CHAPTER 4

Your Beliefs
Determine
Your English Success

In the last chapter, you learned the im-

portance of fuel, or psychology, for English
speaking success. You also learned how to
anchor (connect) strong positive emotions to
English.
In addition to peak emotions, there is an-
other important element of psychology that
you must master in order to speak English
powerfully: belief. Beliefs are our most
powerful “brain programs.” They guide our
decisions, our feelings, and our thoughts.
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They tell us what is possible and what is not.

They open us to success or limit us to failure.
We can put beliefs into two general cat-
egories: limiting beliefs and empowering be-
liefs. A limiting belief is typically a negative
“program” that limits your potential and per-
formance. In other words, limiting beliefs
limit your success.
The hidden curriculum is the source of
most negative beliefs about English. Over
time, schools consistently program limiting
beliefs into the minds of their students. After
years in school, most students share some or
all of these limiting beliefs:

• English is complicated and difficult.

• It takes many years to speak English
well.
• English is stressful.
• Grammar study is the key to English
speaking.
• I’m not good at English.
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• There is one right answer. There is

one right way to say it.
• Something is wrong with me because
I still can’t speak English well.
• My test scores are low, therefore I
can’t speak English well.
• The best way to learn English is to sit
in a class, take notes, and read a
textbook.
• Only a few special people can learn to
speak English powerfully.
• English learning is boring and
frustrating.

The problem with these negative beliefs is

that they lead to negative emotions (about
English). The negative beliefs and emotions
then lead to bad decisions, and the bad de-
cisions lead to disappointing results.
For example, someone who believes that
English is stressful, complicated, and diffi-
cult is unlikely to be motivated to work hard
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every day. Rather, they will constantly be

struggling to force themselves to learn
English.
Someone who feels only a few special
people can master English will likely become
frustrated very quickly. They will assume
that something is wrong with them, that they
are “not good at English.” Again, their pro-
gress will be slow.
Finally, those who believe that classes,
textbooks and grammar study are the key
may spend years using these ineffective
methods, driving their old slow car on the
road to fluency and never achieving success.
This is why beliefs are so important. They
are the central programs in our brain that
create feelings, decisions and actions. Beliefs
are what make the difference between ulti-
mate success or a lifetime of frustration with
English.
Beliefs tell you what an experience means.
Whenever you have an English language
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experience, your brain must decide the

meaning of what happened. In other words,
your brain generalizes the experience. Your
brain decides what the event means to your
life as a whole. And with each negative ex-
perience, the belief can grow stronger and
stronger. Eventually you become completely
certain about the belief.
For example, maybe you were repeatedly
corrected by an English teacher. After each
of these embarrassing experiences, your
brain had to decide the meaning of what
happened. Based on these events, maybe you
decided that you were bad at English. Maybe
you decided that English was painful and
stressful. Each negative experience made the
belief stronger.
The problem is that these beliefs then af-
fected all of your English experiences that
followed. So whenever you had another en-
counter with English, it was always with
these negative limiting beliefs. Because of
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this, you automatically viewed every new ex-

perience with English more negatively. If
your beliefs are strongly negative and you
don’t change them, you can completely des-
troy your ability to succeed as an English
speaker. Many English learners completely
lose hope and simply quit, never to succeed.
You must, therefore, replace your limiting
beliefs with strong empowering ones. “Em-
powering” means “giving power.” So an em-
powering belief is one that gives you power!
What kind of empowering beliefs do you
need for English speaking success?
Here is a sample list:

• English is easy, fun and exciting.

• I can speak English fluently in about
six months.
• Mistakes are normal and necessary.
Even native speakers make mistakes.
• Communication, not a test score, is
the purpose of English speaking.
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• Grammar study kills English

speaking.
• Anyone can learn to speak English
powerfully.
• There’s nothing wrong with me, I’ve
just been using a bad method and I
can change that.

I’m sure you can see how much stronger

these beliefs are. You can see that these be-
liefs are more likely to create success than
the limiting ones. You can probably imagine
the greater feelings of confidence and excite-
ment that these beliefs create. But how do
you create these beliefs? Clearly the em-
powering beliefs are more desirable, but how
do you truly re-program your mind?
One powerful method for changing beliefs
is called modeling. Modeling simply means
to find a successful person and study them
carefully. If you want to speak English
powerfully, for example, you find another
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person who has learned to do it. You learn

about them. You learn what they did and
how they did it. If possible, you talk to them
and learn about their psychology and their
methods. Finally, of course, you do your best
to do exactly what they did.
The more you model successful people, the
more your beliefs will change automatically.
By focusing on success instead of failure, you
gradually re-program your brain. This is why
I created the Effortless English Club™. In
our community, the most successful mem-
bers guide and advise newer members. While
I hope this book will help to change your be-
liefs, there is nothing more powerful than
hearing from another person, just like you,
who achieved success.
Your job now is to find successful English
speakers and model them. You might find
them in your town. You will certainly find
them online. When you do find them, ask
them about their beliefs and methods. Study
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their psychology and their success. This is

exactly what I did when I developed the Ef-
fortless English™ system. I studied the most
successful English learners. I interviewed
them. I studied their emotions, their beliefs,
their goals, and their learning methods. That
is how I created a system based on success,
not failure.
Remember, beliefs are created by the
meaning we attach to experiences. The more
you focus on and think about negative exper-
iences, the stronger the limiting beliefs be-
come. You can make empowering beliefs
stronger in the same way. In other words,
you can use “selective memory” to create and
strengthen your positive beliefs.
How do you do this? Simply by reviewing
all of your past experiences with English. As
you remember all of your past experiences,
search your memory for any that were posit-
ive. Maybe you remember a fun activity.
Maybe you enjoyed reading a short story in
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English. When you remember these positive

experiences, write them down. Create a list
of all the positive experiences you have ever
had with English.
Most people can identify at least a few
such experiences. The next step is to focus
your attention on these memories every day.
Each day, review your list of positive English
memories. Remember each experience. See
each one in your mind and feel those positive
feelings again.
Then write down a new empowering belief
about English. You might write “English is
easy and fun.” You might write “I enjoy
learning English and I’m good at it.” Write
this belief at the top of your list and also re-
view it each day.
And of course, every time you have a new
positive experience with English, add it to
your list. Your list will grow longer and
longer. And as it grows, your empowering
beliefs will get stronger and stronger.
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We all know the computer programming

term “garbage in, garbage out.” Beliefs are
our brain programs. Garbage (negative limit-
ing) beliefs create negative emotions, bad de-
cisions, and low motivation. These, in turn,
create “garbage out” – terrible results. Those
bad results then create new and stronger
negative beliefs, and the whole cycle starts
again, even worse. This is called a “down-
ward spiral.”
Positive beliefs, on the other hand, create
an upward spiral. Empowering beliefs create
more positive emotions, better decisions,
and better motivation. These, in turn, create
better results. Better results then create even
stronger empowering beliefs. The whole
cycle repeats again and again, getting
stronger each time. This upward spiral is the
key to rapid success with English.