Shadowing Practice: If you're ambitious but lazy, please watch this... - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Do you feel like you're living life on repeat, scrolling social media, stuck in bad habits and never hitting your goals?

⏸ Paused

Speed:

219 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

Do you feel like you're living life on repeat, scrolling social media, stuck in bad habits and never hitting your goals?

Well, 10 years ago, I was making $55,000 a year, completely overwhelmed and stuck.

Today, I've co-founded a multimillion dollar business and truly lived the life that I once dreamed of.

So if you're ready to cut off the old version of yourself and build the life that you've been dreaming of, here's exactly where to start.

Decision, decision, decision.

The first and most important step to getting unstuck is to understand

that the old version of you doesn't exist anymore unless you choose to stay stuck.

You have to cut off the person that you are right now to become the person that you want to be.

So how do you actually do this?

You see, I love to look up the derivation of words and the derivation of the word decision is to cut off,

which means you're no longer the person that you were yesterday.

If you have made a decision to change, that person doesn't exist.

Imagine if your car got stolen, the next day you couldn't wake up, be able to use your old vehicle in order to get to where you're trying to go.

You'd have to come up with some different solution.

You'd have to take a bike.

You'd have to Uber.

Maybe you're walking.

You no longer have your car as your option to travel.

Now think about this as a decision for you to change your life.

If you're going to become a person who works out every single day

or a person who is a bad-ass at sales or somebody who reads books and is very well-read and articulate, all of a sudden, if you decide to be that person, you are no longer the person

that doesn't do those things person doesn't exist any longer

so you have to start making decisions as if you are

that new person because guess what you are all

because you made the decision now once you've made the decision let's make your environment easier

so if you know that you doom scroll on tick tock set a policy make it so

that moving forward you have your screen time locked on your

phone you cannot scroll on tick tock for longer than five minutes

when you make subtle changes like this to actually change your

environment you're doubling down on the decision for you not to be the old version of yourself

so your environment matters and the choices

that you need to make in order to get there really matter

and guess what they can be small little tweaks being a whole different version of you doesn't mean

that everything in your life changes but the things that matter

that you need to make progress on have to happen today

and that decision has to be now my second step to getting unstuck is to ruin myself with disappointment in me.

Disappointment is the wake up call that you have been avoiding.

Do not listen to all of those nice memes

and those fun TikToks that make you feel like you should accept yourself

and be okay with yourself the way that you are.

If you're disappointed because you know that you have more in you, you know that you could impact more people, you know you have this great potential and instead you're wasting it, be freaking disappointed.

You shouldn't feel good about yourself.

Why would you feel good about yourself?

You're not living into what is possible for you.

Once you know that you're unhappy with the way that your life looks, you can make that change.

But don't sugarcoat it.

Don't tell yourself lies that you should just love yourself the way that you are and give yourself a big hug.

Don't listen to that bullshit.

Be disappointed, accept the disappointment, and take action.

My parents used to drag me to a dinner every single year with a family friend.

And this family friend was very well educated, very well and incredibly successful, but I hated going to the dinner because he made me feel bad about myself.

The amount of news that he would read every single day would remind me that instead of reading the news, I was watching television.

The way that he would articulate questions

and his opinions would make me feel uncomfortable

because I realized I didn't have an opinion because I didn't even know what the frick he was talking about.

He was so involved in politics and what was happening in the world

and I realized I don't know the things that I could know

and that I really feel like I should know and should be part those conversations.

So after many years of dinners, I finally decided to stop lying to myself and take action.

What did I do?

I ordered The Economist.

I ordered The Wall Street Journal to show up to my house every single day.

And I became interested in the news.

I became interested in politics so that when I showed up to dinner the next year, I would actually have opinions.

You see, I didn't lie to myself saying that those things aren't important.

They were important.

That brings us to step three, which is to decide what you want your life to look like.

You cannot create the life that you want without knowing what you want.

If I'm totally honest, I entirely gave up on my goals for about three years.

I became introverted.

I just decided to be stuck in life because I felt really insecure, to be honest, and I was not confident,

and I was so terrified of what people thought of me that I just didn't want to try.

And I'll never forget flying to this conference, and I had said no to speaking at this conference because I was scared and I didn't feel confident.

But then I was sitting there in the audience realizing I'm here.

I could be participating.

I could be contributing.

But instead, my fear of public speaking, my fear of being seen, my fear of maybe people judging me or criticizing me is going to keep me on the sidelines.

And from that moment forward, I was like, I'm not going to be this person.

I refuse to be the person that doesn't have the life that they want.

And so from there, I took accountability and said, what do I want my life to look like?

And I wrote down all of my goals.

What do I want personally?

What do I want my fitness goals to be?

What do I want my family goals to be?

What kind of friends do I want to have?

Professionally, what type of mentors do I want to bring in?

What are the opportunities that I'd like to create?

And financially, how much money do I want to make?

What do I want to contribute to?

How could I make a financial impact on a charity that really matters to me?

Because if I'm not confident in myself today, and I don't feel like I can create the life that I want, I'm never going to create the impact that I could potentially make,

and I am put on this planet in order to live into my potential and I think that you are too.

So if you haven't done this already, I would pause this video

and I would take out a piece of paper

or maybe open up your notes app and I would write down your personal, professional, and financial five-year goals.

This will give you a picture of who you want to be in the future

so that you can decide to be that person today.

Step four is the most important thing you can do because you have to know for sure that you are moving forward.

Are you making progress daily?

100

That's how you get out of the rut of having this dream life, but actually feeling like you're making incremental progress.

101

You're seeing wins.

102

You're making a change.

103

One of my successful habits around this is to plan my day the night before.

104

I do not leave my office.

105

I do not leave my place of work

106

or go to bed without having a full breakdown of my calendar and where I'm spending my time the next day.

107

Make the plan the night before.

108

So when I'm going through my calendar, I'm looking at what appointments do I have?

109

What books am I reading?

110

What podcasts do I need to listen to?

111

How do I sprinkle in little pieces of future Natalie

112

and make those deposits today so

113

that I can actually get to those opportunities in the future because I'm well-read on these things, because I'm in the know on what's happening in the spaces that I'm interested in going into,

114

the progress you choose to make every single day is what changes things.

115

It is not these big steps.

116

It is the tiny incremental steps that you make every single day

117

that change the trajectory of your life to create the life that you've always wanted.

118

And my hack for this is to actually graph the things that are the most important to me.

119

Because if I can see on a graph that I'm getting more hours of sleep every single night, that I am working out consistently and that my muscle mass is increasing

120

or if i can see

121

that i'm actually making more money month over month all of a sudden i feel better about the growth

122

because i can see it moving up but if you aren't graphing

123

and you aren't paying attention to those movements every day you're gonna feel like you're not getting any closer

124

and you're gonna go back into your rut

125

so measuring the handful of things

126

that matter to you changes everything step five is one of my favorites

127

and i don't hear people talking about this wherever you're currently spending your time stop spending your time there.

128

If you're in a rut, the easiest way to get unstuck in your life is to get out of your house.

129

Your environment dictates the way that you feel.

130

So you're watching a video right now about how to get unstuck.

131

If you're feeling stuck, that means that you shouldn't stay in the environment where you are stuck.

132

Your environment can be the type of social media that you interact with.

133

Your environment can be the friends that you hang out with, the information that you're reading.

134

Get out of your house.

135

Get out of those places where you feel stuck and do that immediately.

136

If you're watching this in a place where you don't feel great, leave the place that you're currently in.

137

And getting out of your house is one of the most effective things.

138

When you get out of your house, it means that you have to be around other people.

139

Back when I was in college, and I would really feel caved in, I would do my homework in my bed.

140

I felt like I was just grinding and that there was no end in sight.

141

My life was always going to suck.

142

I would go and study at a Starbucks.

143

And later on, I learned that the best place to study was actually a hotel lobby

144

because you were just in a different environment.

145

It was a different groove.

146

I just felt better about myself.

147

I put on a different outfit, I made my makeup a little bit nicer, and I felt like I was in a place

148

like the places

149

that I wanted to be in the future instead of physically being in the place where I currently feel stuck.

150

So think of ways that you could change your environment.

151

If you currently study at your house, could you study in a library?

152

If you currently work in a space with a co-worker that you can't stand, could you ask your manager to move?

153

There are creative ways to change your environment, and your environment is everything.

154

Step six is to realize that entertainment disguised as education is why you're not making progress.

155

If you watch a bunch of these videos and you never do anything after them,

156

you have just substituted traditional entertainment via TikTok or Netflix with education that you're using as entertainment.

157

And I am a huge culprit of this.

158

I will never forget when I needed some motivation.

159

It was back when I was in high school.

160

I had to study for this big AP exam.

161

I was going to watch this movie about this inspirational story of this woman who had this incredible gymnastics career.

162

In my mind, I was thinking I was being productive or I was learning something, learning how to overcome and how to have grit.

163

Really, I was just being educated.

164

Back in the day, I didn't have YouTube, but today I see people doing this constantly where they will

165

just binge watch all of these videos on how to launch an effective marketing campaign, how to grow on social media, how to make more money.

166

And they feel better because instead of just watching mindless reality television, at least they're learning something, but they're not pairing the learning of something with the doing of something.

167

This can lead to you feeling like you're making progress when really you're not.

168

So here's my rule of thumb.

169

Whenever I'm watching, reading, or listening to something, I have to actually do something immediately afterwards.

170

I can't just go to the next video, to the next podcast, find the next guru.

171

You will not have a better life.

172

You will not get unstuck from your rut if you just go to Natalie's next video, although you should go to my next video, but that's not gonna really help you.

173

And I'm here to actually help you.

174

So what can you do right now that would make a change?

175

If I was you, I would take my laptop

176

or I would take my phone and I would get out of my house

177

and I would go set up shop in a coffee shop or in some awesome swanky hotel lobby.

178

That is how you implement and you make a change so that you're actually making progress instead of just being edutained.

179

Next up is number seven, which is to separate yourself from people who don't support you.

180

You can take a break from people holding you back and it doesn't have to be a breakup.

181

This is a lesson that my mom taught me.

182

She would tell me about the boyfriends that she would break up with, but they didn't know that she broke up with them.

183

And I was like, mom, how did you do this?

184

She said, I would just create slow and subtle distance.

185

Instead of having this big fight that created all this emotion, I would subtly become more

186

and more busy to the point where it just didn't make sense for us to be together any longer

187

because I already had this new life with things

188

that I was passionate about and they were still doing what they were doing before.

189

We didn't have some massive breakup, but it was obvious to both parties that there was no longer alignment.

190

This is the best way to create separation from your friends.

191

Now here's the deal with this.

192

Don't make other people wrong.

193

Don't have some big emotional blow up.

194

Just separate yourself and start being so busy working on yourself, doing things that are creating the life that you want that you no longer have the time that you used to have.

195

If you have friends who you like to party with and go out with on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights, just have other things to do that you can't move.

196

Whatever it is that you're trying to create, make time to do those things in the time

197

that you spend with people who aren't helping you get closer to your goals.

198

This is where I go back to looking at my calendar

199

and I cancel anything that is not helping me get out of the rut that I'm in.

200

There is no party that you can go to.

201

There is no lunch that you can go to.

202

There is no coffee that you can go to with your friend that is going to make you feel better about yourself.

203

Again, it's not to make them bad and it's not to make them wrong.

204

It's just to say, I no longer have time to talk about my current life

205

because I have to go do things

206

and spend time building a new version of my life

207

and I can't live my old life while building the new version of my life.

208

That brings us to our final step in getting unstuck, which is step number eight, just say no. You have to say no to anything that doesn't align with your goals.

209

I used to make up errands that I had to run.

210

Instead of spending Saturday actually learning a new skill and investing in myself to make progress, I would come up with this list of all of these things that I had to do.

211

I have to go get my nails done.

212

I have to go to Target.

213

I have to eat lunch.

214

I just created all of these things that I had to do when really I didn't have to do any of them.

215

So sometimes saying no isn't saying no to somebody else.

216

It's actually saying no to the habits and the routines and the things that you tell yourself you have to do,

217

but they're really distractions just taking you away from the things that you actually have to do.

218

If you're not making progress on the real things that you need to do, you have to reevaluate the things that you have to do and start saying no to yourself.

219

If you're ready to take this even further, watch my video on how to create your dream life and start making it a reality.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

☕ Buy us a coffee

ShadowingEnglish remains 100% free thanks to your support. Server and AI costs are high — your coffee keeps us going! 🙏

Donate via PayPal

ShadowingEnglish.com – English Shadowing Practice

Speak English fluently using the Shadowing technique. Listen to native YouTube videos, repeat sentence by sentence, and build real pronunciation and fluency — used by IELTS learners worldwide.

Shadowing Practice: If you're ambitious but lazy, please watch this... - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing Practice: If you're ambitious but lazy, please watch this... - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

Download App

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?