Shadowing Practice: How To Stop Taking Things Personally - Learn English Speaking with Video

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I have good news and bad news.

It's not about you.

Imagine that somebody across the street waves at you, so you wave back to them.

But then you realize that they're waving at the guy behind you and you're so embarrassed that you want to evaporate.

You're going to replay this in the shower for the next three years.

Whereas the person who waved at you has already forgotten it by the time that they reached their friend.

See, the guy behind you never noticed.

Nobody on that street noticed either.

They weren't thinking about you.

Because everybody on that street was thinking about themselves.

That girl that you like who left your text on red three hours ago,

you've reread your own message four times looking for what you said wrong.

Meanwhile, she's in a dentist chair, or her dog just puked on her couch, or her phone died, or she saw it and thought,

I'll answer that later.

And then her brain did what every brain does with every text.

She forgot about it.

You're one of the 47 notifications that she got today wedged between a target receipt

and a reminder to renew her car registration.

Basically, it's not about you.

Or let's say the worst -case scenario is actually true.

She's not into you.

She doesn't want to see you.

She doesn't want to talk to you.

You can take that as a judgment on your character and value as a human being,

or you can realize that she has a vast network of internal values and associations that she's made,

and for whatever reason, your unique combination of traits

and behaviors does not stimulate the correct sequence of stimuli in her hypothalamus to trigger a conscious experience of arousal.

You didn't do anything wrong.

She didn't do anything wrong it was just never going to happen anyway, and it was always outside of your control.

Basically, it's still not about you.

Or how about this?

Your friend bails on your birthday dinner an hour before.

He doesn't even bother to text you an apology.

You feel angry, offended, humiliated.

How could you care about someone who clearly doesn't give two shits back?

You feel bad about yourself, and you feel even worse about them.

And you realize you are not a priority for them.

That perhaps they aren't even capable of making another human being a priority at all.

That perhaps they see all relationships as highly transactional, unsentimental, and conditional on getting something of value out of another person.

You realize that you opted into this dynamic yourself, whether consciously or unconsciously, and

that your naive romantic notions of a burgeoning bromance were premature at best and completely delusional at worst.

You realize that this

so -called friend who has ghosted you on the most important day of the year was never actually a friend at all.

They were only imagined to be a friend, and that they are likely suffering from the loneliness

and isolation of their emotionally siloed life far more than you ever will from having one fewer people at a birthday dinner.

Basically, you realize it's not about you. Or this.

You give a toast at your brother's wedding, and your voice cracks like you're 13.

You lose your place, you say um 11 times, and then you sit down certain that the whole room thinks that you're a fucking idiot.

Your face is flush with embarrassment, and you just want to curl up behind the DJ booth and die.

Yet research finds that fewer than a quarter of the people notice our most embarrassing moments.

The truth is, nobody fucking cares.

They are just happy to be at a wedding.

Happy the bride and groom are going to have a life together.

Happy that the dinner is four courses and all paid for.

Happy that they are going to get to dance to YMCA later

and hopefully make out with one of the bridesmaids behind the bar.

Happy that they are going to have an excuse to cancel all of their plans tomorrow when they have a hangover.

By the time you sit down, they have already forgotten that you even gave a speech.

Because it's not about you.

Or you find out your friends planned a weekend trip to Joshua Tree and you weren't in the group chat.

I mean, this one stings because it does feel like a verdict.

But group trips get planned by whoever happened to be at brunch that day.

Someone said, hey, we should go.

And four people said yes.

Someone made a chat and nobody stopped to audit the guest list.

And sure, maybe you weren't loved enough to be thought of in that moment.

Maybe they don't think of you as their bestest friend in the universe.

Maybe they don't pine for your presence in every free moment when you're not around.

Maybe they even find you to be a little bit needy, self -conscious, and exhausting.

Maybe one of the four guys actually secretly kind of doesn't like you.

Maybe they've actually known each other much longer than they've known you, and they pine for the days when they were a valiant foursome,

off on their own together.

Maybe they couldn't be bothered to invite other people, and they just didn't even think anything of it.

Basically, maybe it's not about you.

Or you get fired.

HR is in the room, there's a box for your stuff, and it feels like the most personal judgment imaginable.

They looked at you and they decided, this guy's not worth it.

But in truth, layoffs get decided in spreadsheets by people who have never heard your voice.

They don't recognize your name, and they certainly don't give a shit if you have a stellar personality or not.

A VP needed to cut 12 % of costs before the earnings call, and your salary was a sell in column F.

Congratulations, you get three months severance and a new LinkedIn profile picture.

But let's say it's even worse.

Let's say that you actually do fucking suck at your job, and you're fired for performance, and your manager is sick of your shit,

and his manager is breathing down his neck telling him to run a tighter ship.

So guess what?

You're done.

You're gone.

And it hurts.

It hurts to realize that you weren't good enough at that role to make the cut.

But maybe, maybe it's not just a lost job.

Maybe it's a market signal.

Maybe you were not right for that role to begin with.

Maybe it didn't suit your skill set or your personality or your interests, or you were never really motivated to do a good job anyway.

Maybe you lacked the enthusiasm necessary to excel.

Maybe you went into the wrong career to begin with and never stopped to question why.

Maybe this is actually that opportunity to realize

that you have never properly assessed what you're great at and what you're not great at.

Maybe, just maybe, this is the best thing that has ever happened to you professionally.

And while it is technically about you, it's also not really about you.

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It's about what you're best at and leveraging those skills to create the most enriching life possible.

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So really quick, before we talk more about how it's not about you, let's talk about me.

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This video is sponsored by Veyr.

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Now, a lot of you guys have been commenting, asking me about my watches, And I'm very excited to announce that for the first time,

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one of the watch brands that I wear has decided to sponsor a video.

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And they were kind enough to send through a bunch of awesome watches for me to try on

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and to show off to you guys.

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So Veer is really interesting because it was started by two friends back in 2016

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because they wanted one watch for surfing before work and also for work itself.

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They didn't want to have to switch when they went from the ocean into the office.

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And by 2018, they were assembling watches right here in the United States out of California, Arizona, and Alabama.

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Now here is what actually sold me on wearing it.

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The crown screw down so you twist it shut and you stop thinking about water.

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It's water resistant and Veyr backs it with an actual waterproof warranty.

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Now if it ever lets water in while sealed properly they fix it or replace it.

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The crystal is sapphire.

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It's the same scratch resistant glass that you see on watches five times the price.

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So Veyr was cool enough to let me pick any watch from their entire collection

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and I picked this one because of the really unique orange face.

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You know it's on brand guys.

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The whole book is bright orange

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so I felt like I needed a bright orange watch to blind you guys with when I'm sitting here doing YouTube videos.

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So check out Veer through the link in my description.

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Go to www .veerwatches .com slash Mark Manson.

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And if you buy a watch, you will get a free watch roll, which is normally worth $59.

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It's super cool.

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It's great for traveling.

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Very nice.

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But you can only get it if you buy a watch through my link in the description below.

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Back to the video.

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Then let's say your partner cheats on you.

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Of everything on this list, this one probably feels the most about you.

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You weren't enough.

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You weren't hot enough.

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You weren't fun enough.

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You weren't present enough.

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You weren't loving enough.

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But the infidelity research points the other direction.

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The best predictor of whether someone will cheat is whether they've cheated before.

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A 2017 study that followed people across multiple relationships found

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that the people who cheated in one relationship were three times more likely to cheat in the next one.

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New partner, same result.

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The common denominator is the person doing the cheating, not the person being cheated on.

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Personality research finds the same pattern.

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People who score high in narcissism, low in conscientiousness, and who get uncomfortable when intimacy gets real are the ones who end up straying.

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They brought those traits into the relationship.

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You didn't put them there.

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So once again, it isn't really about you.

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Or is it?

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Because you did contribute to the relationship.

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You chose to be with them.

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You believed them when they told you that they were committed.

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But here's the problem.

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Infidelity isn't meaningfully connected to the quality of the partner or the relationship.

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The psychologist Shirley Glass found that 56 % of men

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and 34 % of women who'd had affairs described their marriages as happy or very happy.

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They weren't fleeing a bad partner.

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Esther Perel, who has spent decades counseling couples after affairs, says that people who stray are usually looking for different versions of themselves,

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not a different partner.

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The version who isn't a tired parent with a mortgage, or the version who feels 25 and full of energy again.

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Sure, maybe there were problems.

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Maybe you've drifted and let yourself go.

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Maybe the sex has gone stale.

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Every long relationship has problems.

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But a problem in a relationship leaves you with a bunch of honest options.

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You can bring it up and work on it.

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You can go to therapy.

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You can leave.

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Cheating is the option that lets them get what they want without having the hard conversations, without doing any of the work.

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Choosing it takes a specific type of cowardice, and that cowardice was in them long before you showed up,

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and there was nothing you could have done to fix it.

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Your partner was running from something inside of themselves, and you happened to live in the house and be with them when they ran.

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Could you have done more?

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Of course you could have.

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Could things have been salvaged?

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Yeah, probably.

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But is it about you?

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No. Honestly, it is about them.

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Now, you might be saying this is getting a little bit ridiculous.

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I mean, Mark, are you saying that nothing is about me?

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Nothing is personal?

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Isn't that just avoiding responsibility or my problems?

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No, actually, you are responsible for everything in your life.

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You are responsible for everything you do.

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And so in that sense, everything that you do is about you.

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But similarly, everything everybody else does is primarily about them.

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It's not personal towards you.

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It's not about you.

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That girl that never got back to you, it's about her.

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It's not about you.

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It's not personal.

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That friend who ditched you, it's about them, not about you.

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It's really not that personal.

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The job you lost, it's about them, not about you.

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The cheating spouse at the end of the day, even if you were a shitty partner, it was about them and the choices that they made.

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They chose to handle it that way.

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It's about them.

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So why do we resist this idea?

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Why do we keep telling ourselves that everything is actually about us?

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I think we do this because we'd have to accept the fact

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that nobody is thinking about us as much as we think they are.

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Because believing that every slight aimed at you is about you requires a certain degree of self -importance

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that I think underneath it all feels kind of good.

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To take everything personally, you're assuming that somebody with their own job, their own family, their own credit card debt

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and weird rash spent part of their day masterminding how to make you feel like shit, I mean, come on.

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They didn't.

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They don't really fucking care.

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See, the twisted fucked up thing about taking everything personally is

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that each grievance makes you the main character of the entire world.

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If your friend skipped your birthday to hurt you, then you mattered enough to be someone worth hurting.

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If a girl broke your heart because you said the wrong thing, then it means that your words matter enough to end a relationship over.

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The truth is, she just wasn't that into you.

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And being wronged feels much better than being irrelevant.

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Psychologists who study people with chronic senses of victimhood find

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that they ruminate on old slights and crave having their pain recognized by others.

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The slight becomes almost like a little trophy that they can show and display to others.

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It's proof that they count, that they matter.

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The psychologist David Elkind calls it the imaginary audience, the conviction that everybody is watching and judging you at all times.

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Kids have it, teenagers especially have it, and they agonize about it, but you're supposed to outgrow it.

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But the truth is, plenty of adults never outgrow it, they just get better at hiding it.

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When one unanswered text ruins your whole weekend, the 12 -year -old who got laughed at in the cafeteria

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is still in there inside of you throwing a fucking pity parade, imagining that everything everyone else does leads back to you.

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No matter how fucked up the situation, the reason for someone's behavior lives inside that person.

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Their fears, their habits, their bad week, their dead phone.

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Aaron Beck, the founder of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy,

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had a name for a habit of assuming that you caused events that had little or nothing to do with you.

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He called it personalization, and he classified it as a cognitive distortion.

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Now, the fix that cognitive behavioral therapists use is very simple.

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When something stings, you're supposed to come up with three explanations for it that don't involve you in any way.

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They don't have to be true, they just need to be possible.

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And when part of the mess is yours, you can own that part.

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If you were a crappy partner, great, fix that for your next relationship.

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If you were really bad at your job, then you should probably figure out why.

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Now, all of this can sound a little bleak, like nobody's thinking about you that much,

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or your friends aren't lying awake wondering how you're doing every day,

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or the guests at your brother's wedding forgot your toast as soon as the conga line started.

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But actually, flip it around.

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Because if nobody is watching that closely, if nobody cares, nobody is grading you either.

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Nobody is actually judging.

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You can take the salsa class and be fucking terrible at it.

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You can start a YouTube channel and have nobody watch it.

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You can ask the dumb question in a meeting and actually learn something new.

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You can wear the weird sweater that gets you strange looks on the train.

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Nobody cares.

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Nobody's going to remember.

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The audience that you've been performing for your whole life is mostly empty seats.

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And the few people

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that are sitting there are probably too busy worrying about their own performance to notice the quality of yours.

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So no, it isn't about you.

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Which means you get to go be whoever you want to be.

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So go be it.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “How To Stop Taking Things Personally”. This video has 250 sentences and 2846 words to shadow. The speech runs for 14:08. The speaker talks fast, about 201 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% 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
cheat verb	/ˈt͡ʃiːt/	To violate rules in order to gain, or attempt to gain, advantage from a situation.
cognitive adjective	/ˈkɑɡ.nɪ.tɪv/	Relating to the part of mental functions that deals with logic, as opposed to affective which deals with emotions.
psychologist noun	/ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/	An expert in the field of psychology.
whoever	/huˈɛvɚ/	Who ever: an emphatic form of who.
priority noun	/pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/	An item's relative importance.
bother verb	/ˈbɑðɚ/	To annoy, to disturb, to irritate; to be troublesome to, to make trouble for.
fewer	/ˈfjuː.ɚ/	Less; a smaller amount of something non-integral commonly expressed as an integer
judgment noun	/ˈd͡ʒʌd͡ʒ.mənt/	The act of judging.
habit noun	/ˈhæb.ɪt/	An action performed on a regular basis.
slight adjective	/slaɪt/	Minor; small in amount
twist verb	/twɪst/	To turn the ends of something, usually thread, rope etc., in opposite directions, often using force.
conscious adjective	/ˈkɑn.ʃəs/	Alert, awake; with one's mental faculties active.
pine noun	/paɪn/	Any coniferous tree of the genus Pinus.
sponsor noun	/ˈspɒn.səː/	A person or organization with some sort of responsibility for another person or organization, especially where the responsibility has a religious, legal, or…
resistant adjective	/ɹəˈzɪstənt/	Which makes resistance or offers opposition.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Meaning
sit down verb	To assume a sitting position from a standing position.
check out verb	To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
come up with verb	To manage to produce, deliver, or present (something) by inventing, creating, thinking of, or obtaining it.
end up verb	To bring to a conclusion.
figure out verb	To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce.
find out verb	To discover, as by asking or investigating.
get back to verb	Return to (an activity)
make out with verb	See make out, with.

Sentences worth repeating

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

They weren't thinking about you.
Basically, it's not about you.
She doesn't want to see you.
Could you have done more?
Isn't that just avoiding responsibility or my problems?

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on	have been commenting · you've been performing
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	has already forgotten · has ghosted · have already forgotten
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	were only imagined · weren't loved · be bothered
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	person who waved · someone who clearly · friend who has

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 66 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, weren't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: bother /ˈbɑðɚ/, breathe /bɹiːð/, booth /buθ/, underneath /ˌʌndɚˈniθ/, enthusiasm /ɪnˈθuziæzəm/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: conscious /ˈkɑn.ʃəs/, explanation /ˌɛkspləˈneɪʃən/, congratulations /kənˌɡɹæt͡ʃəˈleɪʃ(ə)nz/, registration /ˌɹɛd͡ʒ.ɪˈstɹeɪ.ʃən/, notion /ˈnoʊʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: psychologist /ˌsaɪˈkɑl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, priority /pɹaɪˈɒɹɪti/, behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, primarily /ˈpɹaɪ.mə.ɹə.li/, ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/

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 cheat, cognitive, psychologist.

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 Stop Taking Things Personally - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

Key vocabulary in this video

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Sentences worth repeating

Grammar in this video

Pronunciation to watch

How to practise with this video

What is the Shadowing Technique?