Listening transcript · Episode 91

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B1–B2Everyday EnglishAbout 14 min + dynamic ads5 PDF versions available

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Welcome to Your English Toolbox, your slow English podcast, where we train your ears step by step.

I am Martin.

And I am Julia.

Friends, before we say anything else today, I want you to notice something.

Right now — at this exact moment — there is a radio playing inside you.

You did not turn it on.

And you cannot remember a single day when it was silent.

It plays while you work.

It plays while you eat.

It even plays at three in the morning... when all you want is sleep.

And here is the uncomfortable part.

The volume is too high.

The presenter is not kind to you.

And the station... was chosen by somebody else.

Today, we are going to put your hand on the dial.

In this episode, we are bringing together ideas from four of our previous conversations — and turning them into one single strategy.

A strategy with three simple moves.

We call them the three dials.

First — a thirty-second practice that quiets your mind, and we will do it together, inside this episode.

Second — a small question that can disarm the harshest sentence your mind ever says to you.

And third — a daily protocol so simple, you could write it on the back of a bus ticket.

Ready?

Let's meet the radio.

Friends, here is a strange question.

Why does your mind feel exhausted... on a day when your body did almost nothing?

That question has a real answer.

And the answer is about how we are built.

For most of human history, danger was short.

Something appeared.

You ran, or you fought.

And then — this is the important part — the danger ENDED.

The body received a clear signal.

It is over.

You are safe.

Stand down.

Modern life almost never sends that signal.

The emails do not end.

The news does not end.

The comparing does not end.

So the radio inside you keeps broadcasting one message, all day long.

Stay alert.

Something is wrong.

Keep running.

And a mind that never receives the all-clear signal... becomes a very tired mind.

If that sounds like your life, stay with us.

Because the three dials exist exactly for this.

Dial number one.

Volume.

You cannot fix a radio while you are running away from it.

The first move is always the same.

Stop.

In a world that worships speed, stopping feels almost illegal.

But listen to this image.

Your mind is like a lake.

When the wind blows, the surface breaks, and the water turns cloudy.

When the wind stops... the water becomes still.

And suddenly, you can see all the way to the bottom.

Stopping is not laziness.

Stopping is how the water clears.

So let's do it right now.

Together.

For the next thirty seconds, we are going to turn the volume down.

Take one slow breath in.

And let it go... slowly.

Now just listen to the silence between my words.

There is nothing to solve right now.

Nothing to check.

Welcome back.

What you just felt — even for a few seconds — was your hand on the first dial.

Dial number two.

Voice.

Once the volume is lower, you can finally hear WHAT the radio is saying.

And for many of us, the presenter is not a friend.

The presenter says things like — you are behind.

You always get this wrong.

Everyone else finds this easy.

Here is the crucial fact.

Your brain treats repeated sentences like facts.

Say something to yourself every day for ten years... and it stops feeling like an opinion.

It starts feeling like the truth.

So the second dial has three small moves.

Move one — catch the sentence.

Do not fight it.

Just notice it, like a fisherman watching the water.

Move two — ask it one question.

Is that true?

Where is the evidence?

And move three — rewrite it.

If your radio says, I cannot follow native speakers...

you add one small word at the end.

I cannot follow native speakers... yet.

That one word turns a wall into a door.

Dial number three.

The station.

And this is the dial almost nobody talks about.

Here is the question.

The thoughts that repeat inside you, day after day...

who chose them?

Many of the loudest opinions in your head were installed by other people.

By your school.

By your family.

By a thousand hours of scrolling.

You did not choose that station.

You just... never changed it.

Think about what you feed your mind every day.

If you plant weeds, you cannot expect roses.

So the third dial is a choice.

Every day, choose at least one thing you put into your mind on purpose.

One book page instead of one more headline.

One long conversation instead of fifty short clips.

Ten minutes of silence instead of noise you never asked for.

Your mind is a territory.

And only you have the right to govern it.

Now, friends... let us show you what the three dials look like in one real life.

This is the story of a man we will call Tomasz.

Tomasz is forty-one years old.

He was born in Poland, and for the last nine years, he has delivered parcels in Manchester.

His English was what he called — good enough for doors and signatures.

But inside his head, the radio was extremely loud.

Route timers.

Delivery lists.

Numbers.

And underneath all of it, one sentence, always the same, whenever he had to say more than five words in English.

Your English embarrasses people.

That sentence had lived in him for so long, he thought it was simply... a fact.

Like the weather.

Then, one Tuesday evening, something small happened.

His daughter Zofia — eight years old, born in Manchester — was practising her Polish at the kitchen table.

She mispronounced a word.

She laughed at herself, and tried again.

And in that second, Tomasz felt a correction rising in his own throat.

Sharp.

Cold.

Ready to cut.

And he froze the sentence in mid-air... because he recognised the tone.

It was not his voice.

It was the voice of his English teacher, from nineteen ninety-seven.

A man with a red pen, who read student mistakes out loud... so the class could laugh.

Your English embarrasses people.

The sentence was never his.

It was INSTALLED.

A station chosen by somebody else, almost thirty years ago... still broadcasting in his kitchen.

That night, Tomasz did something he had not done in years.

He sat in his parked van, in the dark, and did absolutely nothing for ten minutes.

Dial one.

Volume down.

In that silence, he could finally hear the sentence clearly.

So he asked it the question.

Is that true?

Nine years.

Thousands of doors.

Thousands of conversations.

Nobody had ever laughed.

One man did.

Once.

In nineteen ninety-seven.

So Tomasz rewrote the sentence.

My English opens doors every single day.

Literally.

Dial two.

And then he changed what he fed his mind.

On his delivery rounds, he replaced the angry talk radio... with slow, calm English in his ears.

Three minutes of silence in the van before every shift.

One chosen input, every single day.

Dial three.

Three months later, there was a meeting at the depot about the new delivery routes.

The room was full.

Tomasz raised his hand... and spoke for two minutes.

His voice shook at the beginning.

Nobody laughed.

His supervisor nodded and said — good point.

That is the whole ending, friends.

No fireworks.

No Hollywood.

The radio inside Tomasz still plays.

But now... he is the one holding it.

So let's give you the protocol.

The version you can write on the back of a bus ticket.

We call it three, one, one.

Three minutes of real silence, every day.

No phone.

No sound.

Just the lake becoming still.

One sentence caught and rewritten.

Catch it.

Ask if it is true.

Change it.

And one input chosen on purpose.

One thing you put into your mind because YOU decided it belongs there.

Three minutes.

One sentence.

One choice.

That is the entire strategy.

And friends, notice something beautiful.

This podcast — the slow way we speak, the pauses, the space between words — is itself the first dial.

Every time you listen slowly, you are practising the volume.

And every time you choose this show over noise... you are choosing the station.

So here is the truth we want you to carry this week.

You are not the noise in your head.

You are not the radio.

You are the hand on the dial.

And that hand is getting stronger every single day.

Thank you for training your ears — and your mind — with us today.

I am Martin.

And I am Julia.

We will see you in the next journey through the English language.

Step by step.

Word by word.

Until next time.

Bye bye.

Bye.

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