Language Learning: Over and Underrated Ways to Motivate Yourself

How the right “why” keeps you showing up for years

Image generated by Microsoft Designer AI with prompts by the author.

How pure is your language learning conviction? Or how pure is your current endeavor? (Not all my readers are language learners, but similar principles apply).

As adults, we crave those pure childlike convictions that transcend “rational” norms. I think about how my 2014-era self in Boston wanted to live in Australia more than anything in life. I wanted this path so badly, that I slept in my architecture office on an air mattress behind the filing cabinet to save on sky-high Boston rent.

I had to leave the office by 5:50 AM every single morning, so none of the other tenants would ask questions. Then I would work out and shower at the local YMCA gym. After ordering a large Dunkin iced coffee with butter pecan flavoring and the morning sun hitting my face, I would come back to the office for work at 9:00 AM.

There were a lot of lonely nights at the office looking out over the traffic on the Mass Pike (I-90) imagining my future life in Australia. I watched the traffic at night so often, I contemplated why the cars were so evenly spaced out. How did everyone at all hours of the night decide to leave their houses in near-perfect intervals?

I was also constantly on edge and couldn’t relax knowing that anyone could walk into the office at any time of night. I often felt that the Southern Hemisphere was so far away and such an impossible outcome. But the “impossibility” of this vision kept me alive on the inside.

I ended up moving to Australia only 6 months later and getting a coveted visa sponsorship from an architecture firm there. Such an “impossible” outcome could have only come from wanting this pathway more than anything in life.

Would you be willing to sleep in your office to fight for your current endeavor? I always ask myself this when embarking on something new.

This glorifies my office setup way more than it actually was, but effectively captures the “spirit.” Image generated by Microsoft Designer AI with prompts by the author.

Once I left my pathway to Australian citizenship in 2017, I struggled to find a new endeavor with such pure conviction again…