Shadowing Practice: How I trained my mind to create instead of consume - Learn English Speaking with Video
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So the technology is making human beings dumber.
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And that really frustrates me because human beings are capable of incredible things.
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You are capable of incredible things.
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And I'm genuinely worried that your time spent online consuming, whether it's digital consumption or vaping, smoking weed, using whatever substance you need to turn your brain off,
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I'm worried that that's limiting you from being what you could be.
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I think you're worried about that as well.
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And that's why you're still watching this.
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Today, I want to tell you that there is another option.
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There's another way to live your life.
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I have been working on it for the last three years, and I'm going to try to condense everything
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that I've worked on into this one video so that you have a place to start, so that you have a way of living that doesn't make you want to escape all the time.
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Let's talk about what the tech is doing to us.
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And this might be familiar to you.
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Either way, I want you to get a piece of paper.
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I want you to get a pen, and I want you to engage with this video meaningfully.
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Really try to stay with it.
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Try to give your attention to this, not try to go anywhere else, not open another tab.
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Let's try to have a conversation because this is the problem of our time.
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We are the generation that is going to decide what happens to humanity's consciousness.
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We are faced with unprecedented distraction, overwhelm, technology we're not psychologically prepared for.
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We have no idea what the AI is going to be able to do in a few years.
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We really don't.
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We're not prepared for this.
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We were given addictive tech at a young age before we knew how to handle ourselves, before we knew how to engage with the drug that was in our pockets.
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And that has given us some real challenges.
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A lot of us can't focus for more than a few minutes at a time.
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A lot of us haven't read a book in months.
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A lot of us don't know what to do with our precious time on this planet.
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So we spend our days meaningless, aimless, just trying to distract ourselves from the fact that we don't have a map.
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We don't have something to aim ourselves at.
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That is a core human need.
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We're distanced.
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We're isolated from each other.
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We spend our days in our rooms, just turning our brains off.
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That is not what you were meant to do in this life.
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You were meant for more and you're capable of more.
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You just need something to aim at, and I'm going to help you get there.
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I'm working on it myself.
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I'm not perfect, but for the last three years, I have been on a mission to figure this out.
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The solution is not to abandon the technology.
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The cat's out of the bag.
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It's going to keep developing.
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You need to take responsibility for yourself.
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Take responsibility for your time, your habits, what you're giving your attention to.
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You need to find something better to live for.
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We're going to do this together.
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Human beings are meant to engage with deep stories, with difficult concepts.
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We're meant to think and solve problems and throw our attention at something
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that you can't figure out in a minute or in 90 seconds.
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We're meant to sit in rooms and talk to one another about interesting ideas.
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That is something that is being robbed from us because these companies are set up to addict us, essentially.
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So we're not gonna talk about that specifically.
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We're gonna talk about what to do.
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I want you to get a paper and pen.
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If you haven't yet, this is your second chance, grab it.
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Come on, we're gonna do this.
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We're you and me together.
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This is it how we save ourselves from the dystopia is we talk to one another
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and we stay on a video for a few minutes so
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that we can let our brains like stay with an idea for more than 90 seconds.
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Okay.
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I'm really fired up right now because it frustrates me.
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It really makes me angry to see people reduced to their worst selves.
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It's something that happened to me.
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I lost, I would say, years of creativity to distraction and it's taken me so much time to get back to it.
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Now that I have that, I am all the more excited to share it with you because I think you have something like that too.
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Okay.
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I know this was like a really long intro.
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Here's the first step.
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You need to de-stimulate yourself.
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You need to rest.
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Your brain is full of stuff.
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Okay.
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Your body might be full of stuff as well, like junk food or whatever.
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I don't know what your situation is, but right now, if you're feeling really overwhelmed and anxious, let's bring it down.
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You have to give it time to process out of you.
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And the cool thing about your body is that it is designed to do this.
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So if you just sit and do nothing for a little while, for maybe a day or a few hours, your brain is going to reset itself.
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What this means is it's time to stop looking at information.
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It's time to stop taking in new videos and music and things just for a short while.
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And you need to let yourself get bored again.
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You need to get some sleep probably.
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You need to drink some water.
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You need to eat some low stimulation food
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and let your body return to baseline so that you can start building from the ground up again,
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so that you can reconnect to a spark of curiosity so that you can feel like a child.
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When you were a small child, before the screens, before you were infected with cheap dopamine and all kinds of distractions,
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you had a natural curiosity about you that made you move through the world with open eyes and like, oh, I want to...
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You just kind of did what your soul wanted you to do.
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And I know that's a little ooey gooey, that's not scientific, but I trust that you know the feeling I'm talking about.
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You can find your way back to this feeling with enough time, and then you'll start to heal from all of the overstimulation.
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You can get the excitement you're looking for off of your own supply.
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You can get it yourself in a much more sustainable, healthy way.
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First step is to de-stimulate, and then you need to have the courage to try things.
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You need to listen to what your brain wants to try, and then you have to try it without any judgment.
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What stops most people I see from trying new things is the expectation that it needs to be perfect, it needs to be presentable, it needs to be good,
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and it absolutely prevents them from accessing a state of play.
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So for example, you might be compelled by music, but you've spent, I mean, you've seen, you might have this idea in your head that you need to be like a successful musician, or the work has to be good,
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or that you even have to share it for it to be worth it.
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And And none of those things are true.
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The only thing you're solving for now is finding a game that you can play that satisfies you on an intrinsic level.
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Intrinsic motivation comes from you.
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Extrinsic motivation is like, will the world like this?
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Will the song perform?
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Will I get money from it?
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Will some external result happen because of this thing?
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It's not that.
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It comes into play later.
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But in the beginning, you're looking for that intrinsic motivation.
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Really sit with yourself for a moment and think about what you actually want to do.
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And the cool thing is in most, in almost every case that I've seen, you know, like, you know what it is, you know what you would rather be doing.
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You know what you're distracting yourself from.
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It might not be this insane, fiery passion to go become a sculptor or to go build a tech startup.
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Like, you know what I mean?
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It might be like, yeah, I think I'd like to play with Legos.
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You know, I think I want to go like that was, I had a lot of fun eight years old building this Lego architecture thing.
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And that's something that I want to try.
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And so you might do that.
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Or it might be something a little bit more formed.
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Like I want to go learn Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
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And it might not be one thing, but in the beginning, you're just trying to scout out within yourself what that is.
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And then you have to follow through on it.
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And this is where we get into some of the more personal development stuff, which is the courage to start something, to face the discomfort of starting,
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understanding that discomfort is normal.
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Anytime you're starting something new, anytime that you're doing something more difficult than self-soothing and numbing,
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it's going to involve some degree of difficulty, which is good.
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What'll happen as you face that difficulty once, twice, three times, four times, more than that, is you'll start to crave it.
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This is super important to understand because a lot of People think
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that the solution to their problems is to just build this unbreakable discipline
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and become a monk and to face pain and discomfort and grind every second they're alive for the rest of their life.
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No, that's really not what it is.
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Yes, there's challenge.
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Yes, there's facing discomfort.
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But your body and your brain starts to enjoy that.
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You start to enjoy the challenge of the game.
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And then you almost become addicted to that.
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That's what I was just talking about, where the craft or the practice you give yourself to becomes the drug.
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It's not a bad kind of drug that hurts you.
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It's stimulating in a healthy way.
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And I point this out because I want to encourage you that this process is going to be fun.
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okay you don't need to suffer uh you don't need to only suffer to get to a better place in life
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yes there's pain and challenge but it's not going to be miserable all the way
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or it's not going to work if it's miserable all the way
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if you can't play this game every day of your life
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you will you will give up at a certain point you will um turn back to the thing
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that gives you reliable quick instant guaranteed comfort
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which is only going to keep you in the same place
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and it will trap you in being a lower version of yourself for the rest of your life.
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If this happens to humanity, we will lose.
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We will lose the battle.
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So we cannot have that happen.
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If you're still with me on this video, number one, thank you.
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Number two, you are literally on the front lines of humanity's consciousness.
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We're in it together.
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This is it, right?
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It's like we are fighting to become the best.
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We are fighting to become ourselves.
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We are trying to integrate all of the pieces of our psyche and our soul, and we are trying to bring to life that which we're meant to do.
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And by doing that, you saved the world, period, point blank.
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You literally saved the world.
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You can't change 100,000 people.
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You can't change a million people, but you can change yourself.
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And if you can do that, if you can have the courage to do that on a daily basis in all of the everyday, mundane, unsexy things, but just the courage to get out of bed at the time you said you would get up
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and to go on a morning walk and then train your body to try to build strength, to sit, at the page to try to get your ideas out.
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If you can do that every day, if you can face the monotony of that, right, and the repetition, if you can learn to fall in love with the monotony of difficult,
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meaningful work, you will save yourself from the onslaught of distraction and cheap dopamine and downgrading technology that we are up against.
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Make no mistake, I mean, our current reality as human beings could be called dystopian.
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I don't think that's a crazy thing to say anymore.
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This is our test.
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The cool thing is though, our war, we don't have to go storm the beaches of Normandy.
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Thank God, that's a good thing.
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What we do get to do is fight in the war of art, which is a great book by Steven Pressfield.
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Highly recommend.
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You should check it out.
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It will change your life.
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I changed mine.
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This is the war of art.
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So by engaging in your creative spark, the thing that you, the unique human on the other side of this thing can bring to the world, you will save the world and you'll save yourself.
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So get bored, de-stimulate yourself, get some rest, get some sleep, drink some water, eat some real food, wake up in the morning and then ease yourself into curiosity again.
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Give yourself some time to do this.
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It might take a day or a week or a month of trying stuff.
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And then once you find something that excites you, you're going to want to give much more time and attention to it.
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This is exactly what happened with me in short stories.
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It's the very human desire to share art with people, like the impulse that makes us tell stories around the campfire.
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You know, that's what I get to experience at scale.
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And that is a much healthier way to use the internet than trying to numb myself
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or trying to get as much meaningless attention as possible.
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You know what I mean?
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Like just try to build a following for the sake of building a following.
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No, we're not doing that.
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We're making real human art to stand up against the onslaught of slop.
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by giving yourself to this way of life, you will save the world and save yourself.
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Okay, I've said that enough times at this point.
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I think it resonates with you.
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I hope it does.
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I want to reiterate that you are capable of this.
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It's going to look different for everyone.
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Everyone's going to have different forms of contribution.
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No one's asking you to go out and create an artistic masterpiece.
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You might not even be an artist.
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Your form of contribution might be different.
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Yours might be leading other people in a company.
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Yours might be, you know, being someone who's good with numbers, right?
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And looking at, literally looking at spreadsheets and solving problems with empirical data.
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I don't know.
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Like people have a, the beautiful thing about humanity is our insane, infinite range of gifts.
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And that's what I mean to say, that's what's being flattened that's what's being taken away from us
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by all of the numbing addictive technology you have a responsibility to yourself
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and the species to figure out what you're meant to do
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and then to bring that to life um so if
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if you're in a place in life where you're like oh
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i don't have a purpose you know what i mean like
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or i don't i don't know what i'm meant to do
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with my time here it is right now you stumbled across the video on the internet
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that tells you you need to figure out you need to look inside your body right now in your brain
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and your soul and your spirit the things that I can't tell you how to find, but you know how to feel if you just stay quiet and look.
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You need to look there and figure out what you're meant to do
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and then start taking steps to bring that to life.
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This has always been the game.
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This has always been the human pursuit.
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This has always been our calling, our meaning.
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This is how we survived.
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This is how we created civilization, how we created the technology that now threatens to enslave us.
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This is how we're going to transcend through that technology and create a world that is better.
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That's what we've always done, continuous driving.
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And the cool part is it's going to be fun.
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It involves making art.
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It involves accessing your creativity.
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It involves making something that's going to make someone else's day 1% better.
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And that is so worth it.
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That is so freaking worth it.
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If it makes your day 1% better, it's worth it.
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You were not meant to numb yourself.
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You were not meant to become a dopamine zombie.
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You are capable of a lot more.
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It takes a little bit of courage to get there.
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But I want you to get as fired up about this as I am.
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I know this has been a little all over the place.
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It's been very charged with emotion because I'm angry.
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I'm angry.
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I get frustrated when I see the lack of nuance in comment sections.
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When I see people just commenting like brain rot memes in the comments
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or like when people fail to see the nuance of a story and just are only looking for a quick,
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immediate takeaway that is a one-size-fits-all sugar pill of a message.
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It's like, no, that's not what art is about.
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Art is about asking questions and having complicated conversations and not understanding right away.
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It's about the beauty and ambiguity, right?
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It's about not knowing.
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It's about being okay with uncertainty, learning to live with that.
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It's about enjoying the mystery of life rather than looking to solve it with a quick framework.
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So that's a little bit of a separate topic.
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Let me know if you want to hear more on that.
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But I'm going to keep sharing these ideas because this is very much the war of our time.
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And I want to share the field with you.
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It involves you trying to take back your brain.
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It involves you choosing to read books again.
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Not the self-improvement books that you saw on Twitter.
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Like you should like 10 books to read to become, to lock in.
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Nope.
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Go to the bookstore or the library and walk around until you see something
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that the 10 year old version of you is like that.
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Let's check that out.
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Judge your book by its cover.
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Look at the covers.
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You're like, that's interesting.
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It's not about becoming the smartest, most capable, richest, most successful person in the room.
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It is about starting to acknowledge and indulge your own childlike curiosity.
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Because then, once you stoke that fire,
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you will replace your addiction to stimulation with a real involvement in creativity.
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You'll start to see your light as a creative act on its own.
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And then you'll be excited to live.
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and that'll be worth it.
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Cool.
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That's all I got for you today.
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I love you.
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This is serious shit, but it's also going to be fun.
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I hope that makes sense.
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Look for the nuance.
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I'll see you out there.
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Have a great day.
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Mwah.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How I trained my mind to create instead of consume”. This video has 281 sentences and 3267 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:48. The speaker talks fast, about 207 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 88% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| numb adjective | /nʌm/ | Physically unable to feel, not having the power of sensation. |
| discomfort noun | /dɪsˈkʌmfɚt/ | Mental or bodily distress. |
| stimulate verb | /ˈstɪm.jəˌleɪt/ | To encourage into action. |
| distraction noun | /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/ | Something that distracts. |
| curiosity noun | /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/ | Inquisitiveness; the tendency to ask and learn about things by asking questions, investigating, or exploring. |
| dopamine noun | /ˈdoʊ.pəˌmin/ | A monoamine C₈H₁₁NO₂ that is a decarboxylated form of dopa, present in the body as a neurotransmitter and a precursor of other substances including adrenalin. |
| frustrate verb | /ˈfɹʌsˌtɹeɪt/ | To disappoint or defeat; to vex by depriving of something expected or desired. |
| intrinsic adjective | /ɪnˈtɹɪn.zɪk/ | Innate, inherent, inseparable from the thing itself, essential. |
| nuance noun | /ˈnjuː.ɑːns/ | A minor distinction. |
| creativity noun | /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/ | The ability to use imagination to produce a novel idea or product. |
| monotony noun | /məˈnɑtəni/ | Tedium as a result of repetition or a lack of variety. |
| onslaught noun | /ˈɒn.slɔːt/ | A fierce attack. |
| overwhelm verb | /ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/ | To engulf, surge over and submerge. |
| addictive adjective | /əˈdɪktɪv/ | Causing or tending to cause addiction; habit-forming. |
| addict noun | /ˈæd.ɪkt/ | A person who is addicted, especially to a harmful drug. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. |
| get back to verb | Return to (an activity) |
| get out of verb | To leave, exit or escape from; to become free of. |
| get up verb | To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb. |
| go out verb | To leave, especially a building. |
| stand up against verb | To defy or challenge someone |
| take away from verb | To subtract a quality from; make something seem not so good or interesting. |
| take back verb | To retract or withdraw (an earlier statement). |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I think you're worried about that as well.
- There's another way to live your life.
- We're not prepared for this.
- Will I get money from it?
- You know what I mean?
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 worked · has given · haven't read |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | are faced · were given · were meant |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | stuff, which is · difficulty, which is · art, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 88 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, we're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: soothe /suːð/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: distraction /dɪsˈtɹæk.ʃən/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/, consciousness /ˈkɑnʃəsnəs/, repetition /ˌɹɛp.əˈtɪʃ.ən/, spreadsheet /ˈspɹɛd.ʃit/
- Long words — get the stress right: curiosity /ˌkjʊɹ.iˈɑ.sə.ti/, creativity /kri.eɪˈtɪv.ᵻ.ti/, monotony /məˈnɑtəni/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/, miserable /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹəbəl/
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 numb, discomfort, stimulate.
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.