Kris Hello everyone and welcome back to a new exciting season of the actual Fluency podcast. In case this is your first episode, this is the podcast where we talk about learning foreign languages. We're going to have interviews with top learners, polyglots, industry experts, and just a ton of people with cool stories related to language learning. We're going to be talking methods, we're going to be talking strategies, we're going to be talking motivation, you know, how to keep going with your language learning. I have done over 180 episodes of this podcast in the past. So, do check out those episodes if you haven't already. There's a lot of good, juicy evergreen stuff there for any aspiring language learner. And uh it's good to be back.
But, uh before we get into today's episode, which is all about perfectionism in language learning, we I just want to take a a quick moment to thank you for listening. And I know a lot of you have been with the podcast from the beginning. You know, can you believe that it's been about nine years since the podcast started? It feels crazy to uh to think about that. And uh just another note the the podcast is expected to come out every two weeks. I uh I I might do weekly, but I don't want to kind of overstretch myself and and overpromise something that I potentially can't deliver. So, let's aim for about one new episode every two weeks. So, definitely be sure to subscribe to the podcast so you get a notification in your favorite podcasting app when the new episode comes out.
Also, the podcast is not sponsored and it it won't be, but something that I have not done in the past and that I'm going to start doing now basically is mentioning a few of my own initiatives, a few of my own products that I have. And it's kind of silly that I didn't mention them before. I I guess I was uh just not confident enough in in myself or or in the products or maybe I felt like I was annoying the listener by by mentioning it, but the truth is I'm actually really excited and proud about the products and and and events that I've produced over the years. So, I'm going to be mentioning them on the podcast and I will encourage you to go and check them out and if they fit with what you're looking for then then you know, I I'd appreciate it.
The uh Bite-Size Languages is the first I wanted to mention. We have uh it's a listening practice course where for beginners, total beginners, um and the kind of sell USP for this is that it's 100 authentic dialogues for a beginner learner. So, you can just listen over and over, they're very quick dialogues, they use very simple language, very practical language, but you know, if you're a beginner, it can be very difficult to find good listening practice out there because usually the native level materials are too difficult. And so, Bite-Size was created to kind of circumvent that. And being very small lessons, it's also easy to just have a goal of let's say do a lesson a day, uh because it it only takes a couple minutes to listen to the audio and then you have some exercises, some translations, some cultural notes, all kinds of different extra things you can study. But if you really just go in and listen, your pronunciation is going to get so much better because you can hear the difference and your vocabulary is going to be great because you hear it in context and you're going to get the kind of natural everyday language that you need to uh succeed with whatever you the language you're learning. So, check out that on actualfluency.com uh and click the courses on the top menu. Uh you can also go to bitesizelanguages.com.
The second thing I just wanted to mention are my annual conferences. So, I've been doing this New Year New Language Summit for two years in a row now. We do it every January. And it's really exciting because what we're doing is we're gathering all the top language learners, content creators, industry experts, and they come and do presentations and sessions on how to set up the year really for excellent language learning results. So, these events have more than 30 uh instructive sessions per level. So, 2022 was the beginner level, how do you start out in language learning. And 2023, which was this January, um if you're listening to this in 2023, you might listen be listening in the future. Um, the 2023 was how do you move beyond the beginner level and what sort of steps do you need to take as you approach the intermediate level and how do you ensure that you stay the course because that's really what's important at at that level, just keep going. And and to access these uh they're we have replay tickets. So, again, just go to actualfluency.com and click the summits button at the top menu. You can also go to newyearnewlanguage.com.
And uh you know, my my philosophy with these events and there'll be one next year after this, no matter what year you're listening to this in. And my philosophy is that if you want to start a really time intensive hobby, hobby like learning a language, it's really well worth it to put in some time to learn how to learn. And it's not because we're incapable of learning without this extra level of information. It's just it saves you so much time, hassle, and and frankly, frustration down the road. If you can hear from, you know, people who've learned 5, 10, 20 and even 50 languages over there the course of their lifetime of what you should and shouldn't do. Now, of course, not all advice applies to all people, but you can definitely find a lot of practical information about how to approach the language learning and uh especially when it comes to inspiration, motivation, which you can never get too much of. The uh summits are fantastic for that. So, that's just the two things I want to mention. I'm really proud of the of these two things. And uh it kind of bothers me a little bit that I didn't mention them too much in the past. I guess I was just being like kind of Scandinavian about it, you know, if you want to I guess you if you want to buy my course, you know, it's kind of low confidence. But that's all going to change. I'm going to mention these uh in the in the podcast going forward. And if you have uh have not checked them out yet, please do so.
But now, let's get into the today's uh podcast episode with Heidi Lovejoy. And we're going to be talking all about the perfectionism in language learning. And also, we cover being an expat learning the language in the country as Heidi has lived. She's uh originally from the US, but has now lived in uh Germany and Italy, learning both languages and kind of trying to assimilate, get into the culture. So, that's uh some of the things we talk about a lot. And you could if you like what you hear about this topic, I'd highly recommend you go check out her podcast, which is called Love, Joy, and Languages, which is uh a nice little play on her fantastic last name. I I love the the name Lovejoy. So, enjoy this session with Heidi. It is a long one, but it is one of my favorite topics. And we get into a lot of mental health kind of uh questions and and answers. And uh when it comes to learning languages, I think it's important to have your your head on straight, as they say. So, enjoy this uh this conversation with Heidi, and I will see you in the next episode. All right. Heidi, welcome to the Actual Fluency podcast.
Heidi Thanks for having me.
Kris Yeah. So, we met at the 2023 New Year, New Language Summit. Thank you for being part of it as a as a speaker, where we talked about perfectionism. We it had this very dramatic title, All or Nothing. Um and I really encourage people who have a ticket for that to go and check it out because uh there's a little bit more uh fundamentals there. We we wanted to go into more depth in this episode. And we know this is a really heavy topic that's going to take a long time to unpack. So, please if you do have a ticket for that, go and and get one, you know, so you can check it out.
Um but in any case, uh this is the follow-up to that because we were both like, okay, we've been recording for an hour, we haven't even scratched the surface, we need to go back and and have a proper chat. So, we've allocated uh you know, a good uh a good time block today. And uh we'll see how far we go with the whole topic of perfectionism, uh imposter syndrome, mental health and language learning, how all those things are connected. But, before we get into that, do you want to give the listeners who didn't watch that presentation just a quick overview of who you are, where you're from, and and how you got started on this path of thinking about mental health and talking about it, you know, on your own podcast and and at the summit and other places?
Heidi Absolutely. Quick, I don't know, but I can try. I can try. Um so, I am Heidi Lovejoy and I'm the creator and host of Lovejoy and Languages podcast, which I just started last year in February 2022. Um really the reason I started it was because I felt like there was a lack of I don't want to say genuine, but it's the best word I can come up with, I think, genuine conversations about mental health type struggles or just normal struggles that people have in language learning that some of them aren't necessarily talked about. And specifically, for me, it was perfectionism and all the ways that affected my language learning.
So, I came into language learning when I was 33 years old, a handful of years ago. And I I had always wanted to learn a language as a kid, but, you know, high school, college Spanish just didn't do it for me. I was a math person. So, I just thought I wasn't a language person because those two don't go hand in hand. And, um, in 2017, my family and I found out that we were moving to Italy for my husband's job. And I said, great, this is my opportunity, I'm going to learn Italian. And and I jumped in like without hesitation, but I had no idea what I was doing. And I had two young kids. We moved overseas for the first time. We were traveling a lot. I was going to grad school. And my grad school was back in the states. So, um that affected my time, you know, my whole my whole sleep schedule and everything was off. Um and it was just a crazy time, but I thought I was going to get fluent in Italian very quickly because I was living there. I was going to get fluent in a year. And of course, that didn't happen. And over the next two and a half, three years, maybe, so many times, I deeply, deeply struggled. And I think a lot of it a lot of it definitely stemmed from my perfectionism. I've I've always been a perfectionist my entire life. Um but it really, really stood out in language learning and, um, so we'll get into the the details of that a little bit more.
But the, you know, jump forward to the creation of the podcast, when I was really struggling the most, I I tried looking around me for people for inspiration. And I didn't find anyone like me, which I think a lot of us can say because there is no one like like each of us. But I I looked to a friend
