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Break Rules Main Text

Hello, this is AJ, welcome to our next lesson. I like this lesson a lot. This topic is one of my favorites it’s called “Break Rules.” Break Rules… it’s kind of my motto in life. Let’s begin.

Now this comes from Seth Godin again; another section of Seth Godin’s book. And, if you remember, Seth Godin is an Internet Marketing expert. He started his own Internet Marketing Company. He became very, very successful, super rich and famous and all that. And then he sold his company and now he writes books about Internet Marketing.

More importantly, he writes books about success, especially success in business, success in your career. And I absolutely love his books, I love his attitude and I follow his same approach. I have his same values and this is one of the big ones, break rules!

I like to break rules. In fact, a lot of the members on our Effortless English Club Forum call me “Rebel Number One”. It’s kind of my nickname on the Forums. Maybe I should make that my official title, not Director of Effortless English, but Rebel Number One.

I like it because, in fact, our Effortless English Club is a club of rebels. We don’t like to follow the rules. We don’t like to do things the normal way. We don’t continue doing stupid things again and again. We don’t follow the old, boring, traditional methods of learning, we break the rules.

We follow a new method, a new way. We succeed because we are rebels and now it’s your turn to join us. It is your turn to become a rebel, just like us, a rebel English learner, a rebel in your job, a rebel in your life. All right, I’m going to read from Seth Godin’s book and then I’ll come back and talk a little more about this idea of being a rebel. Here we go:

“Obedience works fine on the well-organized, standardized, factory floor. But what happens when we start using our heads not our hands? What happens when our colors change from blue to white? White-collar workers don’t get paid to follow the rules.

“The big difference between today and the old factory economy is that instead of working with a drill or a machine we work with laptops and telephones. What’s neat about this work is that it’s different every day. We actually get a lot of freedom to decide what to do next and our skill in making that decision has a lot to do with our productivity and our success.

“That’s why your boss allows you the time to read this book, to shop online or to go to lunch meetings because she’s waiting for you to break the rules. She’s waiting for you to create big gains in productivity by using your head.

“Yes, there are exceptions. There are clerks who have every keystroke measured, but that’s not really a white-collar job that’s a factory job where you don’t get dirty, instead you get carpal tunnel syndrome.

“I’m talking about the vast majority of jobs in our organizations, schools, governments and corporations. You don’t have to wear a factory uniform and you’re expected to contribute more than what’s being asked. The thing is white-collar workers, deep down, are petrified to do exactly what it is they actually got hired to do. They are petrified to be different.

“We all know that we could get replaced tomorrow by someone else, almost as good as us, who is willing to work for half as much money. We don’t want to blow it. We want to be given instructions, not to invent them. After all, we know how to follow instructions. That’s what we learned in school.

“We invented the myth that doing what your boss says is the best way to keep your job, but in a white-collar setting this isn’t the right answer. Nine times out of ten a white-collar worker’s reflex is to ask ‘What do you think I should do?’ The easiest way to avoid pain, it seems, is to follow someone else’s instructions, but that is a recipe for failure. To succeed in your career, to really succeed, you have to break the rules.”

Okay, that’s a nice little section from Seth Godin’s book. And I love it because the Effortless English Club is all about breaking the rules. We break every traditional English learning rule. We don’t do anything normally.

Traditional schools teach grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar, grammar. You memorize grammar, terms, the past progressive, possessives blah-blah-blah. We break that rule. We don’t do that, absolutely never.

In traditional schools with the traditional rules they always use textbooks. You’ve got to have a textbook. You must have a textbook and we have to have tests and grades and scores. Well, we break those rules, too.

We never give you a test and we never use textbooks. We use only real English, the real spontaneous English that I’m speaking right now. Real English books that were written for native speakers, they weren’t written for English students. We never use textbooks.

We never memorize and study hard with a lot of effort, not vocabulary, not grammar. No, we listen easily and relax. We listen repeatedly again and again and we learn intuitively, subconsciously, effortlessly.

We don’t do boring drills and exercises, right? You get in a pair with another student and you practice saying some speech or some sentence or some dialogue. Hell, no, we never do that. No, we listen and we listen and we listen and then we get on the Forums and we write to each other and communicate – real communication – and then you get on Skype and you talk to each other. Real communication focused on meaning.

In regular schools they always follow the rules. They tell you your mistakes all the time. They’re very worried about mistakes in normal schools. We never worry about mistakes, never! We worry about communication. We want to be understood. We want to communicate clearly. We worry about meaning, but never do we worry about mistakes. We know mistakes are necessary. We love mistakes. That’s how we learn. We love ‘em. So I never correct your mistakes, never, never, never.

We’re always breaking the rules. I, as a teacher, always break these rules. You, as an English learner - and especially as a new member of the Effortless English Club - you must break the rules. And you’re already doing it by listening to these lessons, you rebel. You’re a rebel, too. You need to accept it.

I may be Rebel Number One, but you’re one of our rebels, too. You’re an Effortless English Club rebel. Accept it! Celebrate it! Be happy about it! Because you’re going to speak excellent English and all the people following the rules, all the people going to the normal schools, memorizing grammar, taking tests, they’re never going to do it.

Or maybe they will, but it’s going to take them years and years and years, much longer than you. And they’re going to suffer and they’re going to hate it. They’re going to be bored and tired and upset and frustrated and you’re going to be smiling and moving and jumping around and laughing while you learn English. You’re going to speak better than they do, your vocabulary is going to be better, your fluency will be better, your pronunciation will be better, because you break the rules.

It’s time for you to do this in other parts of your life, too, especially your job or career. In tough economic times the people who break the rules do the best. They get noticed, they have something special. If you follow the rules you’re like everybody else. That means it’s easy to cut your job. It’s easy to say goodbye to you, it’s easy to fire you, because you’re not special. Why should they keep you?

But if you break the rules, you do something great, you do something different and you are different because most people are afraid to do that. So you want to be remarkable, outstanding, you want to have a great career, you want to do anything well, more than well, you want to do it fantastically well, you want to be great at it, you have to break the rules. What are the rules? The rules in any area of life are what most people do. It’s the normal, acceptable thing to do.

So if you follow the rules you will be normal and acceptable, just like everyone else. Which means you will get the same results as everyone else. You’ll be paid an average amount of money. You’ll be kind of bored at your job because most people are kind of bored at their job. You’ll improve, slowly, because that’s what most people do.

If you want more you’ve got to break the rules. You have to do what other people don’t do. You have to do what other people are afraid to do. That’s how you improve faster and succeed more, in your job, in your career, in your business, in English learning, in anything. Don’t be a cow. Don’t follow the herd. Don’t do what everyone else is doing. Break the rules. Be a rebel. Join us. Join the rebellion at Effortless English.

All right, I hope I have convinced you, at least for English learning. I hope you will join us at the Effortless English Club and proudly be a rebel in your English learning. I hope you’ll do it in other parts of your life, too, but you can start with English learning.

All right, I will see you on the Forums and I will see you next time. Bye bye.