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How are you doing with your English skills practice? I do hope that you have tried the few things mentioned in the previous entries. I also hope that these have helped you in the ways it helped me, and I hope as well that you have found or discovered other ways on how you can improve your skills from these tips.

It may be hard to believe but I myself am no stranger to practice and checking my English skills. As I have mentioned before, I’ve been in the business of radio broadcasting for quite some time. Having had the chance to work with great mentors who have instilled the importance of practice and self-evaluation among other great values and principles, it is not uncommon to see me practicing my talk breaks and to critique myself through airchecks (recording your adlibs on a tape). In one of my airchecks, I noticed that I do not open my mouth big enough for me to clearly produce the sound of the words that I say. This resulted to my adlibs being a little inaudible and difficult to understand. In addition, my tape also showed that the tonal quality of my voice was the equivalent of my cooking – very flat. To describe it as boring would be a compliment.

Awareness is a good thing. Indeed, it is. So, with some major effort on my part, I was able to make a big change in my talk breaks with the help of two little things that I overlooked for some time. That is, to relax and to smile.

In our zest and eagerness to master a skill, or in our complacency for having learned one, sometimes we tend to forget these two factors that greatly influence our ability to perform a task. Sometimes, we get too hard on ourselves for not being able to match up to the set of standards we attempt to achieve. We belittle ourselves, we add pressure, we lose sight of the purpose. On the other hand, sometimes we feel that we have made it for having learned a skill and slowly, albeit unknowingly, we lose the passion to improve further and learn more. A false sense of achievement takes over us clouding our thinking; complacency and disregard displaces the passion to learn.

Take a few steps back. Introspect.

Relax.

Smile.

The law of attraction says that we are what we think we are. When we focus our sights on something, we must never let the negativity hinder us from achieving our goal. Think that you can do it, and you can. Think that you cannot do it, and you never will. Challenges will always show up along the way to success. Do you remember how many times you fell when you were a baby learning to walk?

Relax.

Smile.