Shadowing Practice: BEST Goal Setting Strategy that made me a TOP ACHIEVER (every single year) - Learn English Speaking with Video

I am sick of the anti-goal setting rhetoric that I've seen in 2026

and I completely understand if you are sick of the new year, new me rhetoric.

I get it.

However, as women, I want to make you aware of something.

There is a gender goal gap.

Research shows that women set lower goals than men.

So when we are talking about goals, I need you to know

that it is an act of feminism to be an obsessive goal setter

and in being an insufferable goal setter I have spent the last five years devising the perfect goal setting strategy

that incorporates all the different goal setting frameworks you could possibly think of

and a couple you never will have heard of into this perfect pyramid method

that will not only give you the pathway for setting your goals

but also make sure that you are dreaming bigger than you ever have before

because I know that as women we are so so so guilty for capping our potential.

Stick around until the end

because I will tell you how you can get a free copy of this notion template

that I'm using for my pyramid method for goal setting.

And before we go into the specifics, the nitty-gritty framework for how you're actually going to achieve your goals,

we need to start with a step I think most people get wrong.

This section is specifically for you.

If you are someone who has big, big, big, big, big dreams, however, you really struggle to find the motivation in the boring,

mundane, everyday stuff, it is because you do not have a strong enough why.

So I would like to introduce you to BAHAG goals.

If you have never heard of BAHAG goals, BAHAG stands for big, hairy, audacious goals.

For women, this is specifically important because of this 2023 study that found women perform worse when they make their goals public.

They dumb them down, they make them more realistic, they are not as audacious.

So the whole point of this section is to forget about what is realistic, to forget what is compatible with your everyday life, to shoot for the stars,

to dream as big as you possibly can because lord knows as women we do not do this enough.

There was a dinner that I went to last year

or the year before with Jasmine Sawyers who is an Olympian

and she said that her resolution for that year was to just be more delulu.

Do you think that like as women we just need to be a little bit more delusional?

So to actually set your BAG goal, what I want you to do is to envision yourself in five years time.

What is the absolute dream scenario you could possibly imagine for yourself in five years time

and then I want you to make it 20% bigger so

if your dream is to be in the Forbes 30 under 30 whatever make

that 20% bigger say you want to I don't know sell your company for a ridiculous amount of money

or say for me I would say five years time I

would love to have a PhD in a women's health topic

that I'm interested in how can I make

that 20% bigger have a PhD from the top university in the world think about just keep tweaking

and tweaking and tweaking until it feels like something

that you would genuinely be proud of

because also what I don't want you to do is set a BAG goal

that doesn't feel authentic to you I think there's

so much external noise when it comes to goal setting about what you should be doing.

The key is making it audacious, but still feel like yourself, not just something you're doing for the external validation.

I have a little bit of an embarrassing story about why I think the hag goals are so important.

It is about Faye in 2020 when I had just started my YouTube channel.

I was in my second year of medical school.

I think I had less than 1,000 subscribers.

We'd just gone into lockdown.

I think it was a year after Molly May came out of the Love Island Villa

and to give you a bit of a better picture of what Faye looked like in

that era she had ass-length blonde extensions

that cost her quite a lot of money every month

and I would sit and I'd edit these videos for my YouTube channel

that absolutely no one was watching and it would take me hours

and hours and hours and hours

and I remember vividly like lying in my bed at three in the morning trying to keep editing this video

because I wanted it to get up the next day for about five people to watch this video.

I'm editing, I'm editing, I'm editing

and I remember things to myself like Faye you just need to go to bed

and you know what popped into my head at that moment?

My BHAG goal and you know what my BHAG goal was?

To be the next Molly Mae because I did not want to be paying for my hair extensions, paying £100 for my long-ass length blonde hair extensions every couple of weeks.

Obviously my had goals have changed a little bit since 2020

but I can hand on heart say that

that is what got me through the hours and hours and hours of editing when no one was watching my YouTube videos.

What I'm trying to say is you absolutely need that north star to guide you.

When things get tough you have to have that vision that gets you through.

Maybe it's not Molly May but there will be something.

That is the top of the pyramid.

Next layer of the pyramid is a goal setting framework that I guarantee you will have never heard of before.

And this section is for you if you feel like you are making goals

because they're the goals you think you should be working towards.

You think you should lose weight in January because everyone else is on a diet and they're losing weight.

You think that you should have a goal of earning more money

because everyone else is trying to earn more money or you think

that your goal should be go to the gym more

because everyone else is going to the gym more but

that doesn't actually align with what you want from your life

and because it doesn't align with what you actually want in your life you inevitably fail

but there is a solution I will get to in just a moment

but I want to explain why for women specifically again this is

so important because there was another 2023 study

that found women may be more likely to achieve their goals if their motivation is not solely financial.

Now, in comparison to men.

Now, that might be because for women, it's seen as it's frowned upon a lot of the time to have a financial motivation.

Or it could be because women often do have more complex motivations.

And I know that when I do this next exercise every single year,

I find out that my motivations are so much more complex than just having cash in the bank.

So the solution, I'm so sorry

if you've ever watched any of my other videos on this before because I'm going to sound like a broken record.

You need to do the perfect day exercise.

The perfect day exercise is you imagine your day one year from now.

So we're at the beginning of 2026.

What is your perfect day?

The 1st of January 2027.

100

You're going to start from the very beginning in the morning.

101

Where are you waking up?

102

What do you see when you wake up?

103

Who are you waking up next to?

104

Very important question.

105

Every single detail.

106

What are you eating for breakfast?

107

How do you feel in your body?

108

Do you feel tense?

109

Do you feel stressed?

110

Or do you feel relaxed, at ease, like you have purpose?

111

Journal as if you are living out that day.

112

Not I will do this, you say I did this, past tense.

113

Be as specific as you possibly can be.

114

Once you've written freely about what your perfect day looks like, I want you to go through and pick out the key themes from your perfect day a year from now.

115

Now for me, there are always, every single year when I do this, even though the days are different,

116

there are always three key themes that come out for me and that'll be different for everyone.

117

Mine are always a sense of purpose.

118

That is really, really important to me.

119

I'm a firm believer that we spend more time working than we spend with the people we love.

120

So it may as well be something that we find worthwhile.

121

Financial freedom, always a huge one for me.

122

I'm not someone who values fancy, fancy, fancy things, but I'm someone who values the sense of security that finances bring.

123

I think probably growing up I experienced a lot of financial security secondhand from my parents

124

and I'm not ashamed to admit that financial security is important to me.

125

And the third one is balance.

126

Whenever I look back

127

and reflect on my perfect day exercise I always notice how my day doesn't feel rushed

128

and I feel I envision myself to be a lot calmer.

129

So now you have your themes from your perfect day exercise, I need to introduce you to a goal setting framework called the hard goal setting framework.

130

Now this stands for heartfelt, animated, required and difficult.

131

Do not worry guys, all of this is going to be in the notion template.

132

You do not have to remember any of it, but the hard framework and because I really value balance,

133

I think a reason goal setting culture gets such a bad reputation is it's so tightly linked to hustle culture.

134

But I'm a big believer in your goals reflecting all the different domains of your life.

135

So I like to split my life into five different domains as well.

136

So career, finances, health and fitness, mental well-being and my relationships.

137

So often when I feel like my work-life balance is off, one of my relationship goals will be make time to see one person,

138

at least one social interaction every week, which is equally if not more important to address than your career goals.

139

For all these life domains, I want you to pick one to two goals for each of them.

140

We don't want to overcomplicate it, just one to two.

141

And I'm going to give you some examples of different ones.

142

Let's say that in your career, you by December 2026, you want to have passed some sort of qualification

143

or exam that allows you to progress in your career.

144

To make it heartfelt, you might think about the emotions you feel by not having this qualification.

145

So maybe you feel behind in your career

146

or maybe you don't feel like you have the knowledge to do that job well and that makes you anxious.

147

And then to make it animated, you would visually think about how it will feel if you open up that email,

148

that letter, whatever, and you see your exam result or you get that qualification and really visualize every single little detail.

149

Required is where we think about whether this is actually relevant to your life.

150

Is it something that actually needs to happen for you to meet those bigger goals?

151

So if you need that qualification to progress.

152

And then difficult is for you to study for an exam.

153

That is something that will mentally stretch you and be challenging.

154

And if you achieve it, it is a sign of growth.

155

So then for like finances, it might be that you want to save up for a deposit or health and fitness.

156

You might want to strength train three times a week.

157

Mental wellbeing, you might want to start therapy

158

because anxiety is getting in the way of you living your life to the fullest

159

and then relationships like I said one of your goals might be to make sure

160

that you are carving out time for at least one social interaction every single week.

161

Now a quick note on manifestation, I am a woman of science through and through,

162

if I hear one person talk about manifestation as a means of envisioning a car parking space around the corner, I will scream.

163

That is not real.

164

And it also makes a mockery of the actual real life science behind manifestation.

165

Manifestation absolutely 100% works, just not in like this mystical fairyland way.

166

It's basic psychology.

167

When you visualize something happening, you prime your brain to spot those opportunities and carve a path towards achieving that goal.

168

It's not about using the power of your mind to bend spoons.

169

And that's why I think if you look at very traditional goal setting frameworks, like the SMART framework, so having goals that are specific, measurable, achievable, attainable, realistic and time bound,

170

they don't harness the emotions.

171

And that is really what is important when it comes to driving us towards what we actually want.

172

Now I'm going to come on to how you can actually

173

implement all of this on a day-to-day basis in a little bit.

174

But first, I need you to listen to this next step on the pyramid.

175

If you're someone who has so much motivation in January, but then by March, you are tired, you're exhausted, you cannot be bothered anymore.

176

The momentum has worn off.

177

Our brains really struggle with goals that feel too distant.

178

And I think expecting yourself to keep up the momentum of a single goal for 365 days is a lot.

179

But what can help is having a shorter feedback loop.

180

So I like to do 12-week sprints.

181

Now, you may be thinking 12 weeks, isn't that just a quarter, Faye?

182

Well, quarter sounds a little bit too finance bro.

183

So 12-week sprints is what I like to go by.

184

From your goals, from each of your domains, now I want you to look at your 12-week sprint.

185

What can you do in the next 12 weeks to reach that bigger yearly goal?

186

And this is where it gets a little bit fun.

187

So Google, when they set their OKRs, which is like their targets for their employees, they recommend that employees should be hitting 70% of their target.

188

If the Google employees are always hitting 100% of their targets, they are not setting goals that are ambitious enough or

189

if the employees are not hitting their goals obviously they either haven't set good goals

190

or they're not trying hard enough to hit them.

191

I want you to look to the end of your 12-week sprint whatever your goal is

192

and I want you to create a three-tiered system.

193

So we've got the bronze tier this is you keeping your

194

promise to yourself it is kind of the bare minimum of you just meeting that goal.

195

Then we have the silver tier

196

which is I am becoming her I am becoming the girly pop that I want to be.

197

And then we have the goals here, which is, and I hate to say this, that woman, because that is a little bit of a controversial phrase.

198

I'm going to stand by it though, because that woman, who she is, is whatever you want her to be.

199

It's controversial term because I think it's been adopted by trad wife culture and some things I don't feel very aligned towards,

200

but building a version of yourself where you feel you are treating yourself correctly is whatever you want it to be.

201

It does not need to be anything externally validating.

202

It can just be becoming that woman for yourself, can just be becoming someone whose nervous system is regulated,

203

becoming someone who isn't people pleasing, becoming someone who isn't staying late in work every day, who is setting boundaries, who is building work-life balance,

204

who is being more present with their friends and family.

205

Those are your three tiers.

206

Then what you're going to do is you're going to put

207

that goal into the notion template which I'll tell you how to get at the end.

208

At the end of the video we are going to talk about the step

209

that everyone misses and I honestly think is most important

210

but first this is the final rung on our pyramid

211

and it is for you if you have big big big big big dreams

212

but you struggle to implement them into your day-to-day life.

213

I think we can all be really guilty of forgetting about the unsexy groundwork

214

that has to happen for us to get to where we want to get to.

215

So maybe you want to save for a deposit for your first home, but when it actually comes to sitting down and making a budget,

216

that is extremely unattractive.

217

And I completely understand.

218

It is boring and it's not fun.

219

Maybe you want a fed ass and you're only going to the gym once a month because that's not the fun part.

220

Thinking about how nice

221

and juicy you want your bum to look is not as

222

sexy as going to the gym at 5am in the morning when you're tired.

223

So this is how we really break it down into daily manageable goals, which keep us chipping away so that we can just do 1%.

224

And this is actually the biggest life hack in all of this, because honestly, if you do things on a daily basis,

225

you really do not need to be doing much at all.

226

And the example I'm going to give is my biggest goal for 2026, which is super unbelievably unsexy but it is something

227

that I've been trying to do for years

228

and I'm going to verbalize it now so

229

that you can all hold me accountable and

230

that is 2026 is the year that I become a tidy organized girl

231

because I am so ridiculously anal

232

and type A in every single other area of my life you walk into my home

233

and it looks like it's been hit by a bomb

234

and I'm not someone if someone puts in the comments just you know put put things away as you go along

235

doesn't work it does not work

236

that is what I'm trying to get to I want it to become second nature

237

but I think

238

if you don't have the tidy gene it's not part of my regular routine I can't spot

239

when things are untidy until I've got friends coming over and

240

that I realize that I've been living in a mess for the last you know two weeks

241

but I'm done I'm done I want to live in a tidy home

242

and I've recognized does prevent me doing my job

243

because I do not want to film anything ever when my home looks awful.

244

So this is the year I'm tackling it.

245

And the way that I'm tackling it is every single day I'm setting myself the target of doing 10 minutes of tidying.

246

That is it.

247

The flat does not need to be tidy at the end of it.

248

I am just setting myself the target of 10 minutes of tidying every single day.

249

10 minutes is so small and insignificant in the grand scheme of our day.

250

There is never going to be a single day where I do not have just 10 minutes to do the bare minimum.

251

I'm on day seven and I've done it every day

252

so far and actually every single day

253

that I've done it I've ended up going over the 10 minutes

254

because once you get started it's so much easier to keep going.

255

With your own goals what I want you to do is

256

think of the smallest possible thing you could do every single day to try and make that happen.

257

So say if your goal is this year you want to exercise more.

258

The smallest thing you could do every single day is go on a 10 minute walk.

259

Like that is the absolute bare minimum.

260

Some days you go to the gym, some days you go and play like tennis or you go to Pilates or yoga, whatever.

261

The bare minimum is just going for a walk for 10 minutes.

262

You can always make time for 10 minutes.

263

But if you do that 10 minutes every single day, you are going to get so much further than

264

if you set yourself the goal of doing an hour gym session three times a week

265

and then life gets in the way a month in

266

and then you quit and you fail and you don't go to the gym again for three months.

267

Same for me, if I set myself the goal of being a tidy person by doing one big deep clean every week, that becomes this big mountain of a task

268

that I do not want to do and actually one week I miss it

269

and then our goal's out the window and I don't want to be a tidy person anymore.

270

What I need you to do is build an identity around the goal you want to set.

271

So think about the person, say you want to eat healthier.

272

What does someone who eats healthy do every single day?

273

That could be eat their five a day.

274

That could be eat their breakfast.

275

That build that identity and ask yourself, what does that person do every single day?

276

Now pick one or two of those habits.

277

Keep it as simple as possible.

278

One or two habits and you're going to track those habits.

279

We need to be giving ourselves a little dopamine kick every time we tick off for those habits. For me,

280

I am making it a point of telling every single person I come into contact with every single day

281

that I've kept up my 10 minute tidying habit because that makes me feel good about myself.

282

It's small to other people.

283

This is a big, big, big thing for me.

284

It gives me a huge dopamine kick actually.

285

It's a little bit insufferable of me and you will be hearing this for the next 12 months of the year.

286

It could also be a sticker chart.

287

I've seen the most fun TikTok sticker charts where every single day that you keep up your habit, you just pop a little sticker on the chart.

288

In the Notion template, there will also be a habit tracker

289

so you can use Notion or there's so many other habit tracking apps.

290

It does not need to be complicated.

291

It can be as simple as just clicking a button.

292

Our brains are simple, simple, simple things.

293

Like we make them so much more complex brain likes to feel like it did good thing.

294

You press a button, you feel like you did a good thing, you get a little dopamine kick.

295

It's really, really simple.

296

The most important thing is you track it however you choose to do it.

297

Now, little bonus point, if you want to attach this habit to something you already do anyway.

298

So for example, if you want to get more steps in, you may have to travel to work anyway.

299

So you might walk instead of getting the bus.

300

I know for me, for me to get to the tube station,

301

I can either do a 10 minute bus or a 20 minute walk just by walking instead of getting the bus.

302

I've done that habit, but I've also attached that habit to something I was going to do anyway.

303

When we create that link, it's called habit stacking.

304

And it just makes it so much easier for us to stick to because we remember it.

305

We do the thing we were going to do anyway.

306

And we think, oh wait, I can do my habit right now.

307

Finally, this is the step most people miss.

308

I think the reason most people hate goal setting is

309

because I think we've all failed at it and then after we failed at it, we felt shit and then we've blamed the goal setting for our feelings of feeling shit.

310

It's not a failure of us, it's often failure of the environments around us.

311

We set our goals

312

when we're in this fresh new year state of mind with loads of energy

313

and then life gets in the way and our goals don't happen.

314

We get tired, we get busy.

315

So this is the most important section when it comes to actually making sure you get to your goals.

316

It is the pre-mortem.

317

Now, you may have heard of a post-mortem.

318

This is what is done after someone has died to try and work out why they died.

319

In the pre-mortem, we are going to try

320

and predict why your goals will fail and put in strategies to try and stop them from failing.

321

Let's say your goal is to eat healthier in 2026

322

but you have a really busy day at work and you come home and you order a delivery because you're tired.

323

Maybe you want to go to the gym consistently but then one night you stay up late, you can't get to sleep so you sleep in.

324

Or maybe you want to save more

325

but then you go on a couple of big nights out and you completely blow your budget.

326

What has happened to me in the past when I've set goals and then failed at them, I have had this really like all or nothing mindset.

327

If I fail the goal, that's it.

328

Throw in the towel, throw in all the hard work that you've done previously.

329

forget about it completely it was never going to happen you're never capable think

330

that you were never capable of doing that in the first place

331

that is completely the wrong attitude we want to look through each of our habits

332

or our goals and identify a trigger so maybe

333

if you want to eat healthier look at your triggers for eating foods

334

that are less nutritional I don't want to put foods in good

335

or bad because I don't think that's healthy but foods that you don't feel aligned to your goals.

336

I order takeaways whenever I'm tired and work.

337

I am a big emotional eater.

338

My weapon of choice is a Cadbury's dairy milk, big bar, the entire thing.

339

I also tend to eat more unhealthily depending on the environment I'm in.

340

So one of the hospitals I worked at had a Gregg's at the train station

341

and when I came out of work I was tired, I was hungry, I hadn't had a snack all day.

342

It was a Gregg's straight away.

343

So now we've identified the triggers we can kind of work on how we can prevent it.

344

So for example if you know you're someone who when you get tired that is when you want a takeaway.

345

I tried out Simmer last year and I always kind of begrudged meal prepping services

346

because in the back of my head I kind of I

347

felt like that's quite an expensive thing to pay for

348

when I could just get myself off my arse

349

and meal prep myself but I never meal prepped myself

350

and then I always ended up spending more money on the takeaways anyway

351

so I found having a couple Simmer meals in my fridge

352

that I knew were pretty nutritious

353

and I could just stick them in the microwave for a couple of minutes

354

and that was my dinner done or having some really good quick easy meals.

355

Dr. Megan was on the podcast and she gave a really really really good quick 15 minute gut friendly meal.

356

I also have a bean pita 12 minute dinner recipe

357

that I shared in a vlog recently

358

that I will link on screen now as well or if you're an emotional eater I am and I found that

359

actually sitting with my emotions and tracing back my steps

360

and thinking about why my nervous system feels a bit dysregulated

361

and just addressing that head on sometimes stops me in my tracks from devouring the entire dairy milk bar.

362

I will still probably have a couple of chunks but it just stops that.

363

I'm quite bad for just like eating beyond my hunger

364

because I'm just trying to give myself an emotional hug which is not healthy.

365

Also finding delicious more nutritious options the deliciously Ella salted almonds.

366

Oh my gosh, they were a recent discovery.

367

Wow, love them.

368

And if you're someone who works near a Gregg's, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, whatever, maybe even considering taking a different route home

369

or having a snack before you leave work so

370

that you're not walking past and smelling the fries and putting temptation in your way.

371

Now you have some preventative measures in place.

372

You also have to plan for what happens

373

when you inevitably fail to keep up your goal because I'm going to be completely real with you.

374

Life happens and life should happen.

375

We are meant to live.

376

We are meant to go out and socialize with friends.

377

We are meant to enjoy delicious, not very nutritious meals.

378

We are meant to stay up late because we're having a good time.

379

Like life should not be all about keeping up with our goals and our habits.

380

And it's kind of beautiful that they will inevitably fail.

381

But what is important is how you react to them.

382

And remembering that when they fail, you don't just throw away all the work.

383

You get back on the horse and you just keep going

384

because it's not a sign that you are a failure of a person

385

or you lack discipline it's a sign that you know

386

when living life is more important than just ticking a box

387

and getting your quick dopamine fix so

388

if you want to click there is a link in the description

389

that will take you to the free notion template

390

if there are any goals

391

that you guys are setting for the new year then definitely leave them in the comments

392

so that we can all keep each other accountable now you know how i set my goals personally

393

but maybe you'd like to hear from a money expert all the ways

394

that you can reach your financial goals in 2026 by clicking on this video on screen now

395

or clicking the video below

396

which YouTube has recommended specifically for you based on what you're interested in thank you

397

so so much for watching

398

if you did enjoy the video please don't forget to like

399

comment subscribe I hope you have a wonderful wonderful wonderful week and I'll see you in the next video bye

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: BEST Goal Setting Strategy that made me a TOP ACHIEVER (every single year) - Learn English Speaking with Video

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?