Shadowing Practice: Give me 14 minutes and I'll help you think & speak faster - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

How do you train your brain and your mouth to be able to think and speak faster?

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How do you train your brain and your mouth to be able to think and speak faster?

You see, if your brain takes longer to process thoughts,

it can be harder for you to formulate your responses in real time,

causing you to speak slower.

This can be really frustrating when you're trying to keep up with others.

The exercises

that I'm going to share with you in this video have not only helped me achieve faster rates of speech

and for me to be able to process my thoughts quicker,

but it's also helped thousands of my students transform their ability to think and speak faster while maintaining clarity.

The first one we'll address is Vin,

how do I speak faster?

To speak faster, I've got three thoughts on this.

The first thing is you've got to improve the mechanics.

You've got to improve the hardware.

You've got to improve your ability to speak faster,

which means that you need to be able to learn tongue twisters and you need to be able to do tongue twisters.

Tongue twisters are beautiful because they help improve your articulation

and as you improve your articulation you'll be able to speak faster

because you'll start to develop the muscle strength in your lips,

in your tongue,

you'll start to learn the efficient movements you need to make within your mouth to be able to speak more quickly.

And the way you do this is go to Google or chat GPT,

whatever you like, find the top 50 tongue twisters.

And then what you want to do is read one tongue twister five times.

Okay.

So you don't just read one tongue twister once.

You read it five times,

but each time you read it in the five times,

you get faster and faster and faster and faster.

And again, what you're training yourself to do there is not just to speak more quickly without clarity.

Tongue twisters are built in a way where it kind of trips you up, right?

So if you try to read it too quickly before you have good articulation,

you just go and you won't be able to read it.

And again, what that does is it enhances your articulation ability while you're building the ability to speak faster.

What does that mean?

It means that that means you now can speak more quickly while still having complete clarity.

And you'll notice this in some people,

myself as an example, I now can speak pretty quickly with great articulation.

And as a result of me being able to do that,

even though I speak quickly,

you can still understand me perfectly fine.

Whereas for a lot of people,

when they speak really quickly,

all of a sudden now,

you can't understand what they're saying.

Right?

And again, that's an over-exaggerated example of what happens to people,

but basically that's what happens.

And then it just sounds like they're mumbling.

Not throwing shade at mumble rap,

but there are times when I listen to mumble rap and I go,

I have no idea what that person's saying.

Don't get me wrong, the mumble rap is,

it's catchy, but I'm just saying,

what the f*** are you saying?

Pet, pet, pet, kip, tip, p- Lifestyle.

Just f***ing mumbled him and said one word.

And again, it's because the articulation in those moments, it's really poor.

Now, the second thing that I would recommend is I'd recommend you looking for a 300 word story.

Okay, so look for a 300 word story,

grab the 300 word story,

start reading it and stop at the one minute mark.

All right, so you just get a timer.

You've got the timer, you press start on the timer and then you just read the story.

And then once it gets to one minute, stop.

And then mark in the story where you've stopped and now count how many words you were able to read.

Now, once you've done this,

you will essentially get your average rate of speech per minute.

So the first time you read it,

you go, oh, well, I got to about 100 words per minute.

Cool.

Great.

No worries.

That's okay.

That's just where you currently are.

Now the next time you do this,

I want you to start adding an extra 10 words to that average speaking rate.

So you wanna get to 110 words.

So read a little bit faster.

And then the next time you do it,

start your timer and then now read with a little bit more speed.

And then you'll do it and you go,

oh wow, I got to 120 words per minute, great.

And then the next time you do it again,

try to get to 140 words, 150 words, 160 words.

And this is how you can intentionally practice rate of speech.

And you can literally measure your progress.

And if you find yourself,

oh, I'm still struggling, I can't get past 120 words,

then now I want you to sit and reflect.

What's stopping you from being able to do that?

And you might find that,

oh, I find that my mouth can't keep up.

Okay, back to the tongue twister activities.

So start with that.

That's the second activity I want you to try.

Now, the third thing is breath control.

The most common problem is when you have poor breath control,

the key area that people suffer in that causes them to speak more slowly,

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it's that they're expelling too much breath per word.

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So if I'm too breathy when I speak,

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it forces me to slow down because I have to take more breaths when I speak, right?

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And I'll give you an example.

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If I'm using lots of breath per word,

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I can go, hi, everyone.

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I just want to be able to share with you a few thoughts that I have.

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Notice how I'm very breathy.

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You want to control the amount of breath that's escaping your mouth.

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And psychologically, you want to think to yourself,

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I want to let the breath ease out of me,

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not just be pushed out of me.

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I want to be able to control the breath that comes out.

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here's the cool thing that happens because if I take a deep breath now

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if I really control the amount of breath that's coming out

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and I support each word with just the right amount of breath

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that comes out of my mouth I'm able to speak for

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an extended period of time without taking a breath like I

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can just for an example keep going with this this is just one breath

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that I've just taken before

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and I can still go with this breath that's you being

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efficient with your best breath control one of the things you should practice

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if you want to get really good that breath control is just taking a deep breath and making an S sound.

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So you take a deep breath,

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you make an S sound until you run out of air and you go like this.

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and you go for as long as you possibly can.

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That's mimicking good breath support.

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That's mimicking also the right amount of air you want to expel while you're speaking.

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And you want to start to develop that sensitivity to,

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all right, so that's the amount of air I want to be expelling.

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Not, hi, everyone, great to see you.

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And then you're out already, right?

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Because you're pushing the air out.

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The more advanced one I want to add on here for

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you as well is you can also practice counting in the same way.

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

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6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

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11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

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16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

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Notice what I'm doing here.

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I'm giving every single number the exact amount of breath.

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And I'm energizing every single number that I count with the exact amount of energy.

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Whereas the biggest mistake that most people make is,

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this is what they do.

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They start really breathy.

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And then after that, they're trying to continue to count or speak.

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And then they start to strain their voice.

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1, 2, 3, 4, 5,

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6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

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11, 12, 13, 14, 15.

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And then all of a sudden you get that croaky voice at the end of it.

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It's called vocal fry.

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Now, if you notice it again,

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it's invisible until you see it.

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But now that you see it, you can't unsee it.

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But the thing that Vin does really well is I energize every single word in the sentence,

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including the last.

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And as you practice this as well,

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it allows you to speak more quickly,

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but do so in a way that's influential and engaging.

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Hey, I hope you're enjoying the video so far.

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And I just want to say that if you're watching the video up until this point,

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it seems as if you've developed a little bit of an itch

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and you may want to take your communication skills to the next level.

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And if you do, I run free communication masterclasses for two hours

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where you can join me for free and learn in a structured way.

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Check out the pinned comment below,

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click the link, sign up, and let's learn together.

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Anyway, back to the video.

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Moving to the second part of the question,

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and it's how can I think more quickly?

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Now, this is a loaded one too,

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because there are so many different ways in which you can think more quickly,

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but I'll give you my top three thoughts.

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The first overall thought that I want to share with you is this.

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Seek to understand, not memorize your area of expertise.

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For a lot of you,

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you're in a professional setting and you're going,

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sometimes it takes me a long time to formulate my answer.

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And then all of a sudden,

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it seems like I don't know what I'm talking about.

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Ah, damn, it makes me decrease my credibility and I feel lame.

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And this is a question people often ask me,

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how can I think quicker on this particular area?

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Often it's from people who are fairly new to an area of expertise.

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They're fairly new to a job.

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They're fairly new to this career.

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They're new to an industry.

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When you fully understand something,

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you're not having to go,

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wait, what was the answer for this again?

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Wait, you don't have to go into that part of your brain where it's memory retrieval, right?

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If you want to become quicker at being able to answer people,

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you need a deeper understanding of that topic.

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You can achieve that by get three books on that topic.

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Go deeper.

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If you are in real estate and you are a realtor,

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maybe you should go grab five books understand more about developments if that's the area you specialize in real estate.

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Get really good with what the council rules are,

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what the county rules are,

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tax benefits of being able to do X versus Y versus Z,

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understanding how to work with banks,

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how to work with builders,

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how to work with contractors.

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Again, just really download all that information,

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get really good understanding and depth on it.

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Then once you've got that,

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then the second thing you need to learn is frameworks.

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frameworks on how to communicate your area of expertise,

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frameworks on how to communicate complex things.

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And the most important framework you can learn is the 3-2-1 framework.

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The 3-2-1 framework is very simply three steps,

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two types, the one thing.

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So when someone asks you a question,

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think in that framework, you could either pick,

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there are three steps to whatever you just asked me,

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there are two types of whatever you just asked me,

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or the one thing about what you just asked me is.

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I'll give you an example.

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This happens to me often because people sometimes will see me in public

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and they do know who I am and they go,

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oh, Vin, great to see you.

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Oh my goodness.

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And I always love these interactions.

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They're beautiful.

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And then people always ask me a question, a loaded question.

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They go, Vin, what should I do with my communication skills?

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What should I do to improve my communication skills?

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And that's a loaded question because there are so many things you can do to improve your communication skills,

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but they're just asking me,

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what should I do then to be able to improve the way I communicate?

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And then I've got the framework, right?

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I've got, there are three steps to improving your communication skills.

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There are two types, two ways to be able to improve your communication skills or the one thing, right?

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So in that particular example,

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I just would immediately go to the one thing.

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Because instead of my brain going,

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oh my God, there's so many things you can do to improve.

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What do I do?

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Do I talk about breath work?

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Do I now talk about articulation and the importance of that?

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Do I talk about tonality?

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Do I talk about vocal archetypes?

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Do I talk about storytelling?

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Do I talk about body language?

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Do I talk about active?

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Your brain's going to go crazy.

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So even though I have depth of knowledge,

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if I don't have this framework,

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my brain will just melt down.

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So instead of allowing the brain to go through a meltdown,

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I just pick one of the three in that framework.

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So again, I'm just going to pick the one thing.

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So I'd say to that person,

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hey, the one thing you should focus on as you begin your journey is self-awareness.

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You need to be able to become more aware of what your non-functional behaviors are.

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So all I would get you to do is record a video of yourself and watch yourself back.

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Start there.

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I was able to answer that question in a moment with depth

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and clarity and also in a way that is simple and coherent.

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And then if the person wants more,

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they can ask follow-up questions.

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Whereas a lot of the times experts feel they have to give the other person everything.

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No, because if you gave them everything, you overwhelm them.

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No, no, no. The goal is to be able to use the 3-2-1 framework to answer the question.

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And often you go with the one thing because that's very powerful.

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And then if they want more, they'll ask for it.

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And then the final thing I would say that's going to be able to help you think faster

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is reduce the levels of anxiety and stress.

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Because when you are anxious and you're stressed,

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it impairs your ability to think clearly.

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And if you know you're going to be going into a situation that's going to cause you to be stressed

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and also going to cause you to feel lots of anxiety,

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then make sure you prepare.

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Make sure before you go into it,

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part of the prep work is breathing.

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And I know every time I say this,

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people go, oh my God,

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breathing, breathing is so lame.

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No, you're alive because of breathing.

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There are workshops that I've done that's taken four,

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five days, seven days, and it's just purely on breathing.

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And the first thing that I wanna make you aware of is diaphragmatic breathing.

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If you don't know how to take a diaphragmatic breath,

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I highly encourage you to go look up on YouTube, diaphragmatic breathing.

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There are countless videos out there that teach you how to take a belly breath instead of taking a chest breathing,

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instead of doing chest breathing,

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instead of shallow breathing, like that.

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You take deep breaths into your belly.

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Back to what I was saying though,

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if you know you're going into a situation that's going to cause you to be anxious,

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here's what you do.

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Do box breathing.

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Box breathing is this beautiful breathing technique that Navy SEALs came up with.

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And box breathing is essentially you fully release all the air.

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Then after that, you breathe in for four counts.

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You hold for four counts.

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You breathe out for four counts,

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you hold for four counts.

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That's one cycle.

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Do three to five cycles of that.

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This decreases your level of anxiety,

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which allows you to have a clearer mind,

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which then enables faster thinking.

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Click this video up here to learn another powerful communication concept.

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And if you're ready and you want to learn with me in a more structured way,

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click this link here to join me for a free two-hour masterclass.

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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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