I realized today that it’s been a long time since I’ve tried to take on any challenges. It’s time that changed.

I have always been a voracious reader. When I walked into a library or bookstore as a kid I started drooling like a 400 pound man in a Golden Corral. By the time I was around 6 years old I had devoured every single book my parents had given me and Mom was forced to surrender her sizable Stephen King collection – by 7 I’d finished them all.

I remember the very first book report I ever delivered in school. The kid before me had just rocked his presentation of Green Eggs and Ham. As he passed me on the way to his seat he allowed himself a smug little smirk in my direction – he knew that’d be a tough act to follow.

I gathered my things and strolled to the front of the room. Turning to the class I unveiled my visual aid with a flourish, a posterboard Crayola marker drawing of a viking beheading a cannibal in battle. Eyes visibly widened as they took it in. I quietly cleared my throat.

“My book report will be on Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crighton,” I explained.

The look on the teacher’s face was fantastic.

Developing a new habit is difficult.

Okay, so that’s not entirely true. Let me rephrase that a bit. Developing a good habit is difficult.

It’s easy to develop bad habits. We do it all the time. People get in the habit of hitting the snooze on their alarm clock and curling back into oblivion. They get in the habit of spending their evenings mesmerized by a flickering television while mindlessly cramming snacks into their faces. They don’t usually get in the habit of eating healthy, working out, or spending a little time everyday learning something new.

Why is that? Let’s take a look.

There are a lot of opinions out there on how to learn a second (or third, or fourth) language. While there are likely some that are a bit more misguided than they are helpful, for the most part they’re all valid as long as they help you reach your goal. In all my time researching languages, studying all the ways people acquire languages, talking to successful polyglots and becoming one myself, I’ve noticed a common thread that runs alongside all the success stories – including my own.

The common denominator was that regardless of the learning methods people used, all of them adhered in one way or another to these six key principles. No matter what your personal study method is applying these six pieces of advice will go a long way to making you another one of the success stories.

Benny the Irish Polyglot from over at Fluent in 3 Months has just announced a new, free, open-source tool called Learning With Texts or LWT. I could explain exactly what it is, but Benny does it better, so go ahead and check out the demo video below.

“Don’t think. Feel. It is like a finger pointing out to the Moon, don’t concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.” – Bruce Lee

It might surprise some to learn that, in addition to arguably being the greatest martial artist that ever lived, Bruce Lee was a philosophy major. His writings, heavily reflecting both his love of martial arts and his love of philosophy, are widely regarded as some of the best on martial philosophy. However, for some reason people often fail to see the applications outside of martial arts.

So what other areas of life can we apply this to?