Shadowing Practice: Focus Only On Yourself (And Forget About Everyone Else) - Learn English Speaking with Video
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There is a reason that Theodore Roosevelt's quote, comparison is the thief of joy, is still quoted almost a hundred years later.
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It wasn't just he was trying to be poetic in some sort of way.
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He was actually describing a real psychological and neurological trap that is built inside of the human circuitry.
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And we all fall into it.
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I don't think there's a person that can just completely get out of the trap of comparison to other people.
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And so we fall into it many different ways.
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We scroll through Instagram or TikTok or YouTube for 10 minutes
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and then suddenly you are less successful than some
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25 -year -old dude who just sold a startup for $45 billion and now you feel like a loser.
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You're maybe less adventurous than that influencer that's over in Italy right now
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and then she's going to be in Patagonia hiking for the next two weeks after that.
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You're also chunky and less fit than the 48 -year -old dude who has an eight -pack.
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You're less together than that couple who's posting all of their hashtag fit couple dinners and goals and all that stuff.
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And so then you close the app and you don't feel inspired.
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You feel smaller.
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You feel like you feel behind.
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You feel like you're not enough in some sort of way.
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And that's really the paradox of it all is you could be thrilled with your life before you open up that app.
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You can feel grateful you can feel content, you can feel fulfilled.
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And then 10 minutes later, after going online, you just don't feel good.
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You feel like you're in this hole, this deep, dark hole of inadequacy.
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Why is that?
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Well, it comes down to basically the way that our brains are wired.
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And I want to talk to you about the neuroscience behind comparison.
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So why is it this way when you look at the brain?
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Well, if you dive into the actual neuroscience of comparison, our brains are designed to keep us alive.
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It doesn't care about your happiness.
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It doesn't care about your joy.
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It cares about your safety.
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And your brain, in order to keep you safe, is a prediction and survival machine.
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And so at its core, it thinks inside of your head unconsciously, where do I stand in the tribe?
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So your brain basically evolved over time to create a system that neurologists call a social comparison mechanism.
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It is a built -in radar that is constantly scanning your environment.
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Am I above this person or am I below this person?
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Am I safe or am I at risk?
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Am I going to be accepted or am I going to be kicked out of the tribe?
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And this radar lives in brain regions like the ventral striatum in your brain and the medial prefrontal cortex.
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And those parts of your brain will light up when you compare yourself to other people.
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And so if you happen to see somebody and you're like, oh, I'm farther ahead than this person, your brain will release dopamine,
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which is the feel -good chemical that's like, oh, look at me, I'm better than this person.
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Oh, look at me, I'm better than that person.
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But if you see somebody else who is way further than you
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and you feel quote -unquote behind or they make more money or they seem happier or they're traveling to more beautiful places,
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your brain will release cortisol, which is a stress hormone.
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So in other words, your brain will actually reward you for doing better than other people, and it will punish you for falling short.
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The problem though, you're running software that's 50 ,000 years old,
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but instead of comparing yourself to 30 people like you used to when it was like 25, 30 people in your tribe 500 ,000 years ago,
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whatever it was, you're now comparing yourself to 7 billion people on a screen.
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And we will be right back.
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Hey, if you're ready for your next breakthrough, join me at my three -day live in -person event in Austin, Texas this December.
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It will be a complete deconstruction and reconstruction of the old patterns,
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habits, beliefs, and fears that are holding you back from your next breakthrough and getting to your next level in your life.
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If you're ready for 2027 to be the best year of your life, learn more at freedomlive2026 .com right now,
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or scan that QR code right there.
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And now back to the show.
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And 99 .9 % of them, you probably don't even know.
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And so no wonder why you feel like crap, because you're comparing yourself to every person alive versus the 30 people that are in your trap.
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Like I remember a couple years ago when I took a big step back from social media
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and I woke up one day.
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It was quiet.
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It was a beautiful day.
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It was before we had the baby.
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So I had so much time to do whatever I wanted, right?
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And it was just beautiful morning.
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And I remember I went out to my living room and I did a meditation and I got a cup of coffee.
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And I was outside drinking my cup of coffee and I was watching the sunrise.
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It was an amazing day.
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And then a little bit later, I felt like complete.
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And it was like, my attitude was completely off track.
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I felt like a loser.
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And I was like, I don't, I don't feel good.
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And so I had to bring my awareness in.
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I always try to become aware of what's going on when I feel something shift.
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And I bring my awareness and I'm like, why am I feeling this way?
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Like, what did I just do over the past hour?
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And what was I just thinking?
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And I try to become aware and actually self -diagnose.
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And I realized that I was on social media for about 15 minutes.
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I picked up my phone while I was outside.
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I was having a great day and I was scrolling through
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and I was watching a friend of mine who's an awesome
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person who's 10 years younger than I am talk about his business and his business was doing better than my business.
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And even though my business was crushing it and we were doing amazing, I looked at him and I was like,
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but he's a little bit ahead of me and he's 10 years younger than me.
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And I felt like, so i started researching like why is this happening like why can't i be happy for him
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and be happy for myself why can't
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i just allow myself to be grateful for where i am i started researching this comparison mechanism in our brain
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and why i felt so behind and it was like oh the reason why is because
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when i started comparing myself to him unconsciously my brain felt
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behind my brain released cortisol cortisol is a stress hormone now that's why i feel like
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that is why I'm so stressed out.
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And this is how social media actually hijacks your joy.
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Because when you're looking at somebody's pictures and you're looking at somebody's reels and you're looking at somebody else's stories,
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you're looking at their highlight reels of their life.
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I very rarely see somebody post just a random day.
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Like usually they're posting the best 1 % of their life, their vacations, their wins, their smiling selfies,
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and your brain interprets their highlights, their top 1 % of the moments in their life as normal life for them. And then
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so you're comparing it to your normal life where your kids are breaking down in the middle of grocery store
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and you're like, well, I'm not on vacation in Hawaii right now.
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Their normal is vacation in Hawaii.
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My normal is my two -year -old likes throwing stuff on the floor.
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So you're comparing highlight reels and thinking that it's normal.
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Another reason why it kills your joy is because there's this infinite scroll.
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I've never gotten to the end of a scroll before. Have you?
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I don't think so.
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And so unlike your small tribe that you would have grown up in, there's no end.
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You can always find somebody who is richer, who is fitter, who looks better than you, who's happier, who's more successful.
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And that's what you're going to find when you're going through this infinite scroll.
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Another thing is that platforms like to actually bait you
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and give you content that is designed to trigger envy to actually keep you scrolling.
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Because when you get stressed, you want to then, like when you feel cortisol and you get stressed, what do you want to do?
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You want to numb that stress.
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And what do people usually do to numb their stress?
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Continue to keep scrolling.
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So every time you scroll, your social comparison radar in your brain fires
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and you're unconsciously ranking yourself they make more money
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they travel more than I do their kids look better than
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mine do they look happier than I am they're further along in their business than I am
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and even if you're a happy grateful content person your brain recalibrates baseline not off of what is baseline
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and normal in your life but what you think is baseline in other people's lives which is really just their highlight reels.
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And this is really important to understand because now your success, your happiness feels smaller and it makes it harder to feel joy in your life.
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You were meant to compare yourself to only one other person, not compare yourself to every single person that's alive.
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And the crazy part is that you don't even know what's real on social media.
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Like I know people who I have seen the relationships in the gutter and they post about how amazing the relationship is.
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I know people who are making no money trying to tell people
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that they are doing amazing and renting Ferraris to try to sell their services to you
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so that you can be as quote unquote rich as them.
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I have a friend who is in the house of a now very famous influencer
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that recorded a very famous video inside of a garage next to a Lamborghini
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that was not his and started selling courses about how to make money.
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And people bought courses like crazy from him because they saw a Lamborghini and they went, well, he's got a Lamborghini.
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I'm going to buy from him.
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Completely fabricated.
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There's a couple of brothers that I've seen.
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They have YouTube and Instagram and all that stuff.
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And they're these two brothers and they do these crazy trips.
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They spend like $500 ,000 to go to F1 and their lives just look amazing and insane, right?
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Super successful in their mid twenties.
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I was like, man, these guys are crushing it.
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What happened?
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They got arrested for drug charges.
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They were drug dealers.
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Isn't that interesting?
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So they were selling this course on how to grow an online dropshipping store,
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but they were actually high -level drug dealers trying to teach people how to grow through online dropshipping stores.
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Almost nothing online is real.
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Stop letting it kill your joy.
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And so the problem with all of this is that we're comparing apples to oranges.
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We're comparing your behind the scenes, your bills, your stress, your messy kitchen to someone else's highlight reel.
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You're comparing your chapter five in life to somebody else's chapter 20.
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You're comparing your business to a friend's business, forgetting that they've been doing it longer than you, their goals are different, their industry might be different,
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their timeline might be completely different.
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Neurologically though, your brain does not care.
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It just sees they're ahead, I'm behind, danger, release cortisol.
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And that danger signals the amygdala, the brain's threat detector, to raise your cortisol levels and hijack logical thinking.
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And that's why comparison doesn't just feel bad, but it also clouds your judgment and also kills your gratitude as well.
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And so when you look at this, it's really important to understand there's two different types of comparison, okay?
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Number one is upward comparison, and number two is downward comparison.
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This was originally brought in by the, it's called the social comparison theory in 1954 by a social psychologist named Leon Festinger.
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And humans evaluate themselves by comparing themselves to others.
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Upward comparison, downward comparison.
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Upward comparison is looking people who are quote -unquote above you, more successful, more attractive, more wealthy.
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And that can motivate you to be better or it can crush you because you make yourself not feel as good.
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Then there's also downward comparison, which is looking at people who are quote -unquote below you, which can boost your ego,
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but it can also lead to guilt because of the fact that you're like, why am I comparing myself to these other people?
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So neither one of them is good.
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And we'll talk about downward comparison in a minute, but the real danger, the one
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that will really kind of throw you off track is upward comparison because it can motivate you in some sort of way,
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but most people, it doesn't motivate them.
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It makes them feel like complete and then it starts to erode their own identity
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because you start comparing yourself to someone else instead of asking yourself like, am I fulfilled?
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Am I happy with my life?
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Do I have a good life?
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And trying to build a happy and fulfill life.
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And now you start asking yourself instead, am I as good as them?
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And that shift is what is killing your joy.
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It takes your North Star out of it,
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which should be your own personal goals and what you're building and trying to build your own personal fulfilling life.
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And instead of being my goals, my fulfilling life, it's like, am I better than this person?
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That's not how we want to be running our lives.
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So the only real fair comparison is that you have to compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
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That's the only one that you can do.
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That's the only apples to apples measurement that's available
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because you share the same genetics and background and experiences and circumstances as your old self.
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That's it.
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That is the only fair comparison.
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So are you kinder to yourself than you were yesterday?
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Did you grow 1 % in patience or skill or discipline or business?
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Did you face some sort of fear that you were trying to avoid?
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If the answer is yes to any of those, you're winning, period, you're getting better.
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And from a neurological perspective, this shift rewires your reward system.
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So instead of dopamine only spiking when you beat somebody else or when you're better than somebody else,
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it spikes over and over and over again when you beat your past self, which is awesome because now you're competing with your past self.
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And that's sustainable joy.
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So when you beat yourself and you're better than you were yesterday, you become happier.
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Tony Robbins always says it, progress equals happiness.
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Humans want to grow.
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They want to continue to get better.
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And so when you can compare yourself to yourself yesterday, a week ago, 30 days ago, and you see that you're a little bit happier,
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a little bit clearer skin, a little bit fitter, a little bit better of a parent, your relationship is a little bit better,
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oh my gosh, you're gonna start feeling amazing when you're comparing yourself to your old self.
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And so let's talk about real quickly like how to rewire your brain against comparison against other people.
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The first thing, I don't know how many times I need to say this in the podcast,
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but you got to practice some sort of digital hygiene, some sort of digital detox, like unfollow the accounts that make you feel like crap,
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like that trigger your envy, not your inspiration and set timers for app limits to protect your attention.
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If you're really over it, just delete them for 30 days and see how your life feels after 30 days.
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So that's the first thing.
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The second thing is I want you to journal two things every single day.
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The first one is some daily gratitude.
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Just jot down three things that you're grateful for in the morning.
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This gratitude practice will actually literally strengthen the neural pathways in your brain for joy.
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Just write down three things that you love about your life in the morning.
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The next thing is you want to journal through is micro wins from yesterday.
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Track tiny daily improvements like more patience, another workout, a small business win, patience when your child was yelling,
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maybe showing up in a loving way versus a judgmental way.
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That will reward your brain for growth over comparison to other people.
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So that's the second thing.
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The third thing is to start to compare yourself.
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If you do compare yourself to other people who are further ahead.
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Compare yourself with, not against.
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So instead of thinking like this person is ahead of me, start thinking they show me what's possible.
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Like the mirror neurons in your brain will treat their success as potential fuel for you.
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You'll say they can do it.
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I can do it.
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They're showing me what's possible in my industry.
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So compare with versus against them.
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And then try to anchor yourself in enoughness.
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Like ask yourself if I had nobody compared to would I be satisfied in my life right now?
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And if the answer is yes, that's, that's amazing.
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That's joy speaking before your comparison hijacks it.
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And so your joy isn't scarce.
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It's not a scarce resource.
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Your happiness doesn't need to shrink because somebody else is happy.
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Your success in life doesn't dim because somebody else has succeeded.
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Our comparison is a thief of joy because it tells you that life is a race.
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Life is not a race.
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It is a art project.
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And the only project that you'd be working on is one canvas.
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And the only canvas that you can work on is your own life.
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So the only measurement that you can look at is, okay, is my canvas more beautiful than it was yesterday?
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And if the answer is yes, you're winning.
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And that's the only thing that counts.
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Hey, thanks so much for watching this video.
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This is perfectly crafted for you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Focus Only On Yourself”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: comparison, brain, comparing, joy. This video has 246 sentences and 3113 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:46. The speaker talks fast, about 186 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| compare verb | /kəmˈpɛɚ/ | To assess the similarities and differences between two or more things [“to compare X with Y”]. Having made the comparison of X with Y, one might have found it… |
| scroll noun | /skɹoʊl/ | A roll of paper or parchment; a writing formed into a roll. |
| highlight verb | /ˈhaɪˌlaɪt/ | To make prominent; emphasize. |
| fulfill verb | /fʊlˈfɪl/ | To satisfy, carry out, bring to completion (an obligation, a requirement, etc.). |
| reel verb | /ˈɹiːl/ | To wind on a reel. |
| happiness noun | /ˈhæpinɪs/ | The emotion of being happy; joy; elation. |
| grateful adjective | /ˈɡɹeɪtf(ə)l/ | Of a person or their actions, feelings, etc.: expressing gratitude or appreciation; appreciative, thankful. |
| downward adverb | /ˈdaʊnwɚd/ | Toward a lower level, whether in physical space, in a hierarchy, or in amount or value. |
| upward adverb | /ˈʌpwɚd/ | In a direction from lower to higher; toward a higher place; in a course toward the source or origin. |
| vacation noun | /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/ | An extended trip or journey away from home for rest or pleasure. |
| reward noun | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | Something of value given in return for an act. |
| trap noun | /tɹæp/ | A machine or other device designed to catch (and sometimes kill) animals, either by holding them in a container, or by catching hold of part of the body. |
| versus | /ˈvɝsəs/ | Against; in opposition to. |
| patience noun | /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/ | The quality of being patient. |
| radar noun | /ˈɹeɪˌdɑɹ/ | In full primary radar: a method of detecting a distant object and determining its position, velocity, or other characteristics by analysing radio waves… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come down to verb | To reach by moving down or reducing. | |
| do over verb | /ˈduˌoʊvɚ/ | To cover with; to smear or spread on to. |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| light up verb | To illuminate, to bring light to something, to brighten. | |
| open up verb | To open. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| stress out verb | To become stressed. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It doesn't care about your happiness.
- It doesn't care about your joy.
- Am I safe or am I at risk?
- Am I happy with my life?
- Do I have a good life?
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 | they've been doing · you've been watching |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is still quoted · is built · could be thrilled |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | person that can · cortisol, which is · people that are |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | I've never gotten · have seen · I've seen |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 82 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: thief /ˈθiːf/, breakthrough /ˈbɹeɪk.θɹuː/, wealthy /ˈwɛl.θi/, strengthen /ˈstɹɛŋ(k)θən/, pathway /ˈpæθˌweɪ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: vacation /veɪˈkeɪ.ʃən/, patience /ˈpeɪ̯.ʃəns/, crush /kɹʌʃ/, measurement /ˈmɛʒ.ə.mənt/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: mechanism /ˈmɛk.ə.nɪ.zəm/, neurological /nɝəˈlɑd͡ʒɪkəl/, inspiration /ˌɪn.spɪˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, psychological /ˌsaɪ.kəˈlɑː.d͡ʒɪ.kl̩/, sustainable /səˈsteɪnəbəl/
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 compare, scroll, highlight.
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.