Shadowing Practice: 7 Principles That Will Organize Your Entire Life - Learn English Speaking with Video

If I followed you around for a week, I could probably predict your future.

Not because I'm so smart or because I have a crystal ball, but because your habits predict your future.

Your life isn't random.

It's organized perfectly around these principles that you're currently living by, whether you realize it or not.

So if you want your life to be different in the future, you must start operating from a different set of principles.

And so today I'm just going to give you seven different ones that will radically change your life if you implement them.

Okay, let's dive in.

Number one, radical responsibility.

I'm going to say this with as much love in my heart as I possibly can.

At some point, you have to grow up.

Not age-wise, I mean mentally and emotionally and behaviorally.

You have to stop waiting and you have to become an adult.

Stop blaming other people for what's going on in your life.

You've got to stop explaining why things are not your fault.

You've got to stop making excuses as to why you don't have the life

that you want as if there is someone else to place the blame on.

Because the truth is this, no one is going to come and save you.

Your parents are not going to come and save you.

Your partner's not going to save you.

Your boss is not going to save you.

The government's definitely not going to come and save you.

There's no perfect opportunity that's coming later on down the road, no one is coming.

And I want you to understand this.

I don't mean this in a negative sense.

What I actually mean is this is power because now you can finally put yourself into full ownership of your life.

I think a lot of people like know that they're in charge of their life, but they don't necessarily act like they're in charge of their life.

Like they're kind of like dipping their toes in the water.

You've got to be fully in because as I said, nobody's going to come and save you.

That means if your life is going to be amazing, it's all on you.

Your life is your responsibility.

Your habits are your responsibility.

Your mindset is your responsibility.

Your body is your responsibility.

Your results are your responsibility.

Even if your childhood happened, your childhood might not have been your fault.

So even if it's not your fault, it's still your responsibility to do something with it now.

That's what adulthood actually is.

I don't think this is ever even really taught to children or teenagers or adults, right?

Like a childish adult blames and makes excuses.

Real adults take ownership.

A childish adult waits for someone to come and save them.

A real adult builds the life that they want to.

A childish adult like avoids doing the hard things.

Real adults execute no matter what.

You will not get the life that you want by wishing for it.

You get the life that you want by working for it, for yourself, for your future, for your family, for your children.

You have to understand there's people around you that are watching you all the time.

Your kids, your partner, your team, they're watching how you show up and who you are.

And you're either modeling extreme ownership of your life or you're modeling excuses.

and whatever you do, understand it spreads.

Greatness spreads, but complacency also spreads as well.

So you have to decide what kind of standards you wanna set for everybody else.

You set the tone of your life because whether you like it or not, you're the one setting it every single day.

And we will be right back.

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If you have not, do me a favor, hit that subscribe button so that you and I can go on this journey of self-improvement and making your life better.

So if you had subscribed to me, I would appreciate it.

And now back to the show.

And so this is the moment where you stop acting like life is happening to you

and you start acting like something you're trying to do to build the life that you want.

No one's coming for you.

You've got to build it yourself.

So that's number one.

Number two is you need to get aligned.

Most people don't know where they're going in life.

I've asked hundreds of people what do you want

and most people can tell me what they don't want

but they're not really clear on what they're what they actually want like they're working hard

but they don't really have any idea where they're going

or what they're trying to work towards you need a north star

and you need to become extremely clear on what that is

and your entire life needs to be headed towards that north star every decision that you make from then on out

filters through your North Star.

And then after you figure out where you want to be, you need to figure out who you need to be to create

that life because you have to be the one to change.

So who is that future self?

Like figure out everything that you can about them.

What do they think about themselves?

How do they speak to themselves?

How do they speak to other people?

What time do they wake up?

What type of food do they eat?

How often do they go to the gym?

Every single detail of that future version of yourself

and then start stepping into

that version of you every single day see most people don't have a future self

that they compete with and they they try to build themselves into like they have multiple identities

that are fighting for time inside of their own head like

the the disciplined version of you is fighting with the comfortable

version of you the focused version of you is fighting with the distracted version of you

and that internal conflict is what's creating inconsistency in your life so

if you're lacking alignment across your entire life it's going to be really hard to take action to create an amazing life.

So if you clearly don't know, hey, this is who I need to be, and this is what I'm trying to create,

it's going to be really hard to figure out what type of role you want to play every single day.

The clarity of your identity removes all of this friction from taking action

because you have to have one dominant self that needs to run the show.

Will other old identities try to pop up and take over?

Yeah, of course they will.

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but you need to step back in as your future self and take over.

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You need to have one dominant future self, not five different ones depending on your mood.

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So then the real question becomes, which version of me do I need to step into right now?

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And you need to own that decision, right?

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And so you have to understand competing identities fighting in your head is going to cause the chaos.

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You need one identity.

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And that is the one person that is geared up and aligned

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with the North Star of what you're trying to create in your life.

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So that's number two.

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Number three is you need decision minimization.

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You don't need to do a million different things.

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Like if you're tired, you're probably not tired from just doing things.

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You're also tired because you're deciding things all the time.

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You have to understand that every decision is not just, oh, I'm making a decision.

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Before the decision, it requires prediction.

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It requires planning.

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It requires a lot of energy because your brain is constantly trying to predict outcomes.

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It's trying to predict whatever could happen if you go this route

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or go that route or go this route or go that route.

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And that prediction burns energy.

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And so most people are overwhelmed by like internal negotiations.

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Should I do this thing or should I do that thing?

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Like, is this the right move?

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Should I do that move instead?

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What will people think of me if I do this?

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What will people think of me if I do this?

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What if it doesn't work out?

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It's like just a million different things that's constantly consuming your energy.

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That loop of just constantly having to make decisions, it'll drain you.

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So you might be bad at time management, but you also might just be really bad with your decisions

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being too many decisions you have to make throughout the course of the day.

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Maybe it's not necessarily time management.

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Maybe it's you need better decision reduction.

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And so you have to understand when you start having this identity-based rules of who you are and you say, okay, this is who I am, like we spoke about in the last one,

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it eliminates a lot of your decisions.

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Because when you say I'm the type of person who does this, the future version of me does this, it ends the debate.

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I don't need to make any decisions.

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I'm this type of person.

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This is what I do.

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So if you're working off an identity, you're not negotiating with yourself.

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And less negotiation means more energy and more execution.

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And so I want you to understand, I read an article a few years ago that says Jeff Bezos makes three important decisions a day.

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Now, obviously we're not worth hundreds of billions of dollars, but can you figure out a way to minimize the 400 decisions

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that you make every single day to make like three to five big decisions a day versus constantly multitasking

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and doing 45 different things.

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So you're losing a lot of energy.

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So that's what I would say is minimize your decisions.

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Number three, number four, habit stacking.

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Habit stacking is just a system to take something

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that you already do and add a new habit on the back end of it.

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And your system is just basically what you repeatedly do.

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So the easiest way to fix your life is to just add something to your existing sequence.

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Like most people try to build a habit in isolation.

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They're just focused on this one habit and it's in isolation and that's why they fail.

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Habits stick when they're connected to other habits, when they're not separate, but they're part of a sequence.

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Like habit stacking is very simple.

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You take something you already do, you attach something, no new behavior to it.

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After I do this, I do that.

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No thinking no negotiation just sequence so like it could be wake up that's something

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that we do every single day right

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and then we brush our teeth okay well let's try to create a habit stacking sequence after brushing our teeth

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so waking up we go to brush our teeth after we

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brush our teeth we drink water after we drink water we make coffee

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while coffee is being made we do 100 push-ups after 100 push-ups we meditate.

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After meditating, we journal and then we get to drink our coffee.

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While journaling, we plan the day.

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Plan the day, immediately take action on the most important thing next.

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See how there's a sequence?

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You do this, then you do this.

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You do this, you do this, you do this.

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You don't have to wake up and think like, oh, what do I want to do now?

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It's like, no, once I do this thing, I do this thing.

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So if this, then that.

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You're building a chain.

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and once the chain starts it keeps going once the chain starts you have momentum on your side and

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so the goal is automatic flow you just do this you

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go to the next thing you do this you go to the next thing

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and you start it with something that you're doing already

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and it's getting you in the movement

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because just having to start a brand new action from nothing is pretty hard

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but if you're already doing something

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and you're immediately going to the next step in the sequence

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you've already got momentum on your side make the habits obvious make them easy make them connected

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and just try to be consistent as you possibly can.

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Most people are trying to be intense and like, oh my God, I've got to win this thing.

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I'm just trying to be consistent every single day.

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Consistency beats intensity all of the time.

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And then track it, like track it.

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Have a little, okay, when I do this, I do this.

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And you just mark it off Monday to this, Tuesday to this, and you just do it every single day.

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Because what is tracked improves.

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And so stop trying to like change your entire life all at once, like just try to build sequences throughout your day that make taking action easy.

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Just win the next step of the chain.

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Okay, that's number four.

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The next one, number five, is have a gratitude practice.

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Gratitude is about being thankful, yes, but it's also about training your attention.

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This has completely changed my life because I thought gratitude was just like waking up and like, oh, I'm just gonna focus on what I'm grateful for.

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It does, but it also, from the moment that you started in the morning, trains your attention throughout the rest of the day because you have to understand your brain is designed to detect problems.

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It scans for threats by default and that creates a bias towards lack.

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If we're constantly scanning for threats and problems, we're going to see all of the places where there's holes in our life and we don't have enough.

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And it creates a bias towards lack.

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It creates a bias towards problems.

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And you're basically training yourself unconsciously to focus on what is wrong or what is negative in your life.

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If you start in the morning with gratitude, gratitude rewires your brain to start noticing what is good in your life.

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There's a part of your brain called the salience network.

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It shifts what you're focusing on.

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The salience network is a part of your brain that decides what's important and where your attention should go.

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So if you do this and you focus on your gratitude, you're shifting from what's missing to what's amazing.

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People always ask like, oh my God, what's your morning routine, what's your evening routine?

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The two things I do every single day that just bookend my day, no matter what, is I have gratitude practice in the morning and I have a gratitude practice.

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I'm going to bed.

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That bookends my life.

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That's how important it is for me.

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I want it to be the first thing I think about.

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I want it to be the last thing I think about.

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Most people think like just asking, what am I grateful for?

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Yeah, that is important.

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That's good.

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But that's also just a surface level.

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A deeper question that you could even go deeper into is what am I overlooking?

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Like, what am I not seeing that is beautiful around me?

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And you start noticing these things where you're like, you almost have blinders on because you're looking for what's wrong all the time.

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And it's like, we have blinders to the fact that our lives, they might not be the life you want yet, but it's still pretty amazing.

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I say this to people all the time in my Mindset Academy where I coach people,

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but there's probably 7 billion people on this planet that would trade spots with you right now.

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right?

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Like our lives are some people's dream life.

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They live in other countries where there's war or famine and all this stuff.

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And we can't be grateful for it.

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Like, and so we've got to find our blind spots and say, what am I missing?

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How can I focus on what I'm grateful for?

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Because what you consistently notice becomes your reality.

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Your attention will shape your perception and what you're perceiving in your life.

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And that perception shapes your experience every single day.

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So gratitude is not just an emotion, it is.

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It's also a filter for guiding what you wanna focus on every single day.

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So that's number five.

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Number six, get better with delayed gratification.

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Delayed gratification is not about willpower.

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It's about understanding that everything in life has consequences, good or bad.

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Time will either be your best friend or your worst enemy.

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10 years from now, you're going to see the product of all of your decisions over the next 10 years.

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Wherever your life is, like the life you have will be your decisions.

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It's the culmination of all of your decisions.

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And most people are controlled by their present self in like instant gratification.

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High-level people are guided by their future self, which is what we talked about earlier, in delayed gratification.

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Every decision is a trade.

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You're either choosing comfort now or you're choosing a better life later.

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You don't get to have both.

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I wish that we could, but it just doesn't.

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I've tried to find it for a long time.

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It doesn't seem to exist.

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The problem though is that most people overvalue the present moment like

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and you have to understand you're like your brain is wired

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to chase immediate rewards that's why sugar tastes really good right now

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or salty tastes really good right now

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or savory whatever you're into tastes really good right now doesn't

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mean it's good for your body in the long run our

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brain will chase immediate rewards dopamine favors now over later like the marshmallow effect

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that they did with children proved that a long time ago it's our biology

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but we have to be the ones

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that are in control to actually shift the actions that we take

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but your life needs to be built on what you want in your future and

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if it feels good now it might not be good for

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you what's hard is to do the hard thing now

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that actually builds your life a year two years three years down the road you don't get

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that instant gratification delayed gratification is learning to live in the moment

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but also be focusing on your future when you're doing

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that it's choosing long term over over short term that's really

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what it's doing it's saying no to who you have been and saying yes to who you actually want to become.

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Every time that you delay your own gratification, you send a signal to yourself.

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And it's basically you saying to yourself, I'm someone who plays the long game.

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I'm somebody who's building self-trust.

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I'm somebody who's building confidence.

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I'm somebody who's building identity.

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I'm somebody who's trying to build a life that's better than what I currently have.

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And your identity starts to shift over that.

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You don't need to be perfect.

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You're gonna screw up.

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We're all gonna screw up.

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We're not perfect.

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Nobody ever will be.

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You're gonna fuck up sometimes.

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That's okay.

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It's okay.

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Don't guilt yourself and shame yourself.

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Use it as data so you can get better next time.

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You just need to win more long-term decisions than short-term decisions because your life is, once again, just the accumulation of all of those choices.

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Short-term thinking creates problems in your future.

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Long-term thinking creates a future that you've designed.

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Delayed gratification is not deprivation.

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It's you strategically building your life, okay?

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And number seven, oh no, we all gotta do it.

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Cut your screen time in half let's be honest you probably

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already know you're on your phone too much right we all do this isn't like new information it's something

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that we're probably all avoiding right because it's uncomfortable to admit

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but your screen is stealing your life and you're not going to get

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that time back the average adult spends about four to four to six hours a day on their phone

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and so let's go in the middle

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and call it five hours over the next 40 years five

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hours a day times 365 is 1,825 hours per year times 40 years is 73,000 hours.

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How long is 73,000 hours?

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8.3 years of your life.

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Over the next 40 years of your life, if you spend five hours a day on your phone, that's 8.3 years of your life.

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Not days, years looking at a screen instead of looking at the amazing stuff that's around us, being present and seeing your children's beautiful face, seeing amazing sunset.

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So if you cut it in half

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and you go from five hours a day to 2.5 hours a day over the next 40 years, that's literally you gaining back 4.1 years of your life.

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So just cut it in half, right?

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We're giving away years and years of our life by being on these things.

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So try to cut it in half.

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You don't have to completely stop.

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It's okay.

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You can go scroll cat videos if you want to, but scroll 50% of the cat videos that you currently are, right?

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That will give you back four years of your life over the next 40 years.

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Hey, thanks so much for watching this video.

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Based off of what you've been watching recently, YouTube searched its algorithm and searched all of the videos that I've ever made.

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And it thinks that this video right here is the one that is what you need right now.

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If you want to make sure to never miss another video, hit that button right there, subscribe, and I'll see you on the next one.

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.

Shadowing Practice: 7 Principles That Will Organize Your Entire Life - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?