Shadowing Practice: BECOME INSANELY DISCIPLINED IN 40 DAYS | BE UNRECOGNIZABLE - Learn English Speaking with Video
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365 sentences
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You don't need a new year, a new environment, more motivation or a completely different life.
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You need 40 days of doing what you said you would do.
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40 days.
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That's it.
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40 days of keeping promises to yourself.
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40 days of getting up when you said you would get up.
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40 days of praying when you said you would pray.
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40 days of doing the work even when nobody is watching.
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40 days of putting your phone down when you know you have something more important to do.
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40 days of choosing what will build you over what will entertain you.
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40 days of saying no to the version of you that has spent years negotiating with herself.
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Because maybe your biggest problem isn't that you don't know what to do.
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Maybe you already know.
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You know you need to wake up earlier.
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You know you need to stop procrastinating.
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You know you need to pray more.
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You know you need to take better care of your body.
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You know you need to stop wasting hours scrolling.
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You know you need to finish what you start.
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You know you need to stop giving everybody access to your time and energy.
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You know you need to work on that goal you've been talking about for months.
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You know.
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But knowing has never been your problem.
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Doing has.
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And that is what these next 40 days are about.
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Not becoming perfect.
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Not becoming a completely different human being overnight.
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Not waking up at 5am just so you can post about it.
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Not building some impossible routine that lasts 4 days and collapses on the 5th.
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This is about something much deeper.
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It's about becoming a woman who can trust herself.
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Because there is something powerful that happens when you repeatedly do what you said you were going to do.
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You begin to trust yourself.
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When you say, I'm going to wake up at 6.
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And you wake up at 6, you trust yourself a little more.
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When you say, I'm going to pray before I touch my phone, and you actually do it, you trust yourself a little more.
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When you say, I'm going to work on my goal for one hour, and you sit down and do the hour,
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you trust yourself a little more.
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When you say, I'm not going to spend tonight scrolling for three hours, and you put the phone down, you trust yourself a little more.
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And eventually something changes.
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You stop being the woman who is always promising herself that she will change.
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You become the woman who changes.
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And that is the woman we're building over these 40 days.
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But before you build her, you have to be honest about the woman you are right now.
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Because you cannot change what you refuse to confront.
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Days 1 to 5.
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Get brutally honest with yourself.
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For the first 5 days don't try to impress yourself.
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Don't create some elaborate routine.
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Don't buy a new planner.
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Don't announce your transformation to everybody.
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Sit down with yourself.
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And get brutally honest.
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Where are you right now?
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Not where do you want to be.
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Not where do you pretend to be.
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Where are you actually?
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How do you spend your mornings?
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What do you do when nobody is watching?
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Where does your time go?
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What do you do every day that you know is making your life worse?
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What have you been procrastinating?
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What have you been avoiding?
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What do you keep saying you'll do soon?
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What habit are you secretly embarrassed by?
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What conversation do you need to have?
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What boundary do you need to establish?
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What goal have you abandoned?
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What have you been blaming on circumstances when, if you're honest, you've simply been inconsistent?
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This isn't about attacking yourself.
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It's about telling yourself the truth.
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Lamentations 3 verse 40 says, Let us examine our ways and test them, and let us return to the Lord.
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Examine your ways.
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Not somebody else's.
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Yours.
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Because sometimes we're so busy looking at what everybody else is doing that we never stop to examine ourselves.
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And you cannot build a disciplined life while lying to yourself about your current one.
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So for these first five days, observe yourself.
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Notice where your time goes.
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Notice what triggers your procrastination.
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Notice when you reach for your phone.
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Notice what makes you quit.
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Notice what you repeatedly promise yourself and repeatedly fail to do.
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Don't judge it.
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Study it, because awareness is the beginning of change.
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Days 6 -10.
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Remove what is making discipline harder.
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Sometimes you're asking yourself to become more disciplined while keeping everything around you designed for distraction.
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Your phone is beside your bed.
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Notifications are constantly going off.
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Your room is chaotic.
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Your schedule is chaotic.
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You have 10 unfinished things demanding your attention.
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You follow hundreds of people online.
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You consume motivational content all day but rarely act on any of it.
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And then you wonder why you can't focus.
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You need to understand something.
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Your environment matters.
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You don't have to depend on willpower for everything.
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Make the right thing easier.
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Make the wrong thing harder.
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Put your phone away when you're working.
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Remove unnecessary notifications.
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Clean your room.
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Organize your workspace.
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Prepare what you need the night before.
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Delete apps that consistently steal your attention.
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Stop following accounts that constantly make you compare your life to somebody else's.
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You are not trying to become boring.
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You're trying to become intentional.
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There is a difference.
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You don't need to eliminate every enjoyable thing from your life.
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You need to stop allowing entertainment to consume the time you were supposed to use to build your life.
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Your environment should remind you of who you're becoming.
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Not constantly pull you back toward who you've been.
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Days 11 to 15.
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Take back your mornings.
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Your morning is not the entire day.
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But it can set the direction of the day.
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And if the first thing you do every morning is pick up your phone and enter everybody else's world,
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you have already surrendered your attention before you've even entered your own.
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You wake up.
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You check messages.
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You scroll.
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You watch somebody else's life.
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You see somebody else's achievement.
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You see somebody else's relationship.
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You see somebody else's body.
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You see somebody else's business.
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You see somebody else's vacation.
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And suddenly, before you've even brushed your teeth, you're comparing your life to 20 different people.
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No. Take your morning back.
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Wake up.
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Make your bed.
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Wash your face.
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Drink water.
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Pray.
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Read scripture.
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Think.
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Plan.
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Then work.
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It doesn't have to be complicated.
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The goal is not to create a beautiful morning routine for Instagram.
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The goal is to create a morning routine that makes you more grounded.
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And please don't make the mistake of thinking that discipline means waking up at an extreme hour.
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If you sleep at midnight and force yourself to wake up at 4am every morning
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because you saw somebody on the internet doing it, that's not automatically discipline.
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Sometimes discipline is simply going to bed on time.
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Sometimes discipline is getting enough rest so that you can function properly the next day.
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Discipline is doing what is necessary, not doing what looks impressive.
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Days 16 to 20.
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Stop negotiating with yourself.
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This is where things get serious.
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Because you are going to discover that you don't always feel like doing the things you said you wanted to do.
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And this is where most people quit.
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They say, I don't feel motivated today.
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I'm tired.
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I'll do it tomorrow.
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I'll make up for it later.
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I'm not in the mood.
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And the problem isn't that you're tired.
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The problem is that you've trained yourself to believe that your feelings get the final vote.
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They don't.
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Your feelings are real.
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But your feelings are not always instructions.
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You can feel tired and still do something important.
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You can feel afraid and still move forward.
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You can feel uncomfortable and still remain consistent.
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You can feel unmotivated and still keep your word.
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That's discipline.
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There will be mornings when you don't want to get out of bed.
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Get up.
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There will be days when you don't want to exercise.
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Move your body.
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There will be evenings when you want to abandon the plan.
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Don't.
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There will be moments when procrastination feels easier.
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Do the thing.
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Not because you're trying to punish yourself.
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Because you're teaching yourself that discomfort does not control you.
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Galatians 6 verse 9 says, Let us not become weary in doing good.
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For at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
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If you keep quitting every time something becomes uncomfortable, you will never know what consistency could have produced in your life.
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So for these 5 days, practice doing things you don't feel like doing.
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Small things, but do them.
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Days 21 -25.
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Take back your attention.
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Your attention is one of the most valuable things you own.
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And you are giving it away too cheaply.
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You wake up and give it to your phone.
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You give it to social media.
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You give it to gossip.
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You give it to unnecessary arguments.
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You give it to people who don't even know what they're doing with their own lives.
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You give it to videos you don't remember watching.
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Then you get to the end of the day and say, I don't have time.
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You had time.
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You gave it away.
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For these five days become protective of your attention.
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When you're working work.
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When you're praying, pray.
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When you're studying, study.
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When you're resting, rest.
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Stop doing everything halfway.
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Stop watching television while scrolling through your phone, while replying to messages while trying to work.
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Your mind was not designed to live in constant fragmentation.
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Learn to be fully present again.
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Set periods where your phone is away.
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Eat without scrolling.
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Walk without scrolling.
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Sit without needing entertainment.
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Let yourself be bored.
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You might discover that your mind becomes clearer when it is no longer constantly being stimulated, and then you can finally hear yourself think.
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Days 26 -30.
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Discipline your body.
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You cannot separate discipline from how you treat your body.
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This isn't about becoming obsessed with your appearance.
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It's about stewardship.
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Move your body.
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Eat with intention.
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Drink water.
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Get enough sleep.
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Take care of yourself.
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Stop treating your body as though it exists only to satisfy your cravings.
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Sometimes the most disciplined decision isn't saying yes to something.
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It's knowing when to say no. No, I don't need this.
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No, I'm not eating just because I'm bored.
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No, I don't need to stay awake until 2am.
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No, I don't need to skip movement because I don't feel motivated.
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No, I don't need to punish my body to prove that I'm disciplined.
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Your body needs care, not hatred.
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You are not becoming disciplined because you hate yourself.
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You are becoming disciplined because you value the life God has given you.
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Days 31 -35.
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Become a woman who finishes.
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This is one of the biggest transformations you're going to make.
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Finish.
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Because there are people with incredible potential who will never experience what
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that potential could have produced because they keep starting and never finishing.
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You start the book.
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You don't finish it.
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You start the course.
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You don't finish it.
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You start exercising.
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You stop.
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You start the business.
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You abandon it.
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You start praying consistently.
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You disappear.
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You start working on yourself.
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Something happens.
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You stop.
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You're constantly beginning.
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And constantly beginning can feel productive because beginnings are exciting.
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But transformation is usually built in the middle.
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The boring middle.
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The repetitive middle.
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The part where nobody is clapping.
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The part where you aren't seeing results yet.
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The part where you have to keep going simply because you said you would.
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So for these 5 days, pick something you've been avoiding and finish it.
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Not 10 things.
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1. Finish.
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Because every completed promise strengthens your identity.
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You begin to see yourself differently.
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You realize, I actually can trust myself.
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And that is powerful.
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Days 36 -39.
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Raise your standard.
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Now that you've spent more than a month practicing discipline, you need to decide what the new standard is.
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Because the goal isn't to survive 40 days and then return to your old life on day 41.
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Ask yourself, what does the disciplined version of me no longer tolerate?
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What does she no longer make excuses for?
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What does she no longer entertain?
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What does she no longer repeatedly postpone?
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What does she no longer accept from herself?
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Maybe she no longer stays up all night scrolling.
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Maybe she no longer starts her day with social media.
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Maybe she no longer says yes when she desperately needs to say no.
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Maybe she no longer allows people to constantly interrupt the life she's trying to build.
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Maybe she no longer speaks to herself with hatred.
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Maybe she no longer waits for motivation.
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Maybe she no longer tells everybody every detail of what she's building.
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Maybe she has learned that privacy can protect progress.
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Your standards determine your direction.
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And when your standards rise, your life eventually has to rise with them.
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Day 40 look back.
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And now you arrive at day 40.
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Look back.
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Look at the woman who started.
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She was tired.
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She was distracted.
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She was inconsistent.
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She had goals she kept postponing.
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She had promises she kept breaking.
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She kept waiting for the perfect moment.
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She kept thinking she needed a different life before she could become a different woman.
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And now look at you.
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Maybe everything isn't fixed.
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Maybe your bank account hasn't suddenly changed.
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Maybe you haven't achieved every goal.
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Maybe your circumstances are still the same.
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But you are not.
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Because now you know something you didn't know before.
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You know that you can do hard things.
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You know that you can keep your word.
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You know that you can walk away from distractions.
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You know that you can say no. You know that you can start again after a bad day.
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You know that you don't have to obey every feeling.
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You know that consistency is possible.
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And most importantly, you've learned that discipline isn't about becoming a machine.
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It's about becoming trustworthy with what God has placed in your hands.
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Proverbs 25 verse 28 says, like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self -control.
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Self -control protects you.
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Discipline protects your future.
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And the woman you're becoming deserves protection.
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So don't make these 40 days another challenge you complete and forget.
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Let them become the beginning of a new standard.
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Because the goal was never to become unrecognizable to everybody else.
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The goal was to become unrecognizable to yourself.
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To look at your old habits and say, I don't live like that anymore.
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To look at your old excuses and say, I don't talk like that anymore.
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To look at your old distractions and say, I don't have time for that anymore.
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To look at your old patterns and say, that was me, but it isn't me anymore.
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And maybe nobody notices immediately.
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That's okay.
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You don't need applause.
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A seed doesn't make noise while it is growing underground.
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Keep growing.
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Keep praying.
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Keep working.
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Keep showing up.
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Keep your promises.
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Because one day, the results that nobody could see will become impossible to ignore.
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And when that day comes, people may call it overnight success.
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They won't know about the mornings you got up when you didn't want to.
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They won't know about the nights you put your phone away.
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They won't know about the prayers nobody heard.
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They won't know about the days you wanted to quit but didn't.
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They won't know about the sacrifices.
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They won't know about the 40 days.
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But you will.
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And God will.
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So don't wait for January.
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Don't wait for Monday.
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Don't wait until you have more money.
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Don't wait until you feel confident.
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Don't wait until life becomes easier.
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Don't wait until somebody comes to rescue you.
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Start with what you have.
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Start where you are and start keeping the promises you keep making to yourself.
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Because you don't need a completely different life.
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You need to become a completely different steward of the life you already have.
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40 days.
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40 days of discipline.
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40 days of obedience.
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40 days of consistency.
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40 days of choosing purpose over pleasure.
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40 days of choosing your future over your impulses.
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40 days of becoming the woman you keep saying you want to be and
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when day 40 comes I don't want
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you to say thank god the challenge is over I want
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you to say this is just who I am now
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because discipline was never supposed to be a temporary challenge it was supposed to become part of you
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so begin and this time don't just make another promise to yourself keep it
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “BECOME INSANELY DISCIPLINED IN 40 DAYS”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: discipline, longer, becoming. This video has 365 sentences and 2771 words to shadow. The speech runs for 17:11. The speaker talks at a natural 161 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| discipline noun | /ˈdɪsəplɪn/ | A controlled behaviour; self-control. |
| pray verb | /pɹeɪ/ | To direct words, thoughts, or one's attention to a deity or any higher being, for the sake of adoration, thanks, petition for help, etc. |
| scroll noun | /skɹoʊl/ | A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll. |
| routine noun | /ɹuˈtin/ | A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure. |
| repeatedly adverb | /ɹɪˈpiːtɪdli/ | Done several times or in repetition. |
| bore verb | /boɹ/ | To inspire boredom in somebody. |
| transformation noun | /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/ | The act of transforming or the state of being transformed. |
| examine verb | /ɪɡˈzæmɪn/ | To observe carefully or critically to learn about someone or something. |
| verse noun | /ˈvɝs/ | A poetic form with regular meter and a fixed rhyme scheme. |
| abandon verb | /əˈbæn.dən/ | To give up or relinquish control of, to surrender or to give oneself over, or to yield to one's emotions. |
| consistency noun | /kənˈsɪs.tən.si/ | Local coherence. |
| distraction noun | /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/ | Something that distracts. |
| compare verb | /kəmˈpɛɚ/ | To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it… |
| discover verb | /dɪˈskʌvə/ | To find or learn something for the first time. |
| consistently adverb | /kənˈsɪstəntli/ | In a consistent manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. | |
| wake up verb | /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ | To stop sleeping; to awake. |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). | |
| take back verb | To retract or withdraw (an earlier statement). | |
| break through verb | To gain popularity. | |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| go off verb | To explode. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Where are you right now?
- How do you spend your mornings?
- What do you do when nobody is watching?
- Where does your time go?
- What do you keep saying you'll do soon?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | you've been talking · have you been procrastinating · have you been avoiding |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has spent · has never been · you've simply been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | woman who can · woman who is · woman who changes |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was not designed · being stimulated · is usually built |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 106 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you're, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, trustworthy /ˈtɹʌst.wɜː.ði/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/, negotiate /nəˈɡəʊ.ʃi.eɪt/, punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: repeatedly /ɹɪˈpiːtɪdli/, transformation /ˌtɹæns.fɔɹˈmeɪ.ʃən/, consistency /kənˈsɪs.tən.si/, consistently /kənˈsɪstəntli/, motivation /ˈmoʊ.tə.veɪ.ʃən/
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 discipline, pray, scroll.
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.