Shadowing Practice: 5 Habits of *Genuinely* Happy People (no toxic positivity required) - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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What is it that actually makes someone a genuinely happy person?
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What is it that actually makes someone a genuinely happy person?
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I'm not talking about toxic positivity
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or someone who just posts a lot of cute pictures to Instagram so it looks like their life is happy.
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I'm talking about genuine happiness.
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Now I'm a very observant person and the thing
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that I've noticed is that happy people tend to have similar habits and patterns and many little things in common.
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So let's talk about it.
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What are those?
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What makes happy people different?
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Hey friend, welcome back.
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If you're new here, my name is Jill and I help women step into their power,
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tap into their divine feminine,
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and become their best self, live their best life.
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So if that's something you want to do,
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you should subscribe and stick around.
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And if you want more from me,
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you should get on my newsletter.
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It's called the Dream Life Digest.
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It lands in your inbox for free every Tuesday,
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and it's where I go a little bit deeper.
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So the link for that is down below,
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but let's get into it.
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So you want to know what is the number one habit of happy people that I have noticed,
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it's that they're excited for things.
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They still have excitement in their life and they stay excited about all the little things.
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They get excited for the first day of fall.
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They get excited to try that new little restaurant.
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Christmas isn't just a day, it's a whole season.
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They romanticize their life.
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And it's the super little things too,
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you know, like they're excited about waking up and drinking their morning cup of coffee.
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That excitement and romanticizing everything,
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it brings whimsy into your life and it brings gratitude into your life.
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And I think having excitement for things big or small is really underrated.
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And they've studied this.
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They've actually proved this.
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When you go on vacation,
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the largest happiness boost that you get from that vacation actually happens before you even leave your house,
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before you even go on vacation.
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It's not the actual vacation itself.
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It's the anticipation leading up to said vacation.
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And it's interesting because this is why scrolling can actually be
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so addictive because your brain is constantly chasing and anticipating what's next.
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And that anticipation high, the dopamine you get from that is really, really powerful.
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And so having anticipation for good things is actually a really consistent predictor of wellbeing.
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So happy people stay excited for things.
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Or another way that I like to think of it is they have a low threshold for delight.
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So they let a sunny morning or a yummy snack or a fun weekend brunch date feel exciting.
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And side note, this is also why I love dressing up in cute outfits every day
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because it makes every day feel more exciting.
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Next, I think we all know that sometimes not so great thoughts just pop into your head,
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whether they're weird thoughts or self-deprecating thoughts or anxious thoughts or insecure thoughts.
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And the thing is, is that you can't stop a thought.
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But the next habit of happy people is that they don't believe everything that pops into their head.
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The brain produces over like 6,000 thoughts a day.
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That's a lot of thoughts.
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And most of them are just noise.
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Happy people have negative thoughts too.
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They're not immune to it.
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Like I said, that thought is automatic.
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You can't really stop a thought.
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But believing it, on the other hand, is a choice.
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Taking every single thought that pops into your brain so seriously,
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that is a choice.
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A lot of the suffering that we experience as human beings isn't necessarily about what's happening.
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It's from what our brain is saying about what's happening
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and what you're focusing your attention on
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when you get a negative thought do you grab onto it
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and replay it and build a whole story around it in your head
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or do you try to argue against it in your head
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or do you just let it pass and not take it so seriously
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because happy people do the latter think about it there's a big difference between someone thinking i'm a failure versus
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I'm having the thought that I'm a failure.
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Same sort of thought, but completely different relationship to it.
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One feels massive and like it's gonna ruin your whole life and the other one feels more like an observation
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and observations are easier to let go.
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Now, before we keep going,
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I do want to thank BetterHelp for kindly sponsoring today's video.
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When we talk about happy people,
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most people focus on the external stuff,
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like having friends and hobbies and a full life and yes, that matters.
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But real happiness isn't just what's happening around you,
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it's also what's happening within you.
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Your mindset, your emotional world,
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and the way you relate to your own thoughts.
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And it's really hard to feel genuinely happy
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when your inner critic is loud or when you believe every negative thought that pops into your head.
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That's why having the right support matters,
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whether you're dealing with anxiety or negative thought patterns or self-worth stuff,
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or you're just trying to break habits that aren't serving you anymore.
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Having someone to actually talk to makes a difference.
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Therapy gives you a space to work through what's coming up
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and start shifting that inner dialogue so
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that the happiness you're cultivating on the outside actually matches how you feel on the inside.
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And sometimes just having an outside perspective can help you get out of your own head
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and see things in a new light.
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That's where BetterHelp comes in.
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BetterHelp is an online therapy platform that makes it easy and convenient to get matched with a licensed therapist.
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No waiting rooms, no commuting,
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just professional support from home on your own schedule.
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You just fill out a brief questionnaire and get matched with a therapist within a couple days.
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And if that first match isn't the right fit,
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you can switch to a new therapist at any time at no extra cost.
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If therapy feels like the right next step for you,
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just click the link in the description or go to betterhelp.com slash jills to get 10% off your first month.
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Okay, this next one is huge and a little ironic,
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but happy people are not always trying to be happy.
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It's a bit of a paradox, but it's true.
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Happy people are absorbed in something other than happiness,
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a project that excites them or hobbies that excite them,
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a goal that adds fulfillment to their life or relationships that feel rewarding.
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Happiness is not the focus.
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it's just a byproduct.
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We see this a lot in life.
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You know, the more that you want something,
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the more that that thing evades you.
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It's like trying to fall asleep.
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The harder you try to fall asleep,
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the more awake you become.
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And the only way that you can sleep is by stopping the trying.
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Iris Moss at UC Berkeley actually ran research showing
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that people who explicitly value happiness as a goal actually report being less happy,
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more lonely, and more depressed than people who don't.
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And that basically when happiness becomes the goal,
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you start monitoring for it and chasing it and always thinking about it.
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And that constant monitoring creates a gap between where you are and where you think you should be.
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And that gap is where the suffering lies.
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Viktor Frankl, he's the author of A Man's Search for Meaning.
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It's a good book.
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He said this very well.
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He said, happiness cannot be pursued.
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It must ensue.
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Meaning happiness is not a target.
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You don't aim at it.
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You aim at something worth doing and happiness shows up as a side effect.
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And you see this paradox a lot.
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The person who desperately wants love repels people,
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but the person living their best life and absorbed in something wonderful attracts them.
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Or the second you try to be cool, you're not cool, right?
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Because cool is the absence of trying.
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There are just some things that the more you chase,
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the farther it runs away from you.
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And I think happiness is one of those things.
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Now this next one is actually another sort of paradox that's really interesting.
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It's called the paradox of choice.
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Happy people do not get bogged down by choice and they stay committed to their decisions.
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This one is very counterintuitive, but it's true.
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We think that more options will give us more freedom and therefore more happiness.
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But often it is shown that the exact opposite is true.
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The more options we keep open,
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usually the less happy we are.
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Barry Schwartz, he wrote a book on this called The Paradox of Choice.
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And he did this research where he studied two different types of people, maximizers versus satisficers.
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Maximizers are people who need to find the very best option,
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where satisficers pick good enough and move on.
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And what he found is that maximizers are more depressed,
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more prone to regret, more of a perfectionist,
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not surprisingly, and most importantly, less happy than satisficers.
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The people obsessively optimizing their lives were the ones suffering the most.
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and we see this kind of thing over and over again.
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There was this one study done at Harvard where photography students were told to take a bunch of pictures
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and then they got to pick one and keep that one.
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Half of them were told
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that they could swap their photo anytime in the next few days
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but the other half were told that that choice was final, no take backs.
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And the group that couldn't change their mind ended up significantly happier with their photo whereas the other group,
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the group that could swap,
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they kept second guessing, they kept evaluating,
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and they never came to love the one that they had.
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People predict that they will be happier when they have the freedom to change their minds and all these other options.
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But in fact, the opposite is true.
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It can actually end up being the very thing keeping you from settling into what you have now.
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It's like doom scrolling homes on Zillow in cities you're never going to move to.
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You know, if you keep asking yourself,
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but what if I move?
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But what if I move here?
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What if I move there?
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It means you probably aren't ever fully present or able to enjoy the city you live in now.
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And of course, there's nothing wrong with having options and being thoughtful about what's best for you and your life.
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But I do think there is a balance there and happy people don't constantly renegotiate with their life.
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They don't question everything constantly.
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They pick something, they're living in it.
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They put their energy into actually being there.
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The internet has turned us all into maximizers.
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You know, every time we scroll TikTok,
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it's like one scroll, we're looking at this girl in Dubai who's making a ton of money
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and has all these fancy cars and this big business.
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And then the next scroll is some wonderful lady on a farm with her cows.
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Every life option is visible to us.
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So you can see every city you didn't move to,
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every career path that you didn't pick,
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every body type that you don't have,
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every relationship that you're not in.
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We're being trained all day every day to keep evaluating,
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to never commit, to always wonder.
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I noticed this when I scroll too much.
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I started thinking, oh, well,
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I could do that or I could do that, right?
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Or I can move to Paris or I could have a kid
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or Or maybe I should live on a farm and make my own cheese.
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And you know what?
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All of that stuff does open you up to new possibilities and I think that's good.
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But it also comes to a point where it just starts to make you miserable.
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This is honestly probably one of the biggest reasons why our generation is less happy than previous generations.
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They didn't have the option to constantly compare like we do.
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They committed because there was,
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you know, no infinite menu to keep scrolling.
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Commitment is its own kind of freedom.
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And the longer you have that exit door in your mind,
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the less happy you'll be in that room.
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Now this next one is not as surprising,
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but there's this famous Harvard study.
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You might have heard of it on happiness.
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It's been going for like over 80 years.
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It's the longest study unhappiness that's ever been conducted.
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And the single biggest predictor of long-term happiness,
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more than money, more than success,
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even more than health, the biggest predictor of long-term happiness was the quality of their relationships.
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But I want to point out something.
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It's not just about having relationships and having some people in your life.
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It's about the quality of your relationships.
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That's a big difference.
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And the thing about genuinely happy people is yes,
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they have relationships, but they actually like the people in their life.
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They trust them.
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Quality.
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Do you feel like you can be yourself around the people in your life?
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Do you have people that you can truly rely on?
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Do you feel loved by the people around you?
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In that famous study, people with even just one or two deeply loving,
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trustworthy, safe relationships, they did better health and happiness wise than someone who may have a big social network,
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but that quality was not there.
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And they didn't have anyone that they could feel they could really count on.
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The people in your life affect you more than you think,
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because at the end of the day, we are human beings.
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We are mammals.
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We are community driven.
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It is literally in our biology.
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And honestly, what this comes down to is nervous system regulation.
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We are not designed as community driven beings to regulate our nervous systems alone or to have regulated nervous systems alone.
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We're supposed to regulate in community with one another.
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When you're around people you trust, your body relaxes.
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When you're around people where you feel like you have to perform for them in a way,
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your body stays in this low-grade activated stress state.
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And the flip side of this is true too.
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People in unhappy marriages or people who are chronically lonely have worse health outcomes than people who may be single,
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but have good close friends.
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Loneliness has been measured as the health equivalent to smoking.
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Not metaphorically, literally.
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And of course, when your body is in that kind of chronic stress,
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your happiness suffers along with it because the two aren't separate.
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Let me know if you feel like there's something I missed,
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but in my opinion, I feel like these things are the most important when it comes to happiness.
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But if you have any comments or opinions, feel free to share.
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But you want to know something that probably isn't helping your happiness?
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Doomscrolling.
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And if that's you, you should go watch this video
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because here I break down the real tragedy of doomscrolling
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and how it's simply just a digital pacifier turning us all into losers.
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So I'll see you over there or I'll just see you next time in my next video.
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Thank you so much for watching.
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Love you.
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Bye.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice listening and speaking skills based on the topic of genuine happiness. By analyzing the habits of genuinely happy people, you will enhance your English vocabulary and improve your pronunciation through the shadowing technique. This practice will help you become more comfortable expressing emotions and excitement in English, a valuable skill for both social interactions and self-expression.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Genuinely happy - True feelings of happiness, not just surface-level positivity.
- Toxic positivity - A mindset that discourages negative feelings and prioritizes superficial happiness.
- Anticipation - The excitement or hope for something that is going to happen.
- Romanticize - To view something in an idealized or overly positive way.
- Whimsy - A playful or fanciful quality that brings joy.
- Low threshold for delight - To find joy in small or simple things.
- Dopamine - A chemical in the brain associated with pleasure and excitement.
Practice Tips
When practicing with the shadow speech technique, begin by listening to the video at a slower speed. Pay close attention to the speaker's intonation and rhythm. Try to repeat the sentences right after you hear them, mimicking the emotional tone and excitement in their voice. Make sure to practice phrases like "they romanticize their life" or "having excitement for things is underrated" to build familiarity with these expressions.
As you shadow speak, think about the context of the words. For example, when you hear "excited for the first day of fall," visualize the scene to enhance retention. This context will help you not just memorize, but also use these phrases naturally in conversation. Remember, the goal is to incorporate the joy and enthusiasm discussed in the video into your everyday speech, increasing your comfort level in expressing similar feelings.
Lastly, consider using a shadowing site or tool that lets you record your voice. Listening to your recordings will allow you to track your progress and adjust your tone and delivery to better match the original speaker.
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.
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