Why You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Other People When Learning a Language

I teach Mandarin classes online and every so often I’ll get a student who wonders “I’m not progressing as fast as the others” or “I just can’t seem to wrap my head around this language, it’s just too damn hard!” You’ve probably had these thoughts at some point. I know I have.

I realized the problem with this mindset recently at, of all places, CrossFit. CrossFit is a group workout program that’s notorious for being ridiculously intense. I love doing it but here’s the thing: I suck at it. The problem is I’m just so slow; my body simply isn’t built for these types of workouts. Workouts that it takes other people just 15 minutes to do will routinely take me 25 minutes.

Me, sucking

And when I first started doing CrossFit this would frustrate me. Why am I not as good as everyone else? But the more I worked at it and the more that I improved the more I became impressed by how much better I was than when I first started. I would compare my times at doing certain workouts or lifting certain weights or speed on a run and notice these huge improvements and think to myself, wow, I’ve gotten a lot better!

Don’t get me wrong: compared with everyone else, I still suck at CrossFit. But I’m better than I used to be — I’m stronger and faster and it’s just had these huge benefits in my life that I’m really grateful for. And I think this is the right way to think about learning a language. I’m not going to tell you talent doesn’t matter in CrossFit or language learning because it definitely does — some people simply have an easier time lifting weights or memorizing vocabulary. But if you’re always comparing yourself to yourself this doesn’t matter! Because what does matter is your own body and your own mind and what you can do with it.

Me, still sucking!

And with enough time and hard work, anyone can become fluent in any language. I’ve seen it happen with so many people who thought they were too “old,” or too “busy,” or too “dumb” to make it happen, and a few months go by and they’re literally speaking to me in fluent Mandarin. They just tortoise it out and one day builds on another and you end up accomplishing way more than you ever thought possible. So as we say in Chinese: 加油!