Shadowing Practice: How to live longer and make it suck less - Learn English Speaking with Video

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118 sentences

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Hey, slow down.

I got something to talk about for a minute.

I hate going to the grocery store.

It freaking sucks.

I do not come here because I have to.

I do come here because I have to.

Not because I want to.

It's become kind of a necessary evil.

I got to spend hours of my life coming here for my family.

But I've been challenging myself recently.

Instead of coming in here, flying in, trying to grab everything I need, check out, leave.

Can I slow down?

Kind of relax a little bit?

Peruse the aisles?

Maybe even enjoy myself?

I've been wearing earbuds to the store to try to make this happen.

I hate it when people are always wearing their AirPods out in public.

But I have bit the bullet because if you can shift into this gear,

you're shifting into the same gear as some of the people who have lived the longest in the world.

120 year old people.

And there's a name for this gear.

Harvard calls it slow living.

Slowing down to a very comfortable pace and being okay in the moment that you're in.

Taking it all in people who can do this can avoid all this stress and tension that comes with life sometimes.

And it turns out that stuff kind of kills you.

If you're stressed out all the time, your cells age faster, your DNA can get damaged.

Serious stuff.

And guess what?

Gene Calment, 122 years old.

Richard Overton, 112.

All these people that lived super long lives, They're smoking.

They're drinking.

But they're not letting stuff stress them out.

They let go of stuff.

So it might be worth asking yourself, when you're feeling rushed, could I slow down and enjoy this?

And you might be surprised when the trade -off isn't actually as bad as you thought it might be.

There's a great story about this.

A guy, Derek, he loved riding his bike.

He lived out in California by the coast

and there is this 15 mile loop right on the ocean that he would go to all the time.

And he kind of got in a habit of just hauling through this thing.

He knew it backwards and forwards.

He could do the whole thing in about 43 minutes.

But what starts to happen is then if he hits it longer than 43 minutes, he's a little bit like, ah man.

So one day he's going and he's tired.

He's kind of stressed out.

The idea of having to do this crazy

Thing he just doesn't have it in him.

So he's like, you know what today I don't care about the time.

I'm just gonna go at a pace that feels comfortable for me

So he's going he's a little bit more relaxed.

There's a dolphin jumping in the ocean

He looks up and there's a seagull flying over his head and it poops in his mouth apparently.

I don't know if that's true but that's what he says.

So that part's not good but he feels like he can just go forever.

This is great.

He kind of remembers his joy for cycling.

He looks down at his watch when he's done.

45 minutes.

Two minutes longer than his usual time.

he would just squeeze all the juice

he had in him go as hard as possible for four percent faster than today

and that is a lesson that he never forgot

and it makes me wonder could I relax

and get pretty much the same result I think that's true more often than we might think

that's what he called his blog article relax for the same result wrote

it in 2015 i'll link it my dad sent me

that i don't know

but the other thing is uh

you might be sacrificing a lot more than just stress by not slowing down enough

i had this manager at work his name was mcqueen

i'm just gonna call him that

because he likes going fast okay we had this project we're assigned

and he wants to get this thing done as fast as possible.

He wants to impress the CEO.

He knows he wants it done.

And he's like, we can just like...

Faster than fast, quicker than quick.

It's just the two of us.

I'm the one building it.

And I just kind of slapped this thing out.

And he's like, all right, let's go release it.

Send it out to production.

This is like software stuff.

And now, was everybody really impressed?

No, they hated it.

It broke immediately

and people were like what the heck is going on people are complaining

we're getting tickets coming in i have to spend more time fixing

this stupid thing than i did building it in the first place

i ended up having to answer for this in my performance review it was it was not good

and uh this is why the military has a mantra slow is smooth smooth is fast i think enough guys

messed stuff up severely.

You know, but if you take a step back, you can see your surroundings and make sure you're stepping in the right places.

You go to the grocery store, try to just get in and out as fast as possible.

You forget something.

And then halfway through the week, you have to come back and you had Cheetos for lunch.

So it might not be a bad idea to ask yourself, Could I slow down and not just get the same result,

but maybe a better one?

100

That's true a lot of the time, I think.

101

Now here's the deal.

102

I love going fast, right?

103

I like driving fast, exercising.

104

There's times to do it.

105

But when you're going fast, ask yourself, am I doing this because it's fun?

106

Or am I going fast because I feel some kind of pressure?

107

Am I stressed out right now?

108

Is this fast fun or fear?

109

That's what you should ask.

110

Is it fast fun, fear, fight on fall?

111

Now look, pressure is fun sometimes and stress has a purpose.

112

It's also good sometimes.

113

Push yourself, put yourself in uncomfortable situations, but just remember that sometimes you have a choice in the matter.

114

That's kind of the point, right?

115

Slow down, enjoy your life, break less stuff, and live longer.

116

Hopefully.

117

You know.

118

I'm sorry.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to live longer and make it suck less”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: fast, slow, stress. This video has 118 sentences and 1065 words to shadow. The speech runs for 7:26. The speaker talks at a steady 143 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. 87% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
relax verb	/ɹɪˈlæks/	To make something loose.
distress noun	/dɪˈstɹɛs/	Physical or emotional discomfort, suffering, or alarm, particularly of a more acute nature.
gear noun	/ɡɪɚ/	Equipment or paraphernalia, especially that used for an athletic endeavor.
smooth adjective	/smuːð/	Having a texture that lacks friction. Not rough.
pace noun	/peɪs/	A step taken with the foot.
grocery noun	/ˈɡɹəʊ.s(ə.)ɹi/	Retail foodstuffs and other household supplies.
impress verb	/ɪmˈpɹɛs/	To affect (someone) strongly and often favourably.
rush verb	/ɹʌʃ/	To hurry; to perform a task with great haste, often not properly or without thinking carefully.
lesson noun	/ˈlɛs.ən/	A section of learning or teaching into which a wider learning content is divided.
suck verb	/sʌk/	To use the mouth and lips to pull in (a liquid, especially milk from the breast).
gene noun	/d͡ʒiːn/	A theoretical unit of heredity of living organisms which may take several values and (in principle) predetermines a precise trait of an organism's form…
juice noun	/d͡ʒuːs/	A liquid made from plant, especially fruit.
loop noun	/luːp/	A length of thread, line or rope that is doubled over to make an opening.
sacrifice noun	/ˈsæk.ɹɪ.faɪs/	Originally, the killing (and often burning) of a human being or an animal as an offering to a deity; later, also the offering of an object to a deity.
bullet noun	/ˈbʊlɪt/	A projectile, usually of metal, shot from a gun at high speed.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
slow down verb		To decelerate.
stress out verb		To become stressed.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
come back verb		To return to a place.
end up verb		To bring to a conclusion.
look up verb	/ˌlʊk ˈʌp/	To have better prospects.
step back verb	/stɛp ˈbæk/	To stop what one is doing and evaluate the current situation.
turn out verb		To end up; to result.

Sentences worth repeating

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

Can I slow down?
It's just the two of us.
I'm the one building it.
That's true a lot of the time, I think.
Am I stressed out right now?

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	people who have · people who can
Possibility with “might / may” might/may + verb — something that is possible but not certain	might be · might think · might not be
Comparatives -er than / more … than — comparing two things	longer than · faster than · more often than
Verb + -ing enjoy, keep, stop… + -ing — verbs that are followed by the -ing form	loved riding · love going

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 25 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, I'm, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: rush /ɹʌʃ/, tension /ˈtɛnʃən/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like relax, distress, gear.

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 longer and make it suck less - Learn English Speaking with Video

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