Shadowing Practice: How to build the life you want. - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I hope I'm not the only one who goes through phases where I absolutely suck at like hitting goals

and being consistent essentially.

I realized that competing in the Olympia

and being a body builder I was going through

so many phases where I would get super ramped up

and prep be super consistent on a tight schedule a tight

routine everything at the same time every day doing everything I needed

and then I would kind of dip down right after the Olympia.

I'd kind of fall off

I'd go to the gym when I could find the time

but I didn't really have a routine

So I would often skip days not feel great

and I was giving myself a break And when I did

that a lot of other things in my life were kind of falling off

and then it would slowly ramp up in my offseason You know travel

and business and work is kind of crazy

And then it would get super dialed and locked in again for prep

And I was just realizing that I was going through these phases

and I was so efficient in prep

and then very inefficient other times of the year

so I wanted to take some of the habits and the mindsets

and the things that I applied throughout prep that made me efficient

and Learn how to apply them to like my day-to-day life forever consistently

so I kind of dove in for the last week or

so just like reflecting and writing down some things that I did and

My goal is to apply them to my life going forward forever

and hopefully help you guys too I'm not gonna get into too deeply

because I'll be sitting here for an hour

and I wrote a fucking lot of shit

But I'm gonna just tell you something to put down and maybe it'll help you first thing is a clear goal

Obviously at the Olympia, you know, there's nothing more clear than a fucking goal.

October 14th, 2024, competing at the Olympia in Las Vegas.

Like that's the goal.

I got to win the Olympia.

But this thing that has always stuck with me, super cheesy, and I'm not going to get into deep

because my mom was the one who taught it to me and you can find it online, but it's called SMART Goals.

It stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relatable, and time-based.

So specific, you need a very specific goal.

Not just like, I want to be strong.

It's like, how strong do you want to be at what date do

you want to be strong what lifts do you want to

be explosive strong do you want to be like power lifter

strong what are your specific goals measurable obviously be able to

measure it attainable has to be possible relatable has to be

authentic to yourself something you care about time based there has

to be a time based on it like i said i'm not going to get deep into

that because you guys can google that yourself but the big thing

that i wanted to touch on here

that i realized i applied into becoming mr olympian i think

really helped me drive my success in my life was instead of having a goal necessarily like a thing

that would end

and then like the Olympia would fall off afterwards it was more of an identity a sense of self

that I was trying to build and become someone who could complete x

so the way I kind of worded it

and I had written this down in one of the monologues I did before a prep series without even realizing

that was the way I think it's instead of I want

to win the Olympia it's the goals you could write out to be more I want to be someone who X.

So I want to be someone who trains consistently every single day, hits sets to failure, never skips a meal, never cheats on his diet, gets his sleep and recovery that he needs.

All these different things like that.

And I thought that was so important.

And a huge thing for me within that was it wasn't just the actions and the physical things you did, but your mentality, the way you think, the way you treat people and all these things.

Because You might think of the identity of the champion as someone who is a little bit, you know, edges on the side of arrogance, super cocky, confident.

And that's what winners do because a lot of people we see in the media are like that.

But that wasn't relatable or authentic to me.

So the self I wanted to betray before I was the champion was the humble, respectful champion who treated everybody the same, whether it was a former Mr. Olympia backstage,

a stage marshal, a security guard, whoever it might be the person the champion i wanted to be with someone who embodied

that respect because i knew people would be looking up to me

when i became this champion not only for what i did

but who i was and i wanted to be someone

that my mom and their moms would be proud of

if that's how they were acting

so the next thing I kind of dove into here was you have an identity

and then creating a list of things

and defining very specifically what those people do and this comes back to

that goals I want to be someone who X

so I want to be someone who you know what does mr. Olympia do

and I write that list down

and you know you treat people with respect you're humble you

go to the gym every single day whether it's to train

or to do active recovery to stretch to hit abs to

hit your accessory body parts you know you never cheat on your diet

and doing these things as much as possible the more you define these habits

and you live these habits you will naturally become the success

that you want to achieve so instead of chasing after

that goal you become the identity in the person that will naturally attract that goal

I think the biggest thing that people always come to me

and ask me when I'm doing like meet and greets and they ask me, it's always like, how do I start?

What do I do?

How do I start?

I have all these things, X, Y, and Z.

You can watch a million YouTube videos, read a million books, and sometimes you get like overwhelmed by the amount of steps that are out there.

And I mean, nothing matters unless you actually do it.

So taking action is the most important

and hardest part you know i've always had this mindset

that you are not what you think you're not who you

think you are you just simply are what you repeatedly do

so you can think positive things you can think this is

huge in relationships you know like i could tell my my

wife i think you're beautiful i think i love you i

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just don't say it well she's not going to know

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and feel it unless i show her with my actions

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and it's the same in anything life

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so taking action is the most crucial point of everything

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and i think what people up is they get overwhelmed with too many steps

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and things to do so this is going to be the most basic tip

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but the most important one if you take anything away from this build an identity

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and start fucking small to build momentum those three things are everything

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when you break that down so for example

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when i used to be in college i used to drink

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three times a week get like blackout drunk go out with my friends

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and i loved it you know i loved the social life

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i was in college hanging out with people the only time

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my life i had to be able to live like that

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and I was aware of that so I didn't want to sacrifice

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that so I did that for a period of time

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but then I wanted to take bodybuilding more seriously I was on the edge of going pro

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and I knew I had a lot of potential in me

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but I knew my lifestyle was holding me back

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but I also wasn't ready to sacrifice my social life yet

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so instead of just telling myself all right I'm gonna stop

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drinking stop going out go to bed at 9 p.m wake

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up at 6 a.m do my cardio never miss a meal

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do all these things I was like I'm eating pretty good still cheating a lot

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because I like going out with my friends

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and I love going out at night but I'm gonna stop drinking

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so I still stayed out until 2 a.m every night

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but I made one small change and that was to stop drinking

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and just that alone waking up not hungover

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and not wanting to eat bacon and fucking god knows what else for breakfast

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because you're hungover and tired

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and lazy having a bad workout horrible recovery from the alcohol

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screwing up your system I was able to make a decent amount of progress from

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that alone and the momentum I built from

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that one small change encouraged me to want to make more changes

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and eventually I stopped going out completely started to go to bed early I started to clean up my diet

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and I started to make all these little changes that eventually that literal year was the year that I turned pro, won two pro shows and made it to the Olympia just from making these subtle changes

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and it was huge

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and the one change I made made this cascade effect into everything in my life

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and I think starting small in order to build momentum

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and being conscious that you were starting small intentionally to build momentum is huge.

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So the goal when you're starting something especially

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if you're fresh the goal is to be consistent not perfect

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so create an identity define what that person does start small

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and make your goal to pick something

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that you can be consistent with rather than perfect I don't

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need you achieve the whole list pick one start with that

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and with that momentum start another one and another one

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and another one and after a while once you're embodying these habits these actions

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and these behaviors without even thinking of your goal anymore you're

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going to achieve your goal as long as you're doing this like well thought out

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and the idea with momentum is i mean as anything

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if you're driving a car and you take your foot off the brake

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and you roll into a wall you're going to just fucking

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tap into the wall fuck up your car a little bit

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if you're driving 150 miles per hour at a brick wall

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and just fucking fly right through

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that thing probably keep going there throughout the other side you

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might you know get a little scratches on your car but you're still moving.

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It doesn't stop you because you have so much momentum.

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And that's the same thing with this.

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After starting making those small changes when I was young and building these habits over time, I didn't even feel like it was like I was dieting.

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I didn't feel like I was eating healthy.

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I didn't feel like I was training hard.

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It was just life.

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So who I was and it was what I did.

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So when something came in the way, whether I was in prep and it was my lat tear, my hamstring tear, 2018 when I was in the hospital, you know, last year I had a minor hamstring tear I didn't even really talk about.

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It became the thing where it didn't even have a chance to hold me back because I had so much momentum.

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I had such an identity attached to behaviors that I did that when something came in to stop me, I just kept rolling forward through it after.

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So a lat tear would be something

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that would hold me back for a little bit and I'd be immediately back on my shit, moving forward, getting better and better.

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And I can't stress that enough, that momentum is like the secret to get through stuff because

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when things are so habitual that you don't have to think about them, that when chaos hits in your life, whether it be personal, stressful,

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mental, emotional, physical, your habits you don't have to think about.

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They take less energy.

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So you just keep moving forward, you keep getting better, better, and it's fucking everything.

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All right, so the next little tip amongst all these are kind of the actionable steps

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But the other thing that I realized I did without knowing it is

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Self-talk and like personal accountability I tie these in together

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because how you talk to yourself sometimes how you hold yourself accountable But personal accountability means you're responsible for your own life, which means you are in power You have the power to control

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and change your life So personal accountability equals power power is the ability to do

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or the fuck you want in your life So no one else wants you to fucking hit your goals like you do.

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No one cares what you do beyond yourself

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So make sure you're holding yourself accountable You're not waiting for

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someone else to encourage you you're waiting for someone else to go to the gym Do this

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or that you really have to hold yourself accountable

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You know what's in the self-talk piece a little thing

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that I This is how I label it now

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But I wasn't intentionally doing it in purpose in the time

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But I was always talked to myself in my head like I was a mentor talking to my apprentice, you know, there's always like

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your thoughts in your mind

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and then there's the thinker of the thoughts you know there's two kind of

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when you're talking to yourself in your head there's someone talking

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and then there's someone paying attention

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so there's kind of two like dualistic identities inside your brain at any given time

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and i viewed it as like a mentor who was the

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retired six-time mr olympia talking to the amateur the apprentice who wanted to become

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that and was embodying that and working towards that so

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when i would talk to myself like come on champ come

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on you want to be mr olympia like let's get after it.

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It was like my future Mr. Olympia self talking to myself and

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when I would be on a treadmill I'd be supposed to

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do 30 minutes 25 minutes goes by I'm like ADD bored tired want to go eat breakfast deep

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and prep whatever and I get off I'd get off

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and talk to myself like come on champ like is

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that what Mr. Olympia does is Mr. Olympia has to get

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off five minutes before his cardio is done I'm like fuck

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and I would drag myself back on finish my cardio and actually do it right.

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Same thing with you know a set

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if I'm aiming for 10 I get eight

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and I just put the waist down I'm like what the

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fuck like you could have gotten 10 maybe I take five minutes do another set

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that I'm not even supposed to do to hit

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that 10 just to hold myself accountable or I get right back on

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and do two more three more reps just to make sure i'm hitting

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that 10 that i was supposed to but holding yourself accountable

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and having the proper self-talk is important

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and i don't think this comes from shame i don't think

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shaming yourself calling yourself a piece of like you fat fuck

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get after it all these things i don't personally believe

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that works at all i think if you call yourself a fat

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and you begin to identify as a fat you will continue to act like a fat

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so not to use fat shaming as an example at all

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but that's a huge one that people do you know they eat bad fuck i'm

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so fat i'm

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so fat i'm gonna keep eating bad like no it's don't

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shame yourself positive reinforcement talk to yourself from like a one-up

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position in a positive form hold yourself accountable to be better

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not to shame yourself for being worse i think that's absolutely huge positivity is massive

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and i think so many people think driving forward from shame works

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because it does for a period of time but

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if you're trying to be a six-time mr olympia

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or do something consistently i truly believe

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that everything i I just listed a building identity a habits

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the self accountability the positive self-talk those are the only ways to properly sustain things obviously within

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that you know the goal of everything I'm talking about I'm trying to focus more on like mental things

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and the mental side of things and even in the behavior something I didn't mention

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if I was like Mr. Olympia is someone who always had

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their head on right what does someone who has their head

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on right do you know they self-reflect they journal they go to therapy they talk about their emotions

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and their feelings they let things out they don't hold it all in

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and these were all part of the identity

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that I began to build to be create a mindset

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that could do anything rather than just trying to accomplish one thing

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and I think that was the most important thing

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that I kind of naturally built over time

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and I didn't even realize what I was doing I was just again starting small

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and building habits creating identity around something I wanted to be knowing I wanted to be mr. Olympia

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and embodying that next thing I knew I was fucking looking back retiring

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and I'd done it six times and I was like wow like you did it

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and it was pretty cool so you know there's a lot of these things

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that I'm going to try to apply to absolutely everything in

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my life such as you know being a good father defining what

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that means to me being someone who you know is present

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when his kids are around is emotionally there for his daughter

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is you know drives into their games leads work early

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because priorities family these little things that are important to me something

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that I want to define so I know who I want to be

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and I'm aware of it and then I can actually act

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and live it out so yeah that's pretty much it

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but essentially clear outcome clear goal google smart goals i don't need to do

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that consistent identity define what that identity is start small build momentum

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and just fucking create an identity be someone who x

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and define that very specifically not i want to be jacked i want to be someone who

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and what are the attributes that you would view as someone who is jacked use

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that as example obviously

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because it's easy for me to use self-talk being positive personal

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accountability it all comes down to yourself you know i don't even repeat myself it is what it is

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but yeah this is something that i've been personally reflecting on

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and i just wanted to share

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that with you guys i think you know there's a lot of lessons

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that i learned that i didn't even understand i was learning

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and you know there's two times to learn from something it's from the experience

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and then from reflecting on the experience

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and i think from reflecting on the experience is

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when you truly are able to learn and make changes to your life going forward

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because the greatest achievement of accomplishing your goals isn't the goal it's who you become in accomplishing those goals

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so i want to do my best to be able to

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share a lot of things i did hopefully help you guys move forward

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and are they doing my self-reflection on the experience i just lived i'm going to try

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and kind of share these little tidbits if you will with you guys so

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sorry for the rant hope

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that made sense i tried to i literally have like five bullet points on my phone

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that i'm going off from a 10 minute video however long i'm talking

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so hopefully it made sense but appreciate you guys thanks for watching

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to build the life you want”. This video has 284 sentences and 3495 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:17. The speaker talks fast, about 229 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% 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
momentum noun	/ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/	Of a body in motion: the tendency of a body to maintain its inertial motion; the product of its mass and velocity, or the vector sum of the products of its…
preposition noun	/ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/	Any of a class of non-inflecting words and multiword terms typically employed to connect a following noun or a pronoun, in an adjectival or adverbial sense…
accountable adjective	/əˈkaʊntəbl̩/	Obliged, when called upon, to answer (for one’s deeds); answerable.
accountability noun	/əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/	The state of being accountable; liability to be called on to render an account or give an explanation; liability to be held responsible or answerable for…
embody verb	/ɪmˈbɒdi/	To represent in a physical or concrete form; to incarnate or personify.
cardio noun	/ˈkɑɹ.di.oʊ/	Exercise with the goal of raising the heart rate by walking or running on the treadmill.
relatable adjective	[ɹɪˈleɪ.tə.bɫ̩]	Able to be related to something else; connected with.
mindset noun	/ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/	A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one.
accomplish verb	/əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/	To finish successfully.
cheat verb	/ˈt͡ʃiːt/	To violate rules in order to gain, or attempt to gain, advantage from a situation.
hamstring noun	/ˈhæmstɹɪŋ/	One of the great tendons situated in each side of the ham, or space back of the knee, and connected with the muscles of the back of the thigh.
hungover adjective	/hʌŋˈoʊvɚ/	Suffering from a hangover.
measurable adjective	/ˈmɛʒəɹəbəl/	Able to be measured.
overwhelm verb	/ˌoʊ.vɚˈwɛlm/	To engulf, surge over and submerge.
dove noun	/doʊv/	A pigeon, especially one smaller in size and white-colored; a bird (often arbitrarily called either a pigeon or a dove or both) of more than three hundred…

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
fall off verb	To become detached or to drop from.
go through verb	To travel from one end of something to the other.
move forward verb	To cause to make progress.
get off verb	To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
go out verb	To leave, especially a building.
going forward adverb	In the immediate future and beyond.
clean up verb	To make an area or a thing clean; to pick up a mess; to tidy.
come down to verb	To reach by moving down or reducing.

Sentences worth repeating

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

What do I do?
How do I start?
I didn't feel like I was eating healthy.
I didn't feel like I was training hard.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	one who goes · one who taught · someone who could
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has always stuck · i've always had · i've been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	was always talked · be jacked · is jacked

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 87 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: authentic /ɔˈθɛn.tɪk/, thinker /ˈθɪŋ.kɚ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, accomplish /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ/, measurable /ˈmɛʒəɹəbəl/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/, actionable /ˈæk.ʃə.nə.bəl/
Long words — get the stress right: momentum /ˌmə(ʊ)ˈmɛntəm/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/, accountability /əˌkaʊn.təˈbɪl.ə.ti/, measurable /ˈmɛʒəɹəbəl/, intentionally /ɪnˈtɛn(t)ʃənəli/

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 momentum, preposition, accountable.

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 →

Shadowing Practice: How to build the life you want. - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?