Here is a very powerful question for anyone that still is not satisfied with his or her level of speaking Dutch. It is plain and simple: why don’t I speak fantastic Dutch already?
Sure, this question may seem a bit painful, but… the information that comes up can be extremely valuable. One of the most popular answers to the question is this: well, I guess that I am too lazy… And although this answer seems very reasonable it is always good to think again. Who knows? Also the opposite might be true…. What if you are not lazy enough? What if the big thing that really stands in your way is that somehow you are obsessed with working too hard?
Let’s admit it…. in secret we all love it but at the same time we might also feel ashamed of it. Being lazy!
We all love being lazy and at the same time we all somehow tend to think that lazyness is a bad thing… Why? Why does lazyness have such a bad reputation? Nature loves it. Just look at most of the animals. Apart from the bee, the ant and the beaver not so many animals are working all the time (unless they have children). Just observe your cat or your dog for a while and soon you will come to one conclusion. Not doing anything is completely natural!
In nature not doing anything seems to have a purpose. It helps to use your energy resources wisely. Why would your cat be busy all day? Somehow a cat already realizes that also enjoying life is a very good thing to do! Don’t you think that this make a great contrast with most people? Many people pretend that they are not lazy at all and therefore they try to hide it. It even seems that many people want to prove – at least to themselves – that they are always dilligent and hard working…
Would you rather be a donkey or use one?
No wonder that it is easy to believe that if you want to learn and speak Dutch, you should also work very very hard. This is also someting that many teachers say…
Sure… being active is important but… strangely enough a lack of lazyness can also stand in your way. Here is the problem: people that work hard often cling to learning techniques that are not effective in the first place. They hope that memorizing and pounding in new words and sentences will do the trick. Often they are so busy with these ineffective methods that they even do not notice that they are not moving forward at all… and then surprise, surprise they try to compensate for it by working harder again. How smart is that?
So here is the great thing about lazy people. Only if you are lazy you’ll start to ask yourself if there are no shortcuts that you could take. Lazy people are the first people to ask if there are ways to save time and to learn things more efficiently while having more fun. Can you now see how valuable lazyness really is?
Let’s put it differently: people that like to show the world how hardworking they are, rarely think of inventing new things. Only a lazy person comes up with the idea of using a donkey in stead of carrying things all by yourself, and only lazy people would be delighted to see that even using a wheel can take away so many burdens. In this sense you could really argue that we really owe progress of mankind in general to lazy people!
Feeling relaxed is always a good idea!
So next time that you try to learn and speak Dutch, just ask yourself: are there easier ways of doing this? How could I achieve more results in a shorter time with much less effort? Only then, all of a sudden you will start to move forward fast and then chances are high that you love it! On top of it, you will save some time, so that now you can also do some other things that recharge your battery… Therefore whenever you tell yourself that you should work harder simply ask: how could I use lazyness instead? What if you could feel more relaxed?
At the end it is very simple…. if you want to move forward fast the key thing is that you feel relaxed, and then feel great about it! Then you’ll start to love it. Just imagine what could happen then!
