Shadowing Practice: How To Reset Your Life In 7 Days - Learn English Speaking with Video

Two months ago, I wrote this in my notes

because I like to occasionally write letters to myself for awareness if I'm going through a difficult period.

I can't find joy in life anymore.

It's not the same.

Remember when you used to go on long walks while reading or listening to lectures, audiobooks, or podcasts, and your mind would light up with ideas?

You couldn't stop writing.

Everything felt seamless.

That period was like a blur, a six-month flow state.

You built three products, gained millions of readers, and even wrote a book.

If you had to do it all over again right now, could you do it just as well?

No way.

What did your days look like?

I would wake up, go down to the lake for a walk, sit on a bench in front of that pond, read a book, and highlight it non-stop.

Then, I'd go back home, take a shower, walk 10 minutes to the coffee shop, and write for two hours.

Those two hours every morning built the entirety of your life right now.

Then I'd go home again, eat breakfast.

You were experimenting with different diets.

Maybe that's a clue due to the novelty and dopamine from experimentation and go out on another walk.

A little afternoon, I'd go to the gym, eat afterward, learn on YouTube a bit, and then go on yet another walk.

You'd close the day out catching up with friends, maybe working a bit more and watching a show.

It's been bugging me for too long.

And after thinking about it quite a bit, I just knew that there was a way to get back to this higher state of mind.

Maybe not the lifestyle itself, but just the state of mind, the enjoyability of that lifestyle, the state of mind that it gave me.

But I'm not one to complain because I like to fix my problems before I come and give the solutions to you.

So hopefully this can help you with me solving this problem of not being able to just find joy in life anymore.

And if you're anything like me, you've noticed that these low periods in life are cyclical.

For a few months, you feel on top of the world and you can't stop making progress.

Then the next few months start to slow down.

You start to maintain things.

You're feeling good, but it's not the same.

And then last, you hit a wall.

Your vision is exhausted.

You feel lost.

Negative thoughts begin to flood your mind.

They can cloud your mind

and prevent you from collecting hints at your next purpose in life that sends you down a rabbit hole of obsession.

This video is for those in that last phase.

The ones that can't find the same zest for life

that they used to the ones that can't find joy in just reading a book or walking in nature.

So two notes before we actually get started with this.

First is that my book, The Art of Focus, launches to the public on January 16th.

You can pre-order the Kindle or the Audible version via the link in the description, or if you're just looking forward to the paperback,

then mark your calendars for January 16th

and just pay attention to my social media or join the newsletter so you know when that is actually going out.

Second is that Cortex University, which is our college-level experience for the creator economy, is open for enrollment.

I'll keep that one short.

You can start your digital career in 90 days via the link in the description.

So first off, I want to talk about how your mind is a supercomputer running the game of life.

I want you to think of your mind as a supercomputer.

Your ability to process information is dependent on a few things, but I want to bring your attention to your RAM.

RAM, or random access memory, is one of the most important parts of a computer.

It determines performance.

The more RAM you use up with different programs running, open browser tabs, and the performance requirements of what you have running, the slower your performance will be.

This is no different from your focus or what you hold in your conscious attention.

Humans can process 10 to 50 bits of information per second with their conscious mind.

They can process much more with their unconscious mind going up to 11 million bits per second.

So that's things that we've become accustomed to over time that we don't necessarily have to focus on anymore, like walking or whatever skill you've practiced.

If you're really good at tennis, then you don't really have to think too much about it or shooting a basketball or building a business or making money.

They're all the same skills.

You can use the 11 million bits of information

and store information in them over time to help you achieve the life that you want to achieve.

But your conscious attention, how you learn that information, how you interact with reality can only process 10 to 50 bits of information per second.

That adds up to around 125 billion bits of information in your entire lifetime.

Take note of that number.

Most people live with multiple high demand programs running that are draining the limited creative energy they have.

Thoughts about regretful past mistakes, thoughts about stressful future happenings, desires of hunger and entertainment to escape those thoughts,

an internal cry to break out of their conditioned way of living, a list of mixed priority tasks that need to be finished, open loops of tasks they were supposed to complete but forgot about.

The list goes on and on.

The modern mind has its attention split in infinite different directions by default.

We go about our lives stressed and near sickness rather than with singular focus on a vision for the future,

being able to shift that focus simply to collect high signal information that help you actualize that vision.

When we hold too much of the past or future within the contents of our consciousness, that's when chaos ensues.

That's when entropy happens because you're split from focusing on the system

that actualizes your vision and your attention is just being manhandled towards all of these different things

and it splinters off into the all of these chaotic negative thoughts it deconstructs

or allows your the system that your mind operates on consistently singularly

that brings meaning to your life to fall apart so back in

that period of my life where everything

that i noticed was novel it made me feel good the

entire six-month phase was just a flow state of me building out products writing the book, et cetera, is because one, I had a vision for the future.

I had a project to actualize that vision and everything I consumed, all of my self-education, all of my experiences,

I was able to take that creative firepower that came from those, the novel ideas and fuel them towards those things.

And that's all my life was, was just input, output, input, output.

I was just a vessel for reality to flow through in a channeled way towards a goal.

Now we need to understand how to win the game of life.

So let's imagine the 125 billion bits of information that you can process in your lifetime as your life's potential, because that's what it is.

Now let's think of your mind as the digestive system for reality itself.

If you eat too much information, then you get anxious.

And if you don't eat enough information with your mind, then you get bored.

So to maximize the enjoyment in our lives, we want to maximize the time that we spend at our edge.

We're not bored.

We're not anxious.

We're in the middle.

We're between the two.

Everything becomes meaningful.

We're using what we're learning by building.

You win the game of life by finding enjoyment, not pleasure, big difference, in as much of your experience as possible.

Your experience is the present moment.

Quote, winning the game of life isn't an outcome, but a process.

100

You are either winning right now, regardless of your emotional state or status in the social hierarchy, or you are losing by projecting out of the present moment.

101

In bodybuilding, there is an optimal environment for muscle building.

102

That's when you're training hard at your edge, you're pushing, you're challenging yourself, and then you eat enough nutrition to fuel that muscle growth.

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You're not eating too much where you feel groggy and gross and bloated and you just don't like how you look.

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You're eating a little bit above maintenance

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and you're not eating too little unless you're in a planned cutting phase

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or else you'll feel just like you won't have as much energy.

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You won't want to push towards your goals.

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It's the same thing with information and learning and self-education and building.

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If you aren't learning anything, then you're not going to have the energy to go out and move and build and actually do things in the world.

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And if you're learning too much, but you're not building a business or you're not practicing or you're not using that information, you're not training your mind by doing those things.

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You're not giving the information or the mental nutrition somewhere to go.

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You're not able to partition it into the muscle that you're trying to build, into the skill that you're trying to build.

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In life, you must push into the unknown to fuel your mind.

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Expose yourself to new information and experience, which is curiosity.

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Create something of value with that information to digest it, which is passion.

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Expand your mind when that experience becomes a part of you with practice, which is mastery.

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And transcend that phase of life by passing down that value to others, which is connection.

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That's the recipe for the good life.

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Create, expand, and transcend with the experience you acquire by pursuing self-generated goals that lead you into the unknown.

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So now we understand that winning the game is more of a process of actually utilizing information, training and fueling that training.

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Now we need to understand how to create our own games because everything is a game.

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Society is a game and you know how to win.

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You retire.

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You go to school, you get a job, you retire.

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That's what you've been practicing your entire life unless you chose to break out of that That's the default path.

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You're on it unless you made the conscious choice to break out of it.

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If you don't think you're on it, and you haven't made the conscious choice to break out of it, then you're just unaware that you're on that path.

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Everyone has played a game that they are completely immersed in.

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They forget everything else, enter the flow state, and may not realize that they are in peak experience.

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The beautiful spot where new information is digested as reality flows through them.

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When you start playing a game, you go through a tutorial phase that introduces you to the rules, goals, and skills required to play the game well.

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Games are a hierarchy of goals.

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You need to know how to win, that's a goal, and you need to understand how to progress to each sub-goal in order to win.

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And then you need to understand what character you need to have and the upgrades you need to make, the skills you need to develop, the traits you need to develop in order to reach each of those goals,

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each goal demanding a higher level of skill from you because they present a higher level of challenge.

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And if you're an absolute beginner, you have no business trying to challenge a higher level player or just taking on that challenge.

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The game is locked.

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You're not able to accept that quest because you're not even close to getting there yet.

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You can't start a business because you haven't learned the skills that would allow you to understand how to start a business.

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It's so simple.

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You just need to learn and build according to your skill level.

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So many people try to learn and build according to a millionaire skill level.

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That's not going to happen.

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You have to start where you are.

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So to get immersed in your game of life, you must first create it.

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That's what we're going to do next.

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But I actually have a very good example here of I'm getting back on routine right now.

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It's January 3rd that I'm filming this, this morning was just so good.

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I'm back on the four hour workday philosophy, even when I'm building so much.

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Like, I feel like I shouldn't, I feel like I should have to work longer than this, but I'll, I'll have to create another video on this, but trying to jam everything into four hours in the morning

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is just one of the most fun games for me to play.

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Like I can get so much done.

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If I just wake up early, do what I have to do, have my routine and do all the work,

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the high-level work, and then it just takes four hours to build anything that I want in the future.

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And that feels so good, having that feedback and playing that game.

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Now, finally, we are at the practical stuff.

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How to reset your life in seven days.

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This is a process that I run through when life gets messy.

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I've done it a few times before when I'm at that low point that I described at the beginning of the video.

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This is something you should do when you're constantly thinking back to a time

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when life was better or when your routines fall apart

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and all of these tasks fill your day and you just feel like you're not getting anything done.

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We're going to run through this process fast, so just pay attention, write things down, review it if you have to.

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First thing is take note of how you feel.

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Pull out a notebook and write down exactly what you're doing on a daily basis, how you feel morning, afternoon, and night.

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Take 10 minutes and get specific.

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This is important for identifying unconscious parasites, time and energy suckers.

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I do all of this in my new planner, the FOSI planner.

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I've been using this system forever in my own life in a digital format.

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I decided to turn it into a planner that is finally available for purchase.

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So it has daily pages like this, but it has a quarterly page that I've yet to map out for this year and monthly pages.

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Everything we do is going to be in this planner, but the quarterly is just map out your vision, take notes, create the game of your life.

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The second thing is that you need to get clear on what you want.

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You have to realize what you don't want to figure out what you want, even if it is destructive to realize what you don't want.

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Preventing yourself from making mistakes is the stupidest mistake of all.

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Now that's a tongue twister.

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You have to realize what you don't want to figure out what you want to realize what you don't want.

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So you have to observe, what do I not want?

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How do I not want to end up?

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That's pretty easy.

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Negativity is everywhere.

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I don't want to end up broke.

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I don't want to end up in that job.

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I don't want to end up with, I don't want to end up ugly.

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I don't want to end up all these things.

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Okay.

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Use that as a reference point.

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What's the opposite?

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I don't want to end up ugly.

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I'm going to go to the gym.

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I go to the gym.

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I realize, okay, I don't like this training.

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I don't want to do this training program.

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It's just not sustainable.

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I'm going to try running.

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And then that sparks experimentation.

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And then you, it's a self-corrective compass.

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You need to do what you think you want in order to understand what you don't want

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and you correct your decisions over time.

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It is impossible to know with absolute certainty what is going to happen in the future.

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This is why the masses flock to secure jobs and belief systems.

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It's an illusion of certainty to avoid struggle.

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You can't skip making mistakes.

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Mistakes are your light in the dark.

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So we need to start with a minimum viable vision.

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You can write this down in the planner.

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You can write this down in a notebook.

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What do you want your life to look like?

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What do you want your mind to look like?

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What do you want your body to look like?

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What about your house?

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What about your day?

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What about your week?

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Write everything down.

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Start minimum viable vision.

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Just write some things down.

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Come back to it tomorrow.

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Then the next day, then the next day, refine it.

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Doesn't have to be perfect from the start.

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You just need a starting point point to frame your decision-making so you can start that process of, I don't want this.

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I want this.

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Okay.

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No, I don't want this.

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I want this until it becomes clear and clear.

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You're never going to figure it out like ever.

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You're never going to figure out.

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I want this 100%, maybe with a few things, a few select things in life with everything, everything that life's composed of absolutely no way.

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Now from this, you break it down into goals.

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You're not setting these goals.

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People get so like caught up in this.

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Dan, you're like, why are you setting all these goals?

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I don't want to set 8 billion different goals to get to whatever.

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I'm not even going to use them.

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That's not what they're for.

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Okay.

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Because then those same people, they come back to me and they're like, Dan, I'm lost.

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I don't know what to do.

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And it's like, you don't have a goal to give you direction on what you should do.

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That's what the goals are for.

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They're not for achieving the goals.

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They're for clarity.

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So you know what to learn.

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You know what to study.

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You know what skills to acquire.

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It gives you direction on from a macro level to a micro level so you can actually use it.

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So the next thing is to prioritize, remove, and restructure your days.

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The reason you aren't getting the results you used to is because you feel pressed for time, you don't have the energy to get results, and you stop doing the things that got results.

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So look over your brain dump, your vision, everything that you've written above.

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What can you change?

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Prioritize the things that will get results.

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Remove the things that snuck their way into your day and don't deserve to be there.

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Restructure the specific tasks and obligations to free up more time.

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Get the chaotic structure of your mind on paper and reorganize it.

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The fourth thing is understanding the cornerstone habits of the good life.

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You now have direction or goals and awareness on why you aren't achieving them.

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Now you need to cultivate two habits.

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First is learning for novel information to fuel your skill acquisition and knowledge.

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Two is building to metabolize the information and build mental muscle.

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Start with 30 minutes each day 30 minutes of self-education in the morning 30 minutes of building a project

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that will contribute to your vision If you can't set aside one hour each morning

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when distractions are minimal to build your future Go back to step three

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and get your priorities straight And

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if you want you can learn the high value skill of digital writing with my course to our writer

264

and use the systems inside there to actually build as you're learning a digital career for yourself.

265

Now, step five, one of the most important things I've ever done

266

and ever do in my life is creating a week-long plan

267

that I can iterate on so I can spot problems in my days.

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Because you're in this chaotic spot in life because of entropy.

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The organization of your life, the routines, the habits, everything else, they tend toward disorder unless you put energy into them to maintain them.

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Sometimes you're just ripped of your routines and that's fine.

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New years holidays holidays fuck me up like

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when like i'm not able to work and do things day after day

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when I stop for a week Simply because that's just what you do.

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You go see family you go do other things Like I don't really binge eat or do all these other things.

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It's just like i'm knocked out of my routine Nobody's online.

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Nobody's doing business.

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Like I it's almost impossible for me to stay on my routine I'm just ripped from it.

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So then I have to get back into it.

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And so this, these parts of your life where you're not on routine or you're not doing certain things, your mind isn't structured and focused on what it's doing.

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You pick up bad habits and you're much more likely to go through negative thought cycles.

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And those habits are difficult to break.

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So write out every single thing you are going to do for the next week.

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This shouldn't sound crazy or difficult.

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This is how you reduce the friction of making better decisions.

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Write out your morning routine, your focused work routine, other tasks and meetings, and nightly routine.

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You will have to experiment as you go.

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I literally just did this today in my planner in the weekly section.

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And if your routine doesn't flow, that means there's a problem.

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That means you can go back and change it to with what you wrote down.

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This is why we write it down.

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So you can go back and change it week after week until it gets better and better and better.

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That's how you refine a system.

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That's how you make it second nature.

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That's how you become a new person.

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You create a system for your life by mapping out your week, sticking to the plan, identifying problems,

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experimenting with solutions, and repeating the process until you reach your ideal future.

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It gets more efficient with time if you make this mental housekeeping a regular practice.

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Before you know it, new skills will become second nature and you will be baffled by how far you've come.

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That's it for this video.

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Thank you for watching.

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The Foci Planner is now available.

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You can order that.

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Cortex University is live.

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If you're waiting for Cortex the software, there's another link in the description so you can sign up for the wait list and just see what it's about.

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The landing page is pretty sick.

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If I do say so myself, if you just want to see something pretty, go look at that.

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Other courses, stuff down there, like subscribe, whatever you got to do.

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Thanks for watching.

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I love you guys.

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Bye.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This video has 310 sentences and 3889 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:48. The speaker talks fast, about 207 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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 less common words from the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

routine /ɹuˈtin/ (noun) — A course of action to be followed regularly; a standard procedure.
skill /skɪl/ (noun) — A capacity to do something well; a technique, an ability, usually acquired or learned, as opposed to abilities that are regarded as innate.
planner /ˈplænɚ/ (noun) — One who plans.
habit /ˈhæb.ɪt/ (noun) — An action performed on a regular basis.
conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/ (adjective) — Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.
muscle /ˈmʌs.əl/ (noun) — A contractile form of tissue which animals use to effect movement.
experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/ (noun) — A test under controlled conditions made to either demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of…
chaotic /keɪˈɑtɪk/ (adjective) — Filled with chaos.
awareness /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/ (noun) — The state or level of consciousness where sense data can be confirmed by an observer.
output /ˈaʊtpʊt/ (noun) — Production; quantity produced, created, or completed.
ugly /ˈʌɡli/ (adjective) — Displeasing to the eye; aesthetically unpleasing.
priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/ (noun) — An item's relative importance.
lifetime /ˈlaɪf.taɪm/ (noun) — The duration of the life of someone or something.
collect /ˈkɑlɪkt/ (verb) — To gather together; amass.
expand /ɪkˈspænd/ (verb) — To change (something) from a smaller form or size to a larger one; to spread out or lay open.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

end up (verb) — To bring to a conclusion.
figure out (verb) — To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
go back (verb) — To return to a place or state after having been there at a previous time.
fall apart (verb) — To disintegrate, to break into pieces.
go on /ˈɡoʊˌɒn/ (verb) — To continue in extent.
go through (verb) — To travel from one end of something to the other.
run through (verb) — To summarise briefly.
wake up /ˌweɪk ˈʌp/ (verb) — To stop sleeping; to awake.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 135 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, I'm. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, nutrition /njuːˈtɹɪʃ.ən/, anxious /ˈæŋkʃəs/, unconscious /ˌʌnˈkɑnʃəs/, passion /ˈpæʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, hierarchy /ˈhaɪ.ə.ɹɑː(ɹ).ki/, necessarily /ˌnɛs.əˈsɛɹ.ə.li/, occasionally /əˈkeɪʒənəli/

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 routine, skill, planner.

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
“Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true	used to go · used to the · used to is
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	you've been practicing · I've been using
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	you've noticed · we've become accustomed · haven't made
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	is exhausted · be finished · being manhandled

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

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

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

Grammar in this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?