Shadowing Practice: How To Rewire Your Brain | Andrew Huberman Motivation - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I do believe, however, that the best work, our most creative and best work comes from a love of craft.
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But sometimes in order to find what you truly love, you have to be scared into setting off on a path to find it.
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so i think a lot of it is just having the
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the knowledge of self right what did the oracle say know
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thyself the knowledge of self to really think okay like what are my strengths do i like to learn
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if i'm interested in something do i have a voracious appetite maybe if you're a person with less energy.
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Maybe you're more reflective or you like to journal or you need more time to process.
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I think turning what often appear as weaknesses into strengths is really possible.
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And then I do think that we are all each endowed with some unique gift.
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I really believe in this.
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It's not mystical for me.
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I think that we all have some wiring of our brains that's very similar
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and we all have some unique wiring based on our genetics and our experience.
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And I just thought, I'm going to keep paying attention to what fills my body with energy.
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Well, in my case, it took a fear circumstance, fear of becoming a permanent failure to motivate immense change.
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And that was that circumstance.
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I do believe, however, that the best work, our most creative and best work comes from a love of craft.
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But sometimes in order to find what you truly love, you have to be scared into setting off on a path to find it.
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And yeah, and that goes for relationships too.
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Sometimes to find the right relationship or relationships, it could be friendships, romantic relationships, et cetera.
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One has to be like deathly afraid of having to remain in the relationship that you're in enough to leave.
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Neuroplasticity is actually a feature of the nervous system, the brain, throughout our entire lifespan.
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The rules change a little bit in terms of how you rewire your brain.
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But if the question is, can a person change?
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Can you learn new things?
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Can you unlearn certain patterns?
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Can you overcome traumas at any age?
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The answer is absolutely, categorically, yes.
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How?
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Well, it's very clear that as a child until about age 25, more or less, just passive experience will shape the brain for better or worse.
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After about age 25, and again, these are not strict cutoffs, we can change our brain,
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but what's required is a marked shift in the neurochemical environment under which something happens.
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So one of the reasons why any traumatic event will forever be remembered,
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although by the way, you can remove some of the emotional load of that.
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Trauma does not have to be traumatic forever, is because when we see or experience something very intense of a fearful nature,
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there's the release of certain what we call neuromodulators,
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things like epinephrine, adrenaline, and other neuromodulators that cause a state shift in our body and brain.
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And the nervous system recognizes this as unusual.
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And as a consequence, in the subsequent days, there's reordering of the connections so that the brain can prepare for that event should it happen again.
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This is why we have what's called one trial learning.
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You go to a certain location, something terrible happens there.
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You will forever associate that location with something terrible.
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But there are tools, therapy and other tools,
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that can allow the emotional load to be removed from that so that you could go to that location and feel calm, no fear whatsoever.
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The good news is you can also learn anything you want to learn, provided there's a shift in this neurochemical environment.
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This is why when we are very interested and focused on something, two of the main requirements for neuroplasticity,
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we have to be alert and we have to be focused.
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We can't learn passively as adults.
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We can't just play a lecture about AI and large language models or neuroscience in the room,
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and then the knowledge doesn't just sink in by osmosis.
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But if we pay attention and we're alert when we pay attention.
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There's a shift in the neurochemicals associated with that attention.
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What we call the catecholamines.
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It's three molecules, dopamine, epinephrine, and norepinephrine, all which cause an increase in alertness, all which cause an increase in focus,
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a tightening of our visual field and our auditory field.
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So like cones of attention is one way to think about it.
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And then it sets in motion a bunch of biological processes such that if we get adequate sleep that night, maybe the next night as well.
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There's reordering of neural connections so that that knowledge, that new experience is consolidated in your brain.
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You are forever changed as a consequence of that experience.
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So when we hear that.. the brain is constantly changing.
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Everything that we encounter changes our brain.
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That's not true.
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Why would the brain change unless it needed to?
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As a child, the brain is basically a template for change.
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It's trying to understand the environment and make predictions.
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And so that's true.
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Neuroplasticity is a cardinal feature of childhood and adolescence and the teen years.
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Just think about the music you listened to when you were a teen.
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No other music will ever have as much significance.
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And that's because as a teen, your body is flooded with hormones and neuromodulators.
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The amount of meaning that comes from now seemingly trivial events when you're a teenager or adolescent is immense.
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That song meant so much, and it's because of the neurochemical milieu it creates in you.
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But as an adult, it takes a stronger stimulus, as we say.
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If you wanted to become a tidy person, I would encourage you, here would be one, let's just say neuroscience -supported approach,
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would be to write out one page about what a tidy person you really are.
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You'll know that's a lie, right?
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And then to look at it and realize that in many ways, if you just replace tidy with, you know, messy at any location,
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it'd probably be the exact same story.
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And so what you're really talking about here is just a default that your nervous system is running.
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And if you were to just swap the words, would you feel differently or do differently? on the one hand you'd say,
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no, that's kind of trivial, but I bet you the practice of writing
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it out would forever interrupt your notion of like just going to set something down.
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You'd be like, ah, now you have something to kind of disrupt the habit.
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Cause so much of habit disruption that you'll look like, some people say, oh, you flick a,
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you know, rubber band on your wrist or something like that.
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There's nothing special about the rubber band.
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There's nothing special about the pain on your wrist or that you put a sticky note.
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We know sticky notes work for about one day.
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Why don't sticky notes work?
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Why don't reminders on the mirror work?
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Because they don't have enough salience.
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They're not new.
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They're not different.
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The nervous system only changes if something is new and different.
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So anyway, we could talk a lot about habit formation, but fear works, but so does disrupting the story.
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How do you disrupt the story?
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You essentially give the opposite story and you think, well, that's just lying to myself.
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But neurally, it makes sense because the nervous system, again, likes to be very economical, likes to do everything with the minimum amount of energetic expenditure.
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and to change anything requires attention and attention is expensive.
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Attention is expensive.
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And also I would say, as I'm kind of rambling all this, things are going very well for you.
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So you actually don't have any reason.
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Tidy enough, you have two choices.
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You can either start to be tidy now or you can be successful enough that you can hire some assistants.
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And I actually think, I say this in all seriousness, I think that one has to ask like,
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where is my attention and neural real estate best devoted.
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I think about this every day.
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I mean, we are living in a war of attention.
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I wake up in the morning and I can be a consumer or a creator.
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If I reach for my phone, I'm a consumer.
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If I go to my journal, I'm a creator.
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My advice to anyone who wants to be successful in any
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domain is to do things away from where you broadcast and then take it to that broadcast.
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I mean, take your real life to Instagram and be very cautious about taking Instagram to your real life.
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Does that make sense?
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If you look at successful people, they're doing things away from the platforms and putting them on the platforms.
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Goal setting and habit formation, fear setting is often one of the best tools.
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You spend some time, maybe five minutes or
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so thinking about all the terrible things that are going to happen if you don't actually accomplish your goals.
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Nobody likes to do this, but guess what?
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It turns out to be pretty darn effective.
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Really?
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I know.
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It's really frustrating that this is the case. But again,
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you know, that has a lot to do with the way that the human brain is wired and likes to rewire itself.
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Now, that said, it is important to envision goals.
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Visualizing goals in detail, writing them out, in some cases talking about them, although we can discuss that,
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why that might not be the best idea in every circumstance, can be very beneficial because it's hard to conceive something that you can't imagine.
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But I think when people hear that visualizing goals or visualizing outcomes is critical,
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we sometimes forget that we don't always know what the end goal is.
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Sometimes we have to break this up into milestones.
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This is where I think
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Rick Rubin, even though he's not a formally trained scientist, has drawn a lot of interest for his work on creativity,
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which is, you know, Rick is about largely, you know, sensing the kind of energetic pull of an idea
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and being able to explore that without too much self -judgment or filtering or thinking about how it's going to be received.
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In other words, that the metamorphosis that leads to great music, great poetry, great scientific discovery,
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podcasts, finance, companies that one is building, etc. is a series of iterations that occur on the time course of about a day.
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And so we can't always imagine the end or the end product as the outcome.
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This is why I said university is easy compared to other goals, because the end is a degree, right?
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So you pick up your diploma.
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Whereas in other areas, it's far more mysterious often.
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Now, visualization, I think, can be very powerful
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but perhaps what's more powerful is to learn the brain and body state that best serves the work you're going to do.
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So for instance, if I'm going to do some writing and right now I'm working on a book,
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it's largely done, but I'm writing some bonus chapters.
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Unless I'm hyper motivated to do that when I sit down and hyper focused,
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I'll spend two, three minutes just closing my eyes, focusing on my breathing.
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It's meditation of sorts, but what I tell myself is if I can't focus on my breathing for two or three minutes,
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how in the world am I going to focus on writing for two or three hours?
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That sort of thing.
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The other thing that I want to make sure I don't forget is I mentioned
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that telling people your goals oftentimes can be useful if it stimulates a little bit of fear like you have some accountability,
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but we also know that because of the affiliative nature of people,
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in particular people that support us, there is this danger, by definition,
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changing what you're doing in order to outdo somebody else or something else.
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And so you're morphing your creation in order to kind of overcome something.
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I was also exposed to this incredible world of DIY,
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like take your passion, take your circumstance and pick a craft and just document stuff.
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And so in many ways, like what happened at Embarcadero and what happened in skateboarding and, but the, what I saw was if you love something
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and you want to learn as much as possible about it and you love the culture around it,
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you do have to learn how to sort out the untoward elements.
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Don't get yourself into trouble, but you take that energy and I just took it to academics.
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You know, earlier you and I were talking about if you have, and I'm borrowing this phrase from one of my heroes,
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Martha Beck, who's a wonderful person and teacher, such wisdom, and she calls it an interest -based attention system.
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Some people might call it ADHD, but have you ever noticed that even people, and we know this from the scientific literature,
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people, kids, adults with ADHD, when they're so -called ADHD,
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when they are doing something they really love, they're like a laser they're not going to peel off that.
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Their attention is like level 11 out of 10.
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So I took that energy that I've always had in me for fish, for tropical birds, skateboarding, punk rock music, eventually it was biology.
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And I just went, okay, here are my chips.
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I'm all in, all in.
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But the goal has always been and remains to take what I learn and share it.
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Because the The real joy in doing anything, for me anyway, is the ability to share in that knowledge or in that experience.
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And so those early years were really choppy and really dangerous, you know, frankly.
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But then when I started a laboratory and decided, yeah, I'm gonna study human stress, let's go get VR of stressful circumstances.
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There's a quote about him that resonates a lot.
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And the quote I think is, you know, an early teacher of his said, Oliver will go far, provided he does not go too far.
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And so, you know, you have to be careful, right?
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These adventures, leaving school, you can't be haphazard about it.
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If you look at the broad arc, it's highly nonlinear, but there's a common thread through all of it, which is this desire to learn,
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curiosity, desire to share, intensity.
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And when I'm involved in any one thing, and I recommend that if people are involved in any one thing,
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if it's podcasting or sport or video games or math or AI or program, whatever it is, skateboarding, whatever it is,
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that you can't be haphazard in that world.
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Because forward progress, even if you change things over time, is the consequence of taking that inherent uniqueness that we each have
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and whatever level of intensity we have and making sure that you do take steps forward.
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And what I've learned is as a child, as an adolescent, And as an adult, there are all these traps along the way.
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There are all these shoots down to failure and destruction.
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And you have to be very, very thoughtful.
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And so you can't be reckless.
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As I've gotten older, I realized that, you know, the best things in life,
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success in particular, but also hard times are best shared with other people.
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And the best way to make friends really is twofold.
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A friend of mine once said this.
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He said, you know, people with interests are interesting.
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So if you're interested in things, you know, going and interacting with those things, even if they're within books, etc., have interests, genuine interests.
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Don't just learn things for learning's sake, but just have interests.
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And then the other is that if you are not the sort of person for whom,
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like, friendships are just pouring over you and people want your time, then be of service.
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You know, this notion of be the person who sends the good morning text.
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Now, if somebody never reciprocates, well then, okay, maybe you look elsewhere and send your energy elsewhere.
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But be the person who checks up on somebody, on a family member or friend on a regular basis.
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Be the person of service and you can volunteer, you can help people in any number of ways.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Rewire Your Brain”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: brain, attention, learn. This video has 203 sentences and 2752 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:53. The speaker talks at a natural 173 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 85% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| tidy adjective | /ˈtaɪ.di/ | Arranged neatly and in order. |
| habit noun | /ˈhæb.ɪt/ | An action performed on a regular basis. |
| circumstance noun | /ˈsɝ.kəmˌstæns/ | Something which is related to, or in some way affects, a fact or event. |
| wire noun | /ˈwaɪɚ/ | Metal formed into a thin, even thread, now usually by being drawn through a hole in a steel die. |
| craft noun | /ˈkɹæft/ | Ability, skillfulness, especially skill in making plans and carrying them into execution; dexterity in managing affairs, adroitness, practical cunning… |
| consequence noun | /ˈkɑn.sɪ.kwəns/ | An effect; something that follows a cause as a result. |
| sticky adjective | /ˈstɪki/ | Tending to stick; able to adhere via the drying of a viscous substance. |
| disrupt verb | /dɪsˈɹʌpt/ | To throw into confusion or disorder. |
| elsewhere adverb | /ˈɛlsˌʍɛɹ/ | Synonym of somewhere else: in, at, or to some other place. |
| broadcast noun | /ˈbɹɔːd(ˌ)kɑːst/ | A transmission of a radio or television programme intended to be received by anyone with a receiver. |
| friendship noun | /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/ | The condition of being friends. |
| outcome noun | /ˈaʊtkʌm/ | That which is produced or occurs as a result of an event or process. |
| alert adjective | /əˈlɝt/ | Attentive; awake; on guard. |
| overcome verb | /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/ | To surmount (a physical or abstract obstacle); to prevail over, to get the better of. |
| breathe verb | /bɹiːð/ | To draw air into (inhale), and expel air from (exhale), the lungs in order to extract oxygen and excrete waste gases. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| check up on verb | To examine or inspect something in order to determine its condition; to check out. |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. |
| sort out verb | To clarify by reviewing mentally. |
| step forward verb | to take one or more steps forward, especially in response to a request for identification |
| write out verb | To write at full length or in expanded form. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- It's not mystical for me.
- Can you learn new things?
- Can you unlearn certain patterns?
- Can you overcome traumas at any age?
- How do you disrupt the story?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | be remembered · be removed · is consolidated |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has drawn · have you ever noticed · I've always had |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | anyone who wants · person who sends · person who checks |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 58 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, don't, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: breathe /bɹiːð/, thread /ˈθɹɛd/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/, deathly /ˈdɛθli/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: friendship /ˈfɹɛn(d)ʃɪp/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/, passion /ˈpæʃən/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/
- Long words — get the stress right: differently /ˈdɪf.ə.ɹənt.li/, intensity /ɪnˈtɛnsɪti/, energetic /ˌɛn.əɹˈdʒɛt.ɪk/, adolescent /ˌæd.əˈlɛs.ənt/, unusual /ʌnˈjuːʒ(u)əl/
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 tidy, habit, circumstance.
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.