What were the highlights and low-lights of this past year?
What did I learn?
What did I forget to do?
Did I accomplish my goals?
What did I accomplish?

Personally, I hope to learn from 2011 and apply what I learned in 2012. I know that many of you reading this blog post have a goal to learn Spanish. That is a good goal; however, perhaps you should be a bit more specific. Instead of merely saying that you want to learn Spanish, I recommend that you set a goal to become fluent in basic conversational Spanish. This will help you to focus on the goal at hand.

Not being specific enough with my goals is one mistake that I made this past year. Everybody makes mistakes and I make a lot of them. The best way to learn is from the mistakes of others. This is a grand opportunity for you to learn from some of mine regarding goals. Here are a few more mistakes I made in regards to goals:

1. I wrote my goals down, then I forgot them.
2. I set too many goals, thus there was not enough focus on individual goals.
3. I wasn’t specific enough with my goals.
4. I didn’t celebrate the small successes.

I will elaborate further in an upcoming video lesson and blog post, but that tells the tale for the most part. As you reflect on the past year, don’t allow yourself to be overcome by your mistakes. I am a firm believer in positive thinking when I remember to positively think.

Yesterday I was at the gym working out with a friend. I was helping her do the bench press in order to build some upper body strength. She hadn’t done the bench press in a long time. As I pushed her and spotted her weights, she would be about to give up and I’d encourage her and help her do a few more reps. Mentally she would think she was done at 10 reps, but I’d encourage her and she would often do at least 5 more reps. I told her that she needs to give herself opportunities to surprise herself.

I don’t have any kids, so I’m not going to give you any parenting advice. All that I can do is think of ways that I can be a good father when that opportunity arrives and also try to see things from a son’s perspective. I grew up in a large family. My parents were not perfect parents but they were great parents and did their best, and I love them for that. I knew they could see some sort of potential in me and they still do. There have been times when I have been very motivated to achieve my potential, and other times when there has not been much motivation at all.

Yesterday I learned a great lesson: “Give yourself and others the opportunity to be surprised.” This has made me reflect on the past and think about the future. I took piano lessons for 6 years in my youth. I wasn’t a great piano student, but my mom made it a rule that we couldn’t play organized sports unless we took piano lessons. Sometimes I would enjoy the music I played and work hard to learn it. Other times I didn’t. Had I simply worked a little bit harder, I think I would have surprised myself and my parents. Instead, I just thought about playing sports and I did just enough to pass mom’s inspection.

Many parents have had great success teaching their kids Spanish with the help of Visual Link Spanish software without knowing Spanish themselves. What a great surprise it must be to see your child speaking in a foreign language that you don’t know. On parenting forums I have read the thoughts of parents wondering if they should teach their child Spanish and what tools to use. They wonder what age is too young. One regret that I have from my youth is that many times I did just enough to get by so that I could play sports. I wish I had worked harder on the piano or taken on some other hobbies that didn’t involve basketball, football, baseball, and soccer. Don’t get me wrong, I love sports and I’m glad I play them, but it is good to be more well-rounded.

Your kids need an opportunity to develop skills and talents. Give them an opportunity to learn Spanish. Give them an opportunity to work, play, and learn new things. Encourage hard work and creativity. Celebrate success. Let your kids surprise you and themselves. When is the last time you were surprised?

I hope that it has been a great week for everyone. Last Friday I wrote a post about staying motivated on the weekends. I stated that it was difficult for me to stay productive on the weekend. I said that I would do better. Well, I did do better. I hope that you did too. I ate healthier than I normally do on weekends, maintained normal exercise routines, and was able to do some research on a few projects I’m working on.

In no way do I write this to gloat; however, it was a victory for me because it’s something I’ve wanted to improve in my life. Now the trick is consistency. Certainly do give yourself a break on the weekend, but don’t lose complete sight of who you are, what goals you have, and what you want to accomplish in life. Many of you want to learn Spanish or improve your Spanish. Take a little bit of time this weekend to review or learn more with your Visual Link Spanish software and any other methods you have of learning.

Let’s tackle this weekend. What do you want to accomplish this weekend?

Come share your opinion on our Facebook Survey: Would you like to learn Spanish in video chat groups?

If we get a large enough response, we may consider forming groups that meet for an hour each week.

How it Would Work

Our idea is to sell a monthly subscription to the Visual Link Spanish Level I course for only $9.99 per month. Individuals would learn a particular section during the week, then they would come to their video chat group (which would be free) for an hour to practice with 9 others. Individuals would create 10 questions, from the given weekly section, then come to the video chat group and take turns asking and answering questions in Spanish.

There would be a group leader (also learning Visual Link Spanish Level I) who would help coordinate and guide the conversation and questions.

The sessions would go for 8 – 10 weeks or so. Participants would study on their own, then come once a week, at a given time, to practice with their group.

Your Feedback will Help Us Decide

That being said, if we get a big enough response, we will seriously consider starting these type of groups.

So…we need your feedback.

If you have ideas on how this could better work to help you learn Spanish, please let us know. We are open to suggestions as we are the focus-group phase at this point.

Once again, to participate in the survey, please visit http://www.facebook.com/visuallinkspanish to vote on the survey. You can either leave us feedback on Facebook or feel free to comment here on our blog.

¡Gracias Amigos!

I would like to start out this post by giving a shout out to Elise Taylor, the customer service manager. Today is her last day working for Visual Link Languages as she will be moving on to other things in her work life.  Many of you may have talked to Elise on the phone or communicated with her via email over the years. She has worked very well with co-workers and with customers alike. If you happen to live in Utah, she is also a great photographer. So, a big thanks goes to you, Elise, for being a great co-worker and friend. It has been wonderful to have you here and I wish you well in your future endeavors.

The weekend is a time for many things. For me, it is often a time to catch up on the things I have been unable to do during the week. I have been thinking a lot lately about routine. Many of the good routines and habits I have during the weekdays are often put aside during the weekend. Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays are typically not the days that I eat healthy, exercise, and study. I must admit that it feels good in the moment to have a break from all of those things, but on Sunday nights and early Monday mornings I tend to review my weekend and feel a little bad to have broken my good habits and routines.

I think it’s good to give yourself a break sometimes, but how much break is too much break? Consistency is one of the hardest things about life. Consistently working hard to reach your goals is not an easy task. Since learning Spanish to some degree is probably a goal for many of you readers, being consistent is something you deal with as well. It is important to consistently study Spanish. If you go weeks without studying, you will likely lose some of the Spanish knowledge you’ve gained. I encourage you to make a better effort this weekend to make time for the things that are truly important to you. I promise to do the same.

So, let’s welcome the weekend together and not forget about the things we’ve accomplished this week. Definitely fit some fun in there if you can. Keep the momentum building. Have a great weekend!

Not every reason to learn Spanish needs to be serious. Here are a few less serious reasons to learn Spanish that I came up with. I’d love to hear any new non-serious reasons that you can come up with in the blog comments.

Act like you don’t know English.
Get a girlfriend.
Get a boyfriend.
Your mustache will be taken more seriously.
Confuse telemarketers.
Tell secrets aloud.
Increase your Scrabble score.
No more subtitles.
Impress your Latina waitress.
Increase your chances with Shakira.
Understand more jokes.
Understand the novelas.
Automatically become a great dancer.