Shadowing Practice: 4 Ways to Stop Self-Sabotaging Your Success | Conor Neill - Learn English Speaking with Video
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- Performance equals potential minus self -sabotage.
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And if you can stop sabotaging yourself in four particular ways, you can make such a bigger difference in the world.
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Hey, it's Connor here at ESE Business School in Barcelona.
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And this week I want to talk about performance and what it takes to really deliver your best.
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Over the years for me of writing, of making videos, learning to teach, what I've realized, in terms of performance,
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the main thing that gets in the way of us delivering our best has nothing to do with
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that stuff outside of ourselves.
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It's in our own self -sabotage.
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And I think the formula for success in life, the formula of delivering of your best, is performance equals potential minus success.
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Self -sabotage.
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And if you can stop sabotaging yourself in four particular ways, you can make such a bigger difference in the world.
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Most of my last 15 years as an entrepreneur, as a teacher, as a writer,
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as a creator, I've seen it's so easy for a week to sweep by and you haven't completed anything.
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When I first started to write, I had a coach and each day he would just ask me, "How many words did you write today?"
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and so often the number was
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so low even though i meant all day to write somehow i had let self -sabotage win
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so the four forces of self -sabotage that will stop you from achieving what really matters.
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Number one, and the follow letters D -E -A -F, DEAF.
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DEAF is self -sabotage. is for distraction.
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Distraction.
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If you let distraction win, you'll never get anything important done.
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Brendan Burchard said, "Email is a wonderful task list of other people's priorities.
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If the first thing you do in the morning is open up email and start to respond, you are instantly opening your mind up to distraction.
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If in the morning you think, what is important?
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What are the three most important things today?
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and get that done first, you'll make such a better progress in the world.
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When I first started to write, I remember I decided actually writing is one of the most important things
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and each day I looked how many words I wrote.
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I discovered a tool called the Pomodoro Technique.
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It was developed by an Italian PhD student who was really struggling to finish his thesis.
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Pomodoro is "tomato" in Italian.
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And in his mother's kitchen there was a timer, a kitchen timer in the shape of a tomato, a pomodoro.
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- Thank you.
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And in an act of desperation, having gone years without really making progress on his thesis, he took the timer, set it to 20 minutes and just said to himself,
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I'm just going to sit and write until the timer buzzes.
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And he just did that 20 minutes, 20 minutes, 20 minutes focused and in a couple of weeks he finished his thesis
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and he's written a book on how to apply this to the important things in life.
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And I, years ago, writing, used to take a timer, put it down in front of me, set it to 20 minutes and say,
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"I will just keep writing fingers on the keys until the sound of the buzzer." If I need to get up, if I need to get water, if I need to go to the bathroom,
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if I need to look up something, if I need to go get a book, Thank you.
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I go do it, but I take the timer and I reset it back to 20 minutes.
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And at the end of the day, the question's how many Pomodoros did you complete?
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and it's scary to see how distracted you are until I decided
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that writing was important
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and how many words I produce today was a measure of how effective I'd been in using my time,
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I was not aware of how distracted I was.
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So to overcome distraction have a look at Pomodoro Technique.
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There's a video that I'll put a link to where a few years ago I shared how to use the Pomodoro Technique.
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So if you can overcome distraction, the second way that we sabotage ourselves...
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Allowing our emotions to run us, allowing our emotions to drive an impulsive response to what happens.
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And Viktor Frankl said, we have a choice, we always have a choice in how we respond to the world.
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But if your emotions overwhelm you, you don't really have a choice in how you respond.
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And Killian Jornet, Michael Sunier, the great high performance athletes that I had met years ago,
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one of the things that struck me is they see emotions as an indulgence.
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when you're in a race and your ski binding breaks
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or there's something on the track and you get frustrated and you get anger,
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every second that you spend in anger is a second that somebody else is making progress, is getting further ahead or catching up on you.
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So Killian Jornet is very clear that anger is is an indulgence.
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If what's important in you is delivering your best, The important thing is you feel the emotion.
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but you do not react from the emotions.
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And I think this capacity to accept the presence of an emotion in you without it causing you to react.
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In my case, There's a couple of emotional states that I really struggle to sit with.
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One is boredom.
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Another is frustration.
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And when I feel bored is when distraction, I look for anything to distract me.
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When I feel frustrated, I look for anything to distract me.
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So the ability to allow emotions to serve you, to not be impulsive.
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Now this is hard.
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Now if you've got distraction under control, you allow your emotions to be a part of you, but not the way you react to the world.
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Number three killer in self -sabotage is Arrogance is entitlement,
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believing that something is due to you.
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And I notice every few years my ego grows up a bit
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and my brain starts to tell me that I deserve more, I deserve more applause, I deserve more.
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And it's a really dangerous thing as it creeps in, this sense of entitlement, this sense that I've earned the right to get some stuff.
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mind.
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The moment you feel that you deserve you really start to take yourself away from your best self.
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And I think here, I deserve,
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I'm owed, expecting things leads me to feel emotions that then lead me to seek out distraction.
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So rooting out all sources of arrogance within me, really remaining humble.
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One of the things that I really try to do at the beginning of every class or every training that I do,
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is just stand for a few minutes at the doorway looking in.
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looking at all the people as they're coming in to begin the class with me.
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And sometimes in my head I'm thinking about me, about how much I've done, how good a teacher I am.
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And it's very important for me to stop those few minutes before I begin and look at each of the people.
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- Thank you.
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that are about to learn.
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think what has happened to bring this person to this classroom today?
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What's going on in their life?
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What are they struggling with?
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What's going well?
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And if I look at each individual
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before I begin to teach and connect to them and connect to what they've come here for, I get out of my own head,
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I begin not to be the important person in the room, I begin to put the focus on other people.
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And I know that when I have the time to focus on the others, when I have the time to think about who they are, what they are coming into this room,
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I get out of my own head, my ego, what I deserve, how good I am, and start to focus on how do I get out of my own head give. to them?
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How do I give to the work?
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How do I give to what's important?
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So rooting out arrogance, rooting out any sense of deservedness.
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The fourth way we get in our own way
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and we are an obstacle to our own creation of important things is when we have a fixed mindset,
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a belief that I have got to where I've got.
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There's nothing I can do to change my intelligence.
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There's nothing I can do to change my skills.
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There's nothing I can do to get better in fitness, in health, in eating well.
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And I think a fixed mindset is almost a combination of all of the other things before.
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A growth mindset, and there's a lot of material you can find on the web around what a growth mindset stands for.
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But a growth mindset, all great athletes, all Olympic medalists, all people who achieve greatly,
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deep down they have a growth mindset, not a fixed mindset.
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And a growth mindset focuses more on the work effort I put in, the quality of my efforts more than the quality of my outcomes.
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There's a wonderful line in the Bhagavad Gita,
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the Hindu religious text, and it says, of our labor.
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And I think a growth mindset, Kilian Jornet runs not to win, but to discover who he is through the act of running.
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He competes not to win, but to discover more about himself.
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And in our labor, I have the right to be proud about the quality of my teaching.
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I have the right to be proud of the quality of my writing, the quality that my idea came onto the page and became clear.
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but I don't have a right to be proud of what I get.
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I don't have a right to be proud of the applause from a class when I teach well.
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I don't have a right to be proud of my house or my car.
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dangerously in our society we do get proud of these things but a growth mindset is fundamentally about
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looking at the rewards I get from the act of doing my work.
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And I think when you have this focus that...
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your anxiety doesn't grow because winning
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or losing is not as important as focusing completely on giving my best to my work today and tomorrow being better,
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tomorrow being stronger, tomorrow taking something from today so that I'm even better at my work. or I deserve.
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and keeping that focus on the quality of my work is what I can be proud of.
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The quality of my connection with you I can be proud of.
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The quality of the focus that I put here today, that I can be proud of.
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Not how many subscribers, not how many fans, not how many likes, not how many comments.
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but whether I took an idea and was able to turn it into something that is a work of art.
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And I think that's the fundamental aspect of a growth mindset and the fundamental asset of living a fulfilling, meaningful life.
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So I hope you take these on board.
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Pomodoro technique to overcome distraction.
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Being able to sit with yourself.
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Some of the meditative techniques of just accepting an emotion, not letting it overwhelm you, but accepting it being there not fighting against it,
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but just being able to feel it, let it pass through you and move on but not reacting to emotion.
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Arrogance in all its forms, entitlement in all its forms detracts from your ability to give of your best and become a better person tomorrow.
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And I think the big thing that captures all these ideas is really the development in you.
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of a growth mindset and almost more important the fostering in all of those around you of a growth mindset.
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Acknowledging others for the quality of their effort.
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Acknowledging others for the quality of the problems that they're taking on, bringing into their lives, processing and making better.
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Okay.
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Hey it's Conor, thank you for your subscribes, your likes, your comments.
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As always your questions via email in the comments below help me,
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inspire me to create these videos each week so thank you for that.
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Have a great one.
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Thank you again for your subscribes, your likes, your comments.
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It's a real interesting process, this building a community.
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sharing ideas, getting your comments, getting your questions.
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Just this week I was in a restaurant and someone said, "Hey, I follow you on YouTube.
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Wow, I saw you across there." What's wonderful is the conversation goes straight to something important.
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Because if you've watched these videos, you're not going to ask me where I'm from.
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You're going to ask me about life, about things that are important, things about leadership, about entrepreneurship, about being a good person and how to figure it out.
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So it kind of means that I don't do superficial conversations anymore.
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On that note, have a good one.
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See you next week.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice improving your English speaking skills through the shadowing technique. This method involves listening to a speaker and simultaneously repeating what they say, allowing you to enhance your pronunciation, intonation, and understanding of natural speech rhythms. Drawing from a recent discussion by Conor Neill on self-sabotage, this lesson focuses on recognizing and overcoming distractions to maximize your productivity, which is crucial in your language learning journey. By mastering these concepts, you'll find yourself performing better not just in English but in all areas of your life.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Self-sabotage - actions that undermine one's own success.
- Distraction - anything that diverts attention away from a task.
- Potential - the inherent ability or capacity for growth, development, or coming into being.
- Performance - the execution of a task or role.
- Pomodoro Technique - a time management method that uses intervals of focused work, followed by short breaks.
- Impulsive response - reacting quickly without thinking through the consequences.
Practice Tips
To effectively utilize the shadowing technique while watching Conor Neill's video on self-sabotage, follow these guidelines:
- Start Slow: Begin by listening to just a few sentences at a time. Make sure to pause after each segment to repeat what you've heard.
- Emphasize Clarity: Focus on pronouncing words clearly rather than racing to keep up with the speaker. Notice the intonation and emotion in Conor's voice as you practice.
- Use the Pomodoro Technique: Set a timer to practice shadowing for 20 minutes. This will not only help you focus but will also give you a structured way to measure your progress.
- Evaluate Yourself: Record your shadow speech and listen back to spot areas for improvement in pronunciation and rhythm.
- Engage with Emotions: Try to emulate not just the words but also the emotions in the video. This will enhance your ability to respond naturally in real conversations.
- Regular Practice: Make shadowing a part of your daily English learning routine. Consistency is key to overcoming self-sabotage and distractions.
By incorporating these strategies with the shadowspeak approach, you will not only develop your linguistic skills but also unlock your full potential in English communication.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've realized · I've seen · I've earned |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | student who was · people who achieve |
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.