On Repeat: Level 2: One-to-Many

As I moved on from teaching to training skills, I realized that knowing language in and of itself was not the thing that was troubling my students, or now, the participants in my sessions, it was the fact that they didn’t know how to express themselves at a given point or under specific circumstances.

Language, per se, was just (something I started calling) their stressor of choice. A stressor of choice is a proxy onto which we project our self-perceived flaws and/or inadequacies so we don’t have to deal with them, either knowingly or unknowingly.

For years, I tried to explain to some of them that they black out not because they don’t know a certain word, a phrase, or a structure of a foreign language, but because they don’t know what they want to say in any language. (No, I’m not talking about their intellectual capacities. Yes, I am talking about functioning in heightened emotional states and under added pressure.)

You see, nobody knows the word you have pinpointed in your head as the “best match” for the thoughts you created for a certain purpose. They don’t know if that word is a word, or a phrase, or a full sentence, in your native language, a foreign language, or just a vague concept until you actually speak your mind. So if you do change your mind halfway through, nobody will know. And if they don’t know, luckily, this is one of those situations where nobody will care.

The truth is, people care about the message, not your internal struggle whether to use “buy,” “purchase,” or “procure.” If your life doesn’t depend on it, the choice doesn’t really matter, and if it does, trust me – you’ll know the word. (No, this is not to say that word choice doesn’t matter at all. And yes, this is to say that you don’t need to put unnecessary pressure on yourself for something that inevitably can only be learned through practice on the go.)

So, to cut the long story short, this is why I started introducing the variant of the On Repeat game that would touch on the concept of rephrasing by repurposing.

First, they had to paraphrase a certain sentence a number of times in one language, and then, whenever possible, I’d slowly introduce the bilingual element where they had to paraphrase it in two (or sometimes even more languages) offhand, without knowing in advance which language comes next.

And suddenly, the most common response I’d get was: “Wait, stop, I don’t know what to say!”, regardless of the language being used.

Exactly! Bingo! You don’t say! Well… la-di-da! You catch my drift. 😁

And just like that, the barrier between the stressor of choice and the actual choice gets erased. And once you get the hang of focusing on the message you want to convey, not the word(s) you want to use to convey it, it’s all smooth sailing afterwards.

And before you sail away, here’s a little challenge for you:

Can you say I don’t know in ten different ways?