After watching and being inspired by a billion
"polyglot speaks this amount of languages" videos, then feeling bad about my own progress, and
then feeling so bad I tried to push those same feelings away by creating my own version
of that same video... It dawned on me as I was looking back on that version of myself two
years ago... that I was lying behind the camera, not only about the capacity of my language
learning skills, but also how I was truly doing. And as my channel has started grow
ing and seeing
that that is the second popular video on my channel, I recognize that this video no longer
aligns with my values or who I am, And today I just wanted to give you a very transparent
behind the scenes look of making that video, as well as what I've learned as a decade long
consumer of all this heavily goal oriented, metrics focused, productivity
based language learning content. Now, a disclaimer... I am not accusing
anyone else of feeling the way that I do, who made similar po
lyglot Check videos
in the past. I'm not accusing them of lying about their skills or that they're
somehow not living by their own values, or that they are bad person for posting such a
thing. I don't know them. And that's the thing. We really don't know what's going on in any
other language creators lives. The only thing that we can be sure about is how we feel about
it after watching another person's content, whether or not they meant for us to
actually feel that way or not. Of course, w
e can always say, you know, I wish that
people would be just more transparent and honest with their language learning and all
the struggles and hardships that they face, which I see a little bit more of that in the
language learning communities that I follow. However, there is definitely a barrier to
this because we just can't and shouldn't expect everyone to talk about absolutely
everything going wrong in life, especially when we are at our worst periods. Probably
the last thing that we w
ant to do is just turn on the camera and tell the world about
it. For me too. I definitely cannot do this. I have to process a lot by myself before
even sharing it with you guys. But we do know that despite all that, those creators can
choose what they show us, and when they do, they have specific energy for
creating these types of content, ideas and videos. We just know we're left
with an unfinished story. Literally a 30 second preview to a 50 year long film of
someone's life that is cons
tantly evolving. And we know that usually these stories,
either intentionally or unintentionally, downplay or overemphasize the reality and
the journey behind what we actually see. So in saying all of this, the first
thing that I want to highlight with making my own personal video is... I
knew I would be crossing a fine line of being a creator and either inspiring
others or lowering other's self esteem. I didn't know if I was going to do one or
more of the other thing. I just knew what was
working at the time that I came
into YouTube and I just knew I wanted to start a language learning channel
and didn't really know what else to talk about on such a channel...Besides
about what I already saw was working. I also really didn't know what values I stood for
in my own language learning and was just really figuring it out. I was also at the same time
drowning in perfectionism in my own feelings of anxiety and unworthiness. I had the constant
urgency to just keep on learning lang
uages, keep on learning these grammar concepts as
perfectly as possible, never really stopping. And also just drowning in the
numbers game, the metrics, the comparison and wanting to keep on
achieving without even acknowledging what I had achieved in the past. And there
came a time where my body was like, I have to escape from all of this. And of course
I chose the probably less beneficial method of coping because I chose to make this video in
response to all of that, my brain was like, "I
can escape these feelings by having other people
compliment me and validate me from the outside... And then my inner thoughts and inner self-esteem
will feel better." But as the saying goes, hurt people, hurt people. And I
feel like with me in the situation, we could rephrase this to say "hurt people,
mask this, hurt, hoping other hurt people will cheer them on and make up for their
lack of self esteem". And even at the point where I actually started filming the video,
I mean, I filmed it
like three or four times. I had the bucket of languages to make it
seem a little bit more authentic for speaking spontaneously in each of those languages.
However, I had already filmed that video like three or four times because I was constantly
criticizing myself, blaming myself for not having enough energy to film it three or four times and
still show that amount of energy and confidence. There was always a trend that I saw
in polyglot Check videos where they were very animated and they
could switch
effortlessly between languages. It really didn't seem that they were searching
for any terms, or looking up at the ceiling, they weren't displaying any obvious
signs that someone is thinking about what they want to say. I had a very narrow definition
of what confidence in language learning was, exactly what I saw other people doing in
the YouTube language learning community. And honestly, I feel like I still talk pretty slow
when I talk in other foreign languages, no matter if
I am a beginner, intermediate or advanced
learner. But in this video I tried to talk as fast as possible while still looking at ease somehow
and not looking panicked and trying to mask all of this perfectionism and imposter syndrome
that was welling up as I filmed the video. Overall, it was a very unenjoyable experience,
to say the least, because of this hyper criticism and being hyper focused on everything that I
perceived to go wrong, I wanted compliments, but I was also deathly afraid o
f judgment
and of negative comments that would affect my very broken self-worth. At that time,
I was really in my head afterwards and even during the edited process, I
did edit the video pretty heavily. Being just as critical as I was while filming
the video, as I was editing everything and just cutting out things that I didn't like about what I
said, saying, "Oh, this wasn't fast enough," or "I used the wrong pronunciation here," or "I left
out a word there." And in saying all of that, an
d probably with you guys who have stuck with me
for a while on my channel, as you've seen it grow, you know that I probably.... with my value
set that I have now, that I'm more in tune with and aligned with and try to live by....
I would not make a video like that today. But I also think it's interesting to
see how people evolve and I really support people's evolution too. I really
thought about taking that video down, but I did decide to leave it up in the end
because it's okay to show ot
her people that I am changing, that change is inevitable and
really, just to let others know I am human too. I really didn't have it all figured out.
None of us really do behind that curated image that content creation and social media in
general like to create the illusion of.... and this topic of really celebrating language
learners and how they evolve and how they get to know themselves authentically within
their language.... That is a process that I am diving a lot more deeper now into
what I create
on my channel, really reminding others that the present and the future are not fixed for us and
that our minds that really makes a difference. And so I thought, you know, maybe having
this video so up from two years ago would show my embodiment of a concept that I
preach. So if you have felt a lot worse after watching those kinds of polyglot videos,
what can you do about it? Very first thing is keep your feelings in perspective. It's not
your fault that you feel the way that
you do. We aren't in control of how we grew up, nor
what societal messages we internalized as kids going into adulthood, trying to always do it, be,
achieve the most in the quickest, most effective, most entertaining, most creative way is
possible. I don't even know what I'm forgetting, but you guys get the idea right? It is
all of these things, plus more that we were raised with being overachievers for, and that
overachievement would always yield rewards for us, more than other people who
wouldn't appear
to be doing as much as we were doing. And in fact, I must admit, you know, there
was a big part of my brain that really liked watching those polyglot videos, even though
I felt bad after watching so many of them, it felt normal and comfortable for me to talk
and also see others talk about languages in quantifiable terms. Kind of like if I were
looking at my high school grades again and seeing things tangibly measured with my
achievement, which also seeing that on paper and
quantifying things that way, it made
my self-esteem go up in high school... when in reality, language is so much more tied to our
identity, our humanity, our lives in general. There's so much tied to the narratives that
we tell ourselves about them. And all these narratives, of course, form our own sense
and perception of reality. But the truth is, language cannot be quantified and
simplified so neatly by numbers, no matter how many times we as humans have tried
to do so through standardiz
ed test routines, metrics.... But we humans do like what
we're used to (and creating control), right? If we like numbers or grades or we were
raised with a family or societal values, who likes high productivity or high
achievement for achievement sake, or grew up being very exposed to consumerism and
capitalism all in one, it feels good to quantify languages in that way because it feels like we
have more control and we keep aiming for higher and higher and going more and just pushing harder
instead of standing still, just for a little bit, and investigating deeper into our own thoughts
why we are all doing this in the first place. And if we do that and stand still, it
might not feel as good as first. Also, because we've paused this loop of endless
productivity by doing so, but also because we have to admit that these polyglot videos maybe
aren't serving us as well as we initially thought when we first discovered them. We have to
admit that maybe we're not in control of every
thing that goes on in language learning,
whether that be chronic illness or ADHD. If you are heritage language learner, there are
so many emotions that we cannot fix by just a steady routine, we can't control what society
we were raised in or when life just happens and depletes our energy and time. The second
thing I want us to all be aware of is... Beware of believing unfinished stories, both your
own story and other people's stories, right? Because we have the amazing capacity as humans t
o
think complex thoughts about how to fill in gaps to other people's story and to make another
person's unfinished story as logical and as understandable to us. And depending on our
traumas or our mental struggles right now, we will fill in the gaps with imagined
information that makes us feel bad about ourselves and confirms to us within our own
story that we are way behind from this person, that we don't deserve or we'll never
get to what this person has achieved. We've done less than th
em. We think
that their goal should also be our goals because they seem so impressive to
us. Other examples of this would be, "Oh, they learned Russian in six months.
I bet they're going to learn German in another six months." "I bet they have great
memory." "They must have never struggled with this type of grammar because they learned
everything so fast"... and in trying to piece together someone else's story, as I've
mentioned before, we also fill in our own. We also fill in our own limi
ting beliefs about
ourselves, especially when we do feel anxious or discouraged, or in an otherwise very high
emotional state. It is more likely for us to take our feelings as facts about us and reconfirm
to ourselves how incapable we are compared to that other person. "They're doing great. Oh,
well, that means I'm not doing good enough." "They learn so fast. Why am I learning so slow?"
"They have a near native accent. That must mean a native accent is the only and or best metric to
measur
e my language learning success by. It's the only one that matters. I won't ever have that,
so my achievements don't count as much." But I want all of us to know, and this is as much a
reminder to me as it is to others out there.. Take other stories just as anecdotes and know
that there are gaps, advantages, disadvantages that we will never know about another person's
language learning story. And also in saying that, take your own story as unfinished and ever
evolving, others won't know the
ins and outs of your own story better than you will, and
you'll never be done with rewriting your story. And you can do that at any time. It is the one
that you can control. Which, speaking of which, no, you can't control everything in your
studies, but you can control your mindset, your boundaries and your outlook.
This was a true game changer for me, which helped me get to know a lot more of my
authentic self within my own languages.... Instead of going towards whatever I saw others
doin
g that seemed like the right thing or the best thing to do. And helping you do the same
thing is truly my mission for language travel adoptee and where it is heading as it grows.
So I invite you to decompress when others are making you feel bad. Unsubscribe
and unfollow when you are feeling less inspired than when you watched the beginning
of that video or that reel, take that break from a specific language, reevaluate what
you're feeling away from any distraction. Emotions are there for us
. We just have to show
our own selves patience and listen to them. Another thing I want us to keep in mind is know
that there are multiple ways to do life, language learning included. There's all kinds of pressure
around us, and we can realize that even as we are making big life transitions. For example, from
college to the real world, where you think, "Oh, I should be doing the same career as that
person, this person is getting further than me." "I'm this many years old and I still have no
t
achieved what this person after college has achieved." We feel pressure to conform to
what society finds beautiful. We feel the pressure to be productive for the sake of just
doing something. And after we have had so much exposure to the same thoughts, the same ideas,
the same ways that language learning is being represented and talked about, we all eventually
want to conform to certain ways to study, certain limited ways to find success, limited ways
to just be and show confidence in yo
ur language. And all of that is most likely not aligned
to who we really are as human beings and what would be best for our personality. And
most of these defined perimeters are then, in a way, used against us, so that we do
feel like we aren't doing something and will buy something else that will
make us get to the result faster, to make up for our perceived lack of not
doing enough, or not being good enough. And I guess really that's the beauty of life
and really just getting older as I
see it, is finding out more and more every year
who you really are, accepting what you see and what you find, practicing taking off
those layers that society, that trauma, that internalized messages and other people
have made you or convinced you to put on and just constantly adjusting
to what you find underneath. You don't have to do what everyone else is doing.
In language learning, there are multiple ways to be authentically you and your languages, and
you always have the freedom to cho
ose what next step for you is most right in your language.
If going behind the scenes of this language learning content wasn't enough.... Make sure to
check out this next video and you'll discover why learning Spanish in six months
actually caused me more harm than good.
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