Embrace Your Weirdness
Learn about the benefits you can receive from embracing your weirdness – in other words: accepting your uniqueness.
There are so many benefits of doing this for your language learning and for your life as a whole and I go through a lot of these today while using some useful and relevant vocabulary to help expand your English knowledge.
I loved recording this episode and I hope you love listening to it as well. As always, join in the conversation on the show notes page linked below.
Benefits of Embracing Your Weirdness
Self-acceptance: Love who you are rather than fitting into someone else’s mould.
Creativity: Improve your creativity in work and life.
Authenticity: You can be a more genuine and authentic person and not need to copy others.
Inspiration: You can inspire others to be themselves too. Few successful people have got there by copying others.
Opportunities: You’ll have more opportunities open up to you in life and work.
Improved social connections: You will attract the kind of people you actually like, rather than people who like the person you are pretending to be.
If you try to be someone else, the best case scenario is being the second-best in the world.
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If your personality is liked by everyone, it means that you do not have personality, you are like jelly..
Great saying! Haven’t heard that before
Hello Michael
Yesterday evening, whilst returning home from the office at eventide, I listened to your latest episode in which you encouraged listeners to share their ideas in the comment section. Initially, I was hesitant to do so, thinking that others might consider me weird. However, today I feel inspired to share something that may be considered rather unusual for a learner of English.
At present, I am honing my creative writing skills by using the English translation of the Holy Qur’an (The Qur’an – Oxford World’s Classics; it can be downloaded online for free). My approach involves reading a paragraph or two, noting its key vocabulary items, and then attempting to recreate the passage using these words the next day. Some months ago, in response to a query I posted on https://www.levelupenglish.school, you suggested that I should read a piece of writing, mark its key expressions, and then incorporate these into my practice session the following day. I have found this exercise to be incredibly helpful in improving my writing skills. Hats off to you, Michael, for the suggestion.
Perhaps some may consider my approach unusual, but as someone who edits and translates religious literature, I do not find it strange to use theological texts to enhance my creative writing abilities.
Muhammad Hanif
A fan of Michael Lavers from Pakistan
Hi Muhammad,
Great to hear you’ve been having success using this method! It’s nice you can use something like the Qur’an that I suppose is meaningful for you and therefore a great resource for learning, as long as you can recognise some of the words that might be old fashioned (one example if you don’t mind is “eventide” is a dated word, so it’s not really used anymore). I wonder if that words comes up a lot in your work though! Interesting.
Thanks a bunch for your comment and keep up the good work!
I sincerely appreciate your suggestion to be mindful of archaic language. Upon reflection, I cannot recall encountering the word “eventide” in modern usage, except in a book written about a century ago. Your comment has made me realize the obsoleteness of the word. Thank you for your insightful feedback and words of encouragement.
By the way, I have a feeling that you may be the only English teacher who provides such helpful and thoughtful feedback.
Hello Sir.
I really appreciate your hard work. I genuinely enjoy your podcast, and everytime I listen to it, I feel like things have changed in my mindset.
Sumaya from Yemen
Thanks, Sumaya! So pleased you’re enjoying the podcast