Shadowing Practice: How Does Money Factor into Your Life's Purpose - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Did the color of your fire change?
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Oh, absolutely.
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I'm just, you know, During the-- first of all, nothing was better.
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Nothing was better, nor will ever replace or should the years of the Oprah show.
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There will never be a time like that again.
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for me and I think for all the team members.
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I mean, the...
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And that's what I mean by the velocity and the intensity.
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And I can speak to that because I know
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that So many things happened at such an intense rate that I don't remember half of it.
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I don't remember.
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Because we were just sitting around the table the other night talking with the crew, and they were saying, "This story and this story." I go, "I don't remember that.
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I don't remember that." Because I was just going at such full speed.
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Yeah.
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And so now, what I have is great, pure satisfaction from every conversation.
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So I'm not going from this conversation to the next conversation, the next conversation.
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I'm not trying to fill, you know, 200 shows a year.
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I'm not trying to.
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you know, prove anything.
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First of all, neither you nor I have anything left to prove.
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Right.
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We've done it.
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We've reached the pinnacle of success and achieved and all of that. So everything
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that I do now is basically an offering to help other people see their lives in a more meaningful way
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and what to make of their lives.
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That's what it's all for for me.
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Yeah.
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And I think that's because when the fire changes color, and you are at this different phase, then these amazing things happen late.
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And this notion that somehow we have this peak when we're young, And then it goes like this.
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Well, that's the thing I was saying.
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No matter where you all are in your life, this book is going to be so valuable to you because I'm so shocked at the number of people
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who've done extraordinary things.
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To read that Meryl Streep, most of her Academy Award nominations came after age 60.
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Yeah, she did so many of them.
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She was...
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I mean, talk about somebody who's encoded.
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Yes.
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And has been...
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in frame doing this for so many years.
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And that was a place with her story.
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I watched every one of her films in sequence, which was very interesting.
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Well, as I was reading about her films, I was thinking, gosh, you know what?
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I'm going to have myself a Meryl Streep Festival.
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You should.
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Absolutely.
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I'm going to have myself a Meryl Streep Festival and watch all of those movies.
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That's right.
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And you see the evolution.
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You can see different phases of life.
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playing different roles.
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But what's so interesting is, I mean, she has more Oscar nominations than anybody.
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Anybody.
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I like a factor of two.
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Yes.
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And they don't stack early.
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They're spread throughout, and she has about half of them.
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Her first one was age 29.
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That's right.
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And then she gets all the way out into her 60s, and she has as many nominations in her 60s as when she was in her...
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in her younger years per decade, is amazing.
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And the fire hasn't gone out.
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You can just see that it just gets out.
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Yeah, we're just waiting for Devil Wears product.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so I found this to be a seminal question that you posed on page 99.
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Stop and think for a moment.
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You say, "What is the relationship between work and money?" I love this.
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Y 'all are going to love this.
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Is the purpose of work to make money or is the purpose of money to be able to do one's work?
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That's right.
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Well, that depends on how we define and think about work.
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I think people get really caught up in the money thing.
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How do you flip the arrow of money, as you say?
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Yeah.
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So that was a...
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Like a really critical thing for me to see was that it wasn't about just the economics.
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It was about What direction the arrow goes?
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And there's so many different people that illustrate this in the study.
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But, you know, I think about Maurice White, the founder of Earth, Wind & Fire, you know, and he's doing One meal a day They cost a dollar.
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So a dollar a day, a meal a day, while he's getting his music going to eventually get to do Earth, Wind & Fire.
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And he didn't do music to make money, but he needed money to do music.
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Right.
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- Right.
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- And so he had to do the gigs, and he had to put things in place.
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But then later, when "Earth, Wind & Fire" was really going, it was really interesting.
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He would do these albums with the band, But then he always took the money from that and put it back into doing more music and more spectacular performances.
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Oh, my goodness.
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Some of those performances.
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Do you remember?
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I do.
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And then putting it right back in and then those would generate economics to do more. And so,
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It's like if you understand that Money is fuel to do what you're encoded for
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that feeds the fire rather than the point is to make money.
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The problem is if the point is to make money, and then you make money, what do you do next?
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If the point is, as we were talking earlier, we don't need to do any of this for money.
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But if that's not the point anyways, you never want to stop.
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Yeah. Because...
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But I will have to say, even in the years of The Oprah Show, when I first started doing that show, if they had told me, "You were not gonna make any money doing this show," I would have done it.
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That's right.
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one of the most important moments in my life was doing "The Color Purple." I did that for $35 ,000.
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And I remember when my lawyer was saying, "I'm going to ask them for 50," and I go, "No, don't ask them for 50.
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I'll do it for 35." I've never actually made.. any decision based on money.
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I've never done anything for the purpose of making money.
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And actually, can I spend just a moment on this?
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Because we have some people in our study like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, who just went on with his singing, doing amazing things late in life.
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And he turned down the opportunity to do probably the first billion -dollar reunion tour with Zeppelin.
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And he decided not to do it.
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And people say, yeah, but that's easy because he's already wealthy.
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And what I want people to understand is that Robert Plant's circumstances changed.
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But the reason he did what he did was always the same.
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So he started out without money.
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then ended up with a lot of money, but his motivation was always the same, which was to sing.
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And so I'm curious if that's true for you, that the motivation has always been the same.
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It's just the circumstances are different.
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Exactly.
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And the fact that I was encoded to do that talk show, I was encoded to do that,
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is what allowed me to be so successful at it.
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It was as natural as breathing to me.
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I was the most comfortable in the most in front of an audience.
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Okay.
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I want to talk about this because so many of you are going to be able to relate to this.
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And Jim talks about in What to Make of a Life the competence doom loop i've seen this
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so many times during my working career
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and you write on page 111 one of the great traps of life and see
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if this is you one of the great traps of life
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is the curse of the competence doom loop it goes like this you become reasonably competent at something
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that doesn't capture your encodings or ignite the inner fire but it pays you well work hard
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leads to increased opportunities to do even more of what does not fit your encodings or ignite the inner fire, and you're getting paid even more to do it.
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That's the loop that so many people are in that can't get themselves out.
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I actually have a lot of compassion for how that happens because They may have family responsibilities.
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That's right.
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They may have a need to provide for others.
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There may be reasons for that.
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And so it's not like it's a defect, but once you get trapped in it, it's really hard to get out of it because you just get better and better paid at doing something you're not encoded.
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That you don't even like.
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Yeah.
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And one day you wake up to discover that years or decades have passed.
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You're well paid.
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and out of frame.
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The inner fire is still there, but gradually going dormant.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, learners will practice listening and speaking skills through a transcript from a thought-provoking discussion about life, purpose, and personal evolution. By engaging with the content, you will enhance your understanding of conversational dynamics, emotional expressions, and the impact of life experiences on perspectives. The focus will be on reflective dialogues and personal growth, providing an opportunity to practice English pronunciation through the shadowing technique. This approach encourages you to emulate the intonation, rhythm, and pacing of native speakers, ultimately improving your spoken fluency.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Velocity - The speed of something in a given direction.
- Intensity - The quality of being intense, which in conversations means deep or powerful interactions.
- Pinnacle - The most successful point; the highest level of achievement.
- Meaningful - Having significance or purpose.
- Evolution - A gradual development or change, especially in style or form.
- Extraordinary - Very unusual or remarkable.
- Encode - To convert information into a specific format or symbolize something.
- Festival - A time of celebration, which in this context refers to a personal event of watching movies.
Practice Tips
To effectively use the shadowing technique with this transcript, follow these steps:
- Start by listening to the video at a normal speed, paying attention to how phrases are articulated and where emphasis is placed. The emotional tone of the dialogue is essential for capturing the nuance in conversation.
- Once you feel comfortable, slow down the playback speed slightly. This allows you to focus more on pronouncing each word accurately without losing the speaker's expressiveness.
- Use repetition: Choose small sections of the transcript to shadow. Repeat phrases or sentences multiple times to improve your English pronunciation and fluency.
- Focus on the rhythm and intonation. Mimic the way the speaker changes their tone when talking about different life stages or emotions. This practice will enhance your speaking style, making it more engaging.
- Apply pauses strategically. If the conversation speeds up, take a moment before responding in your own voice. This will help you formulate your thoughts while remaining connected to the original flow of dialogue.
Incorporating these practice tips into your learning routine will help you develop a deeper comprehension of conversational English while improving your ability to express thoughts and emotions effectively. Embrace the shadowspeak method and watch your English skills flourish!
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 | We've done · We've reached · who've done |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | sequence, which was · same, which was |
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.