Don’t Give Up On Yourself | English Podcast for Easy English Conversation | Learn English Fast

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[00:00:00]Hello, we are so excited to show you our native speech capabilities. Welcome back to the English journey. Today we are exploring a concept that sounds like a contradiction but is actually a secret to happiness. Less is more. My name is Anna and I am here to guide you through the magic of a simple life.

[00:00:20]>> And I am Abel. I am so glad to be here with you, Anna. We live in a world that always tells us to want more. More money, more clothes, and more technology. Today we want to talk about how to use English to describe the beauty of simplicity and why having less can actually lead to more freedom.

[00:00:38]>> That is such a wonderful way to introduce it. Abel and I want to start by asking you something personal. When you look around your home right now or when you think about your daily schedule, does it feel light and open or does it feel heavy and crowded?

[00:00:53]>> Honestly, Anna, it feels very heavy sometimes. I have so many things in my apartment. I have clothes I never wear, books I have not opened in years, and kitchen gadgets that are still in their original boxes. And my schedule is the same. I'm always saying yes to things and then feeling exhausted at the end of the day. I think I have a clutter problem both physically and mentally.

[00:01:16]>> You are not alone, Abel. In fact, what you just described is one of the most common experiences for people living in the modern world. We are surrounded by messages that tell us having more is the path to success and happiness. More clothes mean you are stylish. More activities mean you are productive. More possessions mean you are successful.

[00:01:36]This idea is so deeply connected to our culture that we don't even question it anymore. We just accept it. We just keep collecting, buying, scheduling, and accumulating. And then one day we wake up and feel completely overwhelmed without understanding exactly why.

[00:01:54]>> That is exactly how I feel. Overwhelmed.

[00:01:57]And I did not connect it to the things I own or the commitments I have made. I thought maybe I was just tired or stressed about work. But you're saying the clutter itself is part of the problem.

[00:02:08]>> Absolutely. There's actually a lot of research on this topic. When your physical environment is cluttered, when there are too many objects, too many visual distractions, too many things competing for your attention, your brain works harder just to process what it's seeing. Your brain is constantly scanning the environment, even when you're not consciously aware of it. It's like having too many programs running on your computer at the same time. Each one uses a small amount of energy, but together they slow the whole system down. That's exactly what clutter does to your mind.

[00:02:43]>> Oh, that is such a great comparison. I use that computer analogy with my own students sometimes. Actually, when my laptop has 50 tabs open, everything is slow and nothing works properly. My life feels like that right now. 50 tabs open and the whole system is freezing.

[00:03:00]>> And the interesting thing is the solution in both cases is the same. You close the tabs you don't need. You free up the memory. You give the system room to breathe in your life. That means looking honestly at what you own, what you do, and what you give your attention to, and then making a conscious choice to let go of what's not truly necessary or meaningful.

[00:03:22]>> That sounds simple, but I think it's very hard to do. I always feel like I might need something later. Like, what if I throw away that kitchen gadget and then 6 months from now I really want to make pasta from scratch? I will regret it. The whatif thinking is one of the biggest obstacles to living simply. And I want to be honest with you about this because I used to think exactly the same way. I remember when I first started simplifying my home about 5 years ago now. I was standing in front of my wardrobe and I had so many clothes, but I was wearing the same seven or eight outfits all the time. Everything else just hung there, taking up space, making me feel guilty every morning because I'd look at a dress and think, "I should wear that and then not wear it and then feel slightly bad about it." Every single morning, this tiny repetitive cycle of guilt was draining my energy before my day had even begun.

[00:04:17]>> I do that, too. I look at something and think, "I paid good money for that and I never use it." It creates this quiet feeling of failure.

[00:04:25]>> Exactly. And that quiet feeling of failure multiplied across dozens of objects creates a very real emotional weight. So when I started going through my wardrobe and donating things I hadn't worn in over a year, something unexpected happened. I didn't feel loss.

[00:04:42]I felt relief. Genuine deep relief. My mornings became calmer. Getting dressed became easy and even enjoyable because everything I owned was something I actually liked and actually wore. The decision was simple and starting the day with a simple, easy decision put me in a much better mental state for everything that followed.

[00:05:04]>> So decluttering is not just about the physical space. It's about the mental energy you recover when you do it.

[00:05:10]>> Precisely. And this connects to something very relevant for our listeners who are learning English.

[00:05:15]Mental energy is the most important resource you have as a language learner.

[00:05:20]When your environment is cluttered and your schedule is overloaded, you arrive at your study session already mentally exhausted. You try to read, but your attention wanders. You try to listen, but you can't concentrate. You feel frustrated. You call yourself lazy or untalented. But the real issue is that your brain was already full before you even opened your textbook. That explains so much about my own English learning experience. Honestly, I would sit down to study and just stare at the page. I thought I was distracted because I wasn't motivated enough. But maybe my environment and my schedule were taking up all my mental bandwidth. That is very likely. And the prescription is not to try harder. The prescription is to simplify. Create a study space that is clean and minimal. Remove objects that are not related to your learning. A clear desk, good light, perhaps a glass of water, your book or your device.

[00:06:15]That's all you need. When you sit in that space, your brain recognizes it as a focused environment. And it becomes much easier to enter a state of concentration.

[00:06:25]>> I want to talk about something you mentioned earlier, Anna, which is the power of saying no because I think this is connected. I have a very hard time saying no to people. If someone invites me somewhere, I say yes even if I'm tired. If someone needs a favor, I say yes, even if I don't have time, and then I'm exhausted and I resent the situation, which is not fair to anyone.

[00:06:47]>> The inability to say no is incredibly common, and it comes from a very human place. We want to be helpful. We want to be liked. We're afraid of disappointing people or missing out on something.

[00:06:59]There's actually a popular term for this, FOMO, which stands for fear of missing out. It's the anxiety that if you say no to an experience or an event, you will somehow fall behind or something wonderful will happen that you were not part of. FOMO is one of the main engines of the more is better trap.

[00:07:18]>> FOMO is a great word. I definitely have FOMO, especially with social events or opportunities at work. I'm always afraid that if I decline something, people will forget about me or think I'm not serious.

[00:07:30]>> And yet, here's the paradox. When you say yes to everything, you are present everywhere but fully engaged nowhere.

[00:07:38]You go to the event, but you're tired, so you're not truly there. You take the extra project, but you're overwhelmed, so your work is not your best. You have the quantity of experiences, but not the quality. And quality is where real joy and real growth happen. When you carefully choose fewer commitments and give them your full presence and full energy, every single one of those experiences becomes richer and more meaningful. That reminds me of a dinner I went to last month. I was so overcommitted that week. I arrived at my friend's birthday dinner completely exhausted. I sat at the table. I was physically present, but mentally I was thinking about three other things I needed to do. And afterward, I felt like I had missed the whole evening, even though I was sitting right there. That is such an honest and relatable example, Abel. You were at the dinner, but the dinner was not at its best, and neither were you. Now, imagine if you had canceled one other obligation that week, protected that evening, arrived rested, and genuinely excited to celebrate your friend. The conversation would have been deeper. Your laughter would have been more genuine. You would have left feeling connected and energized rather than depleted. That is what intentional living creates. It is the difference between going through the motions and truly living your life.

[00:08:57]>> Intentional living. I love that phrase.

[00:09:00]Can you explain it a little more? What does it actually mean to live intentionally?

[00:09:04]>> Intentional living means making conscious, deliberate choices about how you spend your time, your energy, and your attention rather than simply reacting to whatever comes at you. Most of us live reactively. The phone buzzes, we look at it. An invitation arrives, we say yes. automatically a sale appears in our inbox. We buy something we did not know we wanted 20 minutes ago.

[00:09:28]Intentional living means pausing before each of those reactions and asking yourself, "Does this align with what I genuinely value? Does this bring me closer to the person I want to be or does it just feel urgent in this moment?"

[00:09:42]>> That question, does this align with what I value is a really powerful filter. I think most of us never ask it. We just respond to whatever is in front of us.

[00:09:52]>> And the world is specifically designed to keep us in that reactive state. This brings us to a topic I find absolutely fascinating, which is digital minimalism. Our phones are incredible tools. They connect us to information, to people, to entertainment. But they are also extraordinarily powerful machines for capturing and holding our attention. Every notification, every red badge on an app icon, every infinite scroll of content is engineered by teams of brilliant people whose job is to keep you looking at your screen for as long as possible. That is a slightly unsettling thought when you say it that way. I know it is true, but I do not often think about it so directly. I just pick up my phone automatically. I don't even always know why I picked it up. I just look at it and then I put it down and then I pick it up again 5 minutes later.

[00:10:46]>> The average person checks their phone over a hundred times per day. That's more than once every 10 minutes during your waking hours. Each of those small interruptions breaks your concentration.

[00:10:57]And it takes approximately 20 minutes for your brain to return to a state of deep focus after an interruption. So, if you're checking your phone every 10 minutes, mathematically speaking, you're never reaching a state of deep focus at all. You're just skating on the surface of your own attention all day long.

[00:11:15]>> 20 minutes to recover from each interruption. I didn't know that. That means by checking my phone constantly, I'm essentially preventing myself from ever doing my best thinking.

[00:11:26]>> That is correct. And for an English learner, this is particularly important.

[00:11:31]Deep focus is exactly what you need to absorb new vocabulary, to internalize grammar patterns, to understand the nuances of a listening exercise.

[00:11:41]Language learning is not a passive activity. It requires sustained, concentrated attention. Every time your phone pulls you away, you lose that depth and you end up with a very shallow experience of the language that does not stick in your long-term memory. So, what does digital minimalism actually look like in practice? How do you simplify your digital life without completely disconnecting from the world?

[00:12:06]>> It doesn't have to be extreme. You do not need to throw your phone into a river. It starts with small, deliberate adjustments. The first and most powerful step for most people is to turn off all non-essential notifications. You do not need a notification every time someone likes a photo or every time a news app has a new article or every time an email arrives. You can check those things intentionally at a time you choose rather than being summoned by your phone every few minutes. That one change alone, removing notifications, gives you back an enormous amount of mental sovereignty.

[00:12:43]>> Mental sovereignty. That's a beautiful phrase. The idea that you're the one in control of where your attention goes.

[00:12:50]>> Exactly. Another practice is to designate phonefree times in your day.

[00:12:55]Perhaps the first 30 minutes after you wake up, you do not look at your phone at all. You drink your coffee. You look out the window. You let your mind be quiet before the noise of the world comes in. And perhaps the last 30 minutes before you sleep, the same thing. Your brain needs time to wind down. And scrolling through stimulating content before bed is one of the main reasons so many people sleep poorly.

[00:13:20]>> I am very guilty of the late night scrolling. I tell myself I'm just going to check one thing and then somehow 45 minutes have passed and I feel even more awake and restless than before I started.

[00:13:33]>> That's the design working exactly as intended and you're losing your sleep quality, your energy the next day and therefore your capacity to learn, work and connect. meaningfully. It's a cascade of small costs that add up to a significant reduction in the quality of your daily life. The simple act of putting your phone in another room at night could genuinely transform your mornings. I want to shift to something that is very specific to our listeners, Anna, which is applying the less is more philosophy to learning English itself.

[00:14:06]You mentioned something earlier about vocabulary and I think this is so important because many learners feel pressure to know as many words as possible.

[00:14:15]>> This is one of my favorite topics and I think it is genuinely liberating for language learners to hear. There is a common belief that to be fluent in English you must have an enormous vocabulary. Learners often try to memorize hundreds of new words every week using long lists, flashcard apps, and complicated systems. And there is a certain logic to it. More words should mean better communication, right?

[00:14:41]>> That is what I always assumed. More vocabulary equals better English. It seems so logical.

[00:14:48]>> But here's what the research and practical experience actually show. The most frequent 2,000 words in the English language cover approximately 90% of all spoken conversation and around 80% of most written texts. 2,000 words, not 5,000, not 10,000, 2,000 well-chosen, well understood, deeply internalized words will allow you to communicate in almost any everyday situation with clarity and confidence. The problem is that most learners spread themselves very thing, collecting words they cannot actually use in a sentence. Words they recognize but cannot produce. Words that live on a flash card but never make the journey into real speech.

[00:15:34]>> That is such a good distinction.

[00:15:36]Recognizing a word versus being able to use it naturally. I think I have a very large recognition vocabulary in English but a much smaller production vocabulary. I know what many words mean when I see them, but I would not naturally use them when I'm speaking.

[00:15:52]>> And that gap between recognition and production is exactly where language learners get stuck. The solution is not to add more words to the recognition pile. The solution is to take the words you already know and go deeper with them. Understand not just the basic definition, but the connotation, the emotion behind the word. Understand how it sounds in different contexts.

[00:16:15]Practice using it in your own sentences.

[00:16:17]Hear it in real conversations. Write it in a paragraph about your own life. One word studied deeply with all its layers and collocations is worth 10 words seen once on a list and quickly forgotten.

[00:16:31]>> Collocations. Can you explain that word for our listeners?

[00:16:35]>> Of course. A collocation is a natural combination of words that native speakers use together automatically. For example, native speakers do not just do a decision, they make a decision. They do not do a mistake, they make a mistake. They do not have a walk, they go for a walk. These combinations, these pairs and groups of words that naturally belong together are what makes speech sound natural and fluent. And the only way to truly learn them is through repeated meaningful exposure, reading, listening, and using them in your own communication. You cannot learn collocations from a list. You learn them through depth of engagement with the language. So less is more in English learning means know fewer words, but know them completely. Use shorter, simpler sentences, but use them with full confidence. Focus on a smaller range of topics in English but discuss them with real depth and authenticity.

[00:17:34]>> You have summarized that beautifully Ael and I would add one more dimension. Less is more also applies to your study methods. Many learners try every app, every method, every YouTube channel, every course simultaneously. They're always searching for the perfect system rather than committing to one approach and going deep with it. The learners who make the most progress are usually not the ones with the most resources.

[00:18:01]They're the ones who chose one or two good resources and use them consistently with full attention over a long period of time.

[00:18:10]>> Consistency and depth over variety and distraction. That feels like a theme running through everything we've talked about today. Whether it's our possessions, our schedule, our digital habits, or our English learning, the answer is always to go deeper with less rather than spreading ourselves thin across more.

[00:18:29]>> That's the heart of it, Abel. And I want to bring us to perhaps the most important dimension of simple living, which is the ability to find beauty and contentment in the small, free, ordinary moments of life. Because ultimately the reason we accumulate so much things, activities, digital stimulation is because we've lost our ability to be satisfied with the present moment as it is. We're always reaching for the next thing because we've forgotten how to appreciate what's already here.

[00:19:00]>> That is a profound point. I think I'm always living slightly in the future.

[00:19:05]I'll be happy when I finish this project. I'll relax when the weekend comes. I'll really enjoy life when I have more money or more time or more of something. But the present moment keeps passing while I'm waiting for the conditions to be perfect.

[00:19:20]>> And the conditions will never be perfect. That's the difficult truth.

[00:19:24]There will always be another project, another goal, another thing to achieve.

[00:19:29]The future never fully arrives as we imagine it. But the present moment is always completely, undeniably real. and learning to be fully present, to actually taste your food, to actually see the sky when you step outside, to actually feel the warmth of a good conversation. This is a skill. It's a skill that simplicity helps you develop because when you're not constantly overstimulated by things, screens, and noise, your sensitivity to small pleasures naturally returns.

[00:20:01]>> Can you give some examples of those small free pleasures? because I think we sometimes underestimate them.

[00:20:07]>> I love this question. Think about the feeling of sunlight on your face on a cool morning. Or the first sip of coffee or tea before the day has begun. Or the sound of rain against a window when you're inside and warm. Or the feeling of a genuine deep laugh with someone you care about. Or the quiet satisfaction of finishing a task you've been putting off. Or walking slowly through a neighborhood you know well and noticing something small you have never seen before. A flower growing through a crack in the pavement. a cat sitting on a window sill. The particular way the light falls on a wall in the late afternoon. These moments are completely free. They require no money, no achievement, no special condition. They only require your presence and your attention.

[00:20:54]>> Those examples are so vivid, Anna. And I realize that I walk past those kinds of moments every single day without seeing them because I'm looking at my phone or I'm thinking about something else or I'm mentally already somewhere else than where my body is. And this is why the simple life is not about deprivation.

[00:21:13]People sometimes hear the word minimalism and they think it means living with nothing, being uncomfortable, denying yourself pleasure. But the opposite is true.

[00:21:22]Minimalism is about removing the noise so you can hear the music. It is about clearing the clutter so you can see what is genuinely beautiful. It is about creating enough space in your days and in your mind that you can actually feel your own life as you are living it.

[00:21:39]>> I want to connect this back to English learning one final time because I think our listeners will appreciate this. How does finding contentment in the present moment actually help with language learning? It helps in a very direct and practical way. Language anxiety is one of the biggest obstacles that intermediate learners face. There is a constant exhausting comparison with where you think you should be. I have been studying for 2 years. I should be fluent by now. That person started learning at the same time as me and they are already so much better. My accent is wrong. My grammar is wrong. I'm not improving fast enough. This mental noise, this constant dissatisfaction with where you currently are creates stress. And stress actually impairs memory formation and language processing. It makes you freeze when you speak. It makes you avoid opportunities to practice. And it makes the whole experience of learning feel like a burden rather than a gift.

[00:22:37]>> That anxiety is so real. I see it in my students all the time. And I feel it myself when I try to use my English in a real conversation. There is this background fear of not being good enough yet.

[00:22:49]>> But what if you could genuinely accept where you are right now, not as a place of failure, but as a perfect and valid stage of a beautiful journey? What if you could feel satisfaction in understanding a sentence that you did not understand last month? Or pride in using a new phrase correctly in a real conversation or joy in the simple act of listening to this podcast and following along. Those are real achievements. They deserve real recognition. And when you learn to appreciate the small incremental progress of language learning, when you practice contentment with the present stage, you actually learn faster because you are relaxed, open, and genuinely engaged rather than tense and self-critical.

[00:23:32]>> Less pressure, more joy, and paradoxically, more progress. It really does all connect back to the same idea, does it not? Less is more. in every dimension of this conversation.

[00:23:45]>> It does. And I think that's what makes this philosophy so powerful and so applicable. It's not a trend or a lifestyle for a specific type of person.

[00:23:54]It's a principle that works in your home, in your schedule, in your digital life, in your learning, and in your relationship with the present moment.

[00:24:03]When you consciously choose to own less, do less, consume less, and worry less, you create space. And in that space, something remarkable grows. Clarity grows, creativity grows, connection grows. Real sustainable happiness grows.

[00:24:20]Not the happiness that comes from buying something new, which lasts a day or a week at most, but the deep, quiet happiness that comes from knowing exactly who you are, what you value, and how you want to spend the brief and precious time that you have.

[00:24:35]>> I feel genuinely moved by this conversation, Anna. I came in thinking about clutter as a practical problem.

[00:24:42]Too many boxes in my wardrobe, too many apps on my phone. But we've talked about something so much bigger. We've talked about attention, about choice, about the courage to say no, about finding beauty in ordinary moments. These are not just ideas about tidying up. These are ideas about how to live. And they are ideas that translate directly into how we speak, how we listen, and how we connect with the language we are learning and with the people around us. A simpler life creates a quieter mind. And a quieter mind is the most fertile ground that exists for genuine learning, for deep conversation, and for the kind of fluency that is not just technical accuracy, but real human connection through words. For our listeners who want to begin this journey, what is one single small step they could take today?

[00:25:34]Not a huge transformation, just one gentle beginning. Choose one small area of your physical space, a single drawer, one shelf, the surface of your desk, and spend 20 minutes removing everything that is not useful or genuinely meaningful to you. Don't think about the whole house. Don't try to transform everything at once, just that one small space. and then sit in front of it when it's clear and notice how your body feels. Notice the small exhale of relief. Notice the quiet. Let that feeling be your teacher and let it show you what becomes possible when you make room for it. That is such a wise and achievable starting point. And for our English learners specifically, I would add this. Choose three words from today's conversation that felt new or interesting to you. Don't write down 20 words. Choose three. Write each one in your own sentence. Use each one in a conversation this week. Go deep with three words and let that be enough because it is enough. It's more than enough. The journey towards a simpler, more intentional, and more joyful life begins not with a dramatic gesture, but with a single, quiet, courageous choice to say, "This is enough. I am enough.

[00:26:51]And what I already have in this moment is already beautiful." And that perhaps is the deepest and most important English sentence any of us will ever learn to truly