[video] I believe self-compassion is often the missing ingredient in getting… just about anything we want. When we go after something, we tend to ignore our side of things: our feelings, thoughts, beliefs, experiences, expectations, considerations, the bigger picture, etc. – it’s insanely ironic. We’ve been so well trained to consider everyone and everything else, but who’s standing up for you? Who’s in your corner, empathizing with the entire picture of being you? No one. Not-a-single-person can really witness what it is to be you, in all your entire-ness.

I spent a lovely evening with friends last night and we got to talking about this amazing Finnish beatboxer named Felix Zenger. Juha and I saw him perform a few years back and to our amazement, it sounded like he had a 10 synthesizers in his mouth, when all he held was a microphone – nothing else. “How does someone do that?” we kept asking. I’m often asked this question in the context of speaking fluent Finnish. Here’s something we’re not considering…

As language learners, we also tell ourselves and each other stories that that build up our perceptions, and thus our reality. So what happens when our stories are actually keeping us from learning? Can we change the narrative and shift our results right along with it?

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been speaking more openly about my view that we’re living in a world that’s lacking the feminine — a world that’s unbalanced. I recently came across an explanation of the masculine and feminine as being traits most often associated with…

Today I’m excited to present you with a collection of 7 Finnish sounds! These sounds are carefully curated from real life and can be used at your leisure. Just insert them into different situations and watch what happens! 😉

In this vlog post, I discuss why I’m not learning any new languages right now and what I’m excited about instead. I also touch on a few of the following topics: Learning for fun from home vs learning abroad for ‘need’ vs learning for a real need + studying vs. learning + The pull of curiosity vs. the push of obligation + timing of language learning (also vs studying) + Looking at language learning in the context of your life

Meet Fiel Sahir: a classical guitarist who speaks multiple languages. He’ll show you how much overlap there actually is between learning a language and playing an instrument!

I have yet to meet a single person who hasn’t felt frustration when it comes to learning… anything, but this is especially relevant for those learning languages with big reputations… like Finnish.

So today I made you a little video to help move you forward when you get stuck in a big puddle of frustration. Because ultimately, if you don’t learn to recognize and deal with frustration… you’ll stay there. So here ya go!

This week I did an interview with Oliver from learnwitholiver.com where I answered 10 questions about language learning and living abroad, among other topics. Of the 10 questions, my favourite was: What is your single best non-obvious tip for language learning? This was such a great question (thank you Oliver for asking it!) that I decided to write a whole post about it.