Years ago when I still had an office job, I took the same route every day on the train, transferring to a different train every day. Then one day I had a day off and decided to go do some shopping. I took the same train, changing at the same station halfway: but I was supposed to go a different way from there, and get on a different train to the one that took me to my office. Was supposed to. Because what I actually did was walk the normal way and get on the normal train. The wrong train. Chances are you’ve done something like this before. Why does it happen? It’s simple, really: habit. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=944Ui1lhOZc

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Habits are one the ways the brain saves energy, and where it can it will always prefer to kick-in an automatic routine — a habit — and let things just flow. Certain things trigger these habits (like getting off the train I always got off) and from there they just go on autopilot unless you stop them. This is the same for both learning and speaking English. When you say, “good morning” to someone, that’s a social habit and it’s a language habit (the neurons in your mind are fused together and when you say, “good…” your the habit pulls the rest into “morning”). The mistakes you keep making are also habits. And when you panic, feel fear or get embarrassed, yup, those are also too. Well, the first stage of building confidence is re-wiring your bad habits. And as Rytas, a recent MEFA graduate said to me last week, we’re all FULL of these “bad habits” that are holding us back and stopping us from performing in English properly. Some are performance habits. Some are language habits. Many are thinking habits. But left unfixed, they’ll make progress very, very difficult. Which is why you need to REWIRE those habits to change from counterproductive, too productive so they push you forward with your English, instead of holding you back. How do we do that? Well, that’s for me and my boys and girls in MEFA to know, and for you to wonder about. But we start the process of right from Week 1. For information, go here: https://www.doingenglish.com/MEFA Enjoy, Julian Northbrook