Ask Me Anything_ 50k Q&A

Why are you so beautiful in my eyes? My darling I love you. How can I steal your heart? Will you marry me? How is your love life? Oh my god there's so many questions. How do I even begin to decide what to answer? What keeps me motivated? My god my nose is so itchy. This is a really long video already. I'm really rambly aren't I? This channel hit 50,000 subscribers which absolutely blows my mind. I just can't believe there are so many of you watching. Thank you so much for watching. I literally appreciate every single one of you and I read every single one of your comments. So thank you so much for watching my videos and supporting my channel. If you're new here my name's Izzy. I'm a Cambridge graduate and a doctor working in London and on the side I learn Mandarin Chinese in any free time I can get. To commemorate this little milestone of 50k subs I thought I would do a Q&A video. I haven't done one in a little while so I asked you guys over on Patreon, on the YouTube community tab and also on Instagram if you had any questions and you asked quite a lot of questions. So today I'm going to try to answer as many of them as possible. So I'll start with the Patreon supporters gang. Chris Cheng wants to know what are the daily habits you do now and are they different from when you were in medical school? Yes my daily habits are different but also the same. When I was in medical school I had a lot more autonomy over my time and a lot more flexibility over when I could do things. Now I'm working as a doctor full-time I have to squeeze in the habits I used to have around that job so my whole morning routine and all those habits are kind of different. I have less time to study languages, I have less time to exercise and take care of my health so generally all of the habits that I had built before to support my health and language learning goals have kind of been squeezed into less time which is sort of expected as I'm working full-time now instead of just being a medical student. Josh is asking what are your thoughts on how our first interactions or impressions of languages and cultures kind of cement our thoughts and feelings towards it? I think it's really important and I think first impressions especially impressions where it's something that we don't have a huge amount of familiarity with such as a foreign culture or foreign language the first few impressions we have on that will shape whether or not we want to lean into that and gain more experience in that area. I think it's very natural to feel that way and have first impressions really count because in a world where we have so many different options of so many different cultures and languages and activities to explore even things like tv shows all of these sorts of things we have to make decisions on how we're going to filter those things and whether we're going to allow them more space in our lives or not. We can't give everything our full attention and we can't give everything the full chance that it might deserve. Larry Sweet is asking what kind of music do you like? What kind of music helps you study? I love music and love listening to music to help learn languages. I quite like almost any kind of music except maybe country music. I kind of enjoy pop music, I enjoy some rap music, I enjoy acoustic singer-songwriter kind of vibe music. I do listen to some mandarin songs. I curated a little Spotify playlist for myself during my gap year of learning mandarin and in terms of music to study I usually listen to maybe some classical piano music or some kind of ambient lo-fi hip-hop beats. I quite like those as well. There's also a playlist on Spotify called Brain Food which I really like. Kenny is asking how to get rid of bad habits for example social media, gaming, Netflix, procrastination. This is something that is a daily struggle and I think always will be and it's something that we just have to learn to negotiate with ourselves over time. For me one of the best steps has been changing my environment and making it harder to actually do those bad habits. For example for social media I recently installed an app called OneSec. When I try to open Instagram it pops up like this six second interruption screen which basically is telling me to take a deep breath and reconsider whether I actually want to open Instagram or not because more often than not I find that when I reach for a bad habit it's almost like a reflex instinct where I'm like looking for dopamine. I'm looking for that high that dopamine hit and I actually don't really want to do it if I'm actually following my intention. So I think checking in with your intention and creating an environment where you have to actively go out of your way to indulge in the bad habit makes it much harder to fall into those bad patterns over and over again. Claudine is asking how do you add new hobbies? I've prioritised Chinese so I'm sticking with that fine but I also had a fitness habit that I struggle with. Oh my gosh I resonate with this so much. The way that I have been adding new hobbies into my life is during my free days I will add in like time blocks where I explore different things. So for me in my life I have probably five main areas that are taking up my time and energy at the moment. The first one is my work, my full-time job as a doctor working in London. The second one is taking care of my health and well-being. This includes eating well, sleeping well, going to the gym, doing yoga. The third one is maintaining my relationships with friends, family, loved ones. And then the fourth one is probably maintaining this YouTube channel and still posting on YouTube. And the fifth one is learning Mandarin Chinese. So I completely resonate with you Claudine. It is really hard to juggle all of these things. I think the first step is just accepting that it is hard and you might not be able to add all the new hobbies or the new habits that you want to. The second thing I would say is really using your calendar as your best friend. All of the five areas of my life are scheduled meticulously on my Google Calendar and even if I don't always stick to my intention at least I've tried to block it out and tried to protect that time for it. Matthew is asking what are your aspirations as a doctor? Are you going To be honest I'm not 100% decided on what I want to do or specialise in in the future. I have a couple of interests. I really love dermatology so I might consider specialising in dermatology. Alternatively I might actually go down a more general route and go down general practice or also known as family medicine in the US as I think there's something special about being able to take care of someone's health more holistically and being able to help them all of the conditions that they might have and balance all of that along with supporting them to make healthy life changes and decisions. Jared is asking what keeps you motivated to keep learning a language like Chinese? I think the idea of travelling to China and really soak up the food and the culture and connect with the people there that is really motivating to me and also being able to understand Chinese websites. So I think those are the two things that I really hold as the primary things in my mind as to the benefits of learning Chinese. Obviously there's so many other benefits and actually I have a whole video on my reasons why we should learn Chinese generally so I'll link that somewhere over here. Jared is also asking what's another language you'd love to learn next? Potentially Spanish or French. I'm also considering Hindi. Guardian is asking what's your favourite Chinese food or have you ever eaten food with chopsticks? Kuaizi before. Yes so my favourite Chinese food is very beef hor fun which is essentially hor fun noodles stir fried with beef and yes I have eaten food with chopsticks before. I actually use chopsticks almost on a daily basis. They're kind of my go-to cutlery. I find that chopsticks are just so much more convenient and so much more functional than things like a fork. So that's all the questions from the Patreon community. Thank you so much for all your support on Patreon. It means the world to me. If you're interested in joining the Patreon community where we share a bunch of language resources and encourage each other on our language learning journeys then feel free to check out the link below. So now on to the questions from the YouTube community. What are the traits you admire most in a person? I would say the trait I admire most in a person is probably integrity. That is a really valuable trait that I think is sometimes missed out these days. How do you keep up such a radiant spotless countenance? Do you often reconcile with the worries of life? Do you have a philosophy of life that propels you forward and guards your way? That's a deep question. I do often think about worries of life and all the stresses that come with it. I probably maybe overthink it a little bit. I often journal quite a lot to let out all of these feelings and my meditation practice also really helps to ground me and remind me that this is just the nature of reality as it is, not as I want it to be. I would say my philosophy of life that propels me forward is probably developing that sense of acceptance and also gratitude and merging those together. Did you like the systematic school education system or not? If you can change anything in the education system what would it be? There's actually a lot of evidence that shows that teenagers have a naturally more night owl skewed circadian rhythm and that's just a natural biological thing and as we age and become adults this shifts earlier and earlier so we become more like early birds and I feel like being forced to wake up early on an adult schedule and go to school is actively sleep depriving millions and millions of children and teenagers across the world. Tell us about your yoga journey. It looks like it has become a big part of your life and you seem to be at an advanced level in yoga. I started yoga in my third year of university after a little bit of a rough time in my life. It was winter in England. I think the seasons really affect my mood and just before this winter period I had lost a family member and was having a difficult time with a couple of other things and this sort of put me in a state where I couldn't motivate myself to leave the house and actually go to the gym and be active. So I opened up YouTube and I found a yoga with Adrian video. During my first yoga session there at home on my own I actually found myself feeling very emotional. I actually started crying and tearing up during the yoga session and I thought wow this is bizarre. Why am I feeling so emotional? Why is this all coming up now? But that sort of sparked something in me that realised there's something to this that I needed to heal in a way that I didn't realise I needed to. From then on I kept up a bit of a yoga practice and then I do sunrise yoga almost every single day in my room in college. After a little while I sort of lost touch with my yoga practice as medical school got busy but then when lockdown hit I was suddenly at home no access to the gym and I really dove into my yoga practice again and had a really strong daily practice and I'm actually considering maybe making a little like yoga video like maybe like 15 minute wiggle sort of video which is just the yoga that I do when I'm just feeling like I want 10-15 minutes on the mat. So I might do that at some point and upload it. Let me know in the comments if you'd like to see that. Do you have imposter syndrome? If so how do you deal with it? Yes I definitely do experience imposter syndrome. I think this manifests itself probably in two ways. The first way is sometimes at work. Because I'm a very junior doctor, this is my first year working after graduating, there are often things that I don't know how to do or I often feel like oh gosh why am I Dr Sealy? I feel like I am not good enough to live up to that title or live up to my job role. The second area I get imposter syndrome sometimes is actually with YouTube because I feel like I like making videos, I love making videos for you guys and talking about the things I'm really passionate about but I also feel like wow there's so many of you now and what am I doing? I don't really know what I'm doing most of the time. I'm just trying my best to make content about how I try to live my life and structure it but is that really good enough and am I really the right person to be talking about this and be sharing this with you guys? The way that I deal with it as I just remind myself that almost everyone is kind of winging it and if you're living life where you're pushing yourself to grow you'll always feel a little bit uncomfortable and a little bit like you're not ready to make that step and I think being in that place where you're feeling not 100% ready is actually where we grow the most. I really love your accent. Do you have any plans to do more accent or pronunciation videos? Yes I do. The last video that I made was a bit of a random video that I thought I'd just try out but actually it seems like you guys really liked it so I live to serve and I will do some more accent and pronunciation videos. How tall are you? I am 167 centimetres. How old are you? I'm 25 years old. Do you play any instruments? Yes I actually play violin so I played violin at school since age of age seven I think yeah age seven all the way up until probably age 16 or 17 when I did my grade eight then I stopped playing violin a little bit and I just play it for fun every now and then. Tips on staying calm before tests or exams? The way that I like to stay relaxed before my exams in Cambridge was I would listen to some hype music some like really banging rap or some hype music that makes me feel like confident and really like I can just own it. I'm sure there's some music that makes you feel like that or really makes you feel empowered so have a listen to that and another thing that I would do is use body language to control my mood. Power poses sit like straight keep your arms out maybe like hands on hips or like like this kind of thing power pose and then I would try to actively smile and almost force myself to smile and force myself to embody these power poses because there's actually a lot of research and psychological studies that show that our facial expression and also our body language can affect the way that we feel along with the way that we feel affecting our body language so it sort of works both ways and by controlling your outward body language your outward facial expressions that helps to moderate your inner feelings a little bit as well. You have a lot going on just wanted to know if you're doing okay that's really sweet I really appreciate that question I'm doing okay there's a lot going on it's a bit stressful at the moment but life is all right and we're getting by how to deal with physical insecurities so in the past I used to feel quite insecure about my body or the way that I looked when I was younger maybe when I was sort of in my teenage years the thing that I've realized over time is to appreciate my body for the things that it can do not just the way that it looks my body can carry me for miles and miles and miles it can walk for miles it can run it can lift things it can do yoga it can move things it can hold people it can take care of people and practice medicine and facilitate all of these functions of my life which are so much bigger and so much more important and beautiful than any outside shape or external features so as much as you can please do try to love your body what's your favorite book right now and do you have any other book recommendations I just read the Midnight Library by Matt Hay oh my goodness such a beautiful book it made me cry so much and just feel so much it's a really beautiful book I would highly recommend it so those are my answers to all of your questions I've tried to answer as many of them as I can I hope this was entertaining or interesting in some way if you enjoyed this video you might like my previous Q&A I'll leave a link to it over here otherwise thank you so much for watching take care of yourself and I will see you in the next video bye