Shadowing Practice: disappear and come back unrecognizable in 90 days (full blueprint) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Each mode opens a full-screen practice room.

571 sentences

If sentences are too short or too long, click Edit to adjust them.

All right, hello and welcome to this training.

As you can see from the title, what we're going to be covering today is how to disappear for 90 days and come back someone else entirely.

And as you can see from the overview, what we're going to be talking about more specifically is first the overview itself, the strenuous life, rebuilding the self,

proof and identity, the review, near action items for the day or the next few days.

So without further ado, let's get started and talk about the estrenuous life.

So Theodore Roosevelt is remembered as one of those almost ridiculously energetic people.

You know, this larger than life guy who became president, boxed, hunted, explored, went to war,

spent weeks out in the wilderness and built this whole reputation around basically being tough

and active and almost impossible to wear out, which makes the beginning of his life actually kind of strange.

See, as a kid, Roosevelt was actually pretty sick.

He had severe asthma, and this was in the 1800s.

So obviously, they didn't have the treatments that we have today.

And he'd have these attacks where he basically couldn't breathe properly.

And sometimes in the middle of the night, his family would have to actually really sit with him trying to help him get enough air.

And there were nights where sleeping normally wasn't really even an option because lying down could make breathing harder.

So even something as basic as going to bed could turn into a whole ordeal.

And naturally, that started shaping his childhood.

He couldn't always do what other kids were doing.

And he spent a lot of time indoors and he read constantly.

He became fascinated by animals and natural history.

And he was very intelligent and curious, but physically he was weak and everybody around him basically knew it.

So you can imagine how easy it would have been for that to slowly become his whole identity.

I'm the sick kid.

I'm the intellectual kid.

My body is weak, my brain is strong, and this is just what I got.

But his father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., didn't really accept that as the final answer.

And there's this famous moment from Roosevelt's childhood where his father basically sits him down and tells him, Theodore, you have the mind, but you don't have the body.

And then he tells him that without the help of the body, the mind can't go as far as it otherwise could.

So he tells him essentially you have to make your body and that's exactly what they tried to do.

His father had a small gym built inside their home and Roosevelt started training weights, gymnastics, eventually boxing, rowing, hiking,

just deliberately putting his body under more demand and trying to make it stronger.

And I want you to imagine this properly because I think when we hear the story now, knowing who Roosevelt eventually became,

we accidentally picture some insanely determined little kid who already had the personality of Theodore Roosevelt.

But that wasn't the case when he was a kid, right?

He didn't know the ending.

He didn't know what his future would look like.

He was just a sick kid really doing exercises in his house

because his father had given him this idea that his body could potentially become something different from what it currently was.

And it didn't really happen in a couple of weeks either, right?

He kept going.

And as he got older, he boxed, he rode, he spent more time outdoors,

he continued putting himself into physically demanding situations for years. And slowly, the person who had spent his childhood being limited by his

body became somebody who built a huge part of his adult life around physical effort.

And I think that's the part of Roosevelt's story that I find the most interesting, because if you only looked at him at 10 years old

and basically tried to predict the rest of his life from the evidence available at that moment, you'd probably get him completely wrong.

The evidence said sickly, physically limited, probably much better suited to books than physical adventure.

And yet when we remember Roosevelt now, we almost remember the opposite person.

So what happened in between those two versions of him.

Because obviously he didn't wake up one morning, look in the mirror and decide, okay, I'm Theodore Roosevelt now.

I'm this tough, unstoppable person.

He became that person gradually, right?

First, he started doing different things.

Those things changed what his body could do.

What his body could do then changed what he was willing to attempt.

And those experiences gave him new evidence about himself.

And eventually his idea of who he was had, who he was, had to really catch up.

And this is where Roosevelt's story became useful for us.

Because I think we usually imagine personal change happening in almost the exact opposite order.

We think we need to become confident so we can start acting confidently.

We need to become disciplined so we can finally stick to something.

We need to fix our mindset, get motivated, believe in ourselves, figure out who we are, and then we'll finally start behaving like the person we want to become.

But a lot of the time, you can start from the other end, right?

You do something your current identity doesn't fully support yet, and then you do it again and again, and you get a little better at it, and your circumstances start changing,

and you collect evidence, and after enough repetitions, you look back and you realize that the old description of yourself doesn't really make sense anymore.

And I think everybody has some version of this going on.

You have a story about who you are right now, and a huge part of that story comes from evidence that you've collected from your past.

So maybe you think you're inconsistent because you've started and stopped things for years.

Maybe you think you're bad with money because you've always been bad with money.

Maybe you think you can't really get in shape because you've tried five times already.

Maybe you're shy.

Maybe you're disorganized, lazy, anxious, terrible at relationships, terrible at business, whatever it is, whatever label you've assigned to yourself.

And the annoying part is, yes, you probably have evidence for it.

That's why these beliefs can feel so convincing.

If you've broken the last 20 promises you made to yourself, your brain isn't completely insane for you for expecting you to break number 21, right?

It's looking at what normally happens and making a prediction from it.

And the problem comes when you confuse that prediction with a permanent fact about yourself,

because the evidence tells you what you've repeatedly done up until now.

It doesn't really tell you what you're physically capable of doing tomorrow morning.

And those are two very different things.

And once you separate them, you suddenly have a lot more room to move.

And you don't have to become disciplined before you do the discipline thing tomorrow.

You can still think you're inconsistent and wake up when you said you would, right?

You can still feel like someone who hates exercise and still go train.

You can still feel socially awkward

and still start the conversation your identity doesn't have to approve the action before you're actually allowed to take it

and then something interesting happens if you keep doing

that right your brain has to deal with the new evidence

too you can't keep saying i'm somebody who never follows through

quite as comfortably after you've followed through for 30 straight days

or after 60 days it gets even harder after 90 days assuming you've actually done the work

you now have three months of your own behavior arguing against that old story.

And you'll probably still feel like the old person for a part of that period. And that's normal, right?

You've been rehearsing one version of yourself for years, and you've been rehearsing the new one for 12 days.

Of course, 12 days doesn't immediately erase 10 years.

So I wouldn't constantly check whether you feel transformed yet.

That's almost besides the point.

what matters much more is whether you're creating evidence in the right direction

because if you keep producing

that evidence for long enough eventually your identity starts changing almost

100

as a consequence of what you've repeatedly proven to yourself

101

and that's why I like 90 days for this it's long enough

102

that you can actually change something meaningful but it's also short enough

103

that you can see the whole thing in front of you

104

you're not saying from now on I'm going to be perfect for the rest of my life.

105

That's very abstract.

106

You're saying for the next three months, I'm going to deliberately live in a way that produces evidence for the person I want to become.

107

And then I'm going to see who I am on the other side.

108

And think about it almost like an experiment.

109

What happens if you stop reinforcing the same version of yourself for 90 days?

110

What happens if your mornings change, your environment changes, your body changes,

111

the people you listen to change the work you do changes and the promises you make to yourself

112

actually start getting kept that's what we're going to build throughout the rest of this training

113

and i want to make it practical because become a new person sounds cool and inspiring

114

and means absolutely nothing unless we can turn it into things you can actually do on a tuesday morning

115

when you slept badly and you don't feel like doing anything and you're not particularly motivated so

116

So let's talk about rebuilding the self.

117

So disappearing for 90 days sounds pretty cool, but disappearing itself doesn't really change anything, right?

118

You could disappear for three months, sit around doing exactly what you're doing now, and come back basically identical, except now you're also socially isolated.

119

So the useful part is what you repeatedly do while you're gone.

120

And there's actually an order to this that makes the whole thing a bit easier.

121

First, you change some of the conditions around you.

122

Then you make a few important behaviors easier to repeat.

123

And as you repeat those behaviors, your ability starts changing.

124

And once your ability and behavior change, you start collecting different evidence about yourself.

125

That's the sequence we're after.

126

So what usually happens instead is that somebody tries to change 20 things at once.

127

New sleep schedule, new diet, new workout plan, five books a month, meditation, journaling, cold showers, three hours of deep work, no social media, no sugar, no dating, no fun.

128

And for about four days, they do feel like they've become this completely new person.

129

But then real life happens, right?

130

They sleep badly one night or work gets busy

131

or they miss half the routine and suddenly the whole thing feels broken

132

because they expected themselves to be perfect in the first place, which is why I want your 90 days to be much simpler than that.

133

We're looking for a few changes that actually matter and can survive contact with a normal life.

134

So I'd start with the body because the body gives you some of the clearest feedback you can get.

135

You put it under a demand, you recover, you come back, you do it again, and over time something changes.

136

both mentally

137

but also physically right you lift more you move better your

138

conditioning improves maybe your body composition changes whatever your specific goal is there's usually something you can point to

139

and say okay this is different now so choose a training rhythm

140

that you can actually maintain for the next three months maybe

141

that's four sessions a week maybe it's five maybe it's three

142

because you're starting from zero maybe it's two and two is already a big shift if you're not working out at all.

143

So I don't really care about the exact number here.

144

I care that the number is realistic enough

145

that you can actually repeat it for 12 or 13 weeks instead of designing the perfect week and doing it once.

146

And before you start, decide that what the minimum version looks like.

147

And this is really important because eventually there's going to be a day where you're tired, you're busy, something happened, and the full version of the workout doesn't necessarily fit.

148

That's okay, right?

149

I don't want you negotiating with yourself for 45 minutes about whether today counts.

150

Just decide now what the floor is and make it a floor, right?

151

It's a minimum.

152

So don't make the floor too big.

153

Maybe the normal workout is 60 minutes and your floor is actually 25.

154

Maybe your normal run is five miles and the floor is two.

155

Maybe you normally do a full session at the gym and the minimum is a much shorter session at home.

156

The point is that a bad day already has a plan before the bad day actually arrives.

157

And then obviously you still have the normal version too.

158

So on normal days, you do the full thing.

159

The floor isn't there to become basically a clever way of lowering the standard every day.

160

It's there so that one imperfect day doesn't automatically turn into three days

161

and then a week and then one of those I'll start again on Monday situations.

162

And that's what you're protecting really, continuity, because the change we're talking about throughout this training comes from repeated evidence.

163

And the easiest way to stop collecting evidence is to keep restarting from zero every time life becomes slightly inconvenient.

164

And once you've been going for a while, there's also something psychologically useful about keeping the chain alive.

165

You've trained for five weeks, you've been showing up, now missing for no reason feels slightly more expensive because you're not just interrupting something,

166

you're not just stopping or pausing, you're now interrupting something that already exists.

167

It's like a whole chain of habits

168

that you're now completely throwing in the trash by stopping for a longer period of time.

169

And keep one or two measurements as well.

170

Nothing obsessive, just enough that you can actually see whether anything is happening.

171

Maybe it's your weight, maybe it's progress pictures, maybe it's a specific lift, maybe it's a running time or your steps,

172

your resting heart rate, whatever actually makes sense for what you're doing.

173

Because your mood is a terrible measurement of long-term change.

174

You can look in the mirror on Monday and feel amazing

175

and then look almost identical on Tuesday and somehow decide that you look terrible.

176

So give yourself something that doesn't move around quite as much as your feelings do.

177

And remember that while we're doing this, right, every measurable improvement becomes another receipt.

178

Three months ago, you couldn't do this.

179

Now, now you can.

180

Three months ago, this was your weight.

181

Now it's this.

182

Three months ago, you couldn't keep a training schedule for longer than two weeks.

183

Now you have 12 weeks on the board.

184

And once you've decided what you want to do physically, I'd move to your environment.

185

So this is where people make things unnecessarily hard for themselves.

186

They decide they're going to become a completely different person

187

while keeping every part of their life exactly the same and arranged around the old person with the old habits.

188

So look around and actually ask a really simple question.

189

What keeps making the behaviors I want harder than they need to be?

190

And what makes the behaviors I don't want easier?

191

If you want to train early and every morning you have to find your clothes, find your shoes, pack your bag and decide what workout you're doing,

192

that's a lot of friction to something that's already hard for you, right?

193

You're just adding more hard things on top.

194

None of those things are huge individually, but they create more places where the behavior can die.

195

So prepare some of it beforehand.

196

Put the clothes out, have the workout written down, put the book where you actually read, keep the food you want to eat in the house.

197

And if you want to write in the morning, leave the document ready, right?

198

Again, none of this is revolutionary.

199

That's almost why it works.

200

You're making the next useful action slightly more obvious.

201

And whenever possible, shrink the distance between you and the behavior as much as you can.

202

So Roosevelt literally had the gym in his house.

203

You probably don't need to go that far if you have the ability to do so, but the principle is useful.

204

If the gym you hate driving to is 45 minutes away and there's a decent one five minutes away,

205

maybe the five minute gym is the smarter choice for this season of your life.

206

Basically, I want more of your day to work on defaults.

207

Standardized habits, right?

208

Because if every good decision requires a fresh burst of willpower, you're going to need a ridiculous amount of willpower.

209

Better to make a bunch of decisions once and then let those decisions keep helping you.

210

So if you're trying to eat differently, your default food matters as well.

211

What do you buy every week?

212

What's available when you're hungry and you don't feel like cooking?

213

That's the version of you we're designing for, right?

214

The tired version, the rushed version, the worst case scenario version, the version that doesn't want to think.

215

And same with work.

216

If the first thing you see when you open your computer is Slack, email, YouTube, and 12 browser tabs, like don't act shocked

217

when 40 minutes disappear before you started the thing you said you wanted to do and mattered most to you.

218

Your environment is constantly giving you suggestions on what the next step is.

219

And your social environment is part of this too.

220

And this doesn't mean you need to dramatically announce

221

that you're cutting everybody off for 90 days and then come back wearing a black turtleneck with a new personality.

222

You can relax, but you do need to notice what starts feeling normal around certain people.

223

If everybody around you constantly complains about work, skips commitments, drinks every weekend,

224

spends money that they don't have and treats every ambitious goal like you're taking life too seriously, that affects you.

225

And it affects how you see yourself

226

and it affects what you're willing to do because otherwise you might be thrown out of the group.

227

Maybe subtly, but it does affect you.

228

And the same thing happens in the other direction when you're around people who train, who build things, who keep promises and generally have a higher standard for themselves, who are more engaged with life.

229

So for 90 days, be a little more intentional about whose voice gets the most airtime in your head.

230

You don't have to hate anybody, right?

231

You don't have to burn bridges.

232

You can just spend a little more time around the inputs

233

that support you and support where you're going

234

and a little less time around the ones constantly pulling you back towards where you've already been.

235

And once the environment is helping instead of fighting you, the next part is really just repetition.

236

And I really want to keep this simple because your life doesn't need 27 new habits, right?

237

pick the few behaviors if you actually repeated them for 90 days

238

that would create the biggest difference in your life the few behaviors

239

that if you actually repeated for 90 days would create the biggest difference in your life

240

and so that's basically the big domino behaviors the ones

241

that once you push basically make all the other ones irrelevant

242

or not as relevant

243

so maybe that's training maybe it's writing maybe it's doing focused work before checking your home phone Maybe it's reading, right?

244

Maybe it's a fixed bedtime.

245

Maybe it's keeping your calories where they need to be.

246

Your list depends on what you're rebuilding, but each habit should have a clear reason for being there.

247

So one useful filter is this.

248

If I did this consistently for the next 90 days, would I care?

249

Would something meaningful actually be different?

250

If the answer is no, maybe you don't need it in the challenge, right?

251

Just because a habit sounds healthy or productive doesn't mean it deserves a permanent spot in your day.

252

Just because you heard it from some YouTuber doesn't mean that you need to make it a part of your day.

253

I'd much rather you see do four important things

254

that are important to you that make a difference to you very consistently than 12 things badly, right?

255

Because again, the entire game here is evidence.

256

We want enough clean repetitions that you can actually see a pattern forming.

257

And then give those behaviors a place in your existing day.

258

Attach them to something that already happens.

259

After you make a coffee, you read, let's say, after you wake up, you train.

260

Before you open your messages, you write.

261

Before bed, you do your review.

262

It doesn't have to be exactly those things, obviously, but the behavior needs somewhere to live because I'll do it sometime today.

263

Sounds very flexible, but it's in that flexibility that a lot of the times you don't do the behavior.

264

Most of the time, it just means the task follows you around all day,

265

consuming cognitive ability, basically, while you keep finding slightly better reasons to do it later.

266

And once the timing becomes familiar, you also reduce the amount of thinking that's required because you wake up and you already know what happens next.

267

And there's less of

268

that internal conversation where one part of you is trying to

269

sell the other part on doing something you've supposedly already decided to do.

270

And then you track it again, very simply, a note, a calendar, a spreadsheet, whatever you're actually going to use, just some kind of habit tracker, right?

271

You just need a place where a completed day is a completed day and a missed day is a missed day.

272

And you're honest with yourself about that.

273

Don't turn the tracking system into some kind of a creativity

274

exercise where you optimize a Notion database for six hours and you invent reasons why something basically counted.

275

If you said 30 minutes and you did five, that's useful information, right?

276

You don't need to shame yourself.

277

Just record what actually happened.

278

It's just a data point.

279

And then after a few weeks, you can start seeing patterns that are almost impossible to see day by day.

280

Maybe Monday is always good and Friday keeps falling apart, right?

281

Maybe your evening habit keeps fading because your evenings aren't really predictable.

282

Maybe you always train when your clothes are ready and you keep skipping when they're not.

283

That's where the tracking starts teaching you how things actually work, how you actually work, right?

284

And that's why it's so important for you to be honest with yourself.

285

And the only way to be honest with yourself is to stop attaching shame to missing days

286

or missing a habit here and there.

287

Because as long as you're attaching shame to that, you're not going to be honest to yourself so that you can avoid the shame.

288

But if you're not honest with yourself, you're not going to learn the lessons that you need in order to make this consistent.

289

So this is also where something starts changing that I think gets missed in a lot of these conversations.

290

You're not just becoming more consistent, right? you're becoming more capable as well.

291

If you write every day for 90 days, you're going to have more writing experience than you had before.

292

If you train for 90 days, your body can usually do more than it could do before.

293

If you make sales calls every day, you're going to recognize situations you didn't recognize in week one.

294

If you record videos, the camera eventually stops feeling quite as strange.

295

And because your ability goes up, some of these behaviors start costing less.

296

The first week might require a lot of conscious effort because everything is new.

297

But by week eight, you know where things go.

298

You know what the problems usually are.

299

You know how to start.

300

And you're just better at the activity itself.

301

And more capability gives you more options too.

302

The person who's never trained has a very different relationship with their body than the person who's trained consistently for years.

303

The beginner rider has different options from the person with hundreds of finished pieces.

304

the beginner in business sees fewer moves than somebody who's already dealt with the same type of problem 20 times

305

and as your capacity rises your standard for what's normal can rise with it

306

so something you once thought was an amazing day eventually becomes an average Tuesday

307

and that's a huge shift

308

because now the behavior isn't really even sitting on this pedestal anymore it's just normal

309

and that's really what you want you want the things that currently seem impressive to just become ordinary, to become normal, normalized.

310

Training isn't an event anymore.

311

It's just part of your day.

312

You train.

313

Reading isn't a special challenge, right?

314

You don't have to brag about it.

315

You just read.

316

You make promises carefully before because you expect yourself to actually keep them.

317

And that's when you know the behavior is starting to get absorbed into your normal life.

318

And now we finally get back to identity because all of these little changes have been adding up, right?

319

Your body has changed, your environment has changed, your routines have changed, your capability has changed, and at some point your mind has to make sense of all of that.

320

And this is why I actually like putting mindset towards the end here.

321

People often start here because mindset feels like the control center for everything, and that's true.

322

Obviously how you think matters.

323

But I think mindset becomes a lot easier to change

324

when you stop asking your mind to believe things that your behavior keeps disproving.

325

If every night you tell yourself, I'm disciplined, I'm disciplined, I'm disciplined, and every morning you immediately break the commitment you made the night before,

326

your brain has a weird little contradiction to resolve.

327

You're saying one thing and repeatedly watching yourself do another.

328

And so give your mind some help.

329

Keep the commitment tomorrow, then again the day after that.

330

Now when you say I'm getting more disciplined, And there's actually something underneath the sentence.

331

You're describing a pattern that exists.

332

And the belief starts feeling less like something you're trying to install into yourself

333

and more like an observation of what you're actually doing.

334

That's much more powerful because you don't have to fight yourself into believing it now.

335

You're looking at your own behavior and going, well, apparently this is something I do now.

336

Or apparently this is something I'm doing more often now.

337

Again, there can be a bit of a lag here, especially if the old story is strong.

338

you might lose weight

339

and still mentally picture yourself at your old size you might become better socially

340

and still walk into certain rooms expecting to be the insecure version of yourself

341

or be nervous when talking to certain people

342

or in certain situations you might have a good year in business

343

and still feel like you're one mistake away from becoming the broke version of you again

344

and that's because identity has history behind it it has memories emotion other people's opinions old failures, old successes.

345

So give it a second, right?

346

Give it some time.

347

You don't have to force every part of yourself to update on day 15.

348

Keep doing the work and just let the evidence pile up.

349

And at some point, the old story starts requiring more mental effort to maintain than the new one.

350

And that's where this whole thing starts getting really interesting.

351

So let's talk about proof and identity.

352

So this is the final section here.

353

And it's basically about making sure you can see the evidence you're creating.

354

If the entire point of the 90 days is to build a new history with yourself, you should probably keep some kind of record of that history, right?

355

At the end of each day, take a couple of minutes and just record what happened.

356

Did you train?

357

Did you do the work?

358

Did you follow the habits you chose?

359

Did you hit the minimum on a difficult day?

360

Just mark it down in some sort of a habit tracker and then just keep it stupidly simple, right?

361

You shouldn't need 15 minutes to operate the tracker.

362

The tracker exists to support the 90 days.

363

The 90 days don't exist so you can maintain a beautiful tracker.

364

And keep it factual.

365

I felt productive isn't the same as doing the thing, right?

366

I had a busy day, maybe completely true, and the commitment can still be missed.

367

You're trying to create a clean record so that you can learn from it later.

368

And then once a week, you just zoom out a little.

369

Look at the last seven days together instead of judging every day separately?

370

Where did things go well?

371

Where did the system keep breaking?

372

Did you miss one random workout?

373

Or do you keep missing every workout scheduled after 6 p.m.?

374

Did you randomly eat badly on Thursday?

375

Or does your entire plan fall apart every weekend?

376

Those are very different problems, right?

377

And try to diagnose the actual cause.

378

Sometimes the answer is effort.

379

You knew what to do and you just didn't do it.

380

Fine, just own it, right?

381

But sometimes the system itself is just badly designed and you're just working against yourself.

382

Maybe the habit is at the wrong time.

383

Maybe the minimum is still too big.

384

Maybe your environment makes the bad option ridiculously easy.

385

Just fix the real problem.

386

I also like keeping a short list of specific things you've done that contradict the old version of yourself.

387

So think of them as receipts or confirmations.

388

So I trained when I really didn't want to.

389

I finished the piece instead of abandoning it halfway through.

390

I kept my calories where I said I would for seven days.

391

I woke up and worked before checking anything.

392

These sounds very small, true, but that's kind of the point.

393

One receipt doesn't change your identity.

394

50 receipts start making an argument.

395

And because they're real events, you can go back and actually look at them on the day

396

that your brain suddenly decides you've never made any progress in your life because that happens to everyone.

397

And this is also how you start building self-trust.

398

And self-trust has been made into this vague, airy thing when in reality the mechanism is actually pretty simple.

399

You tell yourself you're going to do something and then you actually do it.

400

That's big.

401

That's it.

402

How big or small it is really doesn't matter.

403

The important thing is that you did it.

404

And now you trust yourself to do the next thing

405

and gradually you increase the difficulty or the size of the habit

406

and that's one little piece of evidence and then you do it again

407

and again eventually when you

408

when you tell yourself i'm going to do this tomorrow there's some weight behind

409

that statement because you've built a history of doing what you said you were going to do

410

and obviously the opposite happens too if you constantly make huge promises to yourself

411

and constantly break them you train yourself to stop taking your own words seriously

412

and this is what happens to people that at 2 a.m in the evening

413

or in the morning whatever way you want to see it

414

tell themselves tomorrow i'm going to change my whole life this is what happens

415

because tomorrow comes and they change absolutely nothing

416

or they go hard for one day

417

and then they break it the next day

418

and then they learn to trust them to trust

419

that they can trust themselves basically so you say monday i'm changing everything

420

and some part of you already knows that probably it isn't true because you've heard the speech 12 times.

421

And the way out of that isn't another bigger promise.

422

It's exactly the opposite.

423

It's usually a smaller promise that you actually keep and then another and another.

424

And you're slowly repairing the relationship you have with your own work.

425

So confidence grows in a similar way.

426

If you've repeatedly dealt with a situation, done the work and survived the difficult parts, you know, you have a better reason to trust yourself the next time it comes up.

427

You still don't know what's going to happen.

428

You can't predict everything.

429

Confidence doesn't mean you've somehow eliminated uncertainty.

430

It just means uncertainty doesn't automatically make you useless because you have some evidence about how you respond when things get hard.

431

And this is why real confidence is often quite specific.

432

somebody can be incredibly confident in business and insecure socially confident in the gym

433

and terrified of public speaking that's

434

because they've accumulated different amounts of evidence in different areas of their life

435

and doubt will still show up by the way like i don't want to sell you this idea

436

that 90 days of good habits turns you into some completely

437

fearless robot you're still going to have weird mornings you're still

438

going to question things you're still going to compare yourself to somebody and suddenly feel like you are behind.

439

The difference is that doubt doesn't get the same amount of weight anymore.

440

You can feel like you're inconsistent while looking at the tracker with 75 consistent days on it.

441

At some point, the feeling has to argue with the facts.

442

And even if the feeling stays for a while, you can make the next decision from the evidence instead of the feeling.

443

And that's a pretty big change by itself.

444

So if we turn all of this into an actual day, I'd keep the structure very simple.

445

You want a few mixed fixed places where the important behaviors happen

446

and you want enough flexibility that your entire life doesn't collapse when one day looks slightly different.

447

And I like putting one of the most important things early in the day if you can.

448

Training, writing, deep work, reading, whatever matters most for your rebuild.

449

and personally I will do it before you hand your attention to everybody else

450

because the second you check your messages email social media work notifications

451

and everything happening in the world your own priorities start competing with a hundred things

452

that feel urgent

453

and it doesn't need to be some insane three-hour morning routine

454

either keep it as short as it needs to be

455

and as long as it needs to be

456

if the important thing takes 45 minutes great then it's 45 minutes

457

if it takes 90 fine just don't add random habits

458

because you think a morning routine is supposed to look impressive

459

or because you copied someone else's morning routine thinking

460

that it would somehow make you successful

461

and then use a few minutes at night to just close the day mark the tracker look at your receipts

462

if you need to prepare anything that makes tomorrow easier

463

and that's basically it i like having a closing point because otherwise days can kind of bleed into one another.

464

You miss something, you say you'll do it later, later never really arrives.

465

And now the whole thing is floating around unfinished in your head.

466

And the evening review gives you a clean reset.

467

Today happened, here's what went well, here's what didn't.

468

Tomorrow already has a plan, and you go to sleep.

469

And I do think it's useful to have at least one other person who knows what you're doing.

470

And you don't need to tell the whole internet, of course, you don't need a giant group chat.

471

Just one person who knows what the actual plan is.

472

Tell them specifically, I'm training four times a week.

473

I'm writing for an hour every day or every weekday morning.

474

I'm hitting this calorie target.

475

Whatever it is, if the plan is vague, nobody can really tell whether you're following it, including you.

476

So then maybe once a week, you send them a quick update.

477

What did you say you'd do?

478

What did you actually do?

479

Where did you miss?

480

And that's it.

481

Two minutes is enough.

482

The point is really just to make it harder to quietly change the rules halfway through.

483

Because we're all very good at moving the goalpost in our own head

484

and then pretending the new goalpost was there the entire time.

485

And if you know you want more support than that, that's obviously where coaching can help.

486

Because one of the advantages of having somebody outside of your own head look at the plan is

487

that they can usually see the problems you keep normalizing.

488

Maybe your standards are unrealistic.

489

Maybe you're making things too easy.

490

Maybe the environment is the real issue.

491

Maybe you're chasing the wrong goal altogether.

492

Those are much easier to see when somebody can actually look at your specific life instead of giving you a generic device.

493

So if you want help building your own 90-day version of this around your actual situation, there's a link below where you can book a call with us

494

and we can talk through whether that makes sense for you.

495

Now, outside of whoever is helping you stay accountable, though, I actually like keeping most of the 90 days fairly quiet.

496

Because talking about change can sometimes give you a weird little piece of the reward before you've really done anything.

497

So you announce the plan and people tell you it sounds amazing

498

and you get a little dopamine spike

499

and you explain the new version of yourself you're becoming and for a second it almost feels like you've already changed.

500

I'd rather keep most of that energy inside the work, right?

501

You don't need everyone around you to understand the transformation while it's actually happening.

502

Just do it.

503

That's all.

504

It also saves you from having to constantly explain yourself, right?

505

Why aren't you going out?

506

Why are you eating this?

507

Why are you training so much?

508

Why are you working in the morning?

509

You don't need to turn every personal decision into a debate with someone.

510

And then, yeah, eventually other people may notice.

511

That's the fun part of the whole disappear for 90 days idea.

512

Somebody hasn't seen you for three months, and they look at you a little longer than usual.

513

And maybe you look different.

514

Maybe you carry yourself differently.

515

Maybe your work has changed.

516

Maybe you're just more grounded because you have three months of evidence underneath you and you're way more confident.

517

Enjoy that.

518

There's nothing wrong with enjoying when other people recognize your progress.

519

It's actually satisfying.

520

But the more important recognition happens before that.

521

It's when you look at your own behavior and realize, wait, I've actually been doing this for three months.

522

And suddenly the old sentence you used to say about yourself feels slightly ridiculous, right?

523

And that's really the threshold you're looking for.

524

The old version of you becomes harder to maintain because your current life keeps contradicting it.

525

The training is normal now.

526

The work is normal now.

527

The new food is normal now.

528

You prefer it, in fact.

529

The morning block is normal.

530

The thing that used to require this huge motivational event has become something you mostly just do.

531

And at that point, going back can actually start feeling stranger than continuing.

532

You miss training and something feels off.

533

You waste an entire morning and you notice it.

534

You break a promise to yourself and it bothers you more because that's no longer what you've been practicing.

535

And that's when identity has started catching up, has started catching up.

536

You aren't constantly trying to become the person anymore because enough of that person's behavior has become part of your normal life.

537

And if you think back to Roosevelt, this is basically why his story works so well as the beginning of this training.

538

The sick child and the adult we remember look like completely different people when you place them side by side.

539

But there wasn't one magical moment between them.

540

There was a process.

541

demand, repetition, capability, evidence, over and over again.

542

And the person changed because the life being lived changed.

543

And that's really the lesson I want you to take from this entire thing.

544

You don't have to sit around waiting for some internal moment where you finally feel like a new person.

545

Just give yourself 90 days of living differently enough that your old identity has to start explaining all this new evidence.

546

That's basically it.

547

So let's go over the review.

548

We covered the overview, the strenuous life, rebuilding the self, proof and identity, the review, and your action items for the day or the next few days.

549

First, decide who you're actually trying to become over the next 90 days and make it concrete.

550

Don't write something vague like the best version of myself.

551

What does this person actually do on a normal day?

552

How do they train?

553

How do they work?

554

What do they stop doing?

555

what would somebody be able to observe if they followed them around for a week

556

then you build the 90 days around a small number of behaviors

557

that would actually move you in that direction decide

558

when they'll happen shape your environment around them define the normal version

559

and the minimum version and set up a simple way to track whether you're actually following through

560

and then keep it simple enough that you can still do it

561

when the week gets messy and then you start collecting evidence.

562

Do the first workout, write the first page, keep the first promise, put one receipt on the board, and then come back tomorrow and do it again.

563

The whole point is just to spend the next 90 days creating enough proof

564

that the old story you had about yourself becomes harder and harder to believe.

565

And with that said, I hope this brought a lot of value.

566

If it did, let me know.

567

And if you want to work with me one-on-one on any of this, make sure to book a call from the link in the description.

568

If you want this training along with its respective document, make sure to join the free community from the link in the description.

569

And if you want weekly newsletters helping you improve every aspect of your life, then make sure to join the free newsletter again from the link in the description.

570

Once again, thank you for being here.

571

Thank you for watching, and I'll see you in the next one.

Download App

Everything you need to speak fluently

AI PronunciationScore every sentence

IPA PracticeMaster every sound

VocabularyBuild your word bank

Vocab GameLearn while playing

Scan QR

Download on theApp Store Get it onGoogle Play

FOR YOU

Recommend Video

274 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “disappear and come back unrecognizable in 90 days”. This video has 571 sentences and 7173 words to shadow. The speech runs for 39:26. The speaker talks fast, about 182 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 89% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
workout noun	/ˈwɝk.aʊ̯t/	An exercise session; a period of physical exercise.
tracker noun	/ˈtɹækə(ɹ)/	A person employed to follow and monitor a political rival.
receipt noun	/ɹɪˈsiːt/	The act of receiving, or the fact of having been received.
disappear verb	/dɪsəˈpɪɹ/	To vanish.
repetition noun	/ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/	The act or an instance of repeating or being repeated.
mindset noun	/ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/	A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one.
rebuild verb	/ɹiːˈbɪld/	To build again or anew.
socially adverb	/ˈsoʊʃəli/	In a social manner; sociably.
inconsistent adjective	/ˌɪnkənˈsɪstənt/	Not compatible (with another thing); incompatible, discrepant, at odds.
vague adjective	/veɪɡ/	Not clearly expressed; stated in indefinite terms.
capability noun	/ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/	The power or ability to generate an outcome.
overview noun	/ˈoʊ.vɚˌvjuː/	A brief summary, as of a book or a presentation.
goalpost noun	/ˈɡoʊlpoʊst/	One of the two vertical side poles of a goal.
rehearse verb	/ɹɪˈhɝs/	To repeat, as what has been already said; to tell over again; to recite.
strenuous adjective	/ˈstɹɛ.nju.əs/	Having great vigour or energy; forceful.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
come back verb		To return to a place.
wake up verb	/ˌweɪk ˈʌp/	To stop sleeping; to awake.
catch up verb		To pick up suddenly.
fall apart verb		To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
follow through verb		To execute or complete a commitment.
go back verb		To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
show up verb		To appear, arrive, or attend, especially suddenly or erratically.
sit around verb		To spend time sitting idly, not doing anything important.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

What do you buy every week?
What's available when you're hungry and you don't feel like cooking?
Did you do the work?
What did you say you'd do?
Why aren't you going out?

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 rehearsing · you've been going · you've been showing
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to say · used to require
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've collected · you've started · you've always been
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	guy who became · out, which makes · kid who already

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 235 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, you've. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, socially /ˈsoʊʃəli/, prediction /pɹɪˈdɪkʃən/, revolutionary /ˌɹɛvəˈluʃənɛɹi/, conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/
Long words — get the stress right: repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, inconsistent /ˌɪnkənˈsɪstənt/, capability /ˌkeɪ.pəˈbɪl.ɪ.ti/, ridiculously /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs.li/, flexibility /ˌflɛksɪˈbɪlɪti/

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 workout, tracker, receipt.

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 technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: disappear and come back unrecognizable in 90 days (full blueprint) - Learn English Speaking with Video

Choose a practice mode

Download App

How to Change Your Life in 30 Days

You Were The Smart Kid... So Why Are You Lost?

Nobody Prepares You for Becoming Replaceable | B2 English Shadowing

Our World Is Naturally Strange

Introduction Atomic habits

How to Disappear and Transform Yourself

If You’re Feeling Behind in Life Because of Your Mental Health, Watch This

The Art of Becoming Dangerously Self-Educated (complete plan in 2 minutes)

The secret to a disciplined life | Pavel Durov and Lex Fridman

Build a Mind So Strong It Scares People

Train Your Brain to Automatically Reach Your Goals

Episode 1 - Olympic Trials or DIE TRYIN'