Shadowing Practice: 4 Things That Are Keeping You From Being a High Performer - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
1
Have you ever noticed that every time your life starts getting really good, somehow you find a way to screw it up?
2
Like you finally start going to the gym consistently and then you stop.
3
Your business starts doing well and then suddenly you lose the momentum.
4
You meet someone who's actually good for you and somehow you push them away.
5
Most people call this self-sabotage, but what if self-sabotage isn't actually the problem?
6
What if self-sabotage is just the symptom of something that is much deeper happening inside of your brain and your nervous system?
7
So today I'm going to show you the four hidden mechanisms that control your motivation, your consistency, your confidence, and your performance.
8
Because once you understand what's actually happening beneath the surface, you stop trying to force yourself to change and you finally start working with your brain instead of against it.
9
Okay, So let's dive in after coaching tens of thousands of people
10
over the past decade I can tell you what we're dealing with here is not a potential problem
11
And if you don't understand the four things
12
that we're gonna be covering today Here's what's gonna keep happening to you
13
So the first thing keeping you from being a high performer
14
is this your nervous system has a set point That's number one your nervous system has a set point
15
and it will pull you back down to it every single time I'll give you an example.
16
Have you ever had this happen?
17
You have the best month that you've ever had in your business
18
and then the very next month you completely fall off
19
or you get into the best shape of your life
20
and then something happens and three months later you're right back to where you started
21
or the wildest one
22
which i see a lot of times with people you finally
23
get into a relationship that's actually healthy that's actually good for you somebody who actually loves you well
24
and you find yourself picking a fight over absolutely nothing now most people look at
25
that and they're like yeah that's just self-sabotage i self-sabotage Yeah, but you don't know why.
26
Why do you self-sabotage?
27
Have you ever asked yourself that?
28
Because you self-sabotage for a reason.
29
Your brain's number one job is not to make you happy.
30
Your brain's number one job is not to make you successful.
31
Its number one job is to keep you alive.
32
And the way it keeps you alive is by keeping you in a state that is recognizable.
33
Because your brain thinks recognizable means survivable.
34
You've been there before.
35
You didn't die so this is safe.
36
Your body does the exact same thing physically already.
37
98.6 degrees.
38
That's what your body temperature is set to.
39
If you get too hot, you sweat.
40
If you get too cold, you shiver.
41
Your body doesn't care if you want to be hotter or if you want to be colder.
42
It's going to do whatever it needs to do to get you back to 98.6 degrees.
43
You have to understand your nervous system does the exact same thing with your life, unconsciously, except instead of a temperature,
44
it's your stress level, it's your income level, it's your happiness level, it's how much love you're allowed to, quote unquote, allowed to receive.
45
It's how good things are allowed to get before your body, your subconscious, your nervous system goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
46
We're at a range.
47
And then when you go above the set point, even if it's good, especially when it's good, your nervous system starts sweating.
48
And it's like, oh, we need to change this and go back to normal.
49
And what is, you know, like, quote unquote, sweating look like in this situation?
50
It's like picking a fight with your spouse
51
or skipping the gym for a week for no reason
52
or scrolling for two hours the night before your biggest presentation of your life.
53
I need you to understand this.
54
It's not that you're lazy in those situations or that you're broken or something's wrong with you, you're regulating.
55
You're bringing the temperature back down to what your nervous system thinks is normal.
56
And we will be right back.
57
Hey, real quick, let me interrupt you.
58
I'm doing a free live training called Break the Ceiling 2026.
59
This is for anyone who knows that they're capable of more, but just keeps hitting the same ceilings no matter how hard they try.
60
We're going to get into exactly why that keeps happening and how to finally change forever so that your income, your relationships, your happiness, your life is better.
61
You can register for free by going ahead and scanning this QR code right here, or you can go to BreakTheCealing2026.com.
62
Once again, BreakTheCealing2026.com, and I'll see you live on the workshop.
63
And now back to the show.
64
And here's what makes it so hidden.
65
Self-sabotage never really feels like it's self-sabotage in a moment.
66
It feels reasonable for some reason.
67
It's always like a really good excuse.
68
Oh, I'm just tired this week, or I deserve it.
69
I deserve a little bit of a break or you know what?
70
Right now is just not the right time.
71
Like it seems reasonable, it seems logical a lot of times.
72
In those situations, it's not really like you making a decision.
73
That's like your subconscious sweating, right?
74
It's bringing you back to what it thinks is 98.6 degrees.
75
And so what do you actually do about it?
76
Well, you have to raise your set point and the only way to raise your set point is exposure.
77
Your nervous system has to get used to the exposure of doing better than you've ever done before.
78
You have to stay at the new level long enough
79
that your nervous system stops calling it dangerous and it starts thinking of it as normal.
80
Which means your goals right now might actually be too big.
81
It might be the problem that you don't need a really big goal.
82
You might need goals that are just a little bit better than what you're doing right now.
83
Your goal being a little bit better might actually have your nervous system to get used to it quicker.
84
So you lose five pounds, not 50 pounds, you lose five pounds.
85
And you're like, oh, I'm starting to get used to it.
86
It kind of gets boring.
87
You're more consistent with it.
88
Maybe you have those five pounds off for 30 days.
89
Maybe you have a little bit more money in your bank account, or maybe you have a little bit more vulnerability in your relationships.
90
It's not massive changes is it's a tiny bit of a change
91
that you're allowing your nervous system to get used to through exposure
92
so that it starts to deem it as safe and not dangerous.
93
Because if it becomes boring to you, it means your body has finally accepted it.
94
And once your body accepts it, it becomes your new normal.
95
It's about being a tiny bit better each day.
96
It's not about changing your entire life overnight.
97
Incrementally better, feel safer to the nervous system than uprooting your entire life.
98
Slow and steady wins the race.
99
So that's number one.
100
Number two is you never really finish your stress cycle.
101
You have never truly learned how to recover.
102
And I don't mean rest, I mean recover.
103
These are two different things, right?
104
Your stress response is designed to be a cycle.
105
There's a threat, your body activates, you take action, the threat resolves, you come back down to baseline.
106
It's like if a zebra sees a lion, it runs, it escapes, it goes back to eating grass 20 minutes later, like nothing happened.
107
Cycle complete.
108
The cortisol is out of the body of the zebra because it ran it out.
109
It's back to normal.
110
No threat is now here.
111
Now look at your life though.
112
The crazy thing about life nowadays is that there's always a threat.
113
You know, and I don't mean like a physical threat.
114
It's like a little bit of a tiny threat in our mind, like an email that comes in, numbers on a spreadsheet, a conversation that you've been dreading for six weeks,
115
a text that you haven't answered.
116
And there's no running from these things.
117
There's no escaping.
118
There's no moment where the lion walks away because we're constantly being bombarded by these little things.
119
And so the cycle never actually closes.
120
This is a really, really big problem in modern society that I don't think people know about.
121
I recognize this in my life probably about four years ago, being a business owner.
122
I have 40 employees.
123
We've done over $20 million in the past five years.
124
There's always something that my brain can go to to stir me up.
125
So I've gotten myself stuck in that for years and years in the past
126
And all of this stuff happens and then you go to bed with it
127
and you wake up and it stacks on top of tomorrows
128
And you do that every single day for 10 years
129
and there's no like There's no like release valve for high performers, right?
130
There's a researcher called bruce mcguin who spent his entire career
131
on this He came up with a term that's called allostatic load
132
Which basically means the wear and tear on your body from being chronically activated
133
I have found myself years ago being chronically activated.
134
And here's what I want you to understand about it.
135
The damage doesn't come from stress.
136
Stress is fine.
137
Stress is actually how you grow.
138
The damage comes from the stress that never gets completed.
139
Nobody nowadays deloads their life.
140
Everybody's just running red line as fast as they can.
141
They never actually allow themselves to deload until their body forces them to deload.
142
right?
143
And it always, your body will always force one eventually.
144
It doesn't ask for permission.
145
It doesn't schedule it at a convenient week.
146
It'll just show up as burnout or a heart attack or an injury or getting sick.
147
Every time you finally take a vacation, it'll show up as a panic attack in the car as your marriage slowly falls apart.
148
And so how do you close the cycle on stress and deload so that you can recover from all of this?
149
These are things that I've prioritized in in my life the past few years
150
when I realized that I was running most of my life with like this mid-level stress that never went away.
151
The first thing, move your body.
152
It's the oldest.
153
It's the most reliable one because it's literally what the chemistry was built for.
154
You've got to move your body to let your body process the cortisol
155
that you have from the stress so that you can get it out.
156
This is one of the most important things you can do.
157
That's the first thing.
158
The second thing, breathe.
159
Specifically, longer exhales than inhales.
160
Slow breathing because that's what tells your body that the lion is gone.
161
The first thing that activates when you're in quote-unquote danger is your breath, short breath.
162
So many people are just walking around short breathing all day long, realizing that it's keeping them in fight or flight.
163
And then number three, close your open loops.
164
Get the unfinished stuff finished or at least out of your head
165
and onto a piece of paper with the decision next to it, even if that decision is not this month, so that therefore you can close it
166
and your brain doesn't see it as this low-level stress and threat that's continuing to stay open as an open loop.
167
Okay, so that's number two.
168
Number three, I want you to realize this.
169
You're not avoiding hard things.
170
You're avoiding the unclear things in your life.
171
This one might be my favorite because almost nobody talks about it.
172
You're not avoiding difficult things or because they're hard or any of that.
173
You're avoiding things that are ambiguous.
174
Think about your to-do list right now.
175
The stuff that's been sitting there for three weeks, be honest.
176
Is it actually the hardest stuff in the list?
177
It's usually not.
178
It's used as stuff where you don't really know what the next step is.
179
It's stuff like figure out marketing or fix things with my brother
180
or have that tough conversation or look into that opportunity or get my finances in order, something like that, where it's kind of like ambiguous.
181
It's like grabbing water.
182
You can't literally grab it.
183
Meanwhile, like you'll actually happily do something that's a little bit harder, like wake up at 5 a.m or go to the gym three times a week
184
or something that's easy to just check off your list, like do the laundry.
185
Why are you more likely to do them?
186
Because there's zero ambiguity in them.
187
They are clear.
188
They know, you know exactly what to do.
189
You know exactly when you're done and you know exactly what the finish line looks like.
190
Crazy study I think about all the time.
191
There was a study out of University of College of London a few years ago
192
and they had people play a game where they would turn over rocks.
193
And under some of the rocks was a snake.
194
And if there was a snake, they would get an electric shock.
195
And they measured people's stress levels like real physical stress, the cortisol, the sweat, the pupil dilation, and here's what's crazy that they found.
196
The people who had a 50% chance of getting shocked
197
were more stressed than the people who had a 100% chance of getting shocked.
198
Hmm, why is that?
199
Well, you have to think about this for a second.
200
Just knowing the fact that you're about to get hurt was less stressful to the human body than not knowing.
201
So uncertainty isn't just uncomfortable.
202
Your brain, it sees that as the threat.
203
The shock wasn't a threat.
204
The uncertainty was a threat, which means that your brain would genuinely rather have a guaranteed bad outcome than have an unknown outcome.
205
And that right there, everybody, that right there is why people stay in jobs that they hate.
206
That's why people stay in relationships that they outgrew five years ago.
207
That's why known pain beats unknown anything.
208
Sit with that information for a moment.
209
Like that's life-changing if you really think about it.
210
This is the reason why people stay in misery
211
and don't change their lives is because they're more afraid of uncertainty than anything else.
212
Now, how do you put that together for high performance?
213
Here's how you do it.
214
The highest leverage work in any field is almost always ambiguous work.
215
Nobody hands you a checklist for the thing that would change your life.
216
There's no instruction manual for building a business.
217
There's no instruction manual for healing your childhood trauma, for having a conversation that saves your marriage,
218
for figuring out what you're actually supposed to be doing with this one life that you have.
219
Right?
220
And so when you look at it, that's the reason why you're not checking off the biggest things on your to-do list is because they're too ambiguous.
221
So how do you fix it?
222
You don't need to try to become fearless.
223
You need to shrink the ambiguity on your to-do list.
224
Take something like grow revenue this month.
225
That's a terrible thing to have on your to do list.
226
And switch it to open a document and write down ten people that I will reach out to this week.
227
Right?
228
That's it.
229
No ambiguity because your brain doesn't need certainty about the outcome.
230
Your brain needs certainty about the next step.
231
Do you get that about the next step?
232
And so here's what I want you to do with this info.
233
Find the thing that's been sitting on your to-do list for the longest and ask yourself, is this hard or is it just unclear?
234
And if it's unclear, your job is to make the next step so small, so obvious that there's nothing left to be afraid of.
235
Okay?
236
So that's number three.
237
And number four is you've never actually defined what enough is.
238
Let me explain what I mean by that, right?
239
This is the one that keeps most talented people that I know miserable, most high achievers miserable.
240
You've never actually defined what enough looks like in your life.
241
So your brain never gets to log a simple win.
242
Because here's how it goes hit the goal and you feel it for about 30 minutes and then it's gone.
243
And then the bar moves and you're already looking towards the next thing.
244
There's a researcher at Harvard named Teresa Amabile who did this massive study where she analyzed thousands
245
and thousands of daily diary entries from people at work trying to figure out what actually drives motivation on a given day.
246
The number one thing, it wasn't money, it wasn't recognition, it wasn't a promotion.
247
It was making small progress in meaningful work.
248
Small wins, that's it.
249
That was the single biggest driver in motivation.
250
But here's the catch, and this is the part that gets a lot of people.
251
You cannot make progress if the finish line continues to move every single time you get close to it.
252
Then by definition, you've never actually made any real progress, right?
253
You're just running towards the horizon.
254
The closer you get, the further it gets away from you, Forever.
255
In your brain, it needs this completion.
256
It needs to build evidence.
257
As Tony Robbins always says, progress equals happiness.
258
Humans want to feel like they're progressing.
259
We really, truly do want to feel like we're progressing.
260
And if you never let anything be done, then you never really collect any evidence for your success.
261
So you can do an extraordinary thing for a decade and still feel like you're behind.
262
And many, many people feel this way.
263
I felt this way, right?
264
You need to cross small finish lines.
265
That little bit of acknowledgement is what gives your brain the dopamine hit that says, hey, we just did something worth doing, let's do it again.
266
And once your brain expects that hit, it starts giving it to you before you even start.
267
And that's when the work stops being something
268
that you have to drag yourself to do
269
because dopamine actually is the chemical of motivation and you actually start feeling pulled to do it.
270
And so if you bring it all together, let's zoom out for a second because I want you to know something about all of these.
271
The set point, the dopamine, the stress cycle, the ambiguity, the completion, not one of them is about you working harder.
272
It's not.
273
Every single one of them is about your biology running an old program in the background, a program that was written 200,000 years ago to keep human beings alive,
274
not to help a human build an amazing life.
275
And so you've been trying to out-discipline your biology, and that's why it hasn't worked.
276
That's why the motivation keeps running out.
277
You're not fighting laziness you're fighting a freaking survival system that's built into us with willpower.
278
That's like trying to scream at a rainstorm and hope that it stops.
279
You're going to lose.
280
So high performance is not about becoming a machine.
281
Most people think they need to like swim faster, right?
282
If we're using that as an example, you don't need to swim faster.
283
You've got weight tied to your ankle.
284
And if you just cut the weight off, you don't have to swim any harder at all.
285
You'll just suddenly start moving at a speed that you couldn't reach before
286
because you don't have that ankle weight tied to you anymore.
287
That's high performance.
288
It's getting rid of all of the things that are interfering with your high performance.
289
And so here's what I want you to do.
290
I don't want you to try to fix all four of these things.
291
If you try to fix all of them, you're going to fix zero.
292
That's how it always goes.
293
I want you to pick one.
294
And I want you to pick one that made you a little bit uncomfortable as I was talking about.
295
The one where you're like, oh, yeah, that one actually feels like it hits.
296
It's not a coincidence.
297
That's the one that your brain has been protecting.
298
And that's exactly the one that's been costing you the most.
299
And so work on that one thing for the next 30 days.
300
You don't have to be perfect, just be consistent.
301
And I promise you, 30 days from now, you're not gonna be a different person, but you're going to be a person with one less weight tied to their ankle.
302
And you do that a few times over the next few years, and then you will be somebody a few years from today that you don't recognize.
303
Hey, thanks so much for watching today's video.
304
If you love this video, click this one right here.
305
This is the one that you need to watch next.
306
And if you wanna make sure you don't miss any more of these episodes, click that button right there.
307
Make sure you subscribe and check out the next one.
📺 Same Channel
B21
How To DESTROY Negative Thoughts (And Rewire Your Brain)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B26
How NOT to Let Your Past Control Your Future
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
How To Get What You Want In Life
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B25
How to (Actually) Shift Your Identity (to Succeed)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B12
Their Mood Isn’t Your Responsibility. 👉 IG:@robdialjr #selfdevelopment #selflove #motivation
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
Never React, Never Explain, Just Ignore
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
5 Habits that Changed My Life in 1 Week
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2Do This for 30 Days and Your Life Will Change
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B119
Easy now & hard later OR hard now & easy later👉 IG:@robdialjr #selfdevelopment #motivation
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B23
Become addicted to discipline in 1 day
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
5 Things to Tell Yourself Every Morning
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B12
You Vs You "Drop a YES in you agree! 👉 IG:@robdialjr #motivation #selfdevelopment #personalgrowth
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B24
Push Yourself to Be Happy Even When Life is Hard
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B24
When You Finally Stop Living in Your Head, Life Becomes Peaceful Again
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
Once you apply this, the Universe will have no choice but to give you everything.
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
Act As If EVERYTHING Always Works Out
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B22
How to Teach Yourself Anything (The Self-Study Blueprint)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C13
WHY YOU SHOULD QUIT YOUR JOB!
Business EnglishWorking Adults
B23
7 Principles That Will Organize Your Entire Life
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
How To Rewire Your Brain To Enjoy Discipline
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
✨ Recommend Video
B26
63 sentences
Why You Can't Stay Consistent (The Psychology Behind It)
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
230 sentences
Self-Sabotage, Self-Forgiveness & Why the Way You Talk to Yourself Is Everything
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2483 sentences
The Mindset That Holds Smart People Back From Success
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B27
323 sentences
7 Skills That Will Be Worth Twice As Much By 2030
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
268 sentences
Once You Want Nothing, You'll Attract Everything
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
250 sentences
Chris Williamson Being Real For 16 Minutes Straight
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2255 sentences
This Is Why You Keep Burning Out | Andrew Huberman Motivation
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B2208 sentences
8 steps to get your sh** together
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
176 sentences
The Psychology of a Winter Arc That Actually Works!
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
20 sentences
The Confidence Hack Nobody Tells You 🤫
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
B21
216 sentences
Why You Feel Like You’re Stuck in Bad Luck But It’s Actually The Nova Effect!
Business EnglishUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
Ever Felt Like You Sabotage Your Own Success? Let’s Break It Down
Have you noticed how life can be going great—you’re hitting gym goals, growing a business, or building a healthy relationship—and then you suddenly derail? The video dives into why this happens, explaining it’s not just “self-sabotage” but a deeper nervous system response. This relatable scenario is packed with everyday language that English learners can use to talk about personal growth, challenges, and self-awareness.
Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master
- “Screw it up”: To make a mistake or ruin something. Example: “I finally got a promotion, but I messed up the presentation and screwed it up.”
- “Lose momentum”: To stop making progress. Example: “I was studying daily, but I lost momentum after a week.”
- “Pull you back down”: To return to a previous state. Example: “I started eating healthy, but stress pulled me back down to junk food.”
- “Set point”: A natural level your body or mind returns to. Example: “My nervous system has a set point for stress—I can’t stay calm for too long.”
- “Pick a fight”: To start an argument unnecessarily. Example: “We were happy, but I picked a fight over a small thing and ruined the day.”
Your Shadowing Challenge: Practice Natural Rhythm
Shadowing speech is a powerful way to improve your pronunciation and fluency. Here’s your task: Watch the video segment where the speaker talks about the nervous system’s set point. Pause after each sentence, then repeat it out loud, mimicking the tone, speed, and stress. Focus on how “set point” is emphasized and how “pull you back down” flows naturally. For extra practice, use a shadowing app or shadowing site to record yourself and compare it to the original. This helps you master the rhythm of conversational English, making your speech sound more native. Remember, shadow speak isn’t just about repeating words—it’s about capturing the energy and flow of real communication. Give it a try, and notice how your confidence grows!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been dreading · you've been trying · has been protecting |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | You've been · you've ever done · has finally accepted |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is set · are allowed · is designed |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | somebody who actually · anyone who knows · people who had |
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.