If you want to read the initial post which sets the stage, feel free.

In my first go at Spanish language training way back in high school, I vaguely recall doing anything with pronunciation.  Since then, whenever I’ve picked up a course or a new book on learning Spanish, I’ve quickly skipped past pronunciation.

It always seemed like the boring part.  I wanted to get to the good stuff where I would learn all the words and therefore be able to understand and start speaking the language.

Well, guess what my initial training down here consisted of?  Pronunciation.  And as I went through the exercise I quickly discovered two things.

First, I was pronouncing most things wrong.  Second, it was very easy to fix that, once I had seen what the correct way was.   As a mater of fact, if you do it correctly, just by practicing counting from one to twenty in Spanish, you can master most of the important components of pronunciation for the entire language.

And after just an hour of practicing and mastering this (I’m very good at counting to twenty), I realized something amazing.  I learned why despite picking up and trying countless audio programs, I had made little progress in the past.

All those times before, I had been trying to build a giant building, but I had refused to start with a concrete foundation.  “I’ll get to that later, or that’s not as important, I’d always say.  Let me just get to the good stuff.”

Except that if you build without a solid foundation, you never get to the good stuff, because you just keep crumbling.

Something tremendous happened after my hour of counting.  It was like someone handed me a two-way decoder ring.  Suddenly, I could understand what people were saying when they were speaking in Spanish.  And they could suddenly understand what I was saying.

I wasn’t fluent by any stretch, but with the foundation now firmly in my grasp, I was able to pick out words that before had seemed like gibberish, but that now made perfect sense.  And I was able to say words that sounded a lot less like gibberish, and a lot more like what they were supposed to.

There is tremendous relevance in my experience to you if you desire a Rich and Happy life.  Rich and Happy people have gotten that way because they took the time to build strong foundations.  They learned what their values are.  They discovered their beliefs and where those beliefs came from.  They became acutely aware of their Big Five for Life.

And because they started with those strong foundational elements, they then were able to successfully build Rich and Happy lives.

In a sense, they had turned on the Rich and Happy decoder ring.  Because once they understood their foundational elements, they could talk with clarity about what they wanted.  They could make decisions easily and without encountering massive stress around what was the right thing to do.  And because they were clear about what they wanted, it became easier for other people to understand and then help them.

I used to jump from Spanish program to Spanish program always looking for the magic one that would suddenly make things clear.  In that same context, I’ve met many people who bounce from book to book, course to course, and coach to coach in their quest to be Rich and Happy.

The Rich and Happy people I’ve studied over the last twenty years don’t fall into that trap.  They have learned that making the initial effort, laying the initial foundation, is what sets you up for even greater things down the line.  Without it, you just don’t make any real progress.

Hasta luego (until next time),

John

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