Channeling Jealousy into Curiosity is the Key to Mandarin Progress (Podcast)

*This podcast is available on Apple, Spotify and Google

On today’s podcast episode, I have a really insightful chat with one of my students on my coaching programme, Lewys Thomas.

Lewys has been learning Chinese for a few years but recently realised that, despite getting a tonne of input, his speaking skills weren’t improving.

After coming across my blog, he reached out for help and is now thankfully well on track to acing his speaking goals.

One of the most interesting things to come out of my conversation with Lewys was his admission that when he first saw a video of me speaking fluent Chinese, he felt a pang of jealousy, as though I was doing something that was beyond his abilities.

This reminded me a lot of how I used to feel at a beginner and intermediate level, whenever I saw videos of foreigners speaking foreign Chinese.

But what Lewys has since been able to do is to channel those feelings of jealousy into something much more productive: curiosity.

After becoming curious and opening his mind to learning about how Will Hart and I became fluent in Chinese, he began putting these methods into practice himself and things really started changing for Lewys.

Mischa Wilmers