New Year Resolution – Learn Chinese
The period between Christmas and New Year provides us with a rare opportunity to step back from the hustle and bustle of everyday life, reflect on the past twelve months and look ahead to the coming year. It’s also a time when many of us make plans and set a resolution for the year ahead.
New Year’s resolutions get a pretty bad rap and many people consider them little more than a quaint New Year tradition. Considering that 80% of people fail to achieve their New Year’s resolutions, it’s little wonder so many people don’t take them seriously. But the truth is that setting a meaningful goal for the year ahead is an effective way to enhance our personal development and ensure our lives are developing in a positive direction.
The reason that so many people’s resolutions fail is that their goals are too vague, or their ambitions are truly unrealistic – start dating supermodels, get abs like the Rock . To have any hope of succeeding, a New Year resolution needs to be ‘SMART’ – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound.https://www.youtube.com/embed/fS1nN0wiFHk
According to research from the US, the most popular New Year’s resolutions are about health, with half of people’s New Year goals being to exercise more (the most common resolution) , lose weight, eat more healthily and drink less alcohol.
While the most common New Year’s resolutions focus on improving physical health, one of the other most popular resolutions is learning a new language, and if you’re going to learn a new language you really should choose Mandarin Chinese. After all, if you’re going to invest time in learning a new language, you’d do well to choose the language spoken by over 20% of the world’s population!https://www.youtube.com/embed/SVMhaj1zhD4
Learning a new language is an excellent New Year’s resolution for so many reasons.
Firstly, learning a language is a very effective way of ensuring good mental health. The brain is like a muscle, and language learning is excellent exercise for the brain . Learn to speak Chinese and you’ll improve your memory, decision making skills, cognitive abilities and protect your mind from mental decline . You’ll be smarter, sharper and more interesting.
Secondly, there can be plenty of financial benefits from learning Chinese. Mastering a second language can open many opportunities to earn more money and most business analysts agree China looks set to be the dominating trading force of the 21st Century. Companies across the world are searching for employees that can communicate in Chinese and understand Chinese etiquette. From international corporations to start-ups to small private business, more and more employers value bilingual employees who have cultural understanding of the countries they trade with.
As the Chinese market becomes the target for more and more organisations, demand for employees with these skills is creating plenty of lucrative placements. Spend some time learning Chinese in 2020 and the chances are you’ll be reaping the financial rewards for many years to come.https://www.youtube.com/embed/kUnw3ppZxtI
Not only will learning Chinese advance your career and develop your cognitive skills, but it will also provide personal development, making you a more global citizen and enabling you to develop new relationships, and potentially make 1.28 billion new friends!
Take the next step towards developing your potentially, couldn’t be easier, simply check out the Domino Chinese ‘Introduction to Chinese’ course – it’s fun and completely free .