Shadowing Practice: Cringe Memories that Keep Coming Back: How to Let Them Go for Good - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Do you have any moments in your life where you look back and your skin starts to crawl from embarrassment?
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Personally, yep, I have.
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I would say I probably have
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10 or 12 recurring ones for a long time really bothered me
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and it's so great that I get to talk to people in my work
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but if you are one of those people
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that has many of those cringe memories
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that come back just realize you're not alone we all have these
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and I want to give you a little bit of feedback in terms of how you process these memories.
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Because they're so intrusive.
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You could be in the shower one morning
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and just this memory pops up into your mind of one of the cringe moments
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that you felt deeply embarrassed and awkward in.
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Maybe you have a lot of regrets and a lot of shame tied up in it.
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Now what's driving these memories is a fundamental core belief.
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It's one of the three core beliefs I talk about
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and it is the belief that they're in being defective and that there's something wrong with me.
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Shame, guilt are tied up in this.
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Now in terms of processing this,
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one exercise, it's not an easy exercise to do is just one day in journaling.
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What I invite you to do here is to sit down and write down,
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you know, you can call this journal entry cringe moments or something, right?
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Where you look back in your life and you look at in sequence,
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the moments in which you felt that really skin crawling embarrassment.
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Usually, of course, it's around other people.
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The bigger the group, sometimes the more tense it can be.
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Just to write them down and to see, we're going to do like a stock take here, an evaluation of of how many of these moments are there for me?
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And how often do these thoughts intrude on my life?
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Because they pop up seemingly random, but for many of us, they happen so often that it can kind of become an issue, right?
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And it can really start to erode away at our sense of self-worth.
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Now, the secret to this, if there is a secret, is how do we let this go?
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How do we process it?
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And I know many people have approached this differently.
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I know many people have tried to like reframe memories or change memories even, which to me seems a little bit difficult to do.
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I don't think it's about that.
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I think it's about looking at the memories.
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And here's the thing, here's the secret.
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You have to give yourself complete permission to experience moments like this.
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What I'm really saying is,
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it is how you are perceiving these moments in your life and using them against yourself that is the main problem.
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Give yourself complete permission to experience moments like this in your life.
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You have to give yourself permission.
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Now, what does that mean, give yourself permission?
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You have to come to terms with the fact that you're allowed to do that.
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That thing that made you your skin crawl.
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Okay.
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And it's a reason I'm talking about this is it's like, we don't often talk about this.
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I don't hear many people talking about this issue.
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And it's it's one of those things that can know away in the background with us sometimes.
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So for me personally, many times like public speaking, I've given loads of talks over the years.
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Many of them, most of them, almost all of them have been good.
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Few of them have been cringe-worthy.
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A few of them I have really made a like anxiety took over
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or something and I found it difficult in those moments and how I was processing those experiences was dysfunctional right.
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So that needed to be worked on and ultimately when you look at it give yourself full
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permission allow yourself to do it it is how you are viewing these memories
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that is all important and if you realize if you give yourself complete permission
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really to even celebrate the fact that that's what I did
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that happened to me okay I can guarantee you that this won't matter so much but I'm gonna say it Anyway, no one else is thinking about these moments.
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Not one soul.
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Right.
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And but if they're popping up in your awareness again and again, really, the issue is, OK, I need to learn to let this go.
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I need to learn to live with this memory.
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And it's in full giving yourself full permission to be a person that's allowed to do that thing, that awkward, socially awkward thing that happened.
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You said the wrong thing.
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Maybe you had an anxiety attack or something like that.
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Said something wrong.
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Maybe you were asking someone out on a date.
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Maybe you said something wrong in a job interview or something like that.
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Giving yourself permission to have these experiences
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will mean that you're going to free yourself up to be way more creative and open to risk in the future.
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But really the most important thing is that these memories that pop up, they're like a thorn in your side sometimes.
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They will start to fade off.
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In fact, here's another thing I would invite you to try.
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every time a memory like
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that pops up into your awareness amplify the memory really go into the memory proactively
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because usually what happens is
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when these memories pop up we want to get away from
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it right what we need to start doing proactively is
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when these memories come up amplify it welcome up that memory
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and celebrate that moment of your life see it as one of the best moments in your life.
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That's what I mean by embracing it.
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This issue is so common for us but we don't talk about it
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that often and I think that tells us
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that we're trying to escape these moments and we don't want to look at them.
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Many many people, hugely successful people, competent people have had these experiences I've seen a lot of
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them online of people kind of having awkward moments whatever
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so you're not alone in this
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but you need to learn to celebrate these moments really give
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yourself permission to be a person that's allowed to do
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that in your life I'll leave it there today short video but I hope that was useful take care
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This video has 91 sentences and 1085 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:52. The speaker talks at a steady 138 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 90% 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 |
|---|---|---|
| awkward adjective | /ˈɔk.wɚd/ | Lacking dexterity in the use of the hands, or of instruments. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| crawl verb | /kɹɔːl/ | To move by dragging one's body along or close to a surface, like a worm or insect, or on one's hands and knees, like a human baby. |
| anxiety noun | /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/ | An unpleasant state of mental uneasiness, nervousness, apprehension and obsession or concern about some uncertain event. |
| awareness noun | /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ | The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer. |
| invite verb | /ɪnˈvaɪt/ | To ask for the presence or participation of someone or something. |
| embarrassment noun | /ɪmˈbæɹ.əs.mənt/ | A state of discomfort arising from bashfulness or consciousness of having violated a social rule; humiliation. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| guarantee noun | /ˌɡæɹ.ənˈtiː/ | Anything that assures a certain outcome. |
| bother verb | /ˈbɑðɚ/ | To annoy, to disturb, to irritate; to be troublesome to, to make trouble for. |
| regret verb | /ɹɪˈɡɹɛt/ | To feel sorry about (a thing that has or has not happened), afterthink: to wish that a thing had not happened, that something else had happened instead. |
| sequence noun | /ˈsiː.kwəns/ | A set of things next to each other in a set order; a series. |
| fundamental adjective | /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/ | Related to a foundation, base, or basis; serving as a foundation. |
| feedback noun | /ˈfiːdˌbæk/ | Critical assessment of a process or activity or of their results. |
| worthy adjective | /ˈwɝ.ði/ | Having worth, merit, or value. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| pop up verb | To come up with a "pop" sound. |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| look back verb | To think of (past events) in retrospect (in hindsight). |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| take over verb | To assume control of something, such as a business or enterprise, and sometimes by force. |
| talk over verb | To discuss; to converse about a matter or issue. |
| write down verb | To produce or set (something) down in writing; to record something. |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 23 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, they're, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, thorn /θoɹn/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: evaluation /ɪˌvæljuˈeɪʃn̩/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: anxiety /æŋˈzaɪ.əti/, embarrassment /ɪmˈbæɹ.əs.mənt/, fundamental /ˌfʌn.dəˈmɛn.təl/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, evaluation /ɪˌvæljuˈeɪʃn̩/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like awkward, belief, crawl.
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.