Shadowing Practice: How to Design Morning & Evening Routines To Transform Your Life 💫 - Learn English Speaking with Video

Hello my loves, welcome back to Lavendaire.

It's Aileen and welcome back to the Transform Real Life series.

So if you're new here, this is a series where I'm posting a video every Wednesday until the end of January, helping us transform our lives in all the areas.

So last week we planned our 2025 goals and today I'm excited to help us design our optimal habits and routines.

So this is basically a workshop to help you find what are the most effective habits

that you can implement and how do you build your morning and evening routines for success.

The series is inspired by our Artist of Life workbook, which is a guided journal that I created to help you plan your most intentional and successful year.

Yet you can check it out at shop.lavendaire.com.

There's actually a layout in the workbook that helps you design your ideal routines, and so this video kind of comes from that.

Before we get started, I want to let you know about our mastermind program

that we are hosting for quarter one in 2025.

So from January to March, we'll be hosting these small groups for anyone who wants to go deeper with their goals,

find accountability buddies, really focus on their goals, and have people to connect with and kind of cheer each other on as you're working towards your dreams.

So our mastermind program is a higher level in our Dream Life Club membership.

So if you join, you get all the benefits of being in the Dream Life Club, monthly live events, journal prompts, daily inspo, and so much more.

But you also get matched with your small group of five to six people, where you're kind of working towards your goals, keeping each other accountable throughout the quarter.

So we're only doing this program quarter one of 2025, because I feel like it's a good way to get the most impactful start to your new year.

So the first quarter, you're super focused and you have your group of people to cheer you on.

So if you're ready to transform your life in 2025 with a group of like-minded people, definitely consider joining our Mastermind program.

I'll have the link down below.

I'm super excited about it.

Enrollment is open now until December 20th and spots are limited.

So I'm excited.

Hopefully I'll see you there.

All right, let's get into the workshop.

So designing your optimal morning and evening routines.

Like all of our other videos in the series, we have a free Notion template that you can download and do along with today's workshop.

I highly recommend the template for today

because it's going to be a little hard to to do it on pencil paper

because there's going to be some sorting involved.

And so when you're on Notion, it's easy to drag and drop and sort things.

So why morning and evening routines?

What makes routines so important?

Why do we focus on them?

So I'm going back to the quote, you are what you repeatedly do.

So that means all those small daily actions and habits

that you do compound over time to create major transformational change in your life.

So the small little things are really important.

And the best way to integrate these small habits in our lives are by habit stacking them into our morning

or evening routines, because that's when we usually have a little bit of time for ourselves.

The middle of our day is dedicated to work, family, life, other things.

But you can usually carve out some time in the beginning and end of your day to do these habits consistently.

So today we're going to figure out what are the right habits, What are the right things that you can do in your routine to really be effective

and really take you closer to your dream life?

Step one, design your energy.

This is one of my favorite exercises to do

because it all starts with the energy that you want to create in your life.

So we'll do this for the morning and evening.

So for the morning, think of what energy do you want to feel in the morning?

How do you want to feel in the mornings?

Or how do you want your mornings to feel?

So some examples may be, I want to feel inspired in the morning, or I want to feel calm and grounded.

I want to feel peaceful.

What do you want to feel is the first prompt.

And then the second prompt is, Okay, now that I know what I want to feel, what habits or activities can I do to make me feel that way?

To invite that feeling, invite that energy into my mornings.

So if you want to feel calm and grounded, then maybe meditation is something you want to do in the morning.

Maybe journaling calms you down.

Maybe taking a walk outside.

So it begins with the feeling.

It begins with the energy that you're trying to design.

After you have your list of habits or practices that could give you that energy, then for each action, estimate the amount of time that it would take to do that action.

This could be a range, right?

You could put meditation 5 to 20 minutes, journaling 5 to 15 minutes.

It really depends on you how much you want to give yourself, but the timing is important because this will help you build your routine later on.

Now we're going to do the same thing for the evening.

So ask yourself, how do I want to feel in the evenings?

Some examples of feelings may be, I want to feel calm.

I want to feel relaxed.

I want to feel grateful.

I want to feel fulfilled.

I want to feel satisfied or proud.

So think of how you want to feel at the end of your day.

And after you've like wrote down your list of feelings, then it is time to brainstorm.

Okay.

What are the habits or practices that I could do to invite that feeling?

What could give me that feeling at the end of the day?

If I want to feel grateful, then maybe I need to make a practice of doing some gratitude journaling at the end of the day.

If you want to unwind or de-stress in the evenings, then maybe some things you could do are take a shower, read a book, put on some calm music.

This is your chance to design the feeling and energy you want to bring to your evenings.

And just like the previous step, for every habit or action that you wrote down, estimate the amount of time that it would take to do that action.

And again, it should be arranged because it's hard to be exact with these things.

Step two, brainstorm ideal habits in various areas of life.

I'm going to suggest five areas that you should look into and brainstorm habits for,

because it's important to take a balanced approach to life and look at the important areas.

If you find that there are different areas that you want to focus on because it's important to you, feel free to add them.

The five areas I suggest are, number one, physical health, because your health is the foundation of everything.

Number two is wellness.

This is the health of your inner self.

Think mental, emotional, spiritual health.

Number three is joy.

Anything that gives you emotional fulfillment, a sense of fun and play in your life.

Number four is relationships.

Anything related to human connection or building community.

And number five is personal growth.

So anything to do with learning, growing, and expanding.

Those are the areas that I felt really fit my goals and are important to me.

But if you have other areas that you want to add, feel free.

But the point here is to brainstorm ideal habits

100

that can help you take care of those areas or even grow

101

and evolve in those areas the way that you want to.

102

After you have your list, you want to estimate the amount of time that each action would take.

103

Again, we're doing a range.

104

So an example would be like exercising.

105

Maybe I want to exercise for 30 minutes to an hour, three to five times a week.

106

Another example could be reading for 30 minutes a day or calling a friend or calling my mom.

107

or maybe it's something like dancing or language learning.

108

So anything that matters to you that you want to do consistently for a fulfilled life, then write that down here.

109

All right, step three, what are the necessities?

110

So this is where you look at your morning and evening, and you really just write down what are the necessities, the things that I need to get done,

111

the things that just have to happen no matter what, right?

112

Stuff like brushing my teeth, changing, maybe getting ready, washing my face, doing skincare.

113

Just think of all the things that you kind of have to do that you don't think about, but it takes time because we're essentially trying to time out your morning and evening routines.

114

So evenings could be shower or I need to pick out my clothes for the next day or plan my tomorrow.

115

Whatever it is that you do, write it down and then estimate the amount of time that each action takes.

116

Step four, sort.

117

This is where it gets interesting.

118

You're essentially trying to puzzle the pieces together.

119

What you want to do is you want to pull everything that you wrote in the previous prompts, which is why Notion is really helpful.

120

You just copy, paste or drag and drop.

121

I would copy paste for this one.

122

You want to bring them all to the section, and then you want to try to separate them into morning slash evening routine.

123

Does this habit fit in the morning?

124

Does it fit in the evening?

125

Could it be any time?

126

That's okay too.

127

So after you kind of separate and sort that, then you want to start to prioritize habits by importance and priority, right?

128

What is most impactful, most important that you absolutely want to do?

129

Put those at the top, sort the lesser important ones on the bottom.

130

This is also a step where you can start to cut things out because I'm sure you wrote a lot of stuff.

131

And if there's anything that you decide is not important to you, You can just cross it out, be like, nevermind.

132

And for whatever's left, you have the ranking from most important to least important.

133

Just do your best with the sorting.

134

And if you even want to be more clear, then you can put a star next to the habits that are really, really important, that are non-negotiable,

135

that you absolutely want to do.

136

And then the rest of it would are just nice to have, right?

137

It would be nice if I spent time reading a book, but it's not absolutely necessary sort of thing.

138

So yes, good luck have fun sorting.

139

If you're done sorting, let me know down below, what are your top non-negotiable habits that you've chosen for yourself?

140

Maybe give me between one to three top habits that you absolutely are going to do.

141

Step five, it's time to piece it together.

142

So now that you kind of have your sorted habits or actions in your morning and evening routines, you can kind of see,

143

okay, this might take a lot of time still, right? based on everything that you want to do.

144

So this is where you kind of piece together what would be a realistic morning or evening routine.

145

And I like to have different options, right?

146

I have a basic morning routine.

147

I have a good morning routine and I have a great morning routine.

148

Great is if I have a lot of time.

149

Maybe I have three hours to do everything that I want to do, and then basic is I have 15 minutes.

150

What can I get done in 15 minutes?

151

This is where the time also plays a factor, because all you do is kind of drag your habits and the time,

152

and then you just add up the total time that this routine would take.

153

And this is how you build different versions of your morning and evening routine, based on the amount of time that you have.

154

So that way it's more flexible and you don't feel too bad if you can't do everything on your list.

155

Another method that I really like is creating menus for my morning and evening routines.

156

So a menu essentially is like a list of habits that you could do, because I'm sure based on your brainstorming, there are different things that you could do for your health and wellness,

157

and you might not be able to do them all every single day, but you can do some of them every day, right?

158

You can choose, right?

159

If I have a menu of wellness habits that I could do, then I just look at it and be like, Oh, today I feel like taking a walk.

160

Or today I feel like meditating and doing a little journaling, right?

161

You get to choose what you feel like doing that day, but you have a menu that kind of is easy for you to look at

162

and gives you a reminder of what you could do.

163

I feel like most people operate without a menu, without a plan, and so they just don't do these habits.

164

So if you have the menu, if you have the routines built out for you, then you can look at it and be like, okay, tomorrow I have 30 minutes to do a morning routine.

165

I can do this, right?

166

Or tomorrow I have so much time in the evenings.

167

Ooh, let me look at my menu.

168

What can I do tomorrow?

169

So that's what makes this exercise so fun and so flexible,

170

is that you can really give yourself the plan of what is the optimum morning and evening routine,

171

but what is also realistic.

172

The final thing I want to say is that this is an ongoing experiment with yourself.

173

So don't think of this as set in stone.

174

This is just the first draft, right?

175

As you test out your routines, you might adjust things, or it might become clearer how much time you need for certain actions.

176

And as you kind of experiment, you adjust and you kind of figure out what works best for you.

177

But maybe after doing this for a few months, you'll really find your optimum morning and evening routines.

178

You'll really hone in on what's working for you.

179

But keep that in mind that this is an ever-changing, fluid thing.

180

And what matters is that you're making an effort in the right direction.

181

If you've completed this exercise, you are just so far ahead of so many people who have no idea what they should be doing.

182

What are the right habits to make me feel good every day or to take me closer to my goals?

183

If you liked today's workshop, then please share it with your friends.

184

And if you're not already, please subscribe to this channel for more videos on personal growth and lifestyle design.

185

We'll be continuing the series every Wednesday until the end of January, the Transform Your Life series.

186

Next week, we will be reflecting on 2024.

187

So it will be like a calm wrap-up session.

188

I'm planning to do a short meditation and then guided reflection prompts on the year, so that will be really nice.

189

We're heading into the holidays, so wishing you a happy holiday season.

190

I will see you in the next video.

191

Love you so much.

192

Bye!

193

you

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 Practice: How to Design Morning & Evening Routines To Transform Your Life 💫 - Learn English Speaking with Video

About This Lesson

Key Vocabulary & Phrases

Practice Tips

What is the Shadowing Technique?