Shadowing Practice: 5 Unfair Advantages You Can Build This Year - Learn English Speaking with Video
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When I was younger, I was convinced that everyone else was more privileged than me, and I could find a thousand examples to prove that.
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The looks they were born with, the family and connections they had, the country they were born in, the travel opportunities they got to experience.
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I always felt like I had to work twice as hard just to catch up, like the whole world just felt super unfair.
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I don't see it that way anymore, because here's what I've realized.
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I have unfair advantages too.
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We all do.
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Every single one of us does.
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We just often can't really see them because the things that are truly your advantage feel too easy to even count.
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So in today's video, I'm going to show you the five places your unfair advantages come from
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and how to actually find yours.
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Not so you can grind harder than everyone else, but so you can build a truly fulfilling life by focusing on the things
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that come easily to you through enjoyment, not suffering.
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Hi guys, if you're new here, welcome.
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My name is Veronica and on this channel I help you slow down, regulate your nervous system and reconnect with your true goals and values.
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Before we get into it, I actually made something for you to use in today's video.
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It's a printable worksheet with all of the exercises we're about to go through, So you can sit down and actually do all of those things with me,
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instead of just watching and forgetting everything by tomorrow.
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If you want to work through it together and build your unfair advantages, you can get the worksheet completely for free.
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The link is going to be in the description.
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Alright, so let's begin and talk about what an unfair advantage actually is.
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Because I really want to lower the bar so that we don't disqualify ourselves immediately.
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because I know a lot of us might be thinking, I don't really have any unfair advantages.
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I don't really have any special traits or unique qualities.
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So that's that.
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And I don't want you to do that.
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I don't want you to disqualify yourself immediately because the thing is an unfair advantage isn't something rare on a global level.
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It's just anything that makes a goal easier for you than the average person.
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That's it.
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It doesn't have to be one in a million.
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It just has to be truly yours.
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Now, I think a lot of us might also be thinking that your unfair advantage always feels easy.
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You know, it's just something that you do that always feels super easy.
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Like there's never any friction.
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But I personally don't think it's like completely 100% true.
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Let me use my own example.
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I'm not a native English speaker
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and I spent years learning English to a point where now I make videos in English for a living.
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And here's the thing, learning English was never frictionless for me.
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It was hard and honestly it's still hard.
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Like recording these videos for you guys, it feels definitely harder doing it in English than if I was sitting here and recording everything in my native language.
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The friction is real and it's still there.
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For example, a lot of people when they record YouTube videos, they can sit down and batch make two, three, four videos in a row.
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In my case, I can't do that.
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I can only record one video and that's it.
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Because after talking for an hour, and usually takes me around an hour to record just one video, my brain feels absolutely fried.
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Like, I feel so freaking tired.
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So it's not that I feel less friction than all the other language learners.
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I probably feel the same friction anyone would when they're speaking a foreign language on camera.
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It's just the difference is that my desire to do it is higher than the friction.
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And that's the key.
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My curiosity, my enjoyment, my pull towards this thing,
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it's way higher than any resistance or any friction I might be experiencing.
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Yes, it's hard.
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Sometimes I repeat myself multiple times, I do multiple takes, but I like it.
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I like doing what I do.
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And yes, there is some friction involved because it's a hard thing
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and all hard things in life come with some sort of friction.
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That's normal.
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So where someone else hits that friction and stops, I hit the same friction but I keep going.
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And that is what an unfair advantage actually is.
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It's not the absence of difficulty.
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Everything in life comes with friction.
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It's just for this one specific thing, your desire to continue doing it outweighs all the friction.
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The thing actually pulls you forward rather than pushing you back.
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So that is what I actually want you to look for.
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Not your most impressive achievement, but the thing where even though it's hard, you still want to come back to it.
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There's a very interesting concept I want to share with you now.
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It comes from a book, The Defining Decade by Meg Jay, and the term is identity capital.
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Identity capital is basically a collection of things you've invested in that become a part of who you are.
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Your skills, your experiences, the way you have shaped yourself over time.
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It's pretty much everything you bring to the table.
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And here's the difference between an unfair advantage and your identity capital.
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An unfair advantage is the raw material you start with.
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Identity capital is what you build when you invest in that raw material over time.
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So we can say that on its own, an unfair advantage is just your potential.
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Identity capital is what it becomes when you actually do something with it.
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So that is why in the rest of the video, I want to talk about how to find that raw material.
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How to find your unfair advantages and turn them into your identity capital over time.
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Because every unfair advantage you have comes from one, I really hope you can see it,
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one out of these five buckets or these five places.
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So let's find yours in each one.
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So the first bucket is your story, where you come from, the languages you speak, what you have lived through, and who you have already been.
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I think this is the most overlooked one out of five because
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a lot of us often assume that our life is just boring.
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Like there's nothing special, there's nothing unique, I don't have any unfair advantages.
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And we also think
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that only those people who are born into more privileged circumstances have something interesting going on about their lives.
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Only they can find those unfair advantages in the story of their lives, like in the very first bucket.
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But that is absolutely not true.
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Because your life is a specific combination that no one else has.
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And that combination is often a very interesting thing about you.
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Let's think about my story for a second.
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I was born in a very small town in Russia and pretty much up until I was 12,
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my family and I lived in a very small livage in the countryside with my grandparents.
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I did gymnastics from the age of four up until I was a teenager, so for many, many years of my life.
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I speak English really well right now because when I was a teenager,
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I started watching a lot of American YouTubers and that is how I got passionate about English and in general about YouTube.
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I speak Spanish now as well.
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I majored in Chinese in college.
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I moved abroad at 22 and I've been working on my social media presence on different social media accounts since 2020,
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so for six years now.
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To me, all of this is just my life.
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But if we really think about it, we can already find a lot of unfair advantages in there, inside my story.
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And I can choose whether or not I can go deeper on those unfair advantages
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and turn them into my identity capital over time.
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This is the exact combination that no one else can copy, because that's my life and it shapes everything I create.
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So the question that I want you to ask yourself, you can journal about it, when you're looking at your story is this.
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What feels boring about your past but others find interesting?
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Alright, so the second bucket is your wiring.
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It's all the things that come effortlessly to you that cost other people more effort.
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Like you can visibly see that things
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that basically come naturally to you i think these things are very hard to spot
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because oftentimes we don't really think it's like anything special
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because we don't experience a lot of friction
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when we do those things especially compared to other people
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so here's how you can actually find it ask people who
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are closest to you one two three people who you talk
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to every single day ask them what they think you're naturally good at the pattern
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that you can notice in their answers is pretty much your wiring.
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It's your second bucket.
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I think it's almost always something that you would have never written down yourself,
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but it's really nice when like other people notice those things and they can highlight them for you.
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They can make them more visible for you.
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And you know, I actually did that before making this video.
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I talked to my husband and I asked him this question and he mentioned a lot of very interesting things.
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And one thing he said is that I am naturally very organized, you know, the way I plan things, the way I organize my environment,
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the way I like to do that, right?
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Like I'm not doing it because somebody made me declutter my house.
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It's just something that I truly love to do.
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I love decluttering, I love cleaning, and I love organizing.
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And that skill helps me so much in my work, in my career.
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It helps me organize my time, you know, my videos, my projects, especially because I work for myself.
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And so I really need this skill in my work.
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There's another very interesting thing that my husband highlighted for me.
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It's a bias for action.
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It's basically this tendency that some people have to just go and do the thing instead of waiting forever.
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Most people have the idea and then they wait for a very long time because they feel like they're never ready.
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They do the research, they prepare over and over again.
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I would say they over prepare.
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They wait for the perfect moment, for the perfect moment that doesn't really exist.
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But people who have this bias for action just start.
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I want to do something, I go and do it.
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And if you're a person who has that bias for action, that can be a huge unfair advantage on its own.
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And I honestly wasn't always like that.
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You guys know that for many years of my life I wanted to start my own YouTube channel
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and when I recorded my very first video I never actually published it because I was too scared.
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I felt like I wasn't ready and I waited for at least another year, maybe two, to actually be like,
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okay, Veronica, I think you just have to start.
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You know, you want to do something?
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Just start posting.
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And so only two years later, I was able to start posting regularly and consistently.
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So I think this bias for action is definitely a skill that we can learn.
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Alright, so the question in your wiring, in your second bucket that you can ask yourself is,
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what do you do without trying that others wish they could?
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Your bucket number three is your obsessions.
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The things you would learn about even if no one paid you.
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Basically where your attention goes for free.
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You're just genuinely curious.
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That's why you go and learn that thing.
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I think this one is the enjoyment and not suffering idea in its purest form.
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Time you spend willingly on something compounds in a way that no other forced time ever could.
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You know, when you're forcing yourself to do something, you will eventually quit.
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Whereas if you truly deeply love something, you will continue doing that for many years and all of that experience,
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all of those skills will definitely compound over time.
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Your obsessions are basically the prepaid effort.
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You're doing it anyways just because you love it.
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So why not point that in the right direction?
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For me, my obsessions, the things that I wrote down are reading neuroscience research.
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Like I can read very complicated books about your prefrontal cortex, your amygdala, and I'm not going to feel like I'm falling asleep.
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I'm not going to feel like it's boring because I'm genuinely interested in it.
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Things about nervous system regulation, habit formation, dopamine, taking courses on how to do a handstand
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and improving and practicing my handstands and you know making my technique better and better over time.
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Reading about nutrition research and it's really funny to me
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because I have all of this list of all of my obsessions right here
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and none of the things mentioned in my list are the things that I studied when I was in college.
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And I think the reason why that happened was because when I went to college, I was 17.
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And to be honest, I didn't really know what I wanted to do.
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Like, if somebody asked me, what did you want to do for work?
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I would be like, I don't really know.
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Maybe this or maybe that.
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What makes me so happy is realizing that now with time, I was able to discover my obsessions,
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the things that I truly deeply love.
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The things that I left to study.
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And now I can focus more
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and more of my time to learn more things about neuroscience
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and nutrition and nervous system regulation and lean more into those things.
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So the question
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that you can ask yourself here to find your obsessions is what do you keep coming back to even
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when you're tired just because you truly love it?
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Okay, so bucket number four is your position.
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It's who you already are, where you live, the rooms you're already standing in, the timing.
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And I think when you hear your position, you might think, okay, it means networking.
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And I don't mean networking in this transactional way.
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What I mean is honestly noticing the axis that you already have
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and stopping the habit of pretending like you're starting from zero.
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Because a lot of us don't really notice what's already around us and, you know, a lot of things that are already around us can be our unfair advantages.
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Where you live can be an advantage.
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A niche that's growing right now.
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A skill the world suddenly needs.
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That's an advantage of timing that you didn't earn but can absolutely use.
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An audience or a community that already trusts you.
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That is your position too.
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And so the question you can ask yourself to find your fourth bucket,
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your position, is what do you have access to right now?
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People, places, a moment in time that you're not using.
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And finally, your bucket number five is your reps.
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This one is honestly my favorite one because that's the unfair advantage anyone can build with enough time, with enough repetition.
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If you show up at one thing daily for longer than most people are willing to.
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And this is pretty much the bridge between the advantages you were handed and the advantages you can build.
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And it works so well because almost no one else does it.
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And the bias for action that I mentioned at the beginning of the video is really important here as well.
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Reps are what happens when you pair the willingness to start with your decision to keep going.
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Starting in itself is really rare.
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I talk about this all the time on my YouTube channel
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that a lot of us are really scared to start because it's too hard, it's too complicated, so we don't want to do it.
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But continuing is even rarer.
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Building that consistency is even rarer.
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You just have to keep showing up after most people have already quit.
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And I think this is the example I'm living through with my YouTube journey.
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Because I started my very first channel in 2020.
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Now that channel has over a million subscribers, but I don't post there anymore.
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I'm currently growing this YouTube channel and there were so many moments in my life,
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you know, and it's still happening right now when like my videos are not getting views,
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my videos are not performing well and I feel so many emotions because of that.
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Like I don't know if I should continue recording videos, I don't know if it's the right path for me.
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I really have to practice my emotional regulation in those moments.
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But also if I think about it, all of that experience that I have built,
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all of my reps are the experience that I can share with people.
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Especially people who are non-native speakers of English and let's say you want to start your own YouTube channel,
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you want to record videos in English and I completely understand how you feel because that's what I do,
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you know, that's who I am and that's what I do.
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But no matter how hard it feels sometimes and how much friction I experience, I still want to keep going.
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I'm still willing to put in the reps.
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For example, today you guys can probably see, if you're still watching this video, that my lighting has already changed because I think it's going to rain
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and I do rely on natural lighting when I record and
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so yes I could be like I'm gonna stop I'm not gonna record anything today
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because the weather isn't great it's a helicopter too there's a
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helicopter it's raining there's also a concert that's gonna happen right outside of my window
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and sometimes they're doing sound testing a lot of things
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that I have to work with you know regulate my emotions through this journey.
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All right, so the question
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that you can ask yourself here to find out all of your unfair advantages
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when it comes to your reps is this one.
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What's one thing you could do a little of every day for a year
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that almost no one around you is willing to do?
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All right, guys, so something that I really want to highlight right now is
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that you don't need to grind yourself to the ground to build a satisfying life.
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You can stack the things that already work for you, your unfair advantages.
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Point them at something you actually care about and stay consistent
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so that those unfair advantages turn into your identity capital over time.
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And using your unfair advantages doesn't mean you're cheating.
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Easier doesn't always mean lazy.
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Your effort is just pointed in the right direction to everyone else around you,
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to your ego, that you can suffer your way through something you absolutely hate.
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So I think it's going to be it for today's video.
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If you liked it, please don't forget to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my YouTube channel.
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If you want to get my free worksheet to discover your own unfair advantages and look at all of these five buckets,
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you can do so by clicking in the description.
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The link is going to be there and I will send you an email with all of the information.
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If you're thinking about what to watch next, I highly recommend checking out this video right here where I share a few things
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that I quit that help me heal my overstimulated brain.
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So I'll see you there or I'll see you in my next video.
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Thank you so much.
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Bye!
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “5 Unfair Advantages You Can Build This Year”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: advantage, unfair, friction. This video has 264 sentences and 3363 words to shadow. The speech runs for 20:47. The speaker talks at a natural 162 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| unfair adjective | /ʌnˈfɛɚ/ | Not just. |
| friction noun | /ˈfɹɪkʃən/ | The rubbing of one object or surface against another. |
| bucket noun | /ˈbʌkɪt/ | A container made of rigid material, often with a handle, used to carry liquids or small items. |
| obsession noun | /əbˈsɛʃən/ | The quality of being obsessed; an unshakeable feeling that one topic or activity must be pursued above other interests. |
| bias noun | /ˈbaɪ.əs/ | Inclination towards something. |
| organize verb | /ˈɔɹɡənaɪz/ | To arrange in working order. |
| worksheet noun | A sheet of paper or computerized document on which problems are worked out or solved and the answers are recorded. | |
| enjoyment noun | /ɪnˈd͡ʒɔɪ.mənt/ | The condition of enjoying anything. |
| bore verb | /boɹ/ | To inspire boredom in somebody. |
| declutter verb | /diːˈklʌtə(ɹ)/ | To remove clutter from, to tidy. |
| disqualify verb | /dɪsˈkwɔləfaɪ/ | To make ineligible for something. |
| handstand noun | /ˈhændˌstænd/ | The act of standing on one's hands, most often in an inverted way. |
| neuroscience noun | The scientific study of the nervous system. | |
| regulate verb | /ˈɹɛɡ.jə.leɪt/ | To dictate policy. |
| grind verb | /ˈɡɹaɪnd/ | To reduce to smaller pieces by crushing with lateral motion. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
| catch up verb | To pick up suddenly. |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| live through verb | To survive a difficult period or event |
| show up verb | To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Hi guys, if you're new here, welcome.
- In my case, I can't do that.
- I can only record one video and that's it.
- It's pretty much everything you bring to the table.
- You know, you want to do something?
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 · you've invested · have shaped |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was convinced · were born · are born |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · people who you · people who have |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 69 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: friction /ˈfɹɪkʃən/, obsession /əbˈsɛʃən/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/
- Long words — get the stress right: disqualify /dɪsˈkwɔləfaɪ/, genuinely /ˈd͡ʒɛn.ju.ɪn.li/, helicopter /ˈheliːˌkɔptə(ɹ)/, amygdala /əˈmɪɡ.də.lə/, effortlessly /ˈɛf.ɚt.ləs.li/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like unfair, friction, bucket.
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.