When in Paris with my daughter years ago, she stopped someone to ask where the war was. She meant to ask where the station was, for a train we were catching, but the words in French are similar (la gare- station and la guerre-war) and it was easy to get the wrong pronunciation and meaning. And she’s a natural with language, whereas I stumble along claiming that
someday, if I could only live in France for a year, my French would improve greatly.
Someday, I realized recently, might never happen unless I changed my perspective. I needed to change how I learned French, and so I’ve started listening to French every single day. No, I can’t carry on a lively conversation in French yet, but it’s absolutely coming. And I’ve already decided once I’m fluent (or my version of fluent) I’ll take myself back to Paris. Tiny changes, compounded over time, lead to significant transformation according to James Clear in his book Atomic Habits.
What have you relegated to “someday,” that you could start doing on a daily basis? Following Clear’s advice, these tiny, continuous improvements will eventually reap really big results.
