Here at Blue Noun, we’re increasingly fascinated by the reset button.
When you sauna, you go from someone protective of their heat and comfort to someone happy to climb into an icy bath in just 20 minutes. And although that urgency fades, do it regularly and you begin to eye water differently — as if it’s an option.
Last week, I picked up a cornet and blew it for the first time in my life. As a result of the group creating that invitation, I signed up for a seat in the local beginners’ brass band.
I’ve studied goal setting, and how to coach people through sustainable growth, progress, and clear, achievable goals. But in language, too often these are treated as the starting point, when they are actually paths.
There are things happening upstream that determine whether a path is the right one. If they’re not addressed, pushing forward can lead to extra discomfort, anxiety, and a sense of failure — not success.
There are plenty of good options designed to keep busy, sensitive adults on track with learning: motivated, consistent, progressing. That’s valuable work. But for many people, English is a low-level discomfort they’ve simply got used to. They function around it. And sometimes it’s more useful not to push forward, but to work sideways — repairing the relationship, not further straining it.
Changing how English feels is a valid language goal.
Yes, you can push through ignoring and masking discomfort for years. Many people do.
But there are also options to realign, let go, and find some joy to build on.
That’s the part I’m truly good at.
You don’t need to decide the future of your English to take a step. Choose simply to let it become comfortable again, and the right path becomes clearer.
There are many ways this can happen. Through exploring nature, crafts, conversation, and culture, English starts to sit differently in the body.
→ How English is Designed for Calm, Confident Use
From that shift, people often go on to choose things they couldn’t previously imagine — from wanting more lessons to stepping into public-facing, English-speaking roles.
A sauna changes how we meet water. It resets our relationship to it.
Leading with solutions is like tossing icy water at people without that reset. We live in cycles of suppression and coping so familiar that we rarely stop to question whether they’re the right way.
My cornet moment proves that an intervention can be much gentler — and just as effective.
It can be as simple as time and space where it’s safe to let your guard down, welcome new experiences, and follow what feels good — supported by people who love the thing they’re sharing, and who know how to guide you through the phases where sounds you don’t yet enjoy slowly become sounds you do.
This reflection sits alongside our Find Your Next Online English Teacher resources and our real-world English holidays in Scotland.
Your feeling
is in our dictionary…
Some experiences of using English are common — but rarely named.
We’ve created a small dictionary for how English feels, to help people recognise what’s happening, why it happens, and what helps.
