Shadowing Practice: Get Outside Yourself - Learn English Speaking with Video
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113 sentences
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this world is making you passive.
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It's making you dependent on algorithms.
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It's making you dependent on food.
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It's making you dependent on what other things people are doing for you.
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The sublime is where you finally become active with your own experience.
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You take it over.
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You're the curator of your own experience.
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How do you best advise people to access the sublime in
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their daily life more readily? like what's a what's a strategic way that people can do this well it's um
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i mean obviously reading my book is going to play a big role in it it's the number one
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that's before anything else yeah yeah
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because i'm gonna the book is is um organized to be very practical
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so it has stories it has things
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that are kind of make you feel wow that's weird that's i never thought of
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that before but then i have exercises in each chapter about how to incorporate this into your daily existence
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and then i have meditations
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that are a little bit weirder about how you can kind of make a sort of poetic way of accessing
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this and so for instance
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you know it's easy for people to talk about thinking about your mortality
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and your death right it's a kind of exercise
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that philosophers go through stoics etc but I always felt like it's kind of weak
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because you can't think about death it's something beyond thinking
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so I have an exercise where I literally take you through what it will feel like
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when you're dying based on my research and based on my own experience
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and I have you lie down
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and I have you feeling like the world is going distant away from you
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that your body is sinking into the ground
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that your skull is getting heavier it's sinking in
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that your bones are dissolving that everything is kind of moving away from you
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and that maybe your mind is separating from your body at some point
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and then to feel that sensation and to make it as visceral as possible and then
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to take that feeling and then go outside and walk in the world
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and tell yourself this is what i i i died
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and this is what the world looks like after i've died right
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and how different the world looks like after you've been through
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that experience if you take it seriously enough
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and you go through it then you will be able to have
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that kind of strange moment of how different things look like
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when you sense that you won't be there anymore
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and how everything has an intensity that it didn't have beforehand
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so the book is very practical but the main thing is as in everything in life
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you have to feel the desire for it so if your desire if your priorities in life
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are just making money getting by doing your career you're going to read my book
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and and it won't really have any long lasting effect
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but i'm trying to hit you over the head i'm trying to really make it clear to you
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that this is something that is going to have a very powerful impact on your experience of life.
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I want you to take all of your emptiness, all of your restlessness, all your feelings like you're missing something in life,
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and I want you to bring them up like you're vomiting them
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and that you're feeling them coming up from the bottom of your
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and into your throat and you sense what you're actually missing in life and you're not diluting it in any way.
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And I want you to feel the kind of ugliness that exists in the world with the social media, the pettiness the polarization
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and you want something else you have to have a desire for something else otherwise
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this won't mean anything to you right
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because we're emotional creatures we're not we think we're rational
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and cognition is everything but really it's emotions that that determine
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that that are the most powerful thing just like
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when you had the experience with the elephant
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it wasn't your mind suddenly coming into place oh i've got to do this on the other
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It was this powerful feeling that affected your emotions, right?
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You have to feel, want to feel the sublime before anything else.
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You want to have to get rid of all of your baggage and just have like kind of, I hate to use the word,
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but like a mental enema.
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And just like get rid of all this other stuff.
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If you don't have that desire, if you think your life is fine, the sublime won't have any appeal to you.
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But I'm trying to make it hit you over the head with the idea that there's something deeply,
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deeply missing and your life will have an intensity.
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You will be experiencing things on a different level if you let this in.
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Once you have that, you've gone to that level where you say you've had your come to Jesus moment.
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You go, yes, I need this in my life.
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Yes, it's important to me.
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Then the things that I try and sneak into your brain will have the effect because I'm always trying to like.
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instill a little bit of a poison into you and make you look at the world differently.
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But you have to have the desire and you have to realize that you're restless and you're bored for a reason.
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You're not getting something.
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And this world is making you passive.
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It's making you dependent on algorithms.
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It's making you dependent on food.
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It's making you dependent on what other things people are doing for you.
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The sublime is where you finally become active with your own experience.
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You take it over you're the curator of your own experience not meta not google not chat gpt
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but you are now the agent of your own experience you're going to create curate your own experience
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and this book is going to help lead you there and
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so just feel that need to get outside of the kind of bubble
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and the emptiness
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that you're experiencing in your daily life how to feel alive again i think is a search term
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that more people would put into google or chat gpt
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if they realized how badly they needed it yeah there's this sense
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that yeah life's amplitude's just been flattened for some reason the color's been sapped out of things
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they're a little grayer i'm not as deeply connected i don't feel the highs quite
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so much and even the lows they don't have this sort of romantic majestic
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large quality to them they're more sort of dour and sapping
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and sort of low and sluggish yeah yeah um you know
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so for instance to take an example um i have i talk about childhood experience
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and uh the writer russian writer nabakov
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and how he tried to recreate his childhood as an adult
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and he remembers that
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when he was on a train as a child he felt the speed of the train in his body
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and the speed was intoxicating so you know i fly an airplane here to austin
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and now we fly
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and we're not even aware of flying we don't even feel
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we don't understand what it is the shades are drawn
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and we're on our computers the movement of the plane is an inconvenience to what i want to do
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while i'm on the plane yeah yeah yeah but
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when you were a kid you opened that up
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and you would look out whoa the grand canyon wow these mountains
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i'm flying you're literally flying do you know what that would have felt like 200 years ago, you're literally in the air.
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It's like magic and you can, like Nabokov, you can feel that sense of speed and power inside your body.
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It's like how to, how to rediscover a sense of wonder again.
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Yeah.
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And these are simple things.
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It's you're flying, you're in a, it won't be in your car really, but or a train or climbing a mountain,
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how you can climb a mountain with a different set of priorities than how you normally do.
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And I take you through that in many numerous exercises.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Get Outside Yourself”. This video has 113 sentences and 1394 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:39. The speaker talks fast, about 182 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| dependent adjective | /dɪˈpɛndənt/ | Relying upon; depending upon. |
| deeply adverb | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | To a deep extent or degree; very greatly. |
| practical adjective | /ˈpɹæk.tɪ.kəl/ | Relating to, or based on, practice or action rather than theory or hypothesis. |
| priority noun | /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/ | An item's relative importance. |
| climb verb | /ˈklaɪ̯m/ | To traverse a slope or contour, either upwards (ascending) or downwards (descending). |
| sink verb | /ˈsɪŋk/ | To descend or submerge (or to cause to do so) into a liquid or similar substance. |
| emotion noun | /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/ | A person's internal state of being and involuntary physiological response to an object or a situation, based on or tied to physical state and sensory data. |
| intensity noun | /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/ | The quality of being intense. |
| passive adjective | /ˈpæs.ɪv/ | Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction. |
| algorithm noun | /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/ | A collection of ordered steps that solve a mathematical problem. A precise step-by-step plan for a computational procedure that possibly begins with an input… |
| sap noun | /sæp/ | The juice of plants of any kind, especially the ascending and descending juices or circulating fluid essential to nutrition. |
| curator noun | /kjʊəˈɹeɪtə(ɹ)/ | A person who manages, administers or organizes a collection, either independently or employed by a museum, library, archive or zoo. |
| bone noun | /boʊn/ | A composite material consisting largely of calcium phosphate and collagen and making up the skeleton of most vertebrates. |
| gray adjective | /ɡɹeɪ/ | Of a color between black and white, having neutral hue and intermediate brightness. |
| badly adverb | /ˈbæd.li/ | In a bad manner. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| lie down verb | To assume a horizontal position. |
| look out verb | To be vigilant and aware often as an imperative to alert a person to danger. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It's making you dependent on algorithms.
- It's making you dependent on food.
- You're the curator of your own experience.
- Yes, it's important to me.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | i've died · you've been · you've gone |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | been flattened · are drawn |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 52 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: algorithm /ˈælɡəɹɪðm̩/, throat /ˈθɹoʊt/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: emotion /ɪˈməʊ.ʃən/, shade /ʃeɪd/, rational /ˈɹæʃ(ə)nəl/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, sensation /sɛnˈseɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/, differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, mortality /mɔɹˈtælɪti/, incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/
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 dependent, deeply, practical.
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.