Shadowing Practice: How To Live A Successful Life - Robert Greene - Learn English Speaking with Video

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You know, life can be kind of difficult, right?

You don't really know sometimes where you're headed.

Nobody kind of gives you any kind of guidance in this world, right?

And they don't tell you when you graduate college, go ahead, go Robert, you go study this.

This is what, you know, and you know, this is what your brain is suited for, et cetera, et cetera.

You have to find your own path.

And so for me personally, I spent years in the wilderness.

So I'm going to give this a personal spin because I think that helps a little bit.

Because I can answer it inside my own body here.

So I know I want to be a writer, but I can't figure out what the hell I'm going to write.

So I leave college and I try journalism because I have to make a living.

I have to support myself.

And I don't really like it.

It doesn't suit me.

He writes an article and then a week later it's forgotten.

Nobody reads about it And as somebody who studied ancient Greek

and Latin in college I think in terms of thousands of years and not in three days or a week,

you know I want something that I write to be read in 3020 for you know, sorry, um So wasn't a good fit.

So I quit I wander around Europe trying to write a novel with my backpack.

I live in London.

I live in Paris.

I lived in Ireland.

I lived in Greece.

You name it.

I taught English in Spain.

Trying to write a novel.

I had no discipline.

I couldn't do it.

It didn't work.

And I started to get depressed.

Then my dad isn't well.

I said, I'm going to move back to Los Angeles.

Hey, I'm going to get a job in Hollywood, right?

I'll make a ton of money.

And I'll be writing and, you know, et cetera.

How glamorous.

How sexy.

movie stars, starlets knocking on my door, etc. Okay, terrible, terrible fit.

Because I'm a control freak.

I don't like people coming in and changing everything I say.

And I don't like conforming and I don't like compromise.

Sorry, that's a bad thing about me.

But I didn't want to have to lower my I standards to what they were asking me to do.

It was a terrible fit.

All right, now comes the chance.

I meet this man, Joost Delphers, we mentioned earlier in Italy.

And he says, he asked me if I have any ideas for books.

And I kind of improvised the 48 loss of power.

The point of my long-winded story here is,

I had spent 18 years or so acquiring high levels of skill in writing.

Okay, I learned in journalism how to write under a deadline, under pressure, how to make it dramatic, how to make the opening sentence exciting enough to make you read off further.

Trying to write novels taught me about creating stories, which is a huge part of my writing.

Working in Hollywood, I learned how to research, which is a huge element, and then the theatrical element, making things dramatic, also story.

okay all of that time slowly by slowly brick by brick i had developed real level skill so

when it came time to write the 48 laws of power

i could do it i had learned all this discipline i

had learned how to write under a deadline i learned how to make things entertaining the whole the whole bag Okay?

And so the world opened up for me.

Prior to that time, I was miserable.

Really, really was.

I mean, I had good moments too.

You're young, you're always happy when you're young.

But a lot of times I was miserable.

And I didn't know why, but I was acquiring skills, not even aware of it.

And so the reason I write that is when you develop that skill, when you're serious about it because I was very serious about writing.

You change your brain.

You rewire your brain.

It's like, and this is a remarkable power of the human brain that people don't realize.

Something I'm also writing in my new book.

This one writer, his name is Schwartz, I believe.

He's a UCLA neuroscientist, he wanted to help people who had OCD, right?

Obsessive compulsive disorder.

And usually it's drugs and it's talking therapy.

He wanted to find out something more effective.

And he found that through certain strategies that he developed that they could use in their life, that they would get over their disorder.

and the point isn't what the strategies were.

The point was he did brain scans.

And through the strategies that he gave them to do, which I can't remember right now, the brain scans show that they changed the brain.

And his point was through thinking, through developing skills, you literally change matter.

You change your brain.

So something non-material like thoughts can literally change material things like the wiring of your brain.

You learn skills.

You're changing your brain.

You're changing the matter of your brain.

Things are connecting that weren't connected before.

And slowly, if you do it, if you're serious enough, a point will be reached like it was reached in my life

where either you will start a business

or someone will ask you to do something like write a book or make a film

and the world will open up for you and you'll be able to do it because you have that, you've laid the ground you've laid the soil everything is there it's rich

and now something great amazing will sprout up out of it

when you have no talents you have no skill life is

a series of endless confusion you hit this road you go

here then something else you go here then you go here you end up in a circle

and you don't know where the hell you are

when you've got skills zoom you know where to go it's not it's not in zoom it's more like

but your head yeah it's not part of your psychology will radiate outward.

But for those that don't, they just don't have that belief.

Can you lie to yourself?

Can you tell yourself, I am strong and I am powerful?

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Well, everybody has some good qualities, right?

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Everybody, I think almost everybody, has something that they can go back to in the past and go, I was actually very good at that.

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That was actually a good moment.

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I actually was scored in that particular moment.

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And you can think about that.

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I mean, actors do that all the time in movies.

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When they want to express an emotion, they go back into their past.

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Like, they have to express sadness.

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They go back and they think about their father, or mother who died, and they call that emotion up.

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You can call that emotion up of when you did something actually really great.

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You might have only been in high school when you were on the sports team, and you threw the touchdown or something.

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Okay, think about that, and it'll come back to you.

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Everybody has something that they can be confident about, I hope.

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If there was one law that the powerless amongst us, who feel powerless or lost in the current world,

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one law or one fact of human nature that people who are feeling lost and purposeless and adrift right now

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should be thinking the most about, which one springs to mind?

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Well, Well, there's no one sharp answer to this kind of thing,

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but one law that I would highlight is interaction with boldness.

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And what I mean by that is, if you're feeling timid, if you're feeling that you're not confident in something,

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you will start a project and it will fail because you feel that way.

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because you don't enter into it with the right energy.

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So if you feel, if you take something and you do something boldly, everybody loves the bold, everybody admires it.

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Even if it's stupid, even if it fails, it will gain you that kind of attention.

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And so let's say you're thinking about starting a business.

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Well, just go ahead and do it and be bold about it

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and start it and be as dramatic as you can and be as confident as you can.

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and it creates a self-fulfilling dynamic.

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People admire it.

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They don't admire the timid and the insecure

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and the guy who spends two years talking about that podcast he's going to start.

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They admire that bloke who just decided, all right, I'm going to start it.

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I don't care.

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If nobody likes it, fine.

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You know, I remember this guy interviewed me once.

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He had a magazine called Bad Ideas, and it was a really successful magazine in like the early 2000s.

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I said, where did you get that idea? and he said, my mother told me that to start that magazine was a really bad idea, right?

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So I thought I'd put the title there, you know, and that would be the title of it.

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And I just went ahead and started it, and it was very successful because it was a great, like, marketing gimmick, and it also worked, and it was actually full of bad ideas in the book,

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but in a very interesting way.

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So being bold, being different.

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Everybody nowadays, I'm kidding, I'm like, god damn soapbox again, and I apologize to everyone about this, but everyone is so similar.

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Everybody is so afraid.

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Everyone's trying to be like everybody else.

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You go out there and you start something that's different, that's you, that's unique, that's loud, that proclaims I'm a different voice on it, you're going to get attention.

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So I want more bold people in this world.

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We've got too much fear.

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I'm not maybe a big admirer of, in some ways, of Elon Musk, But dammit, he's always bold and it always works for him.

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He doesn't start just a minimal business about maybe sending rockets out there.

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He starts thinking it's going to take you to Mars.

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He's bold and people love it.

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The world moves out the way of boldness.

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I was thinking as you were speaking about a memory of

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mine of being at a festival in New York City called Global Citizen.

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I was like, Beyonce was performing and stuff.

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All the biggest names in the world.

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And my friend was drunk.

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And we were in the like VIP section behind the stage

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but we could see that there was this access all areas artist section.

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And because my friend was drunk, I've never witnessed anything like it.

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This guy gets me, takes my hand, goes, come with me.

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He walks directly at the two massive security guards with this boldness, this conviction.

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They just move out of the way.

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I thought you were gonna say they punched him.

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No, they just moved out of the way because of the way he was walking.

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They just thought, well, he must be in here.

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And they moved out of the way.

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They didn't check his pass, they just moved out of the way.

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And he continued to do that all day.

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And it was because he was drunk.

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He's done a documentary about this.

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He used to be an alcoholic.

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So he had this confidence when he was drunk where the world would just move out of his way.

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And he ended up going in what I believe to be the president of some Asian country's dressing room.

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Again, because he was just walking at things.

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And the way he was walking, it just moved out of his way.

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But I've never forgotten that.

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Actually, I deployed it today when I went for a run

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with my girlfriend because I wanted to use a bathroom in a restaurant.

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And I figured that if I just walk with a certain conviction, the staff will let me pass, they'll assume maybe I'm sat here.

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And I ended up walking through a conference.

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It was like a conference hall in this hotel, where they're checking people's badges.

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Just because of the way I was walking, nobody checked mine.

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Right.

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And there's a metaphor here for life, and you kind of allude to it in your book, about the bolder you are, the better.

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Some of these subheadings I find really cool.

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Lion's circle, the hesitant prey, boldness strikes fear, And fear creates authority going halfway with half a heart digs the deeper grave.

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Yeah hesitation creates gaps Boldness obliterates them.

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Yeah an audacity separates you from the herd.

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Yeah.

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Yeah, I want If one thing if I have one legacy if I create more bold people in this world,

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I will be happy because We've got too many timid hairs out there.

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We need more bold lions

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start your business write that book do it just do it please

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and then write me afterwards and either blame me or thank me

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and to be able to create something and know how to master a subject

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and to you know build something that can last that's really important

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and i'm feeling like because young people this is back in 2010 imagine now have this idea

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that everything comes quick and easy because you can click click click

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and things come to you that everything in life should be

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that way that we're becoming alienated from the human brain how the human brain operates

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because the human brain requires time

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if you know how the human brain operates we have what are called neural pathways

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and every time you repeat something a neural pathway is created

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and strengthened and strengthened and strengthened it's why we get addicted to things but it's also why we develop skill.

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So if I'm sitting there shooting free throws day in and day out and day out, my brain is wiring it, it's learning it, it's learning that motor skill,

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that hand mind thing, and it's getting better and better and better at it.

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It takes time, it takes repetition to build those pathways.

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And I explain in mastery that you reach the proverbial 10,000 hours, which some people dispute nowadays

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so it's just a number it's not that's not a fact you've spent

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so long learning something that there's

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so many pathways it's like this amazing inner landscape with all these connections going on in your brain

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and now you can be creative now you can come up with things

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that nobody's ever thought of you can play chess on a higher level you can be pele and soccer

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or lionel messi making passes that no one had ever seen before because you're not having to think

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right you don't have to think anymore your body just does does what it wants imagine 20 000 hours

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which is possible people sometimes attain in certain fields you're almost like a genius you're almost like superhuman right

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if you're someone who's

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so locked into the internet to getting things instantly you can't

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get past 100 hours let alone 10 000 you're never going to develop skill

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and you're going to find life really really difficult for you

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so i wrote the book because i was actually deeply worried

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that we were losing a part of how the human brain

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operates something elemental part of our wisdom the interesting through line between

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that and the subject matter we've discussed in power and seduction is

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that by learning to master something you build that sense of self-esteem

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and confidence that we're looking for um to to be good at the former topics mentioned but on the topic of mastery,

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the first chapter in this book, and really the first question a lot of people ask, is this question about finding your passion.

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And I've always had a difficult relationship with this question

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because it sometimes assumes that there's one of them and that you have to go in search of it somewhere.

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In the first chapter of your book, you talk about discovering your life task.

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Why is it important?

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Is it the same thing?

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Is finding your passion and finding your life task the same thing?

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No, I just recorded this yesterday on my own podcast i

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went on a rant about how it's not about passion it's not about finding your passion i actually don't like

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that word passion it kind of makes me cringe because

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if you think about it passion to succeed at anything requires time and effort and boredom and tedium

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So let's just say a simple example, you're learning to play the piano.

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When you first sit down at the piano, you have to play these really insipid tunes.

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It's so boring.

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You have to learn, you know, what they call it, finger exercises and scales on any instrument.

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You have to learn scales, etc. It's tedious, man.

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If you think it's got to be passion, forget it.

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You're never going to get far.

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The thrill comes after a year of playing the piano, and you get better at it, better and better, and now it starts becoming fun.

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Then 10 years, it's more fun.

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Then 20 years, it's fantastic.

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I'm not trying to name drop here, but the other night I had dinner with Stevie Wonder.

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It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

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He's absolutely, I wish I had interviewed him for my book.

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Speaking of genius, and he's blind, obviously.

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everybody knows

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but i was watching him he performed for us we're with

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friends at his recording studio i was watching him play the piano

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and he's blind right and he's he's improvising and it's just absolutely brilliant

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and amazing as i'm seeing this i'm thinking i could see

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the thousands of hours he's been putting in just touching these keyboards and knowing where the where the keys are.

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It was just mind-blowing how amazing it was.

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That is the power that the human brain naturally has through hours and hours and hours of effort.

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That's how it works.

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So he didn't get there because it was passion.

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He got there because he was a child prodigy at the age of 11.

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He was signed to a contract with Motown Records, right?

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he was playing

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that as he was a kid hour after hour after hour after hour he had a love for the piano

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but it wasn't like every time he sat down it had

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to be passionate about it he had the patience to put up with all of the boring stuff okay

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so you want to discover what you were meant to what

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you have a connection to what you have a love for right

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when you're a child hopefully when you're 18 or 19 or 20.

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That's the best time to discover it.

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All right.

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You decide, and it doesn't have to be something highfalutin or worth, you know, like intellectual.

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You could be great with your hands.

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You could be great with your body.

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You could be great with images and visuals.

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You could be great with words.

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You could be great in many different areas.

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Okay.

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They're all equal.

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They're all great.

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you as a child are naturally

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so there's a book I always recommend for people called The Five Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner

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in which he talks about the five forms of intelligence that humans have

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each brain biogenetically is wired in one direction

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or the other you want to know that you want to feel it inside of you it's like a feeling,

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it's not an intellectual thing you feel when you're doing sports that it's good It's a natural thing.

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It's what I'm meant for.

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When you're involved with words like I was when I was eight years old, it felt right.

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It felt like a natural fit.

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I have to follow this path.

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When you're three or four years old and it's music like Stevie Wonder and you're hearing this in your head.

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Wow, that's that's it for me.

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Right.

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OK, you feel it.

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You feel this connection.

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Right.

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Now you fast forward to when you're 18 or 19 years old and you're having to make a career choice.

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okay so i call

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that your 20s the most important phase of your life that's going to make

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or break you in some way

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if you spend your 20s trying to learn skill in something

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that connects to you deeply right then things are going to

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happen to you by the time you reach 30 you've discovered your life's task it may not be something

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so specific for me it was writing words but i didn't know what to write.

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I tried novels.

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I tried journalism.

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I tried theater.

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I tried screenwriting.

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But you know it.

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It gives you a direction, and you try, and you try, and try, and you know that's what you were meant for.

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That's what you were destined for.

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You feel connected to it.

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You feel a love for it, and so when it comes time to do the tedious stuff, you're able to do it because you know in the end it'll pay rewards.

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You'll get better and better at it, and the connection is so deep that to not do it would be miserable.

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Thank you.

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Who Can Benefit from This Video?

This video is perfect for intermediate to advanced English learners looking to boost their english speaking practice and refine their communication skills. Whether you’re prepping for IELTS speaking practice or simply want to sound more natural in everyday conversations, Robert Greene’s storytelling style—with its mix of personal anecdotes and reflective tone—offers a rich opportunity to practice listening and speaking. The slow, deliberate pace makes it ideal for shadowing technique exercises, where you mimic the speaker’s rhythm and emphasis to build fluency.

Words & Idioms Worth Stealing

The video is packed with vivid expressions that add color to speech. Here are a few to master:

"In the wilderness": Feeling lost or without direction. Example: "After graduation, I spent years in the wilderness, unsure of my career path."
"Control freak": Someone who needs to manage every detail. Example: "I’m a control freak when it comes to planning trips—no spontaneity for me!"
"Long-winded": Talking for too long. Example: "My uncle’s stories are always long-winded, but they’re entertaining."

These phrases are common in casual and formal settings, making them great for shadowspeaks practice—repeat them aloud to nail their natural flow.

How to Get the Accent Right

Robert Greene’s accent is neutral with a slight conversational lilt, making it easy to follow. Focus on two key areas for shadow speak practice:

Pacing: He pauses between ideas (e.g., after "I quit" or "terrible fit") to emphasize points. Mimic these pauses to sound more deliberate.
Stress: Notice how he stresses words like "glamorous," "sexy," and "compromise" to convey emotion. Highlighting these words will make your speech more engaging.

Practice by pausing the video, repeating short segments, and matching his tone—this is how the shadowing technique builds confidence and clarity.

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 you're serious enough, a point will be
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is suited · be read · weren't connected
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've laid · I've never witnessed · I've never forgotten
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	somebody who studied · stories, which is · research, which is

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 Live A Successful Life - Robert Greene - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?