Forwarded from Christen writes
So, it's time to tell you what happened after I received my first 7.0. Finally! 😊
To understand the story, you need to realise one thing: back then, a 7.0 was a big deal.
At least where I lived.
Most students at the learning centre where I studied scored around 5.5 or 6.0. Even my English teacher, who had completed his Master's degree in the US, had 7.5.
So when I saw that seven on my Test Report Form, I genuinely felt that I had reached the summit.🥸
Ironically, that was exactly the moment I stopped focusing on English.
Instead, I started learning German and, later, French.
English never really left me, though. It simply found itself a new job.🌟 🌟
Whenever I learnt new German words, I translated them into English first. I wrote their definitions in English. I even learnt German grammar through English.
Because my major was English, I also began reading about linguistics, phonetics, and language acquisition in English, even though most of our classes were taught in Russian. It simply felt more natural.
Then came the pandemic.🐻
For many people, it was the beginning of endless scrolling.
For me, oddly enough, it became the beginning of reading novels in English.That was when l made myself a promise: from now on, every book I read would be in English.
Two years passed.
Then I needed IELTS again to apply for a university in Europe.
I had about two weeks to prepare.
I completed a few practice tests, walked into the exam, and received an overall band 8.0.
No, it wasn't magic.
And no, I'm not suggesting that IELTS preparation is unnecessary.
What I am saying is this: for those years, I barely touched an IELTS book. My score improved because I spent those years actively engaging with the language instead of constantly preparing for the test.
Without realising it, I had stopped treating English as a subject and started using it as a tool—for learning, communicating, and exploring other interests.
🌟 So, if I were to give one piece of advice to every young learner, it would be this:
Love, peace🌟
#christenwrites🌟
#sixseven
To understand the story, you need to realise one thing: back then, a 7.0 was a big deal.
At least where I lived.
Most students at the learning centre where I studied scored around 5.5 or 6.0. Even my English teacher, who had completed his Master's degree in the US, had 7.5.
So when I saw that seven on my Test Report Form, I genuinely felt that I had reached the summit.
Ironically, that was exactly the moment I stopped focusing on English.
Instead, I started learning German and, later, French.
English never really left me, though. It simply found itself a new job.
Whenever I learnt new German words, I translated them into English first. I wrote their definitions in English. I even learnt German grammar through English.
Because my major was English, I also began reading about linguistics, phonetics, and language acquisition in English, even though most of our classes were taught in Russian. It simply felt more natural.
Then came the pandemic.
For many people, it was the beginning of endless scrolling.
For me, oddly enough, it became the beginning of reading novels in English.That was when l made myself a promise: from now on, every book I read would be in English.
Two years passed.
Then I needed IELTS again to apply for a university in Europe.
I had about two weeks to prepare.
I completed a few practice tests, walked into the exam, and received an overall band 8.0.
🌟 Listening: 7.5 → 8.5🌟 Speaking: 6.5 → 7.0🌟 Writing: 6.0 → 7.0
No, it wasn't magic.
And no, I'm not suggesting that IELTS preparation is unnecessary.
What I am saying is this: for those years, I barely touched an IELTS book. My score improved because I spent those years actively engaging with the language instead of constantly preparing for the test.
Without realising it, I had stopped treating English as a subject and started using it as a tool—for learning, communicating, and exploring other interests.
Don't let IELTS become your world.
It is an important exam, but it is still just an exam. English is infinitely bigger than any test can ever measure.
Read books.
Listen to people.
Fall in love with ideas.
Learn new skills.
Use English to explore the world—not just to pass through an exam.
Love, peace
#christenwrites
#sixseven
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❤9💯3🆒3
Forwarded from Ad Astra School
#results #nine #alhamdulillah #2026 IDP 17/June2026 #twenty_six
Shirina Xamroyeva
Ad Astra is proud to have her on board
Our destination is clear: TO THE STARS⭐️
@alisherposts⚡️
@ad_astra_school🕺
Shirina Xamroyeva
Ad Astra is proud to have her on board
Our destination is clear: TO THE STARS
@alisherposts
@ad_astra_school
Please open Telegram to view this post
VIEW IN TELEGRAM
❤8😭2🆒1
Key Takeaways & Communication Principles:
• The 5 Rules for Masterful Communication (1:53:18):
1. Authenticity: Presence is the highest form of authenticity (0:07, 1:41:15).
2. Reduce Distractions: Minimize phone use and environmental noise to foster true connection (1:07:00, 2:00:15).
3. Stop Over-explaining: Be a "well" rather than a "waterfall"; hold your knowledge confidently (2:04:12).
4. Handle Sadness: Know how to support people through grief and difficult times with specific, genuine gestures (2:17:31).
5. Handle Narcissists/Gaslighters: Maintain emotional control and expose manipulators by staying unbothered (0:32, 42:42).
• Conflict Resolution:
• Repairing Relationships: Most relationships suffer from a lack of "repair" after small, overlooked moments of conflict (1:07). Focus on validating the other person's needs—to feel heard and safe—before pushing your own agenda (1:02:42).
• The Power of Pausing: Taking a few seconds to think before responding can de-escalate tension and establish leadership (2:07:58).
• Energy Checking: Be open about your current emotional capacity with partners; it is better to express you have "10%" in the tank than to force a conversation while depleted (2:34:10).
• Leadership and Impression Management:
• Presence is Key: Whether at a meet-and-greet or in the workplace, giving someone your full, undivided attention is the most valuable gift you can offer (1:36:57, 1:42:00).
• Small Details Matter: Acknowledging everyone in a room, including support staff or juniors, builds a reputation of humility and respect (1:45:00).
• The 'Useless Absurdity' Shortcut: Small, specific, and memorable actions (like learning a name or sharing a specific kindness) serve as shortcuts that define your character to others (1:46:13).
• The 5 Rules for Masterful Communication (1:53:18):
1. Authenticity: Presence is the highest form of authenticity (0:07, 1:41:15).
2. Reduce Distractions: Minimize phone use and environmental noise to foster true connection (1:07:00, 2:00:15).
3. Stop Over-explaining: Be a "well" rather than a "waterfall"; hold your knowledge confidently (2:04:12).
4. Handle Sadness: Know how to support people through grief and difficult times with specific, genuine gestures (2:17:31).
5. Handle Narcissists/Gaslighters: Maintain emotional control and expose manipulators by staying unbothered (0:32, 42:42).
• Conflict Resolution:
• Repairing Relationships: Most relationships suffer from a lack of "repair" after small, overlooked moments of conflict (1:07). Focus on validating the other person's needs—to feel heard and safe—before pushing your own agenda (1:02:42).
• The Power of Pausing: Taking a few seconds to think before responding can de-escalate tension and establish leadership (2:07:58).
• Energy Checking: Be open about your current emotional capacity with partners; it is better to express you have "10%" in the tank than to force a conversation while depleted (2:34:10).
• Leadership and Impression Management:
• Presence is Key: Whether at a meet-and-greet or in the workplace, giving someone your full, undivided attention is the most valuable gift you can offer (1:36:57, 1:42:00).
• Small Details Matter: Acknowledging everyone in a room, including support staff or juniors, builds a reputation of humility and respect (1:45:00).
• The 'Useless Absurdity' Shortcut: Small, specific, and memorable actions (like learning a name or sharing a specific kindness) serve as shortcuts that define your character to others (1:46:13).
❤4🆒4💯3
Forwarded from Seraphine (Dilyora)
Always performative. Do you even feel anything, like deep, deep inside?
There is one truth about human beings that we rarely talk about:
pain has a remarkable ability to rewrite reality.
When we are deeply hurt, we do not merely experience sadness. We begin to interpret the entire world through the wound itself. Every smile looks like betrayal. Every new beginning feels like a personal attack. Every moment of someone else’s happiness somehow becomes evidence that our suffering has been ignored. The mind, desperately trying to protect the heart, starts creating stories that make the pain feel justified.
This is one of the reasons why hatred so often appears where love once lived. Unresolved grief slowly transformed into resentment. It is a painful process to witness, especially when you are on the receiving end of it.
One day, someone who once admired your light begins criticizing the very qualities they used to celebrate. The laughter they once loved becomes “attention-seeking”.. your confidence - “arrogance”. Your healing becomes “pretending”. The people who support you become “bad influences”. Your joy becomes “performance”..
Nothing about you may have fundamentally changed. The lens through which they see you has.
That distinction matters more than most people realize.
Psychology has long described the way emotional states influence perception. We are not objective observers of reality. We are interpreters of it. And our interpretations are heavily colored by our emotional experiences. When someone carries unresolved heartbreak, disappointment, rejection, or shame, those emotions quietly become filters. Without realizing it, they begin assigning intentions to other people’s actions that may have very little to do with reality.
A photograph is no longer just a photograph.
It becomes a message.
A bouquet is no longer simply flowers.
It becomes a provocation.
Silence becomes manipulation.
Moving forward becomes betrayal.
Happiness becomes disrespect.
This is not because the events themselves carry those meanings, they actually rarely do, but because pain deserately searches for explanations that preserve its own narrative.
It is often easier to believe that someone is trying to hurt us than to accept the heartbreaking possibility that they have simply continued living…
Perhaps one of the hardest lessons adulthood teaches is that another person’s interpretation of our actions does not automatically become the truth about our intentions.
Intentions belong to the person acting. Interpretations belong to the person observing.
The two are not the same.
And yet, we frequently confuse them.
How many arguments begin with “You did that because…”? How many relationships slowly fall apart because people stop asking questions and start assuming motives?
Curiosity disappears. Certainty takes its place.
But certainty without understanding is often nothing more than imagination wearing the mask of confidence. When we are hurting, certainty feels safer than curiosity.
Curiosity leaves room for uncertainty. Curiosity requires vulnerability.
It asks us to consider the uncomfortable possibility that maybe the other person’s life is not actually revolving around us… because in reality it rarely is. Maybe they posted that picture because they genuinely felt grateful, they met someone new because life continued moving forward.
Maybe their healing has nothing to do with humiliating us.
Pain rarely likes those explanations. It prefers stories where it remains at the center. This is simply one of the ways the human mind attempts to survive emotional loss. Unfortunately, survival strategies are not always healthy relationship strategies..
There is another subtle shift that often happens when someone becomes consumed by unresolved pain.
Instead of expressing their feelings, they begin explaining yours.
pain has a remarkable ability to rewrite reality.
When we are deeply hurt, we do not merely experience sadness. We begin to interpret the entire world through the wound itself. Every smile looks like betrayal. Every new beginning feels like a personal attack. Every moment of someone else’s happiness somehow becomes evidence that our suffering has been ignored. The mind, desperately trying to protect the heart, starts creating stories that make the pain feel justified.
This is one of the reasons why hatred so often appears where love once lived. Unresolved grief slowly transformed into resentment. It is a painful process to witness, especially when you are on the receiving end of it.
One day, someone who once admired your light begins criticizing the very qualities they used to celebrate. The laughter they once loved becomes “attention-seeking”.. your confidence - “arrogance”. Your healing becomes “pretending”. The people who support you become “bad influences”. Your joy becomes “performance”..
Nothing about you may have fundamentally changed. The lens through which they see you has.
That distinction matters more than most people realize.
Psychology has long described the way emotional states influence perception. We are not objective observers of reality. We are interpreters of it. And our interpretations are heavily colored by our emotional experiences. When someone carries unresolved heartbreak, disappointment, rejection, or shame, those emotions quietly become filters. Without realizing it, they begin assigning intentions to other people’s actions that may have very little to do with reality.
A photograph is no longer just a photograph.
It becomes a message.
A bouquet is no longer simply flowers.
It becomes a provocation.
Silence becomes manipulation.
Moving forward becomes betrayal.
Happiness becomes disrespect.
This is not because the events themselves carry those meanings, they actually rarely do, but because pain deserately searches for explanations that preserve its own narrative.
It is often easier to believe that someone is trying to hurt us than to accept the heartbreaking possibility that they have simply continued living…
Perhaps one of the hardest lessons adulthood teaches is that another person’s interpretation of our actions does not automatically become the truth about our intentions.
Intentions belong to the person acting. Interpretations belong to the person observing.
The two are not the same.
And yet, we frequently confuse them.
How many arguments begin with “You did that because…”? How many relationships slowly fall apart because people stop asking questions and start assuming motives?
Curiosity disappears. Certainty takes its place.
But certainty without understanding is often nothing more than imagination wearing the mask of confidence. When we are hurting, certainty feels safer than curiosity.
Curiosity leaves room for uncertainty. Curiosity requires vulnerability.
It asks us to consider the uncomfortable possibility that maybe the other person’s life is not actually revolving around us… because in reality it rarely is. Maybe they posted that picture because they genuinely felt grateful, they met someone new because life continued moving forward.
Maybe their healing has nothing to do with humiliating us.
Pain rarely likes those explanations. It prefers stories where it remains at the center. This is simply one of the ways the human mind attempts to survive emotional loss. Unfortunately, survival strategies are not always healthy relationship strategies..
There is another subtle shift that often happens when someone becomes consumed by unresolved pain.
Instead of expressing their feelings, they begin explaining yours.
❤5💯3💔2🆒1
Forwarded from Seraphine (Dilyora)
I’ve heard so many girls cut or change their hair as a way of coping with their inner storms.
They say hair holds memories—fragments of who we were. But in my case, it’s never quite been like that.
I have a terrible memory, honestly.
A good nap, a day or two off, and I somehow move on. I keep going.
Life, for all its mess, has never waited for me to fall apart.
Still, what people often fail to recognize is that our struggles—those silent battles—have shaped us in ways we rarely give ourselves credit for. They’ve carved depth into us, softened the rough edges. That’s where my kindness comes from. Which I am severely insecure about — I care.
That’s why my heart is tender. That’s why I can cry with you when you speak of pain, and laugh with you like the world hasn’t hurt us both. That’s why I can joke about myself in the darkest, most sarcastic ways—because I’ve survived enough to make light of the shadows.
And no, we never really know what tomorrow holds.
But I believe—deep down—that life still has something waiting for you, even when it feels like you’ve lost everything.
It doesn’t just stop there.
At least you have your mom, right?
As for my hair… yes, it’s often the casualty.
When I’m hurting, it becomes the target—because who else can I wound when I’m the one bleeding?
They say hair holds memories—fragments of who we were. But in my case, it’s never quite been like that.
I have a terrible memory, honestly.
A good nap, a day or two off, and I somehow move on. I keep going.
Life, for all its mess, has never waited for me to fall apart.
Still, what people often fail to recognize is that our struggles—those silent battles—have shaped us in ways we rarely give ourselves credit for. They’ve carved depth into us, softened the rough edges. That’s where my kindness comes from. Which I am severely insecure about — I care.
That’s why my heart is tender. That’s why I can cry with you when you speak of pain, and laugh with you like the world hasn’t hurt us both. That’s why I can joke about myself in the darkest, most sarcastic ways—because I’ve survived enough to make light of the shadows.
And no, we never really know what tomorrow holds.
But I believe—deep down—that life still has something waiting for you, even when it feels like you’ve lost everything.
It doesn’t just stop there.
At least you have your mom, right?
As for my hair… yes, it’s often the casualty.
When I’m hurting, it becomes the target—because who else can I wound when I’m the one bleeding?
❤5💯2🕊1🆒1