Shadowing Practice: how to ACTUALLY be yourself (when you've forgotten who that is) - Learn English Speaking with Video

I want you to think about the last time someone asked you a question and you paused.

And that pause wasn't because you didn't know the answer.

That pause was because you were calculating, is this the right thing to say?

Are they going to judge me?

Is this too much?

Is that weird?

Would someone else say something better than that?

That pause right there, that's inauthenticity.

And I spent years of my life doing that, adjusting my opinions carefully depending on who was in the room, laughing at jokes I didn't even find funny, dating guys I wasn't even attracted to but they liked me first.

And it wasn't me trying to be fake.

I just genuinely didn't know who I actually was underneath all of that performance because growing up the priority becomes I need to feel liked and safe and popular and loved and not rejected by everyone.

The scariest part about inauthenticity is that it's not about lying.

It's about slowly forgetting who you are because you've spent more of your life choosing safety over your truth to the point where now you've genuinely forgotten what you like, what you think, what you want and what you actually believe.

And it's so frustrating because everyone's always saying just be authentic, just be yourself.

But what if you don't even know who that is?

This video is the ultimate guide to reclaiming your truth and being authentic

and in a way that nobody's ever said it before because we all know the importance of it, but we don't actually know the mindset shifts and actionable steps that we can take to actually implement this into our life and make that transition quickly and efficiently.

And the reason this is so important is did you know that when people are on their deathbeds, when they are about to pass and they're at the end of their lives, do you know what the number one regret they say they have is?

Majority of them have this in common.

They all say, I wish I had lived a life that was truer to myself and I didn't worry about what other people thought of me as much.

And after learning that fact a few years ago my biggest fear in life was letting decades of my life pass by realizing that i was never truly myself i never

took the time to find out who that was and actually designed the woman i wanted to be to suit my standards in my dream life and instead realize i wasted so

much time caring about people that in the grand scheme of things was so so irrelevant you get one life you better live it to the fullest before we get into it i just

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Chapter number one, why you lost yourself in the first place.

Before we get into how you can be authentic, first we need to figure out why you lost your authenticity in the first place.

Because no one was born performing and everybody can look back at their inner child and their younger years and see that they were so freely themselves without having so much as a second thought.

Where did all of that go?

You used to be so confident and unapologetically yourself until the world told you it wasn't safe for you to do so.

Like think about it, you said no when you didn't want to do something.

You cried when you wanted to cry.

Maybe you had absolutely no dance skill or experience, but you would still gather your closest friends or family members to put on a show for them because you didn't give an F about shame or being embarrassed or being judged for your behavior.

But the thing is, slowly we get older and we start to develop the desire to want to fit in and to be loved by everyone and to be popular.

And so one day you might express one of your most authentic, realist opinions and maybe people look at you weird.

Maybe they don't agree.

Maybe you're rejected for it, judged for it, or even laughed at it.

And for the first time in your life, you experience what it's like to be an outsider in your group.

And the worst part of that feeling is that in that moment you were rejected, you were being fully, genuinely yourself.

So the safest thing to do in that situation is stop being myself, start performing.

Because if I'm not myself and I get rejected, then it doesn't hurt as bad.

And this is where inauthenticity is born.

It's a trauma response.

When you were punished for having a certain emotion or reaction by your family members, or you were laughed at for being too much or too weird by your classmates,

your brain saw that as being myself equals danger, equals sadness, equals rejection, equals really uncomfortable feelings that I need to avoid at any point possible.

And so your body biologically is gonna do what it's meant to do, which is your nervous system protecting you from that feeling.

So then becoming a people pleaser and not being able to say no and never having any boundaries isn't you being a weak person.

It's just how you were taught to survive and what you had to do to cope growing up.

You are now a grown woman and you struggle to make decisions.

You don't even know who you are.

If you don't know who you are and you can't make decisions and you can't set boundaries, how are your friends in your life?

Really your friends?

How do you know if the person you're dating is really the person meant for you?

It just opens up a huge world of problems.

And for argument's sake, let's say you don't relate to any of what I just said.

You were absolutely fine as a kid, you enjoyed school, you were thriving as a teenager,

but just because you've gotten to your mid-20s and you've been fine so far doesn't mean that the trap of inauthenticity isn't going to hit you because there are several different ways that women lose themselves and it can stay with you for years.

Once you know what these ways are, then you can help yourself by avoiding them.

The first cause of inauthenticity is relationships.

Dating the wrong person before you're fully secure, before you've gone on your self-love journey can destroy yourself esteem and your sense of identity.

If you don't have that strong sense of self and foundation first before you start dating somebody, you are naturally going to start to mirror them,

you are going to mold into the person you think they want you to be, you are going to shrink so that you are more digestible, so that you're the cool easygoing girlfriend and that's why you'll find when you go through the breakup and the relationship ends, you look at yourself and your life and the choices you've made and you don't even know who the f you are anymore.

That has happened to me more times than I can count, I'll be honest.

The second way is social media because you get so used to performing your life instead of living it and posting the most perfectly curated images and getting trapped into thinking you always need to look your best with the best lighting and the best angles and the best looks when that's not real life at all.

You learn what's going to get you the best reactions online and the best engagement and it tricks you into thinking that's who you have to be in every waking second of your life when in actuality every single person on social media,

even the people with millions of followers have negative emotions, they have their darkest moments, they react in not the prettiest of ways, they don't look their best 24-7, so you're putting all this pressure on yourself for no reason.

Then we have the fear of rejection combined with the need to be liked, which we've already spoken about,

but all I want to add to this is the most exhausting thing about the need to be liked is that you are always on and you are always so highly perceptive of what people might be making out of what you're doing and what you're saying and what your actions are,

and the saddest part of that all is your closest friends and the closest people in your life, you're not even giving them a fair shot at bonding with you and making a deep connection with you because they are never going to know the real you as far as you are concerned with being liked.

And the biggest freedom you are ever going to experience as a woman is when you are open to being perceived as messy or ugly or big or emotional or sensitive.

Yes, it means that a lot of people might fall away.

It means that people might judge you easily, but guess what?

Those were never your people.

And the more open you are to being vulnerable and being okay with the fact that some people might hate this.

Some people might find me so polarizing.

Good, because it means the people I have truly are my ride or dies and really just like me for me.

And finally, you can also lose your inauthenticity by always trying to control the outcome.

And this is the most subtle one of them all.

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When you are trying to control how people might perceive you or what you're going to get out of a certain situation, again, you are just not fully being yourself.

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You have to hide away certain parts of yourself.

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You have to control your reactions.

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You have to control your responses to things.

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Every time you try to stay agreeable or try to show up as a certain role in a relationship with somebody, whether it be your coworker or your friend,

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so that you can control the outcome of how this person sees you, how they talk about you, how they respond to you, where they put you in their life, you are simply making the gap between you and those people or you and these certain situations even bigger.

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And the root of it is if I actually show up as myself, if I don't mentally prepare myself by rehearsing what I'm going to say and what I'm going to do, you might think less of me or you might not like me or this might not go in the way that I told myself it was going to go because that's what I prepared for.

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But you can't prepare for life and it's never going to be certain.

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Chapter two, what authenticity actually means.

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And trust me, it's not what you think.

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Can we all please just collectively agree to stop saying, just be yourself?

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Because what does that even mean?

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And this is my term core definition of authenticity, okay?

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Let me tell you what it's not first.

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It's not saying every single thought that crosses your mind.

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It's not oversharing.

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It's not being vulnerable with people that haven't deserved it.

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It is very simply the absence of the gap between who you really are and who you're pretending to be.

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But so many people get it twisted.

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They think if I overshare that I'm being my most authentic self by posting a crying selfie of myself on the internet.

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But even that can be performative.

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Even that can be scheduled content.

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Trying to control a certain narrative or perception of you by your audience online.

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Again, oversharing, dumping all your emotions and all of your situations on someone is not authenticity.

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I would actually say it's quite bad energetic hygiene.

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Then there are the people that love to say, you've changed, you're not the same anymore, you know, I've always been the real me, I'm who I've always been, therefore I'm authentic.

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I disagree.

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I think the most authentic people are the people who aren't afraid to take up space in their evolution and in their self-growth.

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At the end of the day, if you always feel a pressure to go back to who you used to be and to shrink to that version and always stay the same to make other people comfortable,

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again, you're just conforming and performing for the comfort of other people rather than staying true to yourself and the journey that you're meant to go on in this life.

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So back to my definition.

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When it comes to this definition, you need to remember there are two parts of yourself, your core self and your adaptive self.

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Your core self are your values, your instincts, your real genuine reactions and your actual desires.

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Basically all the things have always been a part of you for as long as you can remember, literally ever since you were a child.

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The things that nobody else has had an influence over.

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On the other hand, your adaptive self is the one that you build and design to get by in day-to-day life.

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Whether it be to be liked and approved of in a work scenario or an interview or to feel safe in a certain situation.

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Both are real and both are you and both serve a really important purpose in your life.

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But the problem is that most people are running on their adaptive self 90% of the time and just lose the thread back to their core selves.

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That's why you feel like you're always on, you're always drained.

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Whereas if you start practicing being your core self more, being more honest about who you are, not needing to perform, then you're finally serving your future self and your life rather than trying to control it.

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At the end of the day, even if you are your true unhinged real self and that makes other people uncomfortable, good because you are a person, not a museum exhibit to be admired, stared at, judged, watched.

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You are allowed to change, you are allowed to be a completely different person than who you were two years ago, you are allowed to outdo people's perception or idea or expectations of you.

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And now to really help you step into this authentic core self mindset, we've got to bring in our girls, Lola and Athena to illustrate my point.

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Now Lola, she's been performing for a long time.

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She has no idea who she is.

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She has no idea how to get back there.

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And so this is how she responds in difficult situations where she's always being adaptive and she's always prioritizing other people.

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Not very self-loving.

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Whereas Athena, on the other hand, she has worked back to find her core self to serve herself and her life and her needs and stop letting other people be the priority in a life that she is supposed to be living.

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So this is what Lola and Athena would respond to if somebody was asking their opinion on some plans that they'd made.

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Oh, oh no.

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Oh my god.

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No, it's so good.

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Yeah, I love that.

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Yeah, no, I've never done that, but that's so cool.

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I need to try that.

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Yeah, oh, nice.

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No, it's not really my thing, but I can see why you'd love it.

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Yeah, I hope you have fun.

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You see the difference?

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Both girls, it wasn't really their thing.

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It didn't really align with their values, but Lola feels the need to act up and find common ground with somebody that she literally doesn't even have common ground with.

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Make it make sense.

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Scenario two, when someone cancels on you, last minute.

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Oh, you're cancelling?

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No, honestly, don't even worry.

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Yeah, no, it's so fine.

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Yeah, no big deal.

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I wasn't even bothered.

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Like, it doesn't even affect my day.

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Yeah, no, don't worry.

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Okay, see ya.

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Oh, really, you're cancelling?

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I mean, yeah,

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I was looking forward to it um but yeah no it's okay we'll rearrange I get it again Lola doesn't know how to truly express her

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feelings and the fact that that put a hole in her plans and her schedule but she wasn't able to express her true feelings and disappointment it's never

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about being rude it's just about being truthful in your experience and lastly this is how they'd react if someone was asking where they wanted to go out to eat oh I don't mind no I'm so easy no I love both of those options.

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Yeah, we can go wherever you want.

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No, honestly, I don't even mind.

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Of course she minds.

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Everyone minds.

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Everyone has a favorite of where they would prefer to go.

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Honestly, I'm really in the mood for sushi.

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Are you down?

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Yeah, cool.

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Let's go.

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And just like that, Athena was a respectful, kind queen who was definitely open to what the other person was going to say, but in the end, got to go to her favorite restaurant.

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Therefore, ended up having an amazing experience.

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And that's the thing.

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Nobody teaches you that whether you are inauthentic or authentic, it always lives in the tiny moments, the day-to-day questions, the tiny little scenarios that no one really thinks that deeply into.

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But the way that you respond, the way you choose to act, the way that you choose to be honest or try to play up to somebody else's preferences really determines whether you are mastering authenticity.

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It's not being fake or pretending to be someone you're not or telling these big lies.

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It's the saying you don't mind when you kind of do.

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And finally, chapter number three, the homework, aka all of the actionable steps that you can start implementing today to be a truer, more authentic version of yourself.

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Homework task number one is coming back home to your true authentic opinions so that that can be your new normal again.

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So for the next 48 hours, I want you to make note of every single time somebody asks you a question or asks your opinion, say whatever you feels right,

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and then either at the end of the day, I want you to journal about this or just make a note of it in your mind what would you have rather actually said in that situation.

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For example, if someone's asked you to do a favor for them or to come to a place that you don't really want to come to but you felt too pressured, too scared to set a boundary and say no, so you just acted really nice and you people pleased your way through it even though that wasn't authentic to you.

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That's okay, it's a process.

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But at the end of the day, journal about what you wished you'd said and maybe what stopped you from saying it in the moment.

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What was the worst case scenario?

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How would you have been better off if you actually just said your authentic opinion?

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This first homework task isn't about being perfect and making that transformation overnight because that's not realistic.

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It's simply about reconnecting with the fact that you have an opinion, that you're not constantly automatically adapting to what other people want and forgetting your voice.

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After doing this a few times, your brain will start clocking how many times you erase your voice and erase who you are when somebody asks your opinion.

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And the more that you clock onto it and the more you notice, the more that you can actually start responding in a way that serves you.

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Task number two is the social media audit.

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Basically, I want you to go through your social media pages and your platforms, look through maybe just your last 10 posts on each platform and ask yourself, really, why did I post this?

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Did I post this because I loved it?

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Or did I post it because I thought other people would like me for it?

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Or I thought it would gain me a certain perception that I want to create from other people.

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Ask yourself, did I overly edit this?

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Because I felt like the natural version of it wasn't good enough.

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This task is simply all about recognizing the pattern of how you're showing up online, why you're showing up in that way, and what's causing you in your life to decide to perform.

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Where is that coming from?

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It's about figuring out what are you trying to make public and what are you trying to put out there versus what are the actual real authentic moments of your life that you really wanna keep off the record.

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It doesn't mean you need to post those moments, but it's just really useful to understand why do I wanna hide these things and why do I really wanna show these things?

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Task number three is my favorite, and this is all about hobbies.

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And now I've heard so many people say this before that like one of the best things you can do for yourself in your early 20s and in your adulthood is to get back to the things that you used to love to do as a child.

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all of those things are such amazing core parts of you because you took up those hobbies and you did those activities without thinking.

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They were just truly such an authentic part of yourself because it didn't take any decision making to do.

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So an example of how I've done this for myself actually I went back to this in 2020 so six years ago now but basically I grew up doing

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a lot of art doing a lot of painting and drawing I was always a really autistic kid and I stepped away from that because people told me art couldn't be

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a career and it wasn't realistic and it was a waste of time because you go to grind and you go to hustle instead and don't get me wrong I do

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focus on my businesses and work but drawing where I come in my free time was really really reconnected me to my inner child and who I

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was back then and again it's not about shrinking yourself or going back in time or trying to be your younger self again it's about discovering why did I love this in the first

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place and really exploring that cool part of yourself again that you let go and you've forgotten about the next homework task is a little bit of a hard one and you might

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have to work your way up to this but I have to say this because this is one of my personal favorites to experiment with and it's basically the rejection

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therapy homework task which is first recognizing where am I at my most inauthentic for example is it at the workplace and the fact that in

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a meeting I have to wait until somebody else speaks first before then volunteering my idea or is it the fact that when a colleague

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asks me something I'm always adapting to their opinion let's say we've realized that's where we're at most inauthentic it's then challenging yourself over the next few days to to take baby steps in starting to say no, in starting to be a little bit more unhinged and in starting to say your authentic opinion.

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So if you're at school, maybe it's the fact that you're gonna sit at the front of the classroom first and you're gonna be the first kid to raise your hand to say an answer that day.

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Whether you get the answer right or wrong does not matter, but the fact that you took that action is one step forward to a more authentic identity than the one that you had yesterday and that is a win.

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And the very last thing I wanna say for this video is that the most authentic version of you, She exists.

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She's real.

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She's already within you right now.

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All she's doing is waiting for you to stop hiding her and to stop apologizing for her.

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?

Shadowing is een wetenschappelijk onderbouwde taalleermethode die oorspronkelijk is ontwikkeld voor professionele tolkentraining en gepopulariseerd door polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. De methode is eenvoudig maar krachtig: je luistert naar native Engelse audio en herhaalt het onmiddellijk hardop — als een schaduw die de spreker volgt met slechts 1–2 seconden vertraging. In tegenstelling tot passief luisteren of grammaticadrills, dwingt shadowing je hersenen en mondspieren om echte spraakpatronen tegelijkertijd te verwerken en te reproduceren. Onderzoek toont aan dat het de uitspraaknauwkeurigheid, intonatie, ritme, verbonden spraak, luisterbegrip en spreekvaardigheid aanzienlijk verbetert — waardoor het een van de meest effectieve methoden is voor IELTS Speaking-voorbereiding en echte Engelse communicatie.

Shadowing Practice: how to ACTUALLY be yourself (when you've forgotten who that is) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

Wat is de Shadowing-techniek?