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On learning (+ being 100% Portuguese)
My husband is Portuguese. In fact, if he were here, he would like you to know that he is 100% Portuguese.
Several years ago, I set out to learn his native language. We got a beginner Portuguese textbook, and sat down for 45 minutes each week to work our way through.
Reader, It was rough.
Partly, Portuguese sounds were tough for my beginner mouth (In my opinion, European Portuguese sounds like a mix of a Slavic language — think Russian or Lithuanian — and saying the words “Oshkosh B’gosh” over and over.)
But mostly, it never seemed like I was really making progress.
Sure, we were slowly (so slowly!) inching our way through the textbook, but I often couldn’t even remember what we did in the week before. Was I making any progress?
I thought back to my days as a successful student:
There had been studying. There had been tests. There had been more than 45 minutes a week.
“I need to study,” I told my husband. “I’ll make flashcards, and vocab lists. I’ll quiz myself and review, so I can remember everything week to week.”
My husband listened to my plan. And then he calmly said it was a bad idea.
“If you keep showing up, you’re going to learn things.” He insisted. “Why don’t you just let yourself remember what you remember?”
I took his advice, mostly because I was busy and tired. It was only later that I realized he was suggesting an entirely new approach to learning for me.
…
When my husband corrected me on the pronunciation of the Portuguese letter “i” (i’s are always pronounced as “ee” in European Portuguese), I used to tense up and try to get the concept lodged in my memory.
But after deciding to just “remember what I remember,” I’d say: “I’m sure I’ll remember it eventually, if you keep reminding me.”
And then I did something incredible: I’d just “forget” about it. I just started assuming that eventually, that concept would get lodged in my memory.
And you know what? It freaking worked.
I started doing it with everything: vocabulary, conjugations, grammar.
Yes, my husband had to correct my pronunciation of the word “para” about a bajillion times (“para” can mean either “stop” or “for/to,” depending on the pronunciation of the first “a”). But also, I eventually totally got it — and now I do it without thinking.
I’m nowhere near fluent, but in the past several years, I’ve gotten to the point where my pronunciation is very passable, I can put together coherent sentences, and I can even eavesdrop a teensy bit on my husband’s phone conversations with his parents back in Portugal.
Our 45 minutes a week dropped to 35 minutes a week once my sons were born. And if there’s a been a lot of stress that week, sometimes 35 minutes doesn’t happen.
In 35 minutes or less a week… In allowing myself to remember what I remember…
… I have learned a lot.
…
I share this story, in the hopes of reminding you of two things:
Sometimes, the ways that we move through the world eventually stop serving us.
I was a successful student in high school and college (Magna Cum Laude at Princeton, thankyouverymuch) because of my rigorous approach to learning.
And yet, that same rigor made me associate learning with “tightness” and “stress.” Sometimes we have to completely take apart our old ways of doing things — ways which may have worked well for us in our past — in order to build something new. And that’s not only okay — it’s fantastic.Don’t underestimate what you can get done in 35 minutes a week.
Thirty-five minutes a week may seem, frankly, measly in the scale of a week. It may seem measly in the scale of a month. I’ve spent no time on this thing! How will I ever make progress?
But don’t underestimate the compounding effect over time.
…
Take care, my friends.
Or, as one says to a friend in Fazendas de Almeirim, Portugal (my husband’s hometown): Beijinhos.
Katie
p.s. It can it be tough to take apart + rebuild how you move through the world. You know what makes it 2x-100x easier? Having a life coach.
Here's what Jackie, one of my clients, said about working with me:
“I feel like the work I did in the past 6 months with Katie have catapulted me forward and I made progress in my own personal goals (weird eating habits, tech habits, personal art goals) that would have taken years if I had not worked with Katie."
Learn more about working with me here.
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One place to start on your self-improvement journey
There are times in our lives where we have the sense — perhaps clearly, or perhaps indirectly, out of the corner of our eye — that we need to do something differently. A big change is brewing in our professional or personal lives.
But at the same time, maybe it’s not time to act just yet. Maybe we aren’t sure what we want to change, or maybe we’re not 100% ready.
I have a suggestion for those times.
Here it is: Start with the obvious.
So many of us spend so much time vaguely agonizing, but not really taking action, on that big change (Should I apply to this job? Or that one? Should I go back to grad school? Should I break up with them, or try to work things out?). And that’s great.
But sometimes, we also have one or two or seven things that we know for sure we need to do in our lives. Maybe we’re deeply dissatisfied with our professional situation and need to fix that, but we also know that we would feel much better in our lives if we:
Took a walk
Didn’t spend tonight on a screen
Saw a friend
Ran those three errands on our to-do list
Finally painted our bedroom
My suggestion is that you start by doing the obvious stuff. Start by cleaning your car or folding your laundry or calling your grandma or meal-prepping lunches for the week.
I’m not saying that you should ignore that bigger, thornier issue. Far from it!
But sometimes we spend so much time agonizing over that big, thorny issue, that we forget: When we move forward on things that we need to move forward on (even things that may seem totally unrelated to our big, thorny issues)… something slightly magical starts to happen:
Because we are behaving in the world differently, the world looks different.
When the world looks different, we have new insights.
When we have new insights, we make different choices.
In other words:
Action begets insight.
Which begets action.
Even if you start with something totally random.
So, if there’s some big, thorny issue that you are chewing on, may I suggest that this weekend you start with something obvious?
Did you like this essay? Sign up for my newsletter to get helpful + encouraging essays like this every Sunday morning. It’s free! :)
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie
Want to "get back on track?"
I have bad news and good news. It’s the same news:
Your journey probably won’t be linear.
Not for your career.
Not for your relationships.
Not for your confidence.
Not for your eating.
Not for your body size or body image.
It’ll get better and then worse and then better and then worse. Whatever “better” and “worse” mean, anyway. Then it will go sideways and backward and to the right and the left and the southeast and northwest.
It may, overall, look like an upward trajectory. Or maybe it won’t.
Whew. Do you feel how exhausting it is? All those different directions?
This is bad news because it can be friggin’ annoying that your life won’t progress like an arrow, zooming towards its destination. This is bad news because so many of us take comfort from having a clear trajectory, a narrative that is easy to explain and predict — and we may not have that.
But it’s also good news. If you feel like you're “off track” today or this month or this decade…it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re actually going in the wrong direction.
Of course, this isn’t to say that you can't grow or make significant progress in the direction that you care about! I’m a coach, for goodness’ sakes. I help my clients do that all the time.
But it does mean that just because your journey seems zig-zag-y, it doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong. You might just need to take a breath, ask for a hug, and buckle up.
Superfans may notice that I originally shared this essay in the past. While I’m on maternity leave, I’m sharing some of the best posts from my archives — I hope you enjoy! :)
As always, I’m rooting for you. You’ve got this.
Katie