Shadowing Practice: How I Get & Stay Motivated - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Hello, welcome to my channel and to the Atlantic Ocean.

In today's video, I'm going to talk about how I get and stay motivated.

So I've always been super jealous of those people who could just wake up every morning at 5am,

go to the gym, or just keep their house clean all the time.

I just thought that those people are so motivated.

And I also thought that something was wrong with me.

I just thought I was lazy or just didn't really know how to get myself motivated.

I was always looking for some tricks or for some secrets or for some,

I don't know, productivity app or for like a productivity journal.

And turns out those people weren't motivated at all.

That's just what I thought that they felt.

Those people just did whatever they needed to do without asking themselves if they want to do it or not.

So we've been conditioned to use expressions like,

I'm not in the mood right now.

I'm not feeling like it.

I don't feel like doing this right now.

And all these sentences are just answering the question,

how do I feel about it in this specific moment?

And then based on the answer,

we decide to take action or not.

And yes, sometimes it does make sense to ask yourself how you feel about it.

For example, you're not going to go out with a stranger just because they asked you to,

because you know instinctively you don't really feel good about that.

And maybe you shouldn't have that difficult conversation

that you need to have with that person when you're not in a good mood.

So yes, the question how I feel about it

and not taking action in these particular situations might save you some pain and trouble,

but we're not talking about those situations.

But if you know that,

ah, my God, this bee literally left like some droplets on my hand.

So if the action that you want to do can only bring you positive results,

but based on how you're feeling in the moment you're saying no I'll do it later then

that is the situation we're talking about.

Stop asking yourself if you want to do it because you don't.

We all have that little voice in our head that is always saying do you want to do it?

Do you really want to do it right now?

Do I want to get up right now?

Do I want to clean up the kitchen?

Do I want to go to the gym?

Do I want to open my laptop and start working?

The answer 99% of the time is going to be no. No,

I don't want to do it.

I don't want to move.

I don't want to fold laundry.

I don't want to make dinner.

I don't want to work.

So here's what I understood and started doing.

I stopped asking myself if I want to do it and how I feel about it.

Avoid that question at all costs because the second you ask yourself if you want to do it,

your brain is going to try to protect you from discomfort,

from annoyance, from boredom, and it's gonna whisper, nah, maybe later.

And that's how procrastination begins.

How many times have you said one of these phrases?

I'll do it later.

Maybe I'll do it tomorrow.

I'm not in the mood right now.

Let me check my phone real quick.

I'll do it after this episode.

I'll do it after I eat something.

I'll do it when I feel ready.

I need to think about it a bit more.

I need a better system.

It's not that urgent.

Oh, okay, bye.

See, your brain is wired for comfort, not effort.

The brain's number one job is survival,

not success and not productivity.

So when it senses some sort of discomfort,

it goes, warning, we don't like this,

you shouldn't be doing this.

And that's when it throws phrases like that at you.

It's just trying to keep you safe and comfy.

And when you say, I'll do it later,

your brain gets instant relief.

You avoid the unpleasant task in the moment and trick yourself to feel responsible because you intend to do that later.

So it's basically half done.

And that tiny mental loophole makes you feel good in the moment,

but it's a lot worse long-term.

It's like a psychological band-aid.

Sometimes these phrases are like a defense mechanism against feeling overwhelmed.

Sometimes I'll do it later really means this task feels too big.

I don't even know where to start,

so I'm just going to procrastinate it.

So basically when the brain feels like this task is going to bring you some sort of discomfort

and it entails some effort,

it tries to protect you from it and chooses escape over work.

And the thing is your brain confuses thinking with doing.

When you say things like I'm planning it out of my head,

I'm thinking about it, Your brain is giving you a little dopamine hit because planning feels like progress.

And while it's good to plan and to think in advance,

too much planning and not doing feels like fake productivity.

You get the satisfaction of doing something without actually doing anything.

So here's the truth.

Whatever you want to do,

don't ask yourself if you want to do it because you won't.

And you're not even supposed to want to do it.

We've been tricked to believe that motivation comes first,

that we need to feel like it before we start doing something.

But that is a lie.

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When I ask myself, do I want to clean the house?

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No, I don't.

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Do I want to wash the dishes after dinner?

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Absolutely not.

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Do I want to work out?

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No, I would rather sit on my couch and scroll on TikTok.

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But if I never ask this question to begin with and I just start doing that, something shifts.

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Once I start, even for two minutes,

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I realized that it's not as bad as my brain told me it would be.

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And that is the trap.

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Asking yourself if you want to do something before doing it almost guarantees that you just won't do it.

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Think about it.

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Nobody wants to get out of their bed in the morning.

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I mean, some people do,

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but most of us don't.

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But once we're up, we're fine.

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Nobody wants to go grocery shopping.

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Well, some people do.

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Most of us don't.

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But once we're there, we just get it done.

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It's fine.

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You don't want to start working on that boring project.

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But the second you start,

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you just get in the zone.

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So I realized something very important.

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Do I want to is the wrong question.

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Will I feel better after I've done that is the right question.

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Because that answer is almost always yes.

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Will I feel better if I've cleaned the kitchen?

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Yes, I love a clean kitchen.

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Will I feel better once I've worked out?

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Yes, I love how my body feels after working out.

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Will I feel better if I'd finished that task that I was avoiding for a million years?

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Absolutely yes.

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And that's the trick.

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Don't let your mood decide your actions.

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Let your future self decide it.

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And the funny thing is,

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once you stop waiting to feel like it,

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you just realize that you don't need a mood shift.

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You don't need a certain environment, certain conditions.

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You just need momentum.

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You just got to start.

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Once you start moving, your brain actually starts releasing dopamine,

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which makes you keep going.

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So motivation doesn't come before the action.

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It comes after it.

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The people who seemed motivated all the time are not motivated at all.

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They just stopped negotiating with their feelings.

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They don't ask themselves, do I want to do it?

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They just do it.

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And that's why I feel like a lot of people are afraid of the word discipline,

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me included, because that basically entails you doing things that you don't like or that you don't wanna do.

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But if you stop asking yourself if you wanna do those things,

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then discipline is not that scary anymore.

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So I don't ask myself if I want to clean the kitchen.

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I just start picking one plate at a time and then I get into my momentum.

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I play some music and I forget about the fact that I'm even doing it.

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I don't ask myself, do I want to work out right now?

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No, I just put on my shoes and go outside.

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And guess how I feel once I'm outside?

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Amazing.

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I don't ask myself if I want to work.

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I just wake up in the morning,

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make myself a coffee, open my laptop,

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open the first email, and then boom,

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I forget that I'm even working.

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I'm just in the zone.

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And once you start, it's so much easier to keep going.

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Another trick is to never think of the task as a whole

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because it's so much simpler and so much more approachable mentally and psychologically

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when you look at it as tiny little simple steps.

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If you're asking yourself, oh my God,

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do I want to finish this project right now?

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No, you don't because that seems like a lot of work

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and you probably won't be able to do it in one day and your brain's like,

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eh, no, let's just wait,

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let's think about it more.

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But if you think I just need to send this email,

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I just need to build this chart today,

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that's all, then it feels a lot more reachable.

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For example, when I look back at our immigration process to Canada,

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when we moved from Moldova to Canada as permanent residents.

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That process seems to me so difficult and complex right now

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because there were so many things we had to do and it took us more than eight months to do everything.

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So that sounds pretty scary.

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We had to get our education assessed with an official Canadian company.

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We had to take our IELTS test to prove our English proficiency,

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which we had to travel to a different country to do.

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We had to get expensive medical checkups.

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We had to get reference letters from all the employers we've ever had in all the countries we've ever worked in.

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We had to get police certificates from all those countries where we lived more than six months.

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I had to do a presentation,

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a video presentation talking about English teaching and how I would do that job in Canada.

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We had to save up a certain amount of money to have it

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and to prove that we can sustain ourselves for three months

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while being there anyway so many more things

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that I don't even remember at this point

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because it was um how long ago was that 2018 seven years ago

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so the whole process seems very complicated right even each task seems quite complicated however

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if you take that each task

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and you divide it into even smaller tasks then it becomes very easy for example to say

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that I needed my education assessed by an official Canadian institution

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seems like oh my god I don't want to do it this already seems too complicated

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and your brain's like no you don't even need to immigrate anymore

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but if you divide it into okay you just take your diplomas you scan them

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and you send them as an email number two you go

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to your university you get some sort of extract paper that they needed and you wait for it for a few days.

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Okay, that's also possible and pretty accessible.

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Then you take what you got from the university,

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you take your original diplomas and the scans and whatever other papers they needed,

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you put them in an envelope and you mail them to this specific physical address in Canada.

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You just have to mail something.

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That seems pretty accessible, right?

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Then you wait for a month,

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which is kind of nerve wracking,

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but you're not doing anything.

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It's not hard.

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You're just waiting.

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And then in a month or so you get a reply

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or you get the mail back with your diplomas and your assessment inside that envelope and you are good to go.

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So yeah, when you say,

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oh, you need to get your education assessed by a Canadian institution,

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you're like, oh my God,

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I have no idea how to do that.

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But then you start looking into it,

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you break it down into smaller tasks.

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It all of a sudden becomes very possible and pretty easy to do.

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Same thing when people decide to start learning English.

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They go from zero and they're like,

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oh my God, I am listening to this person talk,

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I am nowhere near that level that probably takes years and years of practice and studying.

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And it does.

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But the problem is that you're thinking about it all at once.

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You're imagining that the effort that it takes to do in a few years,

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you have to do in a day or in a week.

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No, today you just watch a video.

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Tomorrow you just write some vocabulary down and you practice it.

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The following day you do some pronunciation drills.

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The day after that you do some reading and some retelling.

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You do your best.

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So every day is a small task that takes you closer and closer to your goal.

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And you're going to feel more motivated to do this one

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tongue twister today rather than always thinking I need to learn English today

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because you're not going to just learn English one day

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and your brain perceives that as a super complex task and it makes you feel unmotivated.

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But when you show up just for five minutes,

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your brain goes, whoa, we're making some progress.

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Dopamine hit.

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And that feeling becomes motivation.

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So you do something, you get motivated to do the next thing, right?

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But you cannot wait for the motivation to be the first ever catalyst in order for you to take your first action.

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Does that make sense?

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So stop asking yourself if you want to study today

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because the answer is going to be no. Just build tiny little habits.

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For example, for English learners,

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make English part of your lifestyle.

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You have to understand that from now on until the end of your days,

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you're going to have English in your life.

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Watch a video, listen to a song, do a tongue twister.

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Learn a word, learn an expression.

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No one is looking for perfection.

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We just need a tiny little bit of action.

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Second habit, celebrate your small wins and stop focusing on how much you haven't achieved yet.

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You finished a 10 minute lesson.

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Amazing.

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You showed up.

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You did a tongue twister.

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Great.

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You learned a new word.

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Great job.

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Progress is progress.

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And the third thing I recommend is speak from day one.

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Don't wait to speak until you're fluent because fluency comes from,

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you guessed it, speaking.

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Even if you make mistakes,

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actually, especially if you make mistakes,

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motivation isn't a feeling that you're waiting for.

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It's something that you create.

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So do one tiny thing at a time and see how motivation starts following you.

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So the next time your brain goes,

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do I want to do it?

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Stop it.

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Interrupt that thought.

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Don't even let it finish the question.

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Just start that thing.

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Just do it.

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10 minutes later, the motivation will follow.

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And that's how you get stuff done.

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Not with motivation, not with energy,

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but just by refusing to ask yourself that one tricky question,

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do I want to do it?

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So if you guys enjoyed watching this video,

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please make sure to like it,

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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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Shadowing Practice: How I Get & Stay Motivated - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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Shadowing Practice: How I Get & Stay Motivated - Learn English Speaking with YouTube

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About This Lesson

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What is the Shadowing Technique?