Shadowing Practice: Do This First Thing in the Morning… and Your Life Will Change Immediately! | Mel Robbins - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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I created this course called the Million Dollar Morning.
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I created this course called the Million Dollar Morning.
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Whether you want to make a million dollars a year or in a morning,
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or whether you want to wake up and feel like a million bucks.
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Because it's not when you wake up that matters,
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it's how you wake up that matters.
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What's interesting about creating a better life is that you don't do that over the course of years.
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You do that with the decisions that you make every day.
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And if you do not prioritize it,
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the world will steal it from you.
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It's one thing to talk, talk, talk and think.
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It's another thing to actually take action.
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In today's world, where you have the internet,
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you can literally learn, launch, do anything.
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The only thing that's truly stopping you are the limiting patterns that you think,
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the self-doubt, the fear, the habits that you have.
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And you can break them.
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you can break them five seconds at a time.
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So worrying, if you let it go unchecked,
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what will happen is you will get used to worrying.
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You will get used to living in a state where you're slightly agitated all the time.
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So physiologically, being excited is the exact same thing as being afraid.
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Your body doesn't know the damn difference.
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The only difference between excitement and fear is what your brain says.
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And the problem is if you have a habit of worrying,
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guess what you're gonna tell yourself is going on.
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That you're not excited, that something must be wrong.
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Oh gosh, why would you say something's wrong?
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Because you got a habit of saying that all the time.
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If you basically, right before you're about to do something,
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take a test, run a race,
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public speaking, a business negotiation,
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ask somebody to marry you,
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whatever it may be that get your heart racing, just do this.
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Go, I'm excited.
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I'm excited to give that speech.
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I'm excited to ask him or her.
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I'm excited to do this race.
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I'm excited.
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Because what happens is you give your brain context,
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so your brain doesn't escalate the stuff going on in your body.
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Your brain's not worried.
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So you can combine this with a five-second rule.
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If you start to feel your heart racing,
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5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
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to awaken the prefrontal cortex,
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and then start going, I'm really excited to do this.
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I'm really excited to do this.
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Another technique that you can use is ask interrogatory questions,
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where instead of giving yourself a pep talk,
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say, well, why am I ready to do this?
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Why am I ready?
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Because that'll force you to answer the question, which then convinces you.
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So why am I ready to close the sale?
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Why am I ready to give this speech?
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Why am I ready?
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So those are two strategies that you can use backed by science
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that are proven to actually make your performance be much better.
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Now let's take it a step further to anxiety.
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Anxiety is what happens when the habit of worrying spins out of control,
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your body gets really agitated,
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and then you allow your mind to escalate it into a full-blown panic attack.
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And the problem for your brain is that your brain can't look around and say,
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holy cow, we almost got hit by a car.
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Your brain's saying, what the hell is wrong with her?
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And so now your brain has a problem,
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because what's your brain's job?
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It's designed to protect you.
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So your brain will now do whatever it can to magnify the problem.
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It'll start telling you all kinds of crazy stuff because it can't figure out contextually what the hell's going on.
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She's just making coffee, now her heart is racing and she's breathing really,
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holy cow, maybe she is having a heart attack.
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That is the spotlight effect in your brain,
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now taking control and magnifying everything to get you out of whatever it was.
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So here's how you use the five-second rule.
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You use it to stabilize your thoughts before the panic escalates.
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And then what happens is it drifts into worry and then it disappears.
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So the second you feel worry,
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you catch it, you train yourself to do that if you start feeling yourself getting,
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you know, your heart racing,
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5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
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and just give yourself an anchor thought,
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literally, of you being okay.
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So the second that you feel yourself getting nervous,
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5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
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and then your anchor thought is a vision of what you're going to do when you get to where you're going.
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I used to be terrified of flying.
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And so I started using this strategy with the plane.
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So when I get on the plane tomorrow to fly back to Boston,
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I'll think about walking in the house and the place is like a disaster.
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It'll look like everybody's stuff got loaded into a cannon and fired all over the,
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you know, first floor.
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And so if we hit turbulence,
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5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
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I'll think about that vision because cognitively for my brain,
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if I'm walking in the house and it's a disaster,
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the plane made it.
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Instead of trying to make yourself perfect in every area,
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it's so much easier when you accept the things
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that you're terrible at or that are your weaknesses or that are the things about your wiring,
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instead of fighting those things, actually trick it.
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Because the truth is that you're never going to feel ready to make these changes.
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You're never going to feel like doing them,
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but you can always make a decision that's always in your control.
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Staying with somebody that treats you like garbage is a decision.
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Staying at a job that you hate is a decision.
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Staying in the body that you are not proud of is a decision.
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Is it going to be easy?
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No, it's not going to be easy to change.
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It's simple.
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It's your job to push yourself.
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One 15-minute workout makes a big difference in your health.
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when you make this a part of your week,
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you're going to have a great week and you can get it in if you plan.
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And if you say, all I'm asking of myself is one,
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one really good workout, one of my favorite yoga classes.
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And how are you going to get that in?
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You're not going to do it while you're standing there with your brain dump.
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You're going to plan for it.
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Just one workout a week helps make it a great week.
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You know what else I love that makes for a great week?
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Plan time for rest.
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Just find one moment of quiet for you.
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Can you pick a night after work where you can just do something for you?
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my only requirement is that you're not looking at your phone.
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Could you make a cup of tea or make a mocktail?
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Do you have a book that you're reading
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that you would love to just sit down in your favorite chair
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and do that instead of turning on the TV or doom scrolling?
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Don't be listening to anything.
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If you have your phone,
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keep it in your pocket.
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Don't be looking at it.
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And here's why, because what's on your phone is not your dreams.
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What's on your phone is stuff that's been designed by people that study game theory.
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You know why you check your email all the time?
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All the time.
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You know why you're constantly looking at your phone?
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It's called random rewards.
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It's a psychological principle that explains why we pull slot machines.
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Because every six or seven times,
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we get a little random reward,
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so we keep going back.
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What constitutes rest is not being on your device.
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One of the reasons why we doom scroll on social media
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and hours can go by is because it kind of lulls you into this trance,
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and we mistake it for rest.
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That's not rest at all.
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It's actually keeping your brain really wigged out and active and keeping your nervous system on edge and screwing with your dopamine.
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That's what it's doing.
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So that's not rest.
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What I'm talking about is scan your calendar.
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And I want you to find a time this week where you can give your brain and your body a little rest.
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I mean, if you're like me,
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you think that rest gets nothing done and therefore you don't want to do it.
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You think that you got to always be doing something.
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You're just sitting there, feet are up, reading the paper.
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If you're doing that, you're getting something incredibly important done.
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A short period of rest,
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even just 10 minutes, can activate your body's parasympathetic nervous system.
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Parasympathetic nervous system is basically your calm, resting, confident state.
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This is the opposite of fight, flight, or freeze.
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Your parasympathetic nervous system is just this rest and digest,
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and it helps you counteract your stress response.
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And see, your stress response is on all day long.
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So the first thing that happens when you put your feet up
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and you just rest is that it It reduces stress levels.
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You are intentionally flipping the switch between the world that is stealing your energy and stressing you out
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and your inner world where you have the capability of resting and putting yourself back into a de-stress state.
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You're increasing your mental clarity and focus.
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I mean, the fact is you need to give your brain a boot.
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It's just like turning your phone off.
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Turn the thing off, give it a reset,
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and then you power it back up.
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So when you're resting, you're actually increasing your ability to process things,
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to face the rest of the day and prevent stress-related illnesses.
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And if you do not prioritize it,
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the world will steal it from you.
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And so if you feel burnt out,
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if you feel constantly on edge,
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if you feel chronically overwhelmed, you're procrastinating so much.
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You're going to tell yourself you don't have time to rest.
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I'm going to tell you,
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you can't afford to not rest.
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You got to take this part of your critical life and health back.
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And the only way it's going to happen is if every weekend you look at this checklist and you're like,
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oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
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I got to fight back.
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I got to do this act of defiance.
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I got to rest in a world that is telling me I need to be constantly doing something.
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That's not true.
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Start to make this a part of your week.
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And when you make this a part of your week,
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you're going to have a great week.
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Go you.
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And finally, connect with someone.
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Look at that calendar.
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When can you connect with somebody?
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Do you have time to meet for a coffee?
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I mean, are you even leaving the house these days?
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So if that's you, I'm the same kind of person.
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You know, I like my house and I also can just get
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so stuck in here because I'm always working or busy doing something that then I'm like,
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oh my God, I haven't left the house.
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Can you take a walk with somebody?
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Because it's not just the people that you see on Zoom or at work that matter.
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What about the people in your life that bring you meaning?
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And so if you look at your calendar,
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now you can find a time to either invite somebody over for dinner
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or go out for dinner or make a date to go to a museum.
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And the reason why this is cool is because if you have the time,
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oh, I'm going to go to this yoga class.
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This is how you can get a twofer in.
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Now that you have the time in mind,
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now you can reach out to somebody and say,
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would you like to meet up for coffee?
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Would you like to get together and cook dinner?
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And because you have this spot in your calendar,
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you can now make it happen.
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This really matters.
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It really matters.
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First of all, because I know you don't see your friends as much as you want to.
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And it matters because making friends
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and keeping friends tight as an adult is really challenging
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because everybody's super busy and everybody's drained and everybody's moving in a million directions.
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And so it's really hard to organize.
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But this matters.
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And if you don't go through this checklist at the beginning of every week and plan for it,
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the connection starts to fade and you start to feel like you don't see your friends and you don't have friends.
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And it's not true.
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They're there, but you have to,
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in a world that's going to steal your time and energy and joy and focus,
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you have to steal it back.
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You need relationships to make you happy and healthy.
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Close relationships, more than wealth,
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more than fame, more than anything,
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are crucial for you to have a happy and healthy life.
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That's why we're going to put them on the checklist.
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And relationships protect you from life's challenges.
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They help delay mental and physical decline.
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This truly is the guarantee and the checklist to make the next week of your life a little bit better,
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a little bit brighter.
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But again, remember, you have to get it out on paper.
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You have to plan for it.
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Otherwise, it's not happening.
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People who were lonely had earlier health decline and were less satisfied with their life.
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But it's so easy to have your time and what's important robbed from your attention.
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And instead, you find your days just filled with this meaningless nonsense
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or other people's emergencies or your energy drained by stupid stuff.
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It's happened to me.
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And this checklist summarizes into action the foundational research that creates the building blocks to not only a great week,
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but a much better life.
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And what's interesting about creating a better life is that you don't do that over the course of years.
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you do that with the decisions that you make every day.
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And everybody that you admire,
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everybody, and the list is the same for everybody.
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Oh, Oprah Winfrey, and I want to be like Tom,
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and I want to be like Branson,
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and I want to be like Jay-Z,
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and I want, like, everybody's list is this.
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Bill Gates, and do you know what those people do?
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They do not have the habit of hesitating.
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They trust themselves.
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Why Practice Speaking with This Video?
This inspiring video by Mel Robbins emphasizes the power of starting your day with intention. By practicing speaking through such content, you engage in the shadowing technique, which involves imitating the speaker's rhythm, tone, and emotion. This method not only enhances your speaking fluency but also boosts your confidence in expressing thoughts clearly and effectively. As you learn English with YouTube, you can gain insights into real-life contexts where motivational phrases and expressions are used, imitating them can propel your conversational skills to new heights. The positivity and energy in Robbins' speech can help shift your mindset, encouraging you to talk about your aspirations and overcome feelings of self-doubt—key elements in improving your IELTS speaking practice.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
Examining Robbins' phrasing can help boost your English comprehension and speaking skills. Here are a few key structures utilized in the video:
- Imperative Statements: "Go, I’m excited."—These commands are useful in motivational contexts, encouraging immediate action.
- Contrasting Ideas: "Excitement is the same as fear."—This sentence uses a comparative structure that affirms two feelings can coexist, enriching your vocabulary when discussing emotions.
- Questions as tools: "Why am I ready to do this?"—Using interrogative questions can provoke deeper thinking and self-reflection, making your dialogue more engaging.
- Present Continuous: "I’m excited to give that speech."—The present continuous form emphasizes ongoing feelings, providing a dynamic way to express enthusiasm.
Common Pronunciation Traps
As you learn and practice speaking, it's crucial to be aware of tricky pronunciations present in the video. Here are some words or phrases that might pose challenges:
- Excited /ɪkˈsaɪtɪd/: The initial "ex-" sound may be hard to articulate clearly; practicing with emphasis can help.
- Physiologically /ˌfɪziəˈlɒdʒɪkli/: This term is lengthy; breaking it into syllables can aid in mastering pronunciation.
- Acknowledgment /əkˈnɒlɪdʒmənt/: This word requires careful attention to the "k" sound; practicing in context will improve your flow.
By utilizing a shadowing site or integrating techniques from the video into your daily practice, you'll be well on your way to mastering not just speaking, but also engaging effectively with others in English. Remember, frequent practice and exposure to conversational content like this enhance your ability to articulate thoughts and feelings spontaneously. Happy learning!
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.
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