Creating Healthy Habits when Speaking Portuguese | 003

Last Friday, we revealed the Portuguese Acceleration Blueprint for the world to see!  The blueprint that launches you into speaking Portuguese fluent in under 6 months.

This part is about how healthy habits clear the way of any brush or trees for the construction of your language highway.

This highway is ultimately what will get you up and speaking fluent, and so this first phase of planning goals and “clearing the way” is the most important.
So pay close attention and buckle your seatbelts, here we go!

If this all sounds like French, make sure and check out 001 of this series where the language highway analogy was introduced.

P.S. You are here in the Portuguese Acceleration Blueprint:

What Do You Mean Healthy Habits?

I bet that each and every person on this green planet has a different interpretation of what having healthy habits means.

Some may define it as balance, other’s structure but for me, it’s whatever platform that removes obstacles from getting me fluent!

In a way, it would be like looking at your life in a mirror for a bit of self reflection and figuring out what is standing in the way of reaching your goals so that you can deal with it.

For me, the biggest brush to be cleared out of the way was the “time” one.

During my adventure of learning to speak Portuguese in under 6 months, I was living in the USA and working countless hours a week!  No joke, I worked 11 hours a day (including transportation) and still learned to speak in under 6 months due to some healthy habits I’m about to share with you.

And don’t take this as me tooting my own horn, but rather as a hopeful and humble source of inspiration.

Removing Obstacles and Clearing Brush

Imagine clearing out andy of the brush and obstacles standing in the way of you being able to mark out the highway you are about to build.  Removing this brush and these obstacles allow you to clearly look ahead and keep your eye on the goal – speaking fluent Portuguese.

Let’s look at this 4 minute video as you are walked through a self reflection exercise:

(Watch  on Youtube)

Recap: 

• You were shown about focusing on removing brush and obstacles
• You were walked through a little self reflection exercise
• You were encouraged and motivated at the end

How do you feel now? More focused and ready?

When originally learning to speak Portuguese, I did this exercise and found out that the main thing needing to be cleared away was “TV” and “Facebook”, which needed to be replaced with “TV” and “Facebook” lol.

That probably made no sense, but basically these two huge things blocking me from learning fast ended up being transformed into benefits.

This was accomplished by canceling my cable and getting Portuguese speaking TV  and the same idea with Facebook – more on that later in this series.

Now that you have cleared away this brush and other obstacles blocking your visibility to plan the highway, let’s move onto the actual planning part – but in a fun way.

Habit #1: Defining your Goals and Committing to Achieving Them

Learning to speak Portuguese is no easy task, but if you define your goals and commit to them, it will make everything fun and rewarding.

This is probably the area that will go most awry for people when learning to speak Portuguese and it happens time and time again: Joe six-pack gets excited about speaking Portuguese (maybe even obsessively) and buys a program, goes gung-ho and puts everything else on the back burner for some time, get’s burnt out, frustrated, doesn’t feel like he’s achieving any real results and “discontinues” the speaking experience…

This won’t happen to you!  Set yourself some goals by first believing that you will accomplish this and keep your eye on the prize!  It’s like travelling to Brazil, it’s not about focusing on the plane ride that get’s you there, it’s keeping your mind and heart on the destination and excitement you will feel when you arrive – before, during and after arriving!

Get rid of time-thieves!  It’s time to realize how important your time is and how short this life is: value your time and concentrate on reaching your goal.  Turn off the T.V. (unless it’s in Portuguese!) and maybe put your novel away so that you can set a specific amount of time apart for speaking Portuguese each day.

How much time?  That is entirely going to depend on how fast you would like to be fluent, though I would recommend 30min-1 hour per day in the beginning (trust me, it will challenge your brain and tire it – more on that later) and then upping that number as time goes and your mind gets stronger.

And don’t worry, what I’m going to share with you later on about how to speak Portuguese will be so much fun that you won’t miss TV, your novels or whatever else you used to spend time on before!

Habit #2: Setting Realistic Sub-goals

“Rome wasn’t built in one day” and that’s to say that there are many small “milestones” in reaching your larger goal of speaking Portuguese.  Fortunately, some of these are made easy by most language programs as they usually have a built in mini-goal setting feature (more on that in 006 of this series).

We all know that your main goal is “spoken fluency in Portuguese” but what types of sub-goals are involved in speaking in under 6 months?

Let me show you what my breakdown looked like:

Month 1:

• Complete sections 1-4 of Portuguese course
• Complete interactive audio module 1-4 from Portuguese course
• Watch 4 Brazilian Movies
• Go to 2 Brazilian get togethers
• Listen to 5 Brazilian songs per day with lyrics
• Watch 1 youtube video about Brazil per day
• Find and do a language exchange with a Brazilian (me Portuguese them English)
• Watch half an hour to hour Portuguese TV per day
• Follow 1 Brazilian recipe per week (in Portuguese)

Month 2:

• Complete sections 5-7 of Portuguese course
• Complete interactive audio module 5-7 from Portuguese course
• Watch 5 Brazilian Movies
• Go to 3 Brazilian get togethers
• Listen to 6 Brazilian songs per day with lyrics
• Watch 2 youtube video about Brazil per day
• Do language exchange with Brazilian 2 times per week.
• Find Brazilian groups on Facebook to try and write in.
• Follow 1 Brazilian recipe per week (in Portuguese)

Note: the language program I’m referring to is Rocket Portuguese (affiliate link)

The above is just an example – of which we will cover in more detail later -, but the idea is that you plan out your subgoals in a way that is fun yet pushes you in the right direction.

Another important thing to remember is to  celebrate your achievements.   When you reach your goals for the week, celebrate it with a good movie (hopefully Brazilian or with Portuguese subtitles) and when you hit your monthly goals, throw a little party for you and some Brazilian friends, go out to dinner or whatever it takes to make the milestone feel special.

Habit #3: Being Accountable

The word “accountability” usually hits a strong chord with us.  I don’t know about you, but it always makes me picture an authority figure pointing a finger at me when I do something wrong…
This couldn’t be further from the truth: we are social beings who are designed to be in groups and function best when there is synergy between each other.

By just being involved in each other’s lives with a common goal, keeps us accountable as it becomes the “absolute” (the right way) in the relationship.

During my journey of learning to speak Portuguese, it started by trying to learn together with a friend.  This friend unfortunately gave up quickly and forced me to look for other people to be around and have “synergy” with.

This happened fast!  A group of Brazilians and I became friends, and with this friendship came expectations to hang out, talk and be there for the other people.  What was even better is that they didn’t really speak English thus forcing me to be able to speak Portuguese to have the friendship!

Speaking Portuguese became the absolute for our friendship – it was the make it or break it expectation.

Here’s a shout out to this lovely group of Brazilians, thanks for all your help!

This kept me very accountable and is one of the main reasons as to why I became fluent so fast.

Habit #4: allow for some slippage

I hereby grant you permission to screw up!

Ok, I know, all of this talk about setting goals, achieving them, celebrating them, having someone hold you accountable and then I tell you to allow for slippage… What gives!?

What I mean by this is that you are realistic when learning the language – maybe the more appropriate term would be “be flexible”.

Sometimes uncontrollable things happen that keep you from attaining your goals, it could be that a rat has gotten into your bedroom and decided to make it’s home under your headboard, keeping you awake all night…so you end up spending all night hunting it until you finally catch the little (explicit) at 4:45am!!…hmmm…it almost sounds like this happened to me once…

Anyways, no more needs to be said then this “if you get thrown off track then get back up ASAP and go at it again”.

This Week’s Challenge

Now that you’ve done the “Self Reflection Exercise” above, you are aware of some of your brush and obstacles in the way…

Pull out your calendar whether it’s on your computer, phone or whatever and do the following:

Figure out how much time you would gain by getting rid of “Time Thiefs” and block it out in your calendar.

Starting next Friday, you will have some practical exercises that you can utilize to begin filling up this blocked out time with!

Final Words

My hope is that you were inspired and motivated to come further forward in your journey to speak Portuguese.

With the above healthy habits, you will succeed in reaching your goals!

Until next Friday.

Valeu – cheers!

Kevin
P.S. do you know anyone who could benefit from this series? Please share and !