Overcome Your Fear of Speaking English For Professionals

Does this sound familiar? You know you want to have more international experiences as a professional and you also know how important it is to speak English confidently. But when it's time to actually speak English, fear stops you. You either freeze and don't say anything or you just try to avoid situations in which you have to speak. You have many skills and talents but at times you feel invisible. At other times when people start to notice you or approach you, you feel stressed and can't express yourself or speak confidently. In this video I want to talk about how we can overcome the fear of speaking English as a professional. If you need to use English in the answer isn't only memorizing more grammar and vocabulary. So let's start. Traditional schools focus on perfection but as a professional your focus needs to be something else. Your main goal isn't to pass an exam or get good grades. Your goal is to make an impact or connect with the people around you which needs learning other essential skills too. People often think you either speak English or you don't but that's a very simplistic way to look at it. Speaking has three different layers and I got to understand this after years of teaching and coaching professionals and having international experiences myself. So this is my experience using the English language in real life situations. So let's start from the base. At stage zero you simply learn how to speak and it's a necessary step. You learn all the basics of the grammar rules, vocabulary, you work on your and most things related to the English language. At this stage you need an English teacher to help you with all these things that are related to the English language. Your problem at this stage is that you can make sentences in English and speak when you're in a safe place but you cannot speak confidently or fluently and that's your main problem at this stage. But speaking English doesn't necessarily mean you'll get the job you want, the promotion that you want or you can create the connections and friendships you want. In real life and as a professional English is just a tool for a bigger purpose. One thing no traditional course talks about is the importance of the next two levels in real life. So once you know the basics of the English language you don't need to focus 100% of your time on learning more English. So instead of an English teacher you may need an coach to help you with the next two stages. Stage zero is for someone who is starting their journey or maybe want to pass an exam. But when you know the base and your goal is to use the English language in real life situations then you need to start with the next two stages. So what are they? Stage one is all about speaking English confidently. It's learning how to feel confident and included when speaking English. It's about how to become strong mentally and resilient. Now for example when someone laughs at you, you don't take it personally and you still feel confident and can react professionally. Once you learned all these then it's time for the stage two which is all about effective communication in English. This stage is all about learning all the essential skills that you need in real life situations to make a positive impact and connect deeper with others around you. In these two final stages English language is only one piece of the puzzle and leveling up from stage zero to the next two stages need a plan that is based on your goals and who you are. Because if you think about it you can't have the exact same plan if you're an introvert or you're an extrovert. These two people are completely different personality types. An English coach can help you for the next two stages to speak English confidently and communicate effectively. If these are the things that you're interested in then I prepared a mini training that talks about these things more in depth. You can click on the link in the description for more details. So now that we covered the speaking part it's time for the fear part. Understanding yourself and the problem can help you find the right solution. So what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of making a mistake? Are you afraid of others judgment or being laughed at? Or are you afraid of creating embarrassing situations when for example you forget the words or you don't understand others? What is it for you? What are you afraid of? It might be more than one thing but identifying and understanding the fear is a very important step. You can understand this by journaling and self-reflection and when you get deep you understand that most of the fears have nothing to do with your English language. So you need to work on other skills because it's all like a connected system. You can't wait to know everything to be sure of yourself and feel confident. If you think about it you can never reach a point where you know everything and understand everything in this world. That's a non-realistic expectation. Even native speakers who've known English pretty much all their lives can't know everything. So if you're an intermediate level and can speak English your immediate problem isn't memorizing more words and grammar. It's about working on your English skills holistically and working on the mental, physical, emotional and even spiritual side of your confident journey. Just to clarify by physical side I mean all the things you learn in a traditional language course about English and by spiritual I mean that the bigger purpose that you have that makes your journey meaningful for you and it can be different for different people. So start by asking yourself what are some of your fears when it comes to speaking English and you can share them in the comment section too for me to get to know you better and for others to read and know that they're not alone in this. Once you identify your fears then it's time for facing them. But how? Fear is a very interesting emotion. You can see that fear is there to protect us from danger. But sometimes our brain can make a mistake defining the real danger to feel the fear. For example walking alone late at night or being in the jungle can be a real danger. But how about applying for that international job or saying hello to a stranger? Are they equally dangerous? Well for our brain yes. So how can we face the fears that help us grow and expand our comfort zone? Fear is something that we all have to face in different areas of our lives and overcoming it is like a skill. A muscle you can strengthen with practice. Fear is a feeling that I'm fascinated by and I've dealt with a lot in my life. Whether it was fear of speaking English at the beginning of my journey, living abroad without my family at 16 or changing career path multiple times in my life. All these experiences had one thing in common for me. I felt the fear but I decided to do the thing I wanted to do anyway. The other day I was listening to one of Jordan Peterson's interview and for those of you who don't know him he's a well-known psychologist and an author and when he was asked about facing our fears he said something that was very interesting. He talked about exposure therapy. But what is it? Exposure therapy is when you intentionally put yourself in situations that you're afraid of little by little. For example let's say you're afraid of using elevators. With exposure therapy what you need to do is to start getting one step closer to what you fear. This one step can be different for different people based on how much they were afraid of it. For example at the beginning it might be okay for you to just watch others use the elevator from a distance. By putting yourself in that situation and watching others using the elevator little by little over time that becomes less fearful and you need to take the next step. Eventually step by step you get to a point that you can get inside the elevator but maybe not use it and the final step being using it maybe for going up one floor and little by little expanding your comfort zone. So he said gradually exposing yourself to what you fear until you do it is the solution. But that wasn't the most interesting part of what Jordan Peterson taught me. The most interesting part for me was when he said that facing fears didn't mean that we became less afraid of that thing. It meant that we became braver and more willing to take action despite the fear. The same thing if you're afraid of speaking English. It doesn't matter. So many people feel the same way. When I first moved abroad to the U.S. I was afraid of speaking to the native speakers. When I first started teaching or even when I started this channel I was afraid too. It's about learning the skill of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It's the skill of practicing courage. As Franklin Roosevelt said courage isn't the absence of fear but instead knowing that something else is more important than fear. As a professional what matters the most is getting the result we want. Whether it's an international job, getting a promotion or building a new connection. So focus on the big picture and don't let fear hold you back and practice the skill of feeling the fear and doing it anyway. If you're at an intermediate English level but still struggle with speaking English confidently and communicating effectively in real life situations then I prepared a training for you that you can check out in the description. I love this training because it's where I put all my 15 years of experience teaching and coaching professionals, having international experiences myself and years of searching about personal and professional growth. And I hope that you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it. Thank you so much for watching and see you in the next video!