Living Your Best Bilingual Life...in the time of COVID-19

This is me, living my best bilingual life in unexpected ways in 2020.

This past week, I created my new, 4-Step Guide to Living Your Best Bilingual Life: the four essential steps to reaching your desired level of fluency in a second language, and how to apply the same concepts to live your best life in both your first and second languages. [ICYMI, you can get it here!]

Over time, my business and my brand have evolved.

I went backpacking with an old friend in Desolation Wilderness near South Lake Tahoe this last weekend (literally, I was out of reception in the middle of the woods as the last step of my guide went out to my email subscribers), and we talked about the importance of always learning. She said that even though she doesn’t have her “dream job”, she’s happy as long as she feels like she’s learning something. I agreed with her. I’ve long felt that learning is the antidote to aging. Having a learning mindset opens you up to so many good things: new knowledge, building compassion, more empathy, not to mention really hearing what someone else says.

Learning is part of the job as an entrepreneur and business owner. It has to be, as long as I’m asking the question, “how can I do this better? How can I serve my students better?”

Constantly learning leads to constantly evolving.

When I first started my business, I envisioned a language school, where I would hire multiple teachers of other languages, open multiple locations, and enroll adult students in in-person classes.

As I learned from my students how special their relationship to me as their teacher was, I realized that I was my brand in a way that no other teacher could ever be.

After I started offering hybrid classes online and in-person, I learned how much the flexibility of online courses contributed to my students’ success.

Finally, the more I worked with a coach on my own mindset, I learned that the kind of impact I wanted to have on my students’ lives wasn’t just that of a teacher. It was that of a coach - a person who could challenge them to use the language learning process to transform their lives!

I rebranded from ACT Language Schools to Nikki Bannister Language Coaching, and I took my business - all of my courses and coaching sessions - 100% online.

This iteration of my brand was so much more in line with my goals. It reflected the personal relationship aspect of our special student-teacher relationship. It elevated my title from that of a teacher in a school to that of a coach. It allowed me to work from anywhere and share my love of travel and culture with my students in real time.

And yet…it needed to evolve more.

I realized I was attracting students who wanted to improve their fluency in their second language, when what I really want to offer was a transformative coaching experience.

Finally, with my 4-Step Guide to Living Your Best Bilingual Life, I found a way to happily marry my two lines of work and offer it to new students: a way to reach your language goals, and how to apply the work on a deeper, whole-life level.

Then, two days after I sent the last step of the guide out to the NBLC eCommunity, disaster struck: lightning and thunder storms lit up California in the midst of a record August heat-wave and sparked myriad fires across the state.

On top of the coronavirus pandemic, ongoing calls for racial justice and reform, and an emotional presidential election, 2020 had brought us devastating wildfires, evacuations, and power outages, months ahead of “schedule.”

Around me, I heard people say, “Nothing can surprise me anymore.” A friend told me she was ready to drive 20+ hours across multiple state lines just to get away from what she saw as “the cherry on top, but in a bad way.”

I realized the evolution needed to continue, because how can we talk about living your ‘best bilingual life’ in the midst of the sh*tstorm that is 2020?!

This year has not been like any other. While nothing may ever truly be "normal", that doesn't keep us from having certain expectations about our immediate future in terms of our jobs, relationships, health, income, housing, weather and natural disasters, government, etc. This year, many of us received surprises in one or more of those areas.

How can we talk about living our best lives - in any language - when things are so not at their best right now?!

Let me be the first to raise my hand and say, living my best bilingual life looks a whole lot different now than I thought it would.

Instead of traveling internationally for weeks on end...I went camping for a few days at a time.

Instead of riding high and preaching a message of positivity all the time...my mental health and energy took several dips.

Instead of budgeting a monthly massage, esthetician appointment and gym classes...my self-care looks like pounding the pavement and escaping for the weekend to the woods with 40 extra pounds on my back and bathing in an alpine lake (see photo above).

But as I say in Step #4 of Living Your Best Bilingual Life, living your best life doesn't mean having everything you ever wanted. It doesn't mean having control over your circumstances.

It means experiencing everything you have to the fullest.

It means controlling your reaction to your circumstances.

It means enjoying every step of the journey, not the final destination.

I certainly won't tell you what action is right for you to take. As a coach, that's not my job. My job is to ask you the right questions to help you discover that for yourself.

I'm here to offer you the opportunity to work more closely with me to create your best bilingual life in 2020.

How you follow the four steps and find meaningful input, maintain your motivation, and put it all into practice may look different from how I do it, and from how the next person does it. It's your best bilingual life, after all.

The important thing is that you know it's possible.

Even in 2020. Especially in 2020.

I'm here to show you how. Come on a language journey with me.

Your language coach,