If you can learn 2000 words and be able to use them in real life situations WITHIN A YEAR, you'll be miles ahead of the vast majority of learners. In my opinion, you are wasting your time trying to learn them in a month, simply because even if you could, you'll forget them, which is eventually a waste of time, and you won't know how to use them. Unless you are already advanced, I don't know... I think people put way too much emphasis on vocab. If you know 2000-3000 words in any language and you know the grammar needed to use them, you'll do pretty well in basic daily conversation.

People usually easily find the time they need for the things they love to do. If you can't find the time to learn 2000 words in a month, it's either a crazy goal or it's not the right type of activity for you. And that doesn't mean you failed. You can acquire the words in time and get the same, or better, results than another person who could perhaps manage an amount of words you can't. I could never learn 2000 words in a month, but I can learn a language fast and well. It's overkill.

aphasiac Wrote:2000 words a month is like 66 a day. That's a crazy amount! No doubt you beat yourself up if you don't achieve your total in one day, and then this negative feeling makes you put off doing it the next day.

I think a lot of people would disagree about that on these forums But I'm using a combined method of anki and this: http://www.200words-a-day.com/
So as the site tells me I should be doing 200 a day Will try from tomorrow when I can get some sleep....

Most people on this site start off slow and work their way up. Honestly I think you're setting yourself up to fail...BUT would be happy if you proved me wrong!

Start tomorrow and show me I'm a idiot - just report back on your progress

Just my 2 cents, take them or leave them.

About comparing yourself against other people: I don't see anything wrong about it. It can be actually a great thing. By watching people around you, you can learn lots of things. By comparing people against yourself you can appreciate that everybody is different, and everybody has virtues and defects. Trying to use both as a reference, to incorporate the good stuff into your life and learn to manage the bad stuff when you face it, can be good for growing as a person. It's also good to learn to recognize people's defects and not to judge them too hard, and to recognize and appreciate their virtues. If you learn to do that, you can even eventually learn to apply that same principle to yourself, which is always a good think, methinks.

About "trying to be yourself, not other people": Don't try to be other people. Don't "try" to "be yourself" either. Just be. Did you know there are more than 7 billion people in the world? Whatever kind of person you become into, there we always both people like you and people different to you. I think it's good taking other people's virtues as reference and trying to apply them into yourself, but if you get too concerned into either being "like" or "different" than other people, it's easy to lose the track. If you want to "become" someone, then just become a better you, whatever that means to you.

About some practical things you can do in your daily life: Everybody has things that make them feel better. Try to pay attention when you find them or remember them and make a list. Then try to have at least a couple of minutes of those things every day. It can be anything simple you enjoy, like walking, listening to music, exercising, being or talking to someone whose company you enjoy, watching movies, tv series, documentaries, reading about something you find interesting, learning something new, reading quotes from people you admire and who inspire you or something else. I don't mean just something you enjoy, but something that makes you feel good about yourself or life in general even after you finish it.

This post made me remind of some quotes from Bruce Lee:

Quote:Instead of dedicating your life to actualize a concept of what you should be like, ACTUALIZE YOURSELF. The process of maturing does not mean to become a captive of conceptualization. It is to come to the realization of what lies in our innermost selves.

Quote:What you HABITUALLY THINK largely determines what you will ultimately become.

Quote:Choose the positive. — You have choice — you are master of your attitude — choose the POSITIVE, the CONSTRUCTIVE. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.

Quote:Cease negative mental chattering. — If you think a thing is impossible, you'll make it impossible. Pessimism blunts the tools you need to succeed.

Quote:A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Quote:Don't fear failure. — Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.

And finally (you've probably listened or read this one multiple times):

Quote:Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Here is a site with some quotes in Japanese. Some of them have the original English version too.

[ファブリス]

Sebastian Wrote:And finally (you've probably listened or read this one multiple times):

Quote:(...) be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Thanks for the Bruce Lee links.

In Be water (YouTube link) I think Bruce Lee is pointing at the exact opposite of trying to change yourself to "a better me".

How can you be "formless" and try to be something at the same time? By wanting to cast yourself as something, an imaginary "better you", aren't you trying to cast yourself into a form?

I think, to "be water", to be "formless", means to leave the "should be like this" and "should be like that" behind.

When we're children we have no form. We're not worrying about becoming this or that. Soon enough a child may say "I want to be a policeman" or a firefighter. Already there, though there may be real love/passion, the child is already answering the pressure of his parents to become something. As if he wasn't something already. As if it wasn't ok to be "formless" as Bruce Lee said, and want to be something even when you don't have the slightest idea how life will turn out. You can't know yet if tomorrow will be a "teacup" or a "bottle", but from a very young age already parents and soceity and culture tell us, you have to decide what form you will be.

My 2 cents

PS: Actually it's pretty obvious as the "Empty your mind" is easily overlooked. What does "empty your mind" have in common with "develop your self"?

PPS: And yes, I am aware that I am "myself" rubbing my own "wise guy/spiritual dude/adviser" self image. That's how the game of self plays out >_> Thought I'd try to share something anyway, despite the painful lack of ease that comes with "an empty mind"..

I understand "empty your mind" in terms of focus. It's only when your mind is empty that you can do what you are doing properly (these guys had the martial artist or the craftsman as an ideal).

PS: I once had a friend who wanted to be a sunflower when she grows up. Point is, it wasn't from outter pressure, she was just being conscious of her limits and wanted to be able to transcend them someday to do something that appealed to her.

tashippy Wrote:[...]Is there a thread somewhere about succeeding in school without scaling back Japanese studies too much?

(I'm a rebel)

I'm not a fan of learning large amounts of vocab out of context, but you CAN learn 2000 words in a month. Anyone (of a reasonable IQ and ability to focus) can, with the right method. For instance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic#Fo...cquisition (a method for associating words with their English meaning)

One thing about these mnemonics is that, as explained in Ars Memoriae (a collection of ancient Greek and Roman methods of memorization Aristotle for instance was a contributor to), the associations that work for one person don't work the same way for another. So I would warn you against buying a collection of mnemonics from someone on the Internet, that supposedly makes you learn 200 words a day. You're better off just understanding the method, and then applying it on your own, to words of your choosing.

While you read everything these guys have said, what's so important to take home is that they are reflections of geniune life experience. They're not telling you what you want to hear for your sake and nothing more. Many offer important life lessons told from unique perspectives, and if you see them as a bunch of cliches, maybe you don't yet have the disposition to understand how valuable they are.

There's a reason why all-things-self-improvement can be easily brushed off like empty platitudes. I quickly learnt to do the same growing up, and I'd get embarrassed having to listen to them. But as time passed, and the more I tried and failed, and the more I noticed my own struggles happen to all people, I could feel the sincere and transparent solidarity in stories and advice, exactly like those already given. They're not embarrassing anymore, and sometimes they can really tug at the heart.

I suppose my word of advice would be: not only must you want something to succeed by your own standards, but you must want to want it. This secondary level of desire is a good way of highlighting the necessity for an innate passion to move forward/get better/keep learning, that doesn't change in time. I was nothing like this 3-4 years ago.