Shadowing Practice: become your own case study | get hot, smart, and confident - Learn English Speaking with Video

There's a reason why some people walk into a room and everyone notices them, and sometimes it's not really about how they look.

Hi muses!

Welcome back to my channel where we talk about how women can have their cake and eat it too.

I'm your host Nadine and I'm here to rebuild the village woman once had

so we can have the right conversations and create lives that feel as good as it looks.

Please like, subscribe, and turn on the notification bell so you don't miss anything.

Today, I'm going to show you why the most irresistible people are actually just really good at these two things.

The ability to study themselves and the ability to express who they are.

Because if you want to become the hottest, most confident version of you, you need to be able to look at yourself from a very analytical and strategic lens.

Figure out exactly what you need to work on and then go work on it.

I think I apply a very analytical lens to my own thinking.

You need a level of self-awareness unfiltered that helps you build confidence,

real confidence that no one else can take away from you because of how well you understand and believe in yourself.

The worst part about self-improvement is the cycle you get stuck in.

It feels never ending because you're constantly working on yourself.

But my approach to leveling up has always been to focus on your big ticket items

that really move the needle and shift who you are.

Then, when you're at a place you want to be, you can then start fine-tuning.

So in today's episode, I'll be sharing with you how you can learn to study yourself

and express your own beauty that is solely uniquely yours through self-discovery and self-mastery.

As always, we don't gatekeep, so let's step into it.

You know, the older I get, the more I understand what inner beauty actually means and how that radiates outwards and essentially also affects your physical beauty.

We can chase trends, chase what's hot in this moment, and put on a costume that doesn't really fit us.

Or we can really try to understand ourselves and develop this identity that is all-encompassing of who we are.

I call it personal branding.

You can call it whatever you want.

And the same thing with creating a brand.

You need to understand your brand identity.

Who are you?

What are your values?

What makes you uniquely you?

What are your flaws, your strengths?

We simply cannot reinvent ourselves if we don't know what we are working with.

The goal is and always has been to reach a state of complete alignment where your emotional, physical, mental, spiritual selves are all telling a shared story.

That's what makes you magnetic and unique.

Most people skip this part.

They go straight to the glow up, okay?

The new clothes, the new skincare routine.

They go to the gym and these things are great, babe, okay?

They absolutely are and they can do so much for you.

But you're decorating a house that hasn't been renovated yet, okay? the first thing I want you to do is to self-reflect.

This isn't a vision board moment or you trying to manifest anything.

This is you sitting down and being so honest with yourself.

So grab a journal or your notes app.

I don't care, it doesn't matter.

And I want you to answer these questions like nobody but you is ever going to read it.

Question one, what do people consistently notice about you?

And I mean both good things and the things you wish they didn't.

What do you get complimented on?

What do people tease you about?

What do your closest people come to you for?

because people around you usually are mirrors to things you're refusing to look at.

Question two, when do you feel the most like yourself?

Not your best self, not your curated, polished self, your actual self.

Is it when you're deep in conversation at 2 a.m.?

When you're alone?

Is it when you're creating something?

Because that is usually where your magnetic energy lives.

Question three, what are you tolerating in your life right now?

In your body, in your relationships, and your environment and your habits because what you tolerate tells you exactly where your self-worth currently has a ceiling.

Question four, what part of you are you the most eager to change and why?

This reveals the thing that is currently affecting your quality of life the most.

Write this all down.

We're not judging.

Okay, this is just data.

I want you to practice collecting data about yourself without the judgment.

Now comes the research.

Here's where you become a student of yourself.

The thing about studying yourself is that you can't do it purely from a closed loop.

You need external data and internal data working together.

So the internal data is your self-reflection, your journaling, noticing your patterns, the way you feel in certain situations.

So some things you really wanna look out for, number one, your triggers.

Specifically, who makes you jealous and why?

Not hate, okay?

Not snarky nastiness, but something you see that someone else has that you just really want.

And it honestly doesn't feel great, but feeling envious about something almost always points to what you want for yourself

that you haven't given yourself permission to pursue yet.

You're not jealous of someone for no reason.

So that slight bitterness you feel when you see a woman who's living your dream life, who glows with confidence, who has wicked style, who carries herself so well,

maybe in a relationship that you want for yourself too.

That's all information.

Ask yourself, what am I specifically responding to?

Is it her vibe?

Is it her clarity in who she is, her creativity?

Number two, your self-sabotage patterns.

When life is actually going well, when you've attracted something good, do you find a way to mess it up?

Do you create chaos in healthy relationships because peace feels unfamiliar?

Because if you do, that's your nervous system pulling you back to what's familiar.

Your subconscious is always trying to reshape your reality to match what you believe you deserve.

So if you want a different life, you have to update the belief, not just the behavior.

The behavior is just the symptom.

This personally was

so hard for me to do coming out of a toxic relationship where emotional roller coasters were the norm, okay?

It's like the moment things are going too well, you're anxiously waiting for the other shoe to drop or for a fight or argument to happen.

I really had to recalibrate my nervous system to believe in calm, peace and smooth sailing is what a healthy relationship is.

And number three, your deepest insecurity.

If you go on stage tomorrow and have to speak or perform or whatever, what's the one comment that would absolutely wreck you?

That's your most prominent insecurity telling you exactly where you need to look.

You don't have to fix it today, but you do have to see it because what you can see, you can work with.

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And what you can't see or what you avoid looking at runs the subconscious program in your life.

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You want to understand and know yourself with so much clarity that nothing anyone says can land somewhere you haven't already been.

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That's when you become bulletproof.

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And this is all just internal data, which is rich in quality, but it's also very biased because we have blind spots, right?

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We are in fact our worst narrators of our own story sometimes.

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So you need to balance it with external data.

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And there are a few ways I like to collect this.

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The first is the feedback audit.

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So think about the last three times someone gave you genuine unsolicited feedback that's not flattery but an honest observation about you.

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Like if three different people tell you that you're intimidating, that's a data point, okay?

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If people say you always light up the room when you walk in or when you talk about a specific topic, that's also a data point.

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So start cataloging these because these are clues.

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The second is a video audit.

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This one honestly even makes me really uncomfortable when I do this, but it's exactly why it works.

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Record yourself on a video, having a normal conversation with your friends, hanging out, laughing, just existing, and then play it back and observe yourself.

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How do you hold your body?

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How's your posture?

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Where does your energy go?

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Are you constantly checking your phone?

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Where do you catch yourself shrinking?

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How does your face move when you're genuinely engaged versus when you're performing?

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You'll learn so much more about yourself in a 10-minute footage than in months of just guessing.

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Now that you have everything you need, you've done the internal work, you've collected external feedback, you've observed yourself.

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This is where most people make the mistake of trying to change or fix everything all at once.

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And I get it recovered type A girly here.

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Okay.

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Once you have a list, you're off running a million miles per hour

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because now you can get productive and you want to see results and everything feels urgent.

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But this is a one-way ticket to fixing nothing.

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I want you to look at everything you've gathered and ask yourself, what is the one thing that

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if I changed right now would have a ripple effect on everything else? because there's always a root issue.

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And more often than not, that root issue is usually self-worth and confidence.

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For some people, they think it's people-pleasing, but why do they people-please?

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To be liked and accepted.

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And if they were confident in who they were, they wouldn't need to people-please.

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For others, it's the relationship with their body that's blocking their confidence, the way they're disconnected from it or how they have a hard time loving their bodies.

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I personally do not believe in radical self-acceptance

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and trying to love the parts of ourselves we really do not want to identify with or integrate, but there is a sense of accountability and ownership

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that needs to happen so that you realize it is within your power to change.

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You do not need to romanticize or glorify every part of yourself that needs to heal, but you do need to stop abandoning yourself long enough to take responsibility for what's in your hands.

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That sense of ownership builds confidence because instead of rejecting the parts of yourself you want to change,

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you're facing them honestly and recognizing that you have the power to do something about them.

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And once you find your root concern, that's your big ticket item.

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That's where you need to start.

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This is the one thing

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that once you start working on will create an entire downstream shift because you address the core issue.

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For example, you work on your confidence, your posture naturally changes, your voice naturally changes, your relationships change, how you dress change, who you're friends with changes.

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Do you see what I mean?

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You don't need to work on all of those things individually.

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Now let's talk about the physical self-study to become your most attractive self.

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And I want to be clear.

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This is not you changing yourself to fit whatever is trending at the moment.

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This is about studying yourself the same way we just studied your inner world, with curiosity, with specificity, with respect for what's already there.

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Because the women who look the most put together and the most beautiful, they're not following every trend on TikTok.

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They've done the work to figure out what works for them, and then they fully own it.

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I pray that this is a journey all women eventually go through because it's a step towards owning your own true beauty.

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Take it from a girl who's tried every trend under the sun since the 2010s.

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I know what it feels like to try to make something work for me that just doesn't.

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Blush blindness, bronzer blindness, smoky eye, big lips, ombre brows, monochrome nude outfits, dyed hair.

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I've tried it all, okay?

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I finally landed on how I look now, which is just accentuating what's already there without trying to change too much.

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And that started by choosing who I learned hair, makeup, and fashion from.

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I switched to watching East Asian beauty creators only who have similar facial structures, skin tone, hair color as me,

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so I could actually apply their tips to myself.

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Same with when I'm shopping for clothes.

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I've always told my girlfriends that I really envy women in the itty-bitty club

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because they could wear any top and look so good without it looking overly sexy.

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Meanwhile, every other top I try on doesn't fit right because the girls are right there.

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And I know that the grass is always greener, so I'm not complaining or anything.

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I'm just giving an example that if I saw an off-duty model outfit that I thought was cute, it likely would not work with my body type.

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So here's how you're going to study yourself physically.

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For body proportions, we don't need to categorize ourselves in a box, but clothes are made with proportions in mind.

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So when you know yours, you stop feeling like your body is the problem when something doesn't fit.

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And when you know your body, you can easily pick out pieces that speak to your specific shape and feel beautiful in them.

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Your face shape.

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This affects the hairstyle options and cuts that look good for you.

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And then your natural features.

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Your eye shape, your nose, your bone structure.

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Learn them.

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Know the architecture of your face so you understand how to frame what's already there.

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Another thing I think is really important is knowing your undertones and contrast.

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Like if your vein looks blue you're cool toned

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if your vein looks green you're warm toned and

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if you can see both you're probably neutral

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and then you can usually estimate your contrast by comparing your hair eyes

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and skin if your features are all similarly light

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or similarly deep you're usually lower contrast and

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if there's a stronger difference between your skin and your hair especially dark care against lighter skin, you're usually higher contrast.

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My biggest tip is to find celebrities who look like you

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and take inspiration from their style

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or find a fashion influencer you love who again looks like you for more of your everyday looks.

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Once you know who you are, the expression part becomes almost effortless because you're no longer guessing, okay?

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You're not trying on personalities that aren't yours.

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This is where the personal branding piece comes in and I want to break down what that actually means in practice.

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Think of yourself as having three layers of expression.

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The first layer is energy.

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Your energy is how you make people feel before you've even said a word.

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It's your presence and it's built through your values, your boundaries, your confidence, and all of the internal work.

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You can't fake good energy long term.

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You can cultivate it and you can start by asking what is the energy I naturally carry

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and what's the energy I want to carry and then you work to close the gap.

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The second layer is aesthetics.

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This is where style comes in but it's so much deeper than just clothes.

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It's your haircut, your home, the way your Instagram looks, the music you play when people come over.

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It's the visual language of who you are.

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The goal is coherence, okay?

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Not perfection.

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Everything should feel like it's coming from the same person.

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And I get it.

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This can be so hard for my multifaceted indecisive girlies because you love so many different things.

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So how can you just stick with one?

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So here's a practical exercise for you to do.

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Go on Pinterest and pin 20 images that you're just viscerally attracted to.

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don't think or anything okay just feel clothes interiors art photography people anything

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and try not to pick what you've just been seeing on

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social media with whatever clean girl it girl trend really look at photos

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and see which ones speak to you

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and then look at your overall mood board

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and try to find the through line what textures keep showing

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up what colors what mood what kind of women is living in these images

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that woman is trying to tell you something about yourself the third layer is communication.

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How you speak, what you talk about, the stories you tell, your sense of humor or lack thereof.

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Both are valid.

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People who know themselves deeply are incredibly compelling to talk to because there's conviction behind what they say.

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Like when I'm around really well-spoken and genuinely confident people, the energy is calm.

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It's real.

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It feels secure.

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So work on your story.

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Know what you believe in.

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Know what you don't.

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Know what lights you up and be willing to say it out loud and proud without apologizing for it.

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I want to end with this because I think it's the most important thing.

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Studying yourself is a forever practice.

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Okay.

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The version of you right now is not the final version.

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And that should be the most exciting thing

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because you get to play around and try new things and see what really makes you, you.

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And what separates the people who are constantly becoming from the people who are stuck in limbo is

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that the people who evolve keep asking questions to learn about themselves.

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They stay curious about who they are.

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They don't get defensive when something's being pointed out.

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They don't cling onto an old identity just because it's comfortable.

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So every few months, I want you to revisit everything you wrote down in your mood board.

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See what shifted or what's still the same.

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The most attractive people in the room are the ones who are deeply

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and unapologetically in the process of discovering themselves while fully enjoying and owning who they currently are.

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That's all the cake I have for you today.

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Thank you so much for watching until the end.

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I appreciate it so much.

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And if you enjoyed our little chat today, Please like, subscribe, and leave a comment to share your thoughts, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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: become your own case study | get hot, smart, and confident - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?