Things don’t always go well 🤷‍♂️ @juliannorthbrook

Uploaded March 2020 | Updated September 2026, 17 hours ago

Sometimes traveling can be challenging, but hey.... what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger right?

In this video I talk about why it’s important to remain calm, flexible and learn from your mistakes in English.

Once you’re done go to the URL below to get my free daily emails.

doingenglish.com

Best,
Julian Northbrook

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Written Version & Notes: doingenglish.com/blog/things-dont-always-go-right

#DoingEnglish #JulianNorthbrook #learnEnglish

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$The Broken Angels method for getting yourself unstuck, avoiding bankruptcy and fixing your English https://MasterEnglishFAST.com Transcript: Hello. Im Dr. Julian Northbrook from doingenglish.com. No question today. Instead, Im going to read out an extract from a book. This is an awesome line from Richard K. Morgans excellent Broken Angels. Its not about English or language learning per se, but pay close attention to it, and youll see why I am reading this and making a video about this. Face the facts then act on them. Its the only mantra I know. The only doctrine I have to offer you, and its harder than youd think because I swear human seem hardwired to do anything but face the facts. Dont pray. Dont wish. Dont buy into centuries old dogma and dead rhetoric. Dont give in to your conditioning or your visions or your fucked up sense of whatever. Face facts then act. Now, Richard K. Morgan is the guy behind the excellent Altered Carbon series of books which got turned into a Netflix series a couple of years ago, but theres real wisdom in this extract. The average person from the way I see it spends an enormous amount of time and energy refusing to face facts, but very little time and energy in actually facing them and acting accordingly. Now, honestly, Ive been as guilty of this as anybody else. And this is a very honest and very candid example, but its a good one, and a very illustrative one, I think. But back in 2016, about the time or just after the UK voted for Brexit, I mean, my business was booming. But I was earning all of my money in British pounds and converting that into Japanese yen for complicated reasons that I wont bore you with. And then, Brexit was announced and the British pan crashed. And with it, my income was effectively halved because of the extreme change in exchange rate. My expenditure, however, which was all in Japanese yen remained exactly the same. So what did I do? Absolutely nothing. Instead, we carried on spending as we always had. Business cost didnt change, neither did our cost of living. We had two kids in a very expensive private school, and we carried on like this for about six months, while I diligently ignored the facts. Ignored my balance sheets, which I was paying somebody else to do, because I couldnt be bothered to do them myself, which was pretty stupid on reflection. And long story short, I ended up in a pretty shit situation. A good friend of mine whos an accountant stopped me and went through my books. My accounts with me, with a fine-tooth comb, really looked at everything. Made me fire the person was doing our books and had me start doing it myself, because it turned out that I was right on the razors edge of bankruptcy. It had gotten that bad. Another month, perhaps two, and that would have been it. Now, luckily, we caught the problem in time and I made some pretty extreme changes in cuts. I took my companys financial health into my own hands, and studied my ass off reading every business finance book I could get my hands on. And now five years later, businesses is once again booming and I am very financially healthy again. But the point is, what facts are you refusing to acknowledge? Now for many, its the simple fact that their English is simply too shit to do the job that theyve been hired to do. And thats why they waste huge amounts of time, energy and opportunities, which translates into huge amounts of lost money in terms of promotions never gotten and pay rises never considered. For others, its the fact that theyre doggedly persisting learning methods that just dont work, or conversation lessons that feel good, but that have long ceased to do anything useful for actually improving in English conversation. Or it might be taking the lazy approach and telling yourself that just watching TV every now and then in English or living in an English speaking country will be enough, and it wont. Well, you can ignore these facts, all you like and keep doing the things that youre doing and you will keep getting the results that you are getting. Or you can take a long, hard, look at the facts, then act upon them. Now, a good starting point for you if you are new to me and my world will be to head over to https://masterenglishfast.com, and grab yourself a copy of my best selling and core book, Master English FAST. Its going to take you step by step, by the hand, through all the things that you need to know about improving in English as a second language as a higher level learner. Now, of course it doesnt contain all of the customization and the depth that youd expect from me from my coaching program. But of course you can get it done. You can go through that book for a fraction of the investment. For less than the cost of a lunch, in fact. And it now comes... We have a complete audio version of the book via the Doing English app. Theres instructions in the back of the book for registering for that. Right. Thats it for me, Dr. Julia Northbrook. For another video, see you soon guys. Bye-bye.$

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