Shadowing Practice: Is Ambition a Burden? | English Podcast - Learn English Speaking with Video

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my friend moved out of our flat the other week and i'd lived with him for four and a half years

and the night before he moved out we went for dinner me him

and the two other people who i lived with

and we were talking about how different our lives were four

and a half years ago and we were talking about the things

that we were doing you know what's changed

and what's stayed the same as well

and then we started talking about where do we want our lives to be in four

and a half years from now what do we want to be the same what do we want to change

and we started talking about

what do we want right

and we started talking about things like our careers our relationships with our friends

and our family our physical health new experiences that we wanted to have

and we started talking about all of these things

and we also talked about whether

or not we had kind of figured out what exactly we wanted to do in life yet

and I think you know I'm 29 I think

it's quite a common thing to be thinking about in your late 20s

you know you have some people who have a clear idea

about what they want to be doing in their life you know where they want to go

and you have other people who are still figuring it out

and I think that's quite a common part of being in your late 20s

but as we were talking about all of these things as

we were talking about you know what we wanted from our

careers our relationships physical health all of this my friend talked about how like how tiring it sounded

and it's something

that I've thought about a lot in my 20s is this idea of is ambition a burden

now I understand like I have a good job and I'm fortunate

that I can afford to live comfortably because of my job

and it means that I can think about what else do I want

so it's a good position to be in but it's interesting

because how much ambition is too much ambition and you know

and when does ambition become a burden

and a burden is in english a burden can be a physical burden like a literal like let's say

this bag was very heavy this would be a physical burden it would be something

that is weighing me down but it can also be used in a metaphorical sense

so you can have a mental burden or an emotional burden

which is when you have a lot on your mind

and it makes your life a bit more difficult

and I want to be clear

when I talk about ambition I don't mean just making loads of money I think a lot of people

when they talk about ambition

or they think about ambitious people you might think of someone who has their own business

or someone who works for a big company and wants to make loads of money.

I'm talking about ambition for wanting lots out of life.

That's what I mean by ambition, wanting lots of different things,

wanting to have lots of different experiences. Is that a burden?

Because when we were talking about these things, like we were talking about a lot of things like lots of different areas of life career family

and friends because wanting good relationships it takes a lot of effort it takes a lot of time

and all of these things take a lot of time whether that's you want a specific career

you want to be in really good physical shape all of these things take time

and when you're working eight hours a day like is wanting all of this too much?

Does it make your life too difficult?

Because living slowly is something that I think lots of people want to do more

because who doesn't like a slow walk in the park in the morning

or reading or sitting down and reading a really good book for a long time?

Who doesn't want these things?

And I think ironically

it's actually what motivates people to work really hard in their 20s a lot of people will say

I'm going to work so hard in my 20s

and make loads of money so that I can relax

when I'm older and I can slow down when I'm older

and I like to do lots of things with my time

I have a full -time job I have a YouTube channel I'm learning Spanish

I like to hang out with my friends I like to see my family I try to keep in good shape

and then on top of

that it's like what do I like to do to relax I like to watch films

and just saying it out loud like it's a lot of things it really is a lot of things

and a lot of people have a lot of interests

and people who I speak to often speak about the same

thing like it's really hard to fit all of these things into your day

and it can be stressful wanting to do

so many things can be really stressful like for example

if I wake up in the morning often in morning is

when I try to sit down and do my Spanish

or listen to Spanish and I try to do two hours a day

which is a lot and if I wake up late for example

and I don't do a lot of Spanish in the morning this has a knock -on effect

and a knock -on effect in English is when something happens

that impacts not only the activity that you're doing

but it then has an impact on the rest of your day on your next activity

because for me that might make me more stressed

because I've realized I haven't done as much Spanish in the morning as I would have liked to have done

I'm going to have to do that at a different point during my day

and that's going to take time away from me where I could be doing something else

so that's a knock -on effect and I think having ambition

and wanting to do lots of things can mean it's it's quite easy for this to happen

because if you're trying to do too many things it's easier for something to to go wrong

or for you to not do what you wanted to do

and wanting to do lots of things can be quite mentally tiring as well

because it's harder to just focus on what you're doing

if you have so many other things that you also want to be doing throughout the day.

For example if I'm in the gym

and I still want to do I don't know an hour of Spanish

when I get home it's hard for me to fully be present in what I'm doing

when I'm also trying to plan what I'm going to be doing afterwards

and I think

if you're someone who wants to do lots of things it makes it harder sometimes to enjoy each of those things.

And another burdensome aspect of wanting to do lots of things is that success raises your expectations.

100

So for example if you're someone who is a runner and you like running and you want to improve your 5k time,

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you want to improve your time in how long it takes you to run five kilometers.

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Let's say your goal is to run five kilometers in less than 30 minutes

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and you achieve that and you feel great

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and you're like oh yes this is brilliant i feel amazing

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i've hit my goal i've succeeded next time to have that same feeling

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you'll have to do it slightly faster you'll need to run in 29 minutes and 30 seconds

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and then you'll hit that and you'll feel great

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but then you keep having to decrease

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and you keep having to do more to have that same reaction

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and as you become someone who becomes more used to

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having that success you kind of have to keep achieving things to reach

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that same level of satisfaction and it can be harder in a way to to have

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that satisfaction without continuing to grow and keep growing

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and it's why I personally don't measure things that I do for leisure

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because I really try to avoid setting like expectations on things

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that I just do for fun so like I think with exercise

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and also for language learning it's quite important to measure

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so you can you know feel like you're improving

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and reaching the point where you want to reach

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but I see lots of things these days like for example with films

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I like to watch watch a lot of films

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when I get time

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and you see more of like people have these goals for how many films

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they want to watch in a year or how many books

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that they want to read in a year and I think

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you don't want to set yourself up for disappointment in something that you're just doing for fun

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so it's why I like watching films

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but I will never say I want to watch this amount of films in a month

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because it's something I do for fun I don't want to feel disappointed

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if I haven't watched a certain amount of films

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or read a certain amount of books I just don't think it makes sense there

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and maybe this is a topic for another video

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but I think it's interesting how everything is is quantified more these days everything is measured

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and I think it can be helpful in some areas of your life like I said

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but for leisure I really try to avoid it.

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And there's a Roman philosopher called Seneca who lived thousands of years ago.

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And he has a quote that goes, it's not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more who is poor.

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And to be honest, the first half of that quote, I think, is slightly dismissive of people in real poverty.

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But the second half of the quote is interesting.

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This idea of the person who wants more is mentally and spiritually poor.

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so is ambition a bad thing is wanting all of these things bad I don't think it is

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and I know I've just talked about all of the negative aspects of wanting to do a lot of things

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but I think as humans humans like naturally want to grow I think we feel good

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when we're growing and I think the times throughout my 20s

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when I've actually been happiest have been

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when I've been slowly moving towards a goal when I've spent a day

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and I can say

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I have moved slightly closer to where I want to be

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whether it's understanding slightly more Spanish than I could the day before

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or whether it's improving my you know building a little bit more muscle in the gym

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or losing weight whatever my goal at the time is

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or whether it's you know posting a video on YouTube that I'm proud of.

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Those have been the moments where I've felt the most content and people always say it's not the destination, it's the journey.

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Life's about the journey, not the destination and that's true.

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It's a cliche but it is true but you also need, I think, you need a destination in mind.

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You need to know the destination or roughly.

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I think

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if someone told me

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I can tell you exactly how your life is going to be exactly what's going to happen I wouldn't want

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that I don't think anyone would want that but for me

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when I have like a rough idea in mind of where

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I want to go whether that's been you know in my 20s I've changed jobs a couple of times

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and I've thought okay I want to work in this type of job in this type of industry

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or whether it's you know I want to spend quite a long period of time in a Spanish -speaking country.

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Whatever it is, I think if you can have that in mind, because it gives an opportunity to grow,

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which I think is what is really important.

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Because like I said, I think humans are designed to want to grow and growing feels good.

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And if ambition can give you the opportunity to grow and to feel good, I think then

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that can only be a good thing

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now I think what can be difficult is is having these ideas of where you want to go

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and I think I talked about it earlier and it's something

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that I think people in their in their 20s often

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I know I have kind of struggled at times to think about where I want to go

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and a lot of people a lot of different times in their life

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I think can not know exactly what they want to do

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and where they want to go so I think

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that is the the harder part you know knowing what you want to do

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but something that kind of helped me with this there's this there's a Japanese concept called ikigai

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which you might have heard of

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and the the Japanese translation loosely is like a reason for being a reason to wake up in the morning

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and there is a westernized version of this

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so the west have taken this idea of ikigai

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and kind of transformed it into what can give you satisfaction in your job

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and there are four things right it's do something that you enjoy do something that you're good at

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do something that can pay you and do something

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that helps other people and

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if it's all of those four things

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then this kind of results in a reason for being it results in ikigai

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and that's something that i think is a really good ambition to have

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and something that i like to think about

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when i think about where i want to go is it's something

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that kind of ticks those four boxes so something

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that I ask myself quite a lot is how can I keep growing

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and moving towards something while also avoiding the stress of what we talked about at the beginning and wanting too much.

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And I read a book about this idea of something called essentialism,

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which is.. kind of like minimalism the idea is like doing less

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but doing more of the things that you really like

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and I think as I've moved through my 20s

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I think such a good thing a good part of your 20s is figuring out what you like doing

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because when you're in your 20s I think a lot of the advice

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that you hear is try to do like just say yes to everything try to do lots of different things

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And I think that's great advice to someone who is in their early 20s

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or even maybe in their mid 20s

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or just to someone who hasn't quite figured out what it is that they like doing.

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I think that's good advice.

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But something that I've really enjoyed about moving through my 20s has been figuring out what I like

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because like for example

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I used to go to quite a lot of music festivals in my 20s with my friends

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and I went you know I'd have fun

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but I didn't love going to be honest I went really

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because my friends went and I had a good time

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but I think UK festivals there's probably

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I could probably make a whole video on on UK festivals to be honest

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you go away for a full weekend and you camp

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and then you have music on for the full weekend

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and it's a lot it's very full -on very busy places

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and there's lots going on and I think I've realized slowly over time

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that maybe I like my own space a bit too much to be spending a full weekend doing something like

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that but my point is

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you move through your 20s

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and as you get older you realize what you really love doing

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and I think for me I kind of realized in the last few years

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that I have a real big interest in languages

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and I really want to learn Spanish

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and I thought okay I've got two options here really I can I can either keep doing other things

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that maybe I don't love quite as much as learning a language

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and then you know I will improve in Spanish but more slowly

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and that would be absolutely fine

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but there's definitely there's not one way to learn a language you can learn a language as quickly

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or as slowly as you like but I realized

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that why would I do other things that I don't like as much

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if I can just do more of what I now know

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that I like and I think that has meant

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that I've been able to consistently do two hours of Spanish a day

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because that's a lot but I don't do lots of other things

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because like for example I would love to read more

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but I just I don't have time

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if I want to commit to two hours of Spanish a day

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because I really love Spanish you know

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I'm not going to get a chance to read in English as much as I normally would

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and that's fine that's something I've decided

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but I think it's yeah something that's been really helpful for me in getting

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that feeling of like growing and moving towards something

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and improving in something has been realizing

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that I think for me it's I prefer spending my more of my time on less things

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than doing things that I know that I don't love another thing

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that really helps me with finding time to do the different things

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that I want to do because even though I said doing less

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and doing less things is something

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that you know I try to do there's still a lot of things

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that I enjoy doing and I think sometimes

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when I'm feeling slightly overwhelmed by how much work that I have to do

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or like how I'm going to find time to make YouTube videos

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or how I'm going to find time to do my Spanish

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I think I saw it's a really simple quote a really simple saying but it was

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when you think in my head I've got I've got

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so many things to do you don't you have one thing to do.

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In that moment you have one thing to do.

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That really actually really helps me and it sounds very simple

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but it's something that has helped me to focus on what I'm doing

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and not be stressing about all of the other things

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that I want to do afterwards or that I need to do afterwards

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and something that has helped me really to try to have ambition

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and try to want to achieve lots of things in different areas of life

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while also just focusing on one thing at a time.

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And something else that I find really helpful is, it sounds so simple but like relaxing more,

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a subscriber actually recommended me a podcast called Español desde el

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Sur and it's by someone called Luna who is from Buenos Aires

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and it's a fantastic podcast if you're learning Spanish I highly recommend listening to it

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and she talks about she has this episode where she talks about I think

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it's similar to what I was talking about earlier talking about how everything these days is kind of quantified

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and there's a number put on everything like how many books are you reading how many films have you watched

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and she talks about she's she she puts it really interestingly

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she says she tries to treat relaxing as essential like as essential as

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showering and as essential as eating as essential as sleeping

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and I think it was a really interesting way of listening to it

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and I think as someone who is fortunate that I have the opportunity

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if I want I can decide okay I'm going to relax like I don't have responsibilities

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that I have to do I can choose to relax in the evenings a little bit more

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and obviously I'm not saying be lazy but I think relaxing is

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so essential because you need my the brain needs time to switch off and relax and if you're constantly,

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if you're working and you're exercising and you're learning English and all of these things that are very mentally quite exhausting sometimes,

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it sounds simple but by giving your brain that chance to reset,

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not only do I find that I enjoy myself more because who doesn't like relaxing?

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I know some people can sometimes struggle with relaxing.

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For me, I do sometimes struggle to turn my brain off as much as I would like

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but I think it really helps you be more consistent

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because you wake up the next day feeling more refreshed

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and you can do more and better work

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and you can not only work more

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but you can go you have more energy to go

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and see friends and more energy to do the hobbies that you like to do

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and I think if you miss out on relaxing it makes your life

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so much harder the next day so I think for me it's something

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that I always now I say always

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but you know most of the time I try to do I treat

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it as like I have to relax I have to sleep

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I have to eat I have to relax at least a little bit

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and to close I heard a song in Tesco the other day

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which is a supermarket here in the UK I heard a song called My Silver Lining by First Aid Kit

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and the first verse of this song in particular I think really summarizes quite nicely some of the things

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that I've been talking about in this video so I'll leave

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that in the description the name of the song

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if you want to go and listen to

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that song I really like it

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and yeah I think

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it like I said kind of summarizes what I've been talking

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about in trying to find the right balance between doing too much

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and not enough if you can ever quantify things in such a simple way

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but thank you for watching and I will see you in the next one

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Is Ambition a Burden?”. This video has 310 sentences and 3828 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:49. The speaker talks at a natural 168 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
relax verb	/ɹɪˈlæks/	To make something loose.
ambition noun	/æmˈbɪʃ.ən/	Eager or inordinate desire for some object that confers distinction, as preferment, honor, superiority, political power, or fame; desire to distinguish one's…
burden noun	/ˈbɝdn̩/	A heavy load.
destination noun	/dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/	The place set for the end of a journey or to which something is sent; place or point aimed at.
helpful adjective	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
afterwards adverb	/ˈæf.tɚ.wɚdz/	At a later or succeeding time; after that;
knock verb	/nɑk/	To rap one's knuckles against something, especially wood.
mentally adverb	/ˈmɛntəli/	In a mental manner; an idea thought out in one's mind, as opposed to an idea spoken orally.
satisfaction noun	/sætɪsˈfækʃən/	A fulfilment of a need or desire.
aspect noun	/ˈæspɛkt/	Any specific feature, part, or element of something.
podcast noun	/ˈpɑdˌkæst/	A program, especially an audio program, produced on a regular basis, delivered over the Internet in a compressed digital format and designed for playback on…
tire verb	/ˈtaɪ̯ɚ/	To become sleepy or weary.
expectation noun	/ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/	The act or state of expecting or looking forward to an event as about to happen.
fortunate adjective	/ˈfɔɹ.t͡ʃə.nɪt/	Auspicious.
leisure noun	/ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/	Freedom provided by the cessation of activities.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
sit down verb		To assume a sitting position from a standing position.
wake up verb	/ˌweɪk ˈʌp/	To stop sleeping; to awake.
move out verb		To leave one's present location; to leave somewhere for another place.
slow down verb		To decelerate.
switch off verb		To stop or disable a device by turning a switch or a lever.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Does it make your life too difficult?
Who doesn't want these things?
I think that's good advice.

דקדוק בסרטון הזה

המבנים שהדובר משתמש בהם הכי הרבה, עם המילים המדויקות מהסרטון:

מבנה	בסרטון
הווה מושלם ממושך (Present perfect continuous) have/has been + -ing — פעולה שהתחילה בעבר ועדיין נמשכת עכשיו	has been figuring · has been realizing · I've been talking
הווה מושלם (Present perfect) have/has + past participle — פעולה שקרתה בעבר ועדיין יש לה חשיבות או השפעה עכשיו	I've thought · I've realized · i've hit
משפטי זיקה (Relative clauses) who / which + clause — מידע נוסף על אדם או דבר	people who i · people who have · people who are
סביל (Passive voice) be + past participle — הדגש הוא על מה שקורה, לא על מי שעושה את הפעולה	be used · is quantified · are designed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 89 contractions and reduced forms, such as I've, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: ambition /æmˈbɪʃ.ən/, destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, leisure /ˈlɛʒə(ɹ)/
Long words — get the stress right: destination /dɛstɪˈneɪʃən/, satisfaction /sætɪsˈfækʃən/, expectation /ˌɛk.spɛkˈteɪ.ʃən/, naturally /ˈnæt͡ʃ.(ə.)ɹə.li/, disappointed /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪnɪd/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like relax, ambition, burden.

מהי טכניקת השאדואינג?

שאדואינג היא טכניקת למידת שפה מבוססת מדע שפותחה במקור להכשרת מתורגמנים מקצועיים ופופולרית על ידי הפוליגלוט ד"ר אלכסנדר ארגואלס. השיטה פשוטה אך עוצמתית: אתה מקשיב לאודיו באנגלית ילידית וחוזר עליו בקול רם מיד — כמו צל העוקב אחרי הדובר עם עיכוב של 1–2 שניות בלבד. בניגוד להאזנה פסיבית או תרגילי דקדוק, שאדואינג מכריח את המוח והשרירים בפה לעבד ולשחזר דפוסי דיבור אמיתיים בו זמנית. מחקרים מראים שזה משפר משמעותית את דיוק ההגייה, האינטונציה, הקצב, הדיבור המחובר, הבנת השמיעה ושטף הדיבור — מה שהופך אותו לאחת השיטות היעילות ביותר להכנה לIELTS Speaking ולתקשורת באנגלית בעולם האמיתי.

טכניקת Shadowing: קרא את המדריך המלא שלב אחר שלב →

Shadowing Practice: Is Ambition a Burden? | English Podcast - Learn English Speaking with Video

בחר מצב תרגול

הורד אפליקציה

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

דקדוק בסרטון הזה

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

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