Shadowing Practice: How To Actually Be Disciplined (Consistently) - Learn English Speaking with Video

I struggled with discipline for the majority of my life.

I couldn't wake up early unless I absolutely had to because of work.

I couldn't get myself to do things I knew were good for me, such as meditating and going on walks every day.

I couldn't get a nofap streak past like three days.

And I could not stop wasting hours of my day on YouTube and social media.

And keep in mind, this was during a period of my life where I was aware that I needed to change.

I wanted to change.

I wanted to improve myself.

So the longer this went on, the more and more I struggled to be disciplined on these things, the lower and lower my self-trust became.

Which that alone wreaked havoc on my mental health.

I mean, I thought that I wanted to do these things and yet I just couldn't do it.

And the thing about discipline is, without it, you stay exactly where you are.

Just continuing to struggle with the things you're struggling with in this endless downward spiral.

And because of this, you will never reach consistency with the efforts you're trying to make, and therefore that life that you wish to have, that the discipline is the vessel to get to,

will just remain nothing more than fiction.

But it doesn't make sense, right?

We have all these super disciplined alpha male gurus telling us

that we just need to be more disciplined

and we look at their lives

and they accomplish many of the things we wish to accomplish and they credit it all to their supreme level of discipline.

And I, like many people watching this video, didn't know that these disciplined gurus, these role models, these motivational speakers,

were actually making the situation worse for us.

Because we're constantly consuming this content that tells us, well, you just don't want it bad enough, you're not working hard enough, you just need to be more disciplined, bro.

While simultaneously, they're flashing their lifestyle, their success, their money, their relationships, and telling us that if you were disciplined by me, you would have this too.

And what this does is all the guys that are consuming this content, and that are trying to be disciplined and failing, it just increases their sense of hopelessness.

It lowers their self-image.

Which, and I'll get into this more later, but it is actually further programming their mind to be less disciplined.

Well, what if I told you that these businessmen, these athletes that got there, didn't actually get there through sheer brute force willpower?

Well, that is the case because that would be impossible.

Because willpower is a limited resource.

Imagine you're in a room

and you are overwhelmed by this smell of the most delicious chocolate chip cookies you have ever smelled in your entire life.

The sweet, savory aroma fills the air, and you look across the room and see all of those cookies there.

Not only cookies, but all other kinds of delicious chocolate treats.

But instead of being able to walk over and eat them, you have to sit and eat a fucking radish.

Well, there was actually a study that did exactly this.

They threw a bunch of participants in this very room, and while some Some of them were perfectly allowed to go and eat whatever they want, they didn't have any instructions.

Others were instructed to sit in there and just eat the radish

and resist the temptation and the smells and the yumminess of the chalky chip cookie over there.

And after this happened, all participants were taken into another room where they had to work on this seemingly unrelated puzzle.

A puzzle that required persistence, aka willpower.

And what they found is that those who had to sit in

that room and eat the radish while resisting all the treats gave up way

Earlier than the people who were allowed to eat whatever they want

and then just came and worked on the puzzle

Because the radish people already used up so much of their mental energy their willpower

Trying to resist the cookies therefore they couldn't last very long with the puzzle

So right off the bat with this information The first thing

we can do is just start to be more greedy with your mental energy, with your willpower, with your decision-making.

This is why so many millionaire entrepreneurs wear the exact same clothes and eat the exact same foods every single day,

because that's one less thing to try to think about or use up mental energy on.

But while that's a great place to start, it's not enough.

So as we now know, if all of those successful people actually just relied on willpower to get where they are, it would have ran out, just like it does for the rest of us.

But if willpower isn't the answer, then what actually makes the disciplined disciplined?

It's because the real reason they have this seemingly effortless discipline is because their minds are programmed to do so.

And when something is part of your subconscious programming, your mind's programming, it becomes the default.

Therefore, willpower isn't actually always required from them because they aren't actively resisting anything,

compared to you, which has to actively resist your current programming to do the disciplines you wish to do.

But imagine if something like working out or being productive felt as effortless as tying your shoe, for example, combined with most of those urges you get to do the bad habits,

to do the bad things, disappearing.

Because most of these urges are just surfacing into your consciousness from the subconscious programming.

And finally, since most of the discipline is coming effortlessly, you now have a much higher reserve of willpower

that you can tap into if something comes along your way that you actually have to use willpower on.

So what if this bottleneck of discipline was removed from your life?

Would there be anything else really standing in the way besides time from you and your goals, or would it just be a seemingly effortless progression to what you want out of life?

This is the level that the elite, high-performing men are on.

Same with the gurus that preach

Discipline they just don't understand that the reason they're so disciplined is

because of this mental programming Therefore they think preaching just be disciplined bro is more than enough advice for you

But after you watch this video, you're not gonna have to listen to them anymore You're not gonna have to deal with all

that shitty advice because you'll know how to actually Reprogram your mind to be disciplined

So the first reason why you haven't been able to be as disciplined as you'd like to be is

because Your reasons suck and I know what you're thinking.

No, no, I do have good reasons to be disciplined I do have a strong why to do all this

that is exactly what I thought to when I was sleeping in and playing with my wiener and watching YouTube all day.

Because one thing our egos are very good at is convincing

us the reasons we have to do the things we do are perfectly valid and good enough.

But in reality, that's not the case.

If it was the case, you wouldn't have clicked on this video.

So we need to understand that our brains will find the quickest path to the outcome it desires.

So if your reasonings for doing the things you do is, for example, well, I want to be successful

so I can have time freedom so I can do the things I want to do, which is hang out and play video games or be successful so I can track beautiful women and have sex with them,

your brain's going to go, well, you can play Fortnite and watch porn right now.

And you trying to resist doing those things is using up that willpower reserve.

This is why a lot of guys have to just keep watching those same motivational videos over

and over and over because they don't have good enough whys within them.

So they need to hear something blasting why they should do something

and be disciplined and work hard into their consciousness just in order to be disciplined for little bursts here and there.

And the best way to detach and combat these urges when they appear is by building the skill of mindfulness.

And the best way to do this is through meditation.

I have a free five-day guided meditation series in the description below.

You can check out after this video.

So in order to actually rewire your mind to be disciplined on these disciplines you wish to do, you need to alter your reasonings.

Now, there's two types of reasonings.

There's two types of why.

You can have what you're working towards and also what you're running away from.

Right now, let's start with what you're running away from because often it's more powerful.

The mouse that's running away from a cat

that wants to eat it is going to run faster than a mouse just running to some cheese.

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So in order to develop this anti-reasoning, you need to figure out what happens if I don't get disciplined?

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What happened if I don't do these things?

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What happens if I don't change?

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And not just a week from now, a month from now, six months from now, but one, two, three, four, five, 20 years from now.

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If you do not change, what does your life look like?

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Spoiler alert, it does not remain the same.

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It is going to get worse and worse and worse over time.

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And then you have to take that and ask yourself, well, why is that bad?

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And you have to think about all the mental suffering, the lack of fulfillment, the shit excuse of a life you're going to be in,

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and generate those negative emotions that creates the cat that you're going to run away from.

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And then you need to figure out what you're moving towards.

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What are your goals in life?

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And whatever they are, I promise you, they're not good enough.

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Why do you want that goal?

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Why is that?

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Take your goal and ask yourself why at least five times in order to get to a core goal, like something that is truly what truly drives you

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and you may not even know what that is right now and it may surprise you to discover that.

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For example, I was in a call with one of my mental mastery students

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and he was telling me how he was struggling to wake up early in the morning.

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He always would get up, hit snooze and go back to bed.

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And at first he was trying to ask me if there's any sleep tactics or any hacks to once you wake up, stay up and go about your day.

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But I asked him, why do you want to wake up early.

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And his answer was super generic.

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Well, it's productive.

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I'll have more time in the day.

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And then I asked him, why do you need more time in the day?

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Why do you need to be more productive?

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And he couldn't give me a reason.

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So it's like, no shit.

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You don't have the discipline to wake up early.

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You have no actual reasoning to be up early compared to how I developed my discipline to wake up early.

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And it was because I need more time in the day to be productive

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and to get work done because I need to reach a certain level of financial freedom

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and success because I want to retire my mother

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and I want to be an amazing role model for my baby brothers as they're growing up.

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I need the money that success will bring because I want to achieve the best human experience I possibly can.

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And the other side of that is if I don't, I will feel like I have wasted my life

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and it will send me into a depression and I will just every time I see my mom continuing to work

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unretired continuing to struggle to pay bills my baby brothers don't have a role model to grow up

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and watch it would cause me so much immense depression

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and suffering you see why it's so easy for me to get up early

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because i need to there is no negotiating my way out of it

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so do this as an exercise go on a piece of paper a document a journal

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and write these things out

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and i promise you whatever your reasons are at first they are not good enough over time keep prying and prying

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and prying until you can get to the source of why you want to do something get Get

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that crystal clear future vision of the life you want for yourself and those you care about.

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And get a crystal clear vision of the life that you are fucking terrified of ending up in.

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And what's going to happen is over time as you dwell on these things, as you read these things over, as you visualize these things,

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you are going to begin to program that subconscious part of your mind to work towards that.

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And when you're able to gain the clarity on why, waking up early, working a couple extra hours a day, eating healthy, going to the gym, quitting pornography, quitting video games,

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quitting drugs, is required to get to that future you want.

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They are the vessels that will carry you there.

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Your brain's going to realize that and be like, okay, this is what we do now.

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We need to do this.

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And that is going to become your default.

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And once you start doing this and you're doing all these disciplines you want to do, it is going to enter the second phase, which is shifting your identity.

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There was a study done in 2011 that tracked 205 people for a week.

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They all had these blackberries that would constantly

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ping up and ask them questions throughout their day regarding discipline and motivation and willpower.

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And this research found a huge paradox in human psychology.

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All of the people who would answer these surveys and say things like, I'm very disciplined, I have a lot of self-control,

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had fewer instances throughout their day-to-day life in that week where they had to be disciplined, where they had to resist temptation.

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Compared to the people who didn't see themselves as very disciplined, who didn't see themselves as in control,

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they reported way more instances of having to resist temptations and use willpower and try to be disciplined,

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which means the people who believe that they are super self-controlled and have strong willpower didn't have to use

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as much self-control and willpower.

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Therefore, people who have an identity of a disciplined person actually use less willpower than other people.

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And this is because, as we know, their unconscious default is to just be disciplined.

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So what you need to do as you begin getting rid of these bad habits

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and doing the disciplined things is view yourself already as a disciplined person

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and let every single disciplined action you take further justify that identity to yourself.

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Plus our brains love doing things that reinforce our previously held beliefs.

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It actually releases dopamine from doing so.

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This is why people are addicted to consuming content online that's about their political beliefs.

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So what I didn't mention earlier is when I was going through

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that period of having absolutely no discipline to do these things, I still went to the gym and worked out almost every single day.

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It did not take an ounce of discipline from me to do so because

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going to the gym was just part of my identity.

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It was just something I did.

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There was no rationalization, there was no resistance to get there.

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It was just effortless.

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So in your day-to-day life, whenever you feel lost, just zoom out to your reasons.

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Gain the clarity on why these disciplines are the vessel to where you need to be.

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And what that's going to do is that's going to cause you to do every single discipline thing

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and not do every single bad habit with intense levels of intention.

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Because you are doing the things

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that you know you need to do to get the life you want and avoid the life you'd hate.

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Plus it is going to be easy to remain consistent in this because it is who you are.

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If discipline is the biggest thing you're struggling with right now

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and you would like to know my exact protocol to unlock that effortless discipline,

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that authentic confidence, that elite level of focus every single day through my exact mental reprogramming protocols, exactly how to transform your identity,

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exactly how to reprogram the subconscious, consider checking out mental mastery in the description below.

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But even when you do get disciplined, you know, you stop consuming all the bad content and start consuming all the good content,

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you could still be negatively impacting your brain in performance by consuming content the wrong way.

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So if you'd like to learn more about that.

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I have this video on the screen right here where I explain exactly how to fix that.

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That's it.

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I really hope you learned something from this video.

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I hope you're inspired to do the things I said, to be disciplined.

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Thank you for watching.

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Bye-bye.

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146 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Actually Be Disciplined”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: disciplined, discipline, willpower. This video has 201 sentences and 2967 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:25. The speaker talks fast, about 206 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
willpower noun	/ˈwɪlˌpaʊɚ/	The unwavering strength of will to carry out one's wishes.
resist verb	/ɹɪˈzɪst/	To attempt to counter the actions or effects of.
consume verb	/kənˈsum/	To use up.
effortless adjective	/ˈɛfə(ɹ)tlɪs/	Without effort.
cookie noun	/ˈkʊki/	A small, flat, baked good which is either crisp or soft but firm.
radish noun	/ˈɹæd.ɪʃ/	A plant of the Brassicaceae family, Raphanus sativus or Raphanus raphanistrum subsp. sativus, having an edible root.
subconscious adjective	/sʌbˈkɑn.ʃəs/	Occuring in the part of our mind that we are not normally aware of.
puzzle noun	/ˈpʌzəl/	The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in…
pry verb	/pɹaɪ/	To peer closely and curiously, especially at something closed or not public.
reprogram verb		To program anew or differently.
temptation noun	/ˌtɛmpˈteɪʃən/	The act of tempting.
guru noun	/ˈɡʊɹ(ˌ)u/	In Indian traditions: a spiritual teacher who transmits knowledge to a shishya.
reasoning noun	/ˈɹiːzənɪŋ/	The deduction of inferences or interpretations from premises, abstract thought, ratiocination; (countable) any instance of this, especially as a process…
seemingly adverb	/ˈsiːmɪŋli/	As it appears; apparently.
urge verb	/ɜːd͡ʒ/	To press; to push; to drive; to impel; to force onward.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
wake up verb	/ˌweɪk ˈʌp/	To stop sleeping; to awake.
run away from verb		To avoid or shirk a problem or consequences; to rush to back away from or disclaim responsibility for something.
use up verb		To consume, deplete, expend, or exhaust.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
figure out verb		To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
get up verb		To move in an upward direction; to ascend or climb.
grow up verb		To mature and become an adult.
work out verb	/ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/	To calculate.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

What happened if I don't do these things?
What happens if I don't change?
What are your goals in life?
Why do you want that goal?
Why do you need to be more productive?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Conditional sentences if + clause, will/would + verb — a condition and its result	If it was the case, you wouldn't have · if I don't, I will feel
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	be disciplined · were disciplined · are overwhelmed
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	those who had · people who were · you, which has
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	have ever smelled · haven't been · have wasted

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 59 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: radish /ˈɹæd.ɪʃ/, subconscious /sʌbˈkɑn.ʃəs/, temptation /ˌtɛmpˈteɪʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/
Long words — get the stress right: participant /pɑːɹˈtɪsəpənt/, effortlessly /ˈɛf.ɚt.ləs.li/, rationalization /ˌræʃənəlaɪˈzeɪʃən/, pornography /pɔɹˈnɑ.ɡɹə.fi/, millionaire /ˌmɪl.i.əˈnɛə(ɹ)/

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 willpower, resist, consume.

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.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

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