English. * * * * * A little more difficult is when we change the time point of view. This is more tricky. It s a little more difficult because it s more complicated. For example, we have this story and we can look at it from right now and we can look at it backwards, back into time, so it happened already in the past. We re here now in the present and we re looking back at the story, so we use a certain kind of English and grammar when we look at a story that way. * * * * * Or if we could go back in time, we could go before the story starts and we could look forward into the future. Now we re in the past and we re looking at the story as if it s in the future. It s ahead of us in time. If we do that, we ll use lots of future grammar, like I m going to or he will or she will. * * * * * In this one, we changed it a little bit differently. We were looking towards the past and we re looking at things that were being done again and again. What was Socrates doing several times that he doesn t do anymore? That was in the first version. He used to, he would do lip pushups every day, but now in the present moment he doesn t because he doesn t need to anymore. * * * * * In the next one, we changed the point of view and we actually had to use our imagination. We re trying to predict, we re imagining what possibly could have happened. If the situation was different, what might have happened? What probably would have happened? We were just guessing and imagining. * * * * * In the third version we re talking about the story as if we re just right next to Socrates and we re going along with Socrates as it happens. Those were our three versions. You don t need to think about the grammar terms for that. Just listen to each one each day and it becomes more and more familiar and easy for you. See you next time. Bye-bye.

Persistence VIP - Commentary Hello, this is A.J. and welcome to the Commentary about Persistence. I was thinking about this topic and thinking about my life. I was trying to think of some good stories to tell you from my life about persistence and when persistence helped me. Of course I have a lot of them. I ve told a lot of them before. I ve talked about training for a marathon or completing a marathon, for example. That required a lot of persistence to prepare for the marathons and to finish them. That s a common one that I ve told a lot and quite clearly. I started thinking what s the best example in my life of persistence where I just kept going and refused to quit? I kept going and going and going. I ve told this story before too, but it s really a series of stories that lasted 20 years. Twenty years of persistence. That s persistence, when you keep going and going and you refuse to quit, even though you don t have success for 20 years but you don t give up. You don t quit. You keep on going. That s my best persistence story and that s the one I m going to tell you now. It starts when I was a teenager around the age of 16. I ll be honest; I think I was a little spoiled by my parents in the sense that they were basic middle-class parents, not rich but on the other hand not poor. I always had whatever I needed or wanted. I didn t have to work too hard. As long as I was doing well in school, they were pretty happy. It was around the age of 17 that I got my driver s license in the United States, and I wanted a car and I wanted extra money. I was just getting a little bit of money from my parents at that point and I was borrowing money from them. I wanted more money. When you re a teenager you often start to spend more money. You go out with your friends more. My friends were going out to the movies a lot. Sometimes maybe they wanted to go to a concert or something, and that required a little more money than my parents were giving me, so I decided I needed more money. My parents said no we re not going to give you any extra money. You re going to have to go out and get a part-time job. I thought okay I ll do it. I was in high school, so I went and got a job at Arby s fast food, my first job ever. They still have them in the United States. They make roast beef sandwiches. So, I got my job at Arby s, my first experience in the working world and I absolutely hated it. I hated it. I think I ve told this story before, but the first day on the job I was making a milkshake and I spilled it all over my pants, so I smelled like chocolate all day.

I was kind of stressed out the whole time because it was fast food, so it s fast. They re trying to go really fast. Customers are coming in really quickly. I was more of a laid back guy, not used to having to hurry all the time, so it stressed me out. Then as the days and weeks went by working there, I really started hating that my schedule was not flexible. My girlfriend at the time wanted to go somewhere or do something, and I couldn t do it because I had to work that day, or my friends wanted to go do something fun and I couldn t do it because I had to work. Maybe I was a little spoiled but still I hated it. I hated this idea that I felt like a slave suddenly. Suddenly I felt like a slave. I already didn t like going to school, but at least all my friends were going to school at the same time, and for me school was really easy and kind of boring. In high school I read books in my classes a lot of times. I just brought books that I liked, and I would ignore what the teacher was saying and just read books. I d sit in the back of the room. I wasn t a bad kid. I didn t yell stuff or anything. I was quiet but I also didn t like school much at all. I got good grades, so my parents didn t care. So, I just would bring books to school and read. It was kind of my reading time. It was all right. I didn t mind it so much, but the working thing really kind of sucked. Sucked means that it was bad, it was terrible. I didn t like it at all and I quit after a couple of months; thus, establishing very early on my pattern in life of quitting jobs quite quickly and not staying in one job very long, a pattern that lasted my entire working career. That was the end of Arby s. I quit the job. I said forget it, the money s not worth it, I value my freedom more. This is another thing that I learned at a very early age, another pattern that started at the age of 16 or 17 and continued my whole life. I didn t work anymore for the rest of high school. Actually, this was my first entrepreneur experience. I started selling gum to students. I would go to the grocery store and I would buy gum and candy bars at the grocery store. Then during school I would sell these to other students, and both of these things were kind of illegal. They were against the rules in school. You re not supposed to have gum in school, and you re not supposed to be eating during class or have food, so it was like a little black market.

That was my first entrepreneur experience. I could buy a big pack of gum at the grocery store cheaply, but in school because there was a demand and you couldn t buy the gum during school, other students would buy it from me for like a dollar a pack or 50 cents per pack or something, so I could double my money or more. In this way, I made extra money and didn t have to work. I had freedom and I could do what I wanted after school, and that worked pretty well. Then I went off to college and I had some scholarships. I did okay but eventually I needed more money during university and I had to get a job. It was no fun. I was working at the library. It was not high stress but it was boring, and again I decided I hate jobs. This sucks. I hate it. I hate having my time scheduled like this and I don t like having a boss telling me what to do. In those kinds of jobs, I didn t have much to do but I would have to pretend to be busy. Have you had a job like this before where you really didn t have much to do, but the boss would walk around and you d have to pretend like you re doing something? I found that very stressful. I didn t like that. The worst of that was in the summertime during the university break. I got a summer job at IBM because I had a scholarship there and my dad worked there, so I worked at IBM. It sounds like a good job and they paid quite well for a college kid, but it was a full-time job, 40 hours a week, and it was the most boring thing I had ever experienced in my life. It was like dying. I absolutely hated it and it was 40 hours a week. This was my first experience of a full-time job, 40 hours a week. I had to drive to the office in the morning and drive home at night in rush hour. That was usually at least an extra hour each way or maybe an hour and a half. It was eight hours a day of working plus another two or three hours of driving. I had no time for my life. I had to get up early to get there by 8:30 I think that s what time I was supposed to be there. When I got home I was tired. I was a late night person and I never would get enough sleep. I was exhausted Monday through Friday. I thought this is what full-time work is like. This is what my dad s been doing all these years. This is horrible. I made this promise to myself that I will never do this. I will not do this! I said no. I actually did end up doing it two more times in the summers. Basically it allowed me to work a lot in the summer but then during the school year I didn t have to work so much. I could just focus more on studying and I had more freedom, so I sacrificed it but I decided I m never going to have this kind of life again when I get out of school. This is not the way I m going to go.

I think my dad hoped that I would go into business and get some corporate job, and maybe my mom did too. I don t know but I decided at that point no, it s never happening. Then after I graduated, I had an undergraduate degree but in nothing useful. Then I worked a series of low-paying difficult part-time jobs. I was a security guard at a couple different places. I liked being a security guard because it was easy, I could do it at night and just read books and study and do anything that I wanted to do. I could watch videos. I didn t want to have that corporate life. I wanted to be able to still have my own freedom and mental freedom, so I worked part-time jobs. I had this dream of freedom. I had a dream that I ll find some kind of job, some kind of career that I ll really enjoy and love and that will give me a lot of freedom, so I ll have all this flexibility and freedom with my time and I ll make enough money to enjoy my life and live how I want to. I didn t want a lot of money, just enough to travel a bit and kind of live like a student, but most of all I d have freedom, my time freedom. This was the dream and yet it turned out to be extremely difficult to find. I didn t want to work a corporate full-time job, so it was a series then of little difficult lowpaying part-time jobs. I worked security. I worked at a shoe store. I worked at some restaurants. I worked in a library at the university even after graduation. When the Olympics came to Atlanta, I worked as a security guard at the Olympics. I volunteered. None of those jobs lasted very long because I would get really bored and tired of them, and then I would move onto another one, but I had this persistence. It was like okay I m going to keep trying things. I m going to keep trying and eventually I m going to find the thing that I like that gives me the freedom and the time I want. Being a security guard was not that, so I kept trying and trying. I kept thinking what should I do? Finally I decided I guess I need to go back to school. I think I want to do something to help people. I thought about being a psychologist. I looked into that. Then I started volunteering at a hospital and I met a social worker. He told me all about social work and it sounded pretty interesting, and I decided okay I ll be a social worker. It sounds like it s more flexible than a psychologist. So, I went back to grad school and became a social worker. I got my Master s in social work. I came out and started getting other jobs again. I actually did have some pretty nice jobs. I certainly enjoyed them a lot more but still I didn t like working full time. I wanted more flexibility, so I never stayed in one job more than two years.

Year after year after year went by, and I kept thinking I m going to find some perfect job, some perfect career that will give me the freedom I want and enough money and flexibility. I tried and I tried. I switched jobs again and again and again. Five years, eight years, 10 years went by. Fifteen years went by. I tried another kind of business on my own. Finally I got so sick of working for other people. I was working at a hospital at this point as a social worker and again it was long hours. I hated it. No flexibility. I was getting paid better but I had no freedom. I didn t like that and at this point I was really into traveling. I wanted to have more vacation. They only gave me two weeks a year for vacation. I just thought this is horrible. I can t do this. Now I should say at this point, after let s say 15 years of working and being in the working world, most people that I knew at that point had quit and given up. In other words, they just accepted the situation. Everybody would tell me this is just the way it is, A.J. You re not going to find this dream job. If you re lucky, maybe you ll get three weeks of vacation a year. This is what it means to be an adult. This is what the working world is. Everyone has to work, so you just have to do it. This is life. I watched a lot of the people around me kind of lose a lot of their passion for life and their energy because they were being crushed by these full-time jobs, slowly losing their energy, slowing losing their vitality. Vitality is like life energy. But I was persistent. I decided I will never give up. I will never ever give up. I will keep going until I find this kind of dream life of having enough money to live, but most of all having freedom. I started calling work wage slavery. A wage is payment or a salary. You know what slavery is. I stopped calling it work and I started calling it wage slavery. I started getting more and more angry about it and more and more sick of it. I saw it as a sick system and I started getting more and more emotional about it. I said I m sick of this. I m not going to be a wage slave. Instead of giving up, instead of quitting and instead of just accepting the situation, I kept fighting and fighting and fighting for 10 years on and on. I decided maybe I needed to do my own business. I d been reading business books for a while with this kind of dream in my mind but never did anything. Finally I met this woman who was selling these nutrition products. It was kind of like Amway, this multilevel marketing thing. At that point I was so desperate, so upset and

so sick of wage slavery that I was willing to try anything, so I signed up and I started trying to sell nutrition supplements, which is fine. I actually take supplements myself. I have no problem with nutrition supplements but it was not the kind of business for me. I d never really done selling much, and the main focus of this business was selling to your friends and family, which is kind of obnoxious and annoying. I tried. I think my dad bought some stuff. I think I got my mom to buy some things, but I just started feeling weird. I said this is weird. I m pressuring my family to buy this stuff and I know they don t want it, so I quit doing that. It was not for me. Again, I did not quit my dream though. I stayed persistent. I went back to working as a wage slave and then I changed my focus. I decided maybe I ll never find the dream job. Maybe it s not going to happen. I just failed as an entrepreneur. I hate working for other people but I can still keep going. I m not going to quit. I will never quit. I ll quit when I m dead. I thought I need to try a different approach. Instead of looking for this great perfect job, which doesn t exist, I m going to simplify my life so much that I don t hardly need any money so that I can just work the minimal amount, so I can just get part-time jobs with minimum hours and anytime I want to go travel I can just quit and go travel. I ll work part-time and still save money. I ll travel whenever I want by just quitting my jobs and then come back and get another easy part-time job. I thought that will give me freedom. I was willing to do anything. I would not give up. I would not quit. This is the point where I started trying things like living in my car for a full summer with my dog. I lived in a little Toyota car with my dog and it was actually a very interesting adventure. I was able to quit the full-time job that I had at that time. I lived in my car for a full summer with no job at all. I just lived off my savings and I felt free again. I felt like I was a student again like back when I was in university in my 20 s. Once you taste that freedom again, it s like I m never going back. At that point I said I will never ever again work full time, and I didn t. So, I traveled. This was also the period where I started getting jobs abroad. I d get teaching English jobs. My strategy at this point was I ll go live in a country somewhere Korea or Japan or Thailand and I ll teach English for a while. I ll spend no money. I ll just save everything and then I ll just travel as much as I want, and when I come back to America I ll live in my car.