To become a linguist you must overcome the different forms of resistance to language learning. It may take a personal relationship or sudden positive experience to break down this mental block to learning a new culture.
I remember an incident in Japan twenty years ago. I was selling lumber for a major Canadian exporter. We were having trouble getting our sawmills to produce the quality that the Japanese customers wanted. We arranged for our senior quality supervisor to come to Japan in order to better understand the customers' needs. The first days were a disaster. Our man was from a small town in Canada and had worked at lumber grading and quality for his whole life. He had definite views on how lumber should be graded, and believed that it was not a matter of adjusting our sawmills' standards to the needs of the customers, but of showing the customers why they were wrong! In other words, our senior grader had a closed mind when it came to understanding the views of our customers.
One evening we went out on the town for a few drinks. We went to one of the bars in Japan where young ladies provide entertainment in the form of flattery and idle chit-chat. One pretty hostess asked our senior grader if he spoke Japanese. He gave her an intense star-struck gaze and answered, "No, but I can learn." He had a delightful evening at that bar.
From the next day, he started to see the Japanese customers' point of view and we were able to develop a new and successful Japanese lumber grade. This is the kind of event that should happen to every learner in order to soften resistance and increase interest in a language. The best opportunity to break down resistance to a new language is to make a friend in that language.
There are others who want to learn a new language and do not resist the new language. Yet they do not become linguists. They have another problem. They are afraid to make mistakes. These people put pressure on themselves to achieve accuracy or perfection at a stage when they have no feel for the language, and cannot visualize themselves comfortably using it. This is counterproductive and inhibits their ability to communicate by making them self-conscious. If you are willing to communicate at your level, even imperfectly, you will start to gain the confidence and the motivation to improve. Pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary can then be learned naturally, when the time is right.
By communicating and making mistakes I was able to learn and improve. Roughly forty years ago, in a university class in France, I was making an oral presentation. When I wanted to say the word "responsible", I said it with an "i" as in English, instead of "responsable" with an "a" as in French. Every time I pronounced it wrong there was laughter in the room. Only later did I realize that people were laughing at my mispronunciation. But it did not bother me that people were laughing at me. I was totally involved in giving my presentation and in getting my meaning across. I ignored the reason for everyone's laughter until later. But their laughter helped me. Now I never make that mistake.
Try to free yourself from the desire to achieve perfection, which is vanity and will hinder your progress. Instead, seek to communicate naturally and enjoy yourself. Your improvement will be constant although uneven. You must believe that you have the ability to communicate in the new language and that by following the correct method you will achieve your goals. Just as in sports, confidence is an important ingredient for success.
In a very useful book about golf, Robert J. Rotella deals not with the techniques of golfing, but with developing the necessary attitude. The book is called Golf is Not a Game of Perfect. In golf, trying to be perfect undermines your enjoyment and your confidence, and therefore leads to poor performance. The same is true, if not more so, in language learning. To improve in golf it is important to practice, but it is critical to get out and enjoy the game regardless of your score. It is pointless to spend the whole time on the practice range.
To be a linguist you have to enjoy communicating in a new language for its own sake, regardless of your level. Do not spend your time in a vain attempt to master the language from grammar rules and word lists. You will not enjoy this tedious form of study, and it will not work.
