Changing Others Requires Long-Term Accompaniment

Alex Chen
15 hours ago
3 min read

Recently, I finished teaching a two-month English course aimed at helping some students pass their IELTS test. Most of them are beginner level, but they need to pass the lower-intermediate or intermediate level. In other words, it's no small feat.

Throughout these two months, I realized that the hardest thing isn't teaching English or IELTS tactics. The hardest thing is helping the students maintain a good emotional state. Because they have strong pressure to achieve a high result in a short time frame, which is very difficult, they understandably get anxious and stressed a lot.

Every week, there are a couple students who get emotionally unstable. The IELTS test is one source of their stress, but there are other factors too, like conflict with classmates, or body discomfort, or bad sleep. Fortunately, there are always some students who have a good emotional state, and they'll help to comfort the students in a bad emotional state.

I teach them every day, and outside of class, I continue to tutor them. Sometimes, I feel like it's a contest between my calm and positive energy against their stress and negative energy. Sometimes my energy can overcome theirs, and other times, their energy overpowers mine.

Every day, I repeat the same things to them: "You can do it. You have to believe in yourself. Focus on the process. Don't be impatient for quick results. Don't get disheartened at failure or mistakes, it's part of the learning process. You have to accumulate mistakes to succeed. You have to practice staying calm. Be focused when you study and practice. Take care of your health. Notice your own improvement and encourage yourself. Be your own cheerleader. If you encounter difficulties, communicate with me promptly and we can solve it together."

At the end of the two months, many of them told me that their biggest gain from my class isn't English, but rather an improvement in their attitude. Two months isn't that long, but it also isn't that short either, and I noticed that most of them improved their sense of confidence and emotional stability as compared to the beginning.

From this experience, I realized that we really shouldn't expect people to change after we give them advice once or twice. If we're serious about helping others to change, we have to accompany them for a long period of time, and throughout this time period, we need to set a good example and use a good attitude to give frequent reminders and encouragement.

It's easy to give advice. It's much harder to role model that advice and repeatedly give the same advice every day without getting impatient. But only when we can do this would they have faith in us and be willing to listen to us; if we get impatient, they will think we don't really care about them, and they'd lose motivation to change. The reason we'd get frustrated is because we aren't empathetic enough. I'm sure my students all want to remain calm and have faith in themselves, but they can't control their emotions sometimes. They're not purposely ignoring my advice, it's just that changing habits takes time.

When I see things from this perspective, I gain more patience. My job is precisely to remind and encourage them when they revert to their old habits, and each time they will improve a bit. Although the improvement might not be noticeable day to day, with enough accumulation, they will eventually have noticeable change.

As Epictetus said,

“Nothing important comes into being overnight; even grapes and figs need time to ripen. If you say that you want a fig now, I will tell you to be patient. First, you must allow the tree to flower, then put forth fruit; then you have to wait until the fruit is ripe."

Is there anyone you've been trying to change? Do you patiently focus on the process, or have you become impatient at the lack of results?

Weekly Wisdom #343