Shadowing Practice: 5 Life Changing Speeches You Need to Hear TODAY (2021) | Motivational Video Compilation - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I was thinking this morning about a conversation I had with my grandfather.
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This particular example, I was living in LA at the time, my grandmother, my grandfather, they flew in from Boston
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and you know I think we're doing some family stuff
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but I wanted to hang out with my friends down the street right I wanted to go to Kyle's house, play Star Wars, whatever it was we were doing and that felt like the world to me.
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Like I didn't want to miss out on that because I felt like I'd lose it.
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If I wasn't there I'd lose something
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and I remember him taking me from the kitchen to the
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living room being like Eddie you have to relax he's like
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that stuff I promise you will always be there the fun
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the escape the metaphorical going to Kyle's house will always be there you have to do what's right for you
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and then when you need that it's there it was almost like all the nuance
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and the detail is reacquirable and why I'm bringing this up and And it's a little bit of a pivot, but I've seen throughout my life,
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personally, this sort of loss aversion, like I mentioned a few days ago,
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where you don't want to leave a bad situation because you fear that the very basic boxes that you've checked, you can't get them back.
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It's like you can have a job that you're not satisfied, you're unfulfilled, there's nothing great about it.
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You've lost your sense of self, your purpose, but you're getting a paycheck, right?
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Or, you know, at least you have some direction in the day or in your life.
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You can say who you are.
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There's some identity.
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There's some very basic boxes.
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You're not happy, but the basic boxes are checked.
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And what you fear is if you leave in pursuit of something different, maybe you can't check those boxes again, right?
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Or you're in a relationship and it's like, it's not right
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and you know in your core it's not right
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but there's very basic boxes
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that are checked right you're not alone you're with someone there's
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some predictability in your life like it'd be tough to lose those things and
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so that's really the essence of what I want to say right having the self -belief in the self -trust
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because that's really what it comes down to to understanding that if you move into the unknown, you can recreate those things.
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You can check those basic boxes off.
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But if you don't have the courage to move out of that situation, you'll be shackled to a world that's not really meant for you.
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Right?
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So like the job thing.
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And by the way, I always worry about saying this because there are people that love their jobs.
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I'm never ever knocking a nine to five.
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Like it's just my thing, right?
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That was for me.
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I felt so constrained and I'm just such a, like I love to be creating and sort of out on the fringes.
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That's just like what motivates me.
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That's not how everyone works.
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So I don't want this to be interpreted as me bashing a nine to five.
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It's just my story.
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But like I, I realized that I could have walked away
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come back in a year after living in Thailand and things would have been exactly the same when I got back.
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I could have got a similar job, I could have found ways to check off those same boxes.
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Those foundational things, they're reacquirable.
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Just like the relationship thing.
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It's like if it's not right for you, there's eight billion people in the world.
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Eight billion.
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You think one of those doesn't share your value system, one of those you can have fun with, hang out with, relax, enjoy yourself, improve your life.
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Like, of course you can.
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But you're worried about losing the very basics, the very basic boxes that you've checked.
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And it's like you have to have the courage and self -belief to walk away from those things.
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You have to believe in yourself enough to know that you can recreate a reality, right?
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With a similar foundation but with the things on top of that that make you happy, make you feel alive.
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Like I'm prone to do, I found a random internet quote today.
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It says, I am learning to love the sound of my feet walking away from things that are not meant for me.
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And it's that simple.
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You can never get where you're going if you're shackled to the things that don't move you.
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If you're staying in a place of discontent
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And the message is simple right believe in yourself trust yourself There's nothing in your life that you can't reacquire or rebuild
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But what you'll miss if you stay in
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that place is the opportunity the upside the people that will change your life the places
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That you've never seen the experiences the journeys that Thank you make life worth living.
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The upside is just too high.
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Commit.
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The only limit to your impact is your imagination and your commitment.
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The fence is for losers.
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Right?
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That's a harsh way to put it, but that's the reality is things get better when you look at life from a binary standpoint.
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You either want it or you don't.
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And if you want it, why wouldn't you go all in?
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And if you don't, why would you touch it?
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I can't tell you how many times I've been, you know, one toe in the water and it's like, why?
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Do you want this or not?
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First time I heard this freshman year in college.
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And it was one of those things where I always thought I worked hard, you know, I always kind of jumped into what I was doing
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and I wanted to get good grades and I invested in what I did.
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But I realized that I didn't quite grasp what it meant.
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And I walk up to the student center and I'm looking around
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and there's a flyer and it says Holy Cross D1 Men's Rowing.
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And I'm like, yes, this is perfect.
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You know, I can make friends with like -minded people, you know, stay in shape.
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This is amazing and I go up and there are 73 people there walk -ons
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And what I didn't realize at the time was that they don't make cuts
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Quit or you don't senior year when we graduated four walk -ons were left
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And we always joke about it because
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It's not like we were far more talented or we had this superior skill set we just committed to the process.
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We committed to the ups and the downs and the trials and the tribulations and the difficulty.
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One of my first practices, you guys know what a rowing machine is?
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The thing in the gym you sit down and you pull?
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Pretty straightforward.
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You pull, it tells you exactly how hard you pull.
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That's it.
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And so I'm sitting there, we're doing five sprints, 2 ,000 meter sprints, and I'm suffering, you know, just going the world of hurt.
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And after the second one I get up and I go to the bathroom, I'm throwing up, I have a headache, I'm dizzy, and just feeling so sorry for myself.
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I'd never experienced anything like that before, this is all new to me.
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And eventually I get it together and I go down, I sit on the erg, you know, feeling like a hero.
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It's like, alright, I'm back.
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And I sit down, grab the thing, and the coach walks up next to me.
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He goes, it's Eddie, right?
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Yeah, it's Eddie.
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He goes, yeah, that score won't cut it.
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And walks away.
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and that was not a nice thing to hear because I always associated suffering with paying the price, right?
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How could I be going through that type of punishment and have someone respond that way, right?
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So we start the piece and now I'm like, I have something to prove and I'm just ripping the thing as hard as I can
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and just not in a good place and he comes up again.
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I'm like, all right, good, right?
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Now he understands.
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He goes, look, Eddie, I don't know what you have to do mentally.
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I don't know what you have to do physically, but you gotta figure it out.
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And that's where it occurred to me, showing up isn't enough.
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Being in pain isn't enough because the guy from Georgetown you're racing on Saturday, the guy from Northeastern you're racing on Saturday, they hurt too.
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But they're pulling faster.
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Winning, truly winning is committing in every single way.
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It's immersing yourself in something because if you want to be great,
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that's what it takes So in this parable,
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there's a man and he's walking through a circus and
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What he's noticing as he looks around he sees these massive elephants, right?
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I'm sure everyone knows how big
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and strong an elephant is they have a rope around one of their legs connected to something
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and that's what's holding them in place and he's looking at them thinking how are these enormous creatures
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being held in place by these little ropes right they could
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easily you know have enough strength to just break free
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and run around yet they're not they're all staying right where they are
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and so as he keeps walking he finds someone
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and he asks them you know how is it these elephants are constrained like
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that and the person explains well
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when they're little we do the same thing we take a
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rope we tie it to one of their legs connect it to something
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and at that point they are too small they can't go anywhere
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and every day you know we do the same thing
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and as they get older they don't realize that they're big enough or strong enough to break free
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They maintain the idea that they're shackled by that rope or tied by that rope, that they're bound to the same place.
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It's mental.
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And in fact, most limitations are mental.
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These elephants don't even realize their constraints are self -imposed.
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And if you take a step back, if you look at your own world,
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I think what you'd find is there are more of these ropes than we'd like to admit.
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And changing that is one, awareness, and two, a willingness.
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Like what types of parameters have you made for yourself?
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Are you living in just because that's what you've always done?
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What is your metaphorical rope?
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Is it a job?
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Is it a relationship?
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Is it a routine?
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Is it the courage to start something?
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Like what is holding you back?
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What stories have you told yourself are you living by
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that dictate your actions and your days and ultimately your happiness that can change with a tug on a metaphorical rope?
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See reality, your life is nothing more than what you've conceded to, what you've allowed it to be.
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It's a line in the sand.
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And the message today is so incredibly simple.
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It's to look around you and pinpoint where those lines can be redrawn.
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Where that rope needs to be pulled.
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What invisible walls have you created for yourself?
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Because in life there's one truth, right?
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Things only stop when you do.
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Life stops when you decide to stop and sometimes you realize it and sometimes you don't
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Sometimes you need the reminder to look around you
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And realize how courageous you are how much you're capable of if you see beyond the immediate
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Because reality was not destined to be it's what you've allowed.
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It's what you've created.
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It's what you've accepted So let's tear down those walls and build something incredible Have an amazing Saturday.
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Catch you guys tomorrow.
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I want to talk about a myth.
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And it's a myth, it's an idea that's commonplace in our lives
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and it's rooted in a lot of the decisions we make, as well as the actions that we do not take.
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It's this idea of certainty.
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Of a formula, something that's already out there that will get you from point A to point B.
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See, breaking it down further, there are two things you need to know about certainty.
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One is that it's an idea derived from fiction.
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There's no way of knowing exactly what the top of the mountain will look like.
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And waiting for that to materialize,
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to have that crystal clear step -by -step formula, it creates stagnation.
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We don't have perfection, so we don't move.
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It's one of those things where you wait and days turn to days
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and more days and weeks and months and years and eventually regret.
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Why?
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Because we were not certain.
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And what do we do?
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See, this leads to the second piece.
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We study everything.
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We live in a time where we have access to unlimited resources.
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And it's this incredible thing, right?
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We can study the LeBron James, the Jeff Bezos, the Gary Vaynerchuks of the world.
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We can see exactly what they did.
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We can see how they think, how they approach problems, how they get to solutions.
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And on one hand, it's an unbelievable benefit.
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Knowledge is power.
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But on the other hand, there's a cost.
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And this cost can be extremely detrimental because it mitigates the most important thing in your life, and that is your unique self.
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What makes you valuable?
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What do you bring to the world?
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What makes you tick?
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And I'll tell you right now, you do not find that by studying how Jeff Bezos started Amazon and attempting to duplicate it.
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You don't find that by simply copying LeBron James' workout routine.
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Your value.
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Your source of happiness.
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You know, that's discovered moving forward through ups and downs, falling and getting back up, not once, not twice, but repeatedly.
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And it's through those trials and tribulations that you carve out who you are.
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But if you wait for the perfect moment, you'll never find it, which means you will never go through this process.
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I often think back to my days in the corporate world, in the insurance industry, being in a situation that I was not thriving in.
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And if someone sat me down and said, Eddie, what do you want to do?
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What is the top of the mountain?
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What does success look like to you?
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I couldn't answer that.
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But what I did know was that I loved to create.
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I loved to speak, to write, compose music, produce videos, just put out content.
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That's what I was destined to do and I knew it.
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But if I waited to move until I knew exactly what my life would look like, until there was, you know,
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this path perfectly paved to the finish line, I'd still be there.
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I'd be in a cubicle crunching numbers in Excel in a weirdly painted beige room.
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But sometimes you have to move forward.
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Trust your gut, your instincts, what you love to do.
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Embrace the idea, the fact that you'll fall down and you'll fall down and you'll get back up.
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But that it will shape you and that as you go on living your passion, your purpose, thriving in life, the pieces come together.
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You have to trust that even when it's not certain because I'll tell you what is certain.
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If you do not move, you will not achieve.
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that world will spin right around you.
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I read a book a few months ago called Hatching Twitter.
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Simple read, it's about the founders of Twitter, Jack, Ev, all these guys with their different ideas and different notions of what this company is going to be.
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It started out as, I believe, a radio, online radio company and it evolved and it evolved
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and there were pivots and adjustments and alterations and they kept moving forward and they kept growing.
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And there's one point where they have a valuation of millions and millions of dollars and they're having a conversation like, what do we have?
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What is our company?
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Is real -time news the focus?
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Are we promoting social interaction?
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Like what is it?
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How do we brand this?
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How do we market it?
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What do we have on our hands?
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This is a company worth millions of dollars.
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Talk about just moving forward, taking it one step at a time.
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Things will change, they'll evolve, but you have to give yourself an opportunity for that to happen.
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Imagine if they never left the garage
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or whatever room they started the company in because they didn't know what it would be in 2017.
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We wouldn't have Twitter.
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And that applies to everything around us, right?
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We have this idea that you know things were meant to be they were destined
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No
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Things exist around us because of risks that were taken
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Because people pushed forward until they got a result until they knew what they were meant to do
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and it materialized and that is life So don't be scared to take that step don't be nervous To fall down
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You need that.
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The world needs that.
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Because without it, we'll have could -bes and some days.
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But not the existence that we want, that you deserve, that you're capable of acquiring.
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No longer is certainty the standard.
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Progress is the standard.
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And your life will change.
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Let's talk about fear.
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One of the most interesting aspects of being human.
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Our fear of touching the stove prevents us from burning our hand.
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In many ways, it's our greatest protector.
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But it's also outdated.
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It can obstruct us from the things that we want most.
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For thousands and thousands of years, it has kept our species alive.
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Those who weren't afraid or skeptical of the dark cave or the rustling in the bushes, they probably didn't make it too long back in the day, right?
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They would have been weeded out.
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But the thing is, life today is very different than it was back then.
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We don't have to fear for our life going to get food anymore.
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The tricky part is that in many ways our cognitive processes are still the same.
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We are wired to be afraid.
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And this can be a problem.
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Because if these fears limit our ability to grow or live the life that we want to live, then that fear, that primal instinct can be a barrier.
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Because the human body will always take the path of least resistance.
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And for us, that means avoiding the problem.
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It's just easier.
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Right, if I'm scared of public speaking, it is exponentially easier for me to avoid the problem and not deal with it.
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I can eliminate the pain and discomfort by simply staying home.
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But here's the issue with that mentality.
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Life is too short and too precious to waste.
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Think about all the opportunities we'd miss if we ran the other way and hid every time we were afraid.
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If we never pushed ourselves.
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If we never broke through the barrier of the unknown and sought out more, it would be a tragedy.
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We'd live a fraction of the life that we're capable of living.
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So the big question is how?
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How do we overcome fear?
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Well, it turns out the answer is simple, it's just not easy.
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If you've ever jumped into a freezing cold pool, you'll be able to relate to this.
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As soon as your body hits the water, you go through extreme discomfort, right?
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Pins, needles, that quick shock you feel.
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The only thing on your mind is being out of the pool, being warm.
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But as time goes by, this changes.
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Your body acclimates, you adjust.
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And after five minutes, you can get out, you can jump back in.
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There's no discomfort, you're completely fine.
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While facing our fears follows a very similar pattern, the more we expose ourselves to a certain stimulus, the more comfortable we become.
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Tim Ferriss references this in the context of going to a crowded place, sprawling out on the floor, lying on your back as people walk by.
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It's an incredibly difficult and anxiety -inducing thing to do.
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It goes against every instinct we have, but something happens when you get back up.
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You've taught your brain that there are no negative repercussions, that it's okay.
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And this pushes the bar a little higher, makes you a little braver, stretches your boundaries a little further.
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Emphasizing the point that to get what we want out of life, to overcome fear, to be better than we were yesterday,
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we cannot avoid what makes us uncomfortable.
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Quite the opposite, we need more exposure to it.
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To destroy your fears, you need to muster up the courage to stare them in the face. And that's tough, right?
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Our mind tricks us into thinking about worst case scenario.
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But if you can change your mentality to see not the downside but the upside, life changes along with it.
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Now the scariest outcome isn't failure or having to backtrack or being wrong.
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The scariest outcome is doing nothing.
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What we eventually learn is that dark, mysterious unknown isn't half as scary as standing still and watching life go by.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This video is a goldmine for IELTS speaking practice and everyday conversation skills! The speaker shares personal stories in a natural, conversational tone—perfect for shadow speech (repeating aloud as you listen). You’ll learn to express complex ideas like "loss aversion" or "reacquirable opportunities" in relatable ways, while picking up casual phrases that make your speech sound more fluent. Plus, the emotional depth of the content helps you practice intonation and emphasis, key for connecting with listeners. Whether you’re prepping for an exam or just want to sound more confident, this video makes learning feel like a chat with a friend.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Let’s break down 3 standout structures to boost your speaking:
- "I was thinking this morning about a conversation I had...": This past continuous + past simple combo sets a storytelling tone. Use it to introduce personal anecdotes (great for IELTS part 2!).
- "You have to do what's right for you": "What's right for you" is a flexible noun clause. Replace "right" with "best" or "important" to talk about decisions—e.g., "I need to choose what's best for my career."
- "It's like you can have a job that you're not satisfied...": "It's like" softens examples, making your speech less formal. Try it when explaining concepts: "Learning a language is like building a house—you need a strong foundation."
Common Pronunciation Traps
Watch out for these tricky sounds to improve English pronunciation:
- "Reacquirable": Break it into "ree-uh-KWY-ruh-buhl"—don’t rush the "kw" sound. Practice saying it slowly to avoid "ree-uh-KWIR-uh-buhl."
- "Fringes": The "ng" sound here is nasal—don’t add a "g" at the end. Say "frin-jez," not "fring-gez."
- "Predictability": Stress the third syllable: "pree-dik-tuh-BIL-uh-tee." Many learners stress "pree" too much—focus on "BIL" instead.
Use the shadowing technique to master these: play a short clip, pause, and repeat, matching the speaker’s rhythm and stress. Over time, you’ll notice your speech sounds more natural—just like the pros!
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result | If I wasn't there I'd lose · if you want it, why wouldn't you · if you don't, why would you |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've seen · you've checked · You've lost |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are checked · be shackled · be interpreted |
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.