Accent Training Podcast

#123 6 Steps To Create the Accent Habits You Want

July 05, 2022 Season 5 Episode 123
Accent Training Podcast
#123 6 Steps To Create the Accent Habits You Want
Show Notes Transcript

Today I'd like to take the opportunity to teach you about the 6 stages of change by psychologist James Prochaska. When learning a new skill or building a habit, it's important to know where we stand on our progress, and recognize what we're lacking to reach our goals.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the accent training podcast, a podcast where I teach you how to develop the American accent for yourself. My name is pat. I'm an accent coach. I come from Canada and I, I teach folks who don't speak English as a first language, how they can use their time in the most valuable way to develop an American accent. Honestly, the reason I made a podcast in the first place was for my students so that they would have a little extra study material between classes. And then I realized, Hey, I could take the whole world on as a student and make these lessons available to everybody. And this is what brings us to where we are today. Now, today I'm not gonna get into so much detail about the specific sounds of the American accent, but instead, I'm going to talk about the steps that we take as human beings to see change in our personal lives. We are going to examine what they call Prochaska's six stages of change. And I'm sure I'm saying that name, wrong Prochaska, but I'm saying that in my own accent now, James O Prochaska is a psychologist he's currently still alive. 79 years old is what Google says. He is a professor of psychology at the university of Rhode Island, and he's the lead developer on the trans theoretical model of behavior change. Now that's a complicated name. And so instead, we're just gonna call it the six stages of change. Prochaska's six stages of change. These are the six steps that humans take in order to see a behavioral change. And what is a behavioral change? Well, that's a habit and this whole podcast is about creating new habits. And so of course, if you are someone who's working on developing new habits, such as speaking with an American accent, then you wanna make sure that you listen to this all the way through so that you can better analyze yourself and determine which stage you're currently at in your life and which stage you wanna reach. Now let's run through the names of these six stages of change. Stage. Number one is pre contemplation stage number two, contemplation stage number three, preparation stage number four, action, number five maintenance and number six termination or possible relapse. In which case we start back again at stage number one. So stage number one, like I said, is pre contemplation, pre contemplation. What does that word mean in the first place? Pre contemplation? Well, pre means before, before contemplation. And what is contemplation while this is considering that a problem exists, thinking about something, having deep thought and consideration about something contemplation. So pre contemplation, what does that consist of? Well, this is a time of denial. This is when we say I'm not the problem. Everyone else is the problem. Maybe you felt like that's yourself. You felt like, Hey, I'm using the proper word. It's not my fault. If you don't understand me, you are the problem. You're the one that's not understanding. And sometimes you're right, but I'll tell you the truth. If you're feeling like that 5, 10, 15 times a day, it may mean that you are in denial, that a difficulty or a problem exists. And because you are in denial of the existence of the problem, it's impossible to face it. It's impossible to handle this problem. Now what's wrong with this? Well, this is a disempowering attitude. This is saying I'm hopeless. This problem can't be faced. I have no power here. And do you know what? This is a podcast about empowerment. I'll tell you the truth. This is a podcast about showing you what you are capable of as a human being with fully functioning mouth muscles. And so when we say in life, everyone else is the problem. Nothing is my fault. Everyone's picking on me. We feel like we're protecting ourselves. But the truth is we are disempowering ourselves and we are hurting ourselves. We're making ourselves feel like we're incapable of change. Now, after that stage, number two is contemplation recognizing that a problem exists, becoming aware of its existence, starting to look in the mirror and say, huh, this particular word, maybe the word world is misunderstood. Every single time that I say it, maybe I'm the one that needs to make a change. Maybe I can't force other people to change, but I can meet everybody else in the middle. I can make a change. Maybe you become aware of this. And you may even have a slight idea of how to change that problem. You might not quite be ready to take it on today. When we consider the word world, there is quite a bit to this word that makes it difficult. It's got w it's got an R, it's got a dark L oh God world. Oh boy. Although let me say that in slow motion. So you can repeat that back to me, world, starting to notice world, we wanna stretch. Those sounds out. And so we contemplate the issue and we consider the fact that we ourselves may be the problem. That is the second stage of change. I've been through that many times. Now, the third stage of change is preparation preparation. And this is a stage that a lot of people are on about their problems. These days preparation, we're all preparing to take care of our problems. You know, we, it is a step and it is important. We've gotta prepare before we can do things. Maybe we come up with a bit of a plan or we, we announce to other people that we wanna make a change. You tell people, I wanna learn how to ride a motorcycle. I wanna learn how to fly a plane. I wanna learn how to speak with an American accent. You announce it to people. Maybe you even get on YouTube, you get on YouTube or you listen to a podcast just like this one. And you start considering what it takes to make a change. And you start watching some videos and just preparing yourself mentally to make a change and to solve your problem. You've accepted that the problem exists and now you're making a plan to change it. Now, the thing is that many people get stuck in stages, number two and three, and then don't progress any further than that. And I mean, I've done the same. I've done the same with learning German. I started learning. It started preparing, listening to some podcasts, trying to open up my ears to German sounds, but I didn't take it any further than that. And that's an issue here. If we get to the preparation stage and we watch YouTube videos and we listen to podcasts, but we don't get to stage number four, which is action. If all that we do is listen, and we don't put what we learn into action, then we're gonna give up. We're gonna give up. Eventually we're gonna feel like we're just wasting our time. And so preparation is important. It's better to be preparing to take action than it is to be in denial about the problem in the first place. But the job of a coach is to push you into that action stage. That's why I make these podcast episodes so interactive. I don't want you just preparing. I don't want you just listening to facts. That's useless. You know, if I just come on here and I tell you facts about vowel sounds, then I would be keeping you stuck in the preparation page. I want action. And so this accent training podcast is also an action training podcast. Is it not? I'm training you to take action? My friend, even if this is just a small baby step, Hey, that's okay. It's a little bit of action. And do you know what? If we make a 1% change each and every day, then over the course of a year, we see a massive difference in whatever skill we're working on. And so a lot of people get intimidated by the thought of action because they look at the end result and they look at where they are. And they're not seeing the fact that that end result is one year away or two years away, or three years away. They just think to themselves, oh, well this is gonna take way too much work. I'll never get there. And they give up, they don't consider the fact that a 1% change is what it's gonna take a 1% change. You don't need to make a 100% change overnight. It's just not possible. It's not gonna happen, but a 1% change just build that habit a little bit every single day. And when you do this, you start to see result. And we start to see a shift in your overall behavior. We see a shift in the way that you think, and Hey, when you think about things differently, you act on things differently. And then the results of your action are going to reinforce your thinking. And like I just mentioned that little 1% change in thinking every single day is going to result in a reinvention of yourself. So keep it up, take an action. That's gonna help you reach that 1% every day and let your results compound over time. Okay? So those are the first four there pre contemplation denying that we have a problem contemplation becoming aware of the problem, but maybe just not quite ready yet to move forward on it. Preparation, trying to get our head in the right space, maybe watching some YouTube videos, listening to some podcast episodes like of this podcast, opening up your mind to what you're capable of, developing a plan one step at a time, and then stage number four, action, working to see just a 1% improvement every day. In order to give you a major shift in thinking over time, a major change in your self image in the way that you look at yourself or think about yourself. Now, stage number five is what we call maintenance maintenance. And I'd like everybody listening to note the glottal T in the middle of that word, maintenance, maintenance. I'm not saying maintenance but maintenance. And so our maintenance is continuing that 1% growth, having a nonstop and focused effort and commitment, even when you don't wanna do it, even when you feel like, oh my God, it's a waste of time. I'm tired. I got things to do. I've got sweep the floors and wash the dishes. How am I gonna practice my accent? You're gonna listen to the accent training podcast. That's how maintenance, if you can't find the time you gotta make the time. And again, I'm a bit of a hypocrite saying that right now, because I haven't been practicing boxing lately. I like I really enjoy practicing boxing and for the last month or so, I've just continually convinced myself. I don't have the time. I'm tired. Uh, that it's too hot outside. I haven't been making the time. And as a result, my belly's growing, I haven't been maintaining my figure and my arm muscles, my biceps, my triceps, my Dell tos are getting smaller. I haven't been maintaining my action, my commitment. I just wanna be in good shape. And boxing's a great way to do it. And now I've opened up myself personally to you. And I've told you somewhere that I'm falling behind in my own personal commitments. I need you now to, to be honest with yourself, are you maintaining your habits that you want to develop? If you are congratulations, congratulations, keep up the good work. My friend, I'm absolutely proud of you for making that little 1% improvement. If not every day, maybe every week, maybe a couple times a week, but that maintenance is going to show you the results that you want. And if you haven't been keeping up with maintenance, ask yourself why and ask yourself. If you can take responsibility for those reasons, the truth is quite often, we can take responsibility for the reasons that we fall behind on things I know around the world. There's all these different situations. There's, there's political strife and famines and wars and disease. And those are the things beyond our control, but for the things that are within your control, if you could admit to yourself what things you have control over, then you empower yourself to make a choice, to use your time, to see changes in improvement, through maintenance and action taking or to regress and fall behind while moving on. Now, stage number six of change is what we call termination termination. Another word for the end. Our desired change is now complete. You've gotten that six pack. Your English is well understood. And people have stopped asking you, oh, where are you from? Where are you from? Does this mean that you never need to maintain that habit? No, of course you need to maintain that habit. However, that habit may just be a part of your regular life now, and it feels as natural to you as breathing air or drinking water. Now, of course, we do need to remain vigilant. We don't wanna get overconfident. We don't wanna just say, okay, I don't need to improve on anything anymore. I've finished. I've reached the termination stage. I've I've solved my problem. We wanna make sure that we're aware of what we've developed and that we don't lack gratitude for it. That we're grateful for what we've developed. Otherwise we may relapse. We may go right back to the beginning. We may say, oh, I solved that problem. It's not a problem anymore. And then guess what? You're right back at stage number one, pre-contemplation, you're in denial. That there's a problem, even though you may have relapsed. And that problem may have come right back to Haun you again, that happens with things we need to remain vigilant. However, if that does happen, we just follow these same steps again, except this time it's gonna be easier than ever, because you would go straight from stage number one, straight to the action stage, right? You don't need to prepare mentally. You already know that you can do it. You know what to do. You've done it before you have a mental blueprint on how to reach your goal. And so you'd go right from denial. And then one day you'd wake up and you'd say, ah, you know what? I think I do have this issue again. And you just get right back into action, action and maintenance action and maintenance. Those are the two key parts there. Like I said, my job as a coach is to keep people in this action and maintenance stage. You know, termination is, is something for you to decide for yourself. I've had some people that have been students with me for over three years. And even though they've seen a ton of progress, they don't feel ready to stop this action and maintenance stage yet. They're just gonna keep on learning more and more things about their accent. They're gonna keep having me catch these tiny little things that we tweak and continually improve their communication skills, action, and maintenance stages. Four and five are great. And stage number six, like I said, does not mean that we have solved the problem and we never need to look at it again. But it means that the solution to this problem has become a part of our daily routine. That the solution to this problem is something that we just passively do. And don't even think about like washing your hands. After you go to the washer, you just automatically flush the toilet, go to the sink, wash your hands, or you should a hundred years ago, people didn't do that. There was no awareness of the problem, but then what happened? Awareness started to spread. Scientists began to prepare antibacterial, soaps and methods for cleaning our hands to limit the spread of disease and germs. And now, what do you do? Do you ever finish washing your hands? No. We gotta wash our hands a couple times a day. We touch disgusting things. Sometimes we touch raw meat. You gotta wash your hands after that. And you take out the garbage from the kitchen, throw out the garbage bag. You gotta go wash your hands. After that, you've just touched the garbage that's disgusting. And if you don't, you should. So as you can see, this is a habit that we don't terminate. We don't stop washing our hands simply because the problem of diseases and germs is never going away. We have to coexist with them, but of course, if we can limit our exposure to them, we may just save our lives. While my friends, this brings us to wrapping things up for today. We didn't get much into accent, but we did talk quite a bit about how we as humans go about developing new behaviors, how we create new habits and make them last. Although regarding accent and pronunciation, let's just talk about the two words, world and maintenance real quick. Just once more, just to slip that in. Repeat after me were old, were old now. Yes. The R sound is tricky in there. Do your best with it. Go back and listen to the R episode if you need to work on that. But the dark L is the real key to getting clarity with this word, dark L like, oh, oh, for example. Oh yes. I'm exaggerating it right now. However, in order to let your ears develop to this, you need to exaggerate it. So if you want to take action on these words, if you wanna take yourself out of the preparation stage and you want to get into the action stage, repeat after me right now. We old. Yes. That's it just what I wanted to hear. We're old. We're old. Repeat that 15 times today and another 15 times tomorrow and 15 times the next day, and your muscles will start to adjust. Your ears will start to adjust and you'll get good at it. You'll take yourself beyond preparation and put yourself into action and then maintenance. And just before we wrap it up, I wanna bring that word to your attention. Maintenance. As I mentioned, the word maintenance uses a glottal tea. That's when we use the glottis, a valve in our throat to stop our air, and then we release it again or voice in this case, not just air release voice. So repeat after me, I've got three wonderful steps here that are going to give you great. Glottal. T sounds repeat after me. Uhoh uh, N one's more, uh, N maintenance maintenance. Now again, take some action. My friend, work on that glottal tea sound alongside your dark OS. Take a look back at episode number 49. That's where I talk about the glotal T matter of fact, I'll put a, a link in the description of this podcast to episode number 49. Get in there, take some action on your glottal. T even if you've seen it before, that's good. You took action. And now we're gonna listen to it again for maintenance. All right, well, now we're really gonna wrap it up for today. I've got things to get to. My lovely wife has to get to a doctor's appointment, and I've been up in the sun for the last two hours. So I'd like to go have a shower because it is hot. And I need to cool off a little bit. So I'm gonna have a shower, and then I'm gonna go to the doctors, and then I'm gonna come back and edit this and try to get it out. Before the end of the day, I have eager listeners, eager students who wanna learn these things who wanna recognize where they're at personally and what they're capable of reaching. And so, as we wrap things up today, I would just like to remind you to hit that subscribe button, give this podcast a nice little rating, preferably five stars or a thumbs up. That's the preferred way of showing some appreciation. But if you don't think it's a five star podcast, if you thought that this episode was garbage, then let me know that too. Show me one star that's okay. Let's see what you got hit. Those stars on this podcast hit subscribe, and you'll be notified as soon as I've got more accent learning information prepared for you. And if you can't wait, if you think to yourself, I can't wait. I wanna take action right now. I wanna jump into the action and maintenance stage, and I want some hard hitting serious material to do this with. Well, then you have got to check out my video course, where I teach you how to use the sounds of the American accent with a lot of very useful, very common phrases and expressions things that you'll have no trouble working into your daily life, no trouble taking action with, and no problem maintaining your accent training. Just click the link in the description. And I look forward to getting started my friend. All right, well, that's it for today. These have been Prochaska's six stages of change. I hope you've enjoyed yourself. And I look forward to sharing much more knowledge with you in the days to come have a good one folks.