Shadowing Practice: How to Train Your Brain to Enjoy Hard Work | Andrew Huberman - Learn English Speaking with Video
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I think we need to get comfortable as a culture in trying to understand our species
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and how we work that the early stages of hard work and focus are going to feel like agitation,
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stress, and confusion because that's the norepinephrine and adrenaline system kicking in.
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I realized this is it, you know, it's now or never.
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It really was one of those moments, you know, you hear about those moments,
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but it was me realizing I'm living in this squat where I've got a pet ferret, my girlfriend's gone,
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she broke up with me she was smart enough to break up with me
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i'm getting in fights i'm working at a bagel shop i barely make ends meet and at
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that point i just made the decision i just said okay look
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i'm i'm not gonna be a professional athlete i think
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i'm pretty good at memorizing things i think i have an interest in people i just decided to do school
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that was the track so like some people pick the military
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because it's like if you you know what to expect at least in terms of you the passages
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that you're going to go through.
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And for me, that was school.
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And so I decided to get back in school.
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I moved into a studio apartment by myself.
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I quit partying completely.
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I didn't go to parties.
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I got really serious about fitness.
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So I just started running and lifting weights and I studied.
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But you constructed that kind of structure for yourself.
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Yeah, I think I was really afraid.
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And at that point, fear was the best motivator for me.
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I just basically worked like crazy and it's interesting
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because i didn't have a mentor or someone to bring me to
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that but once i started doing
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that you know there was one professor in particular who took note
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he was like oh you know you seem really interested in this stuff
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and i was like yeah
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because he was teaching me about depression schizophrenia neurochemicals i thought
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i was totally turned on by the world of neuroscience
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this one guy harry carlisle he was teaching me about thermal regulation
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and how the brain works
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and how receptors in the skin relate to perceptions in the mind and he also had a deep sensitivity to mental disease.
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You know, he gave me an opportunity to work in his lab.
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And at some point he told me, if you go to graduate school, they'll actually pay you to do science.
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And what ended up happening at that point was I hit a brick wall
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because I had a lot of resentment toward my dad.
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I felt, oh, here's my dad.
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He was a scientist.
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He had, you know, left us, all this kind of thing.
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And I realized if I didn't do this, if I didn't take this opportunity, it was going to be the most foolish thing ever.
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What am I going to do?
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My parents, 20 years old at that point.
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So I just made the decision, I'm going to get a PhD, I'm going to become a professor, I'm going to get tenure,
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I'm going to be like this guy, you know, this guy who has looked like he had a pretty good life to me.
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And so that's pretty much how I spent the last 25 years of my life is doing experiments.
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It worked out.
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It worked out.
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Well, as a neuroscientist, I mean, you're your own patient.
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I mean, the fact
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that you were able to turn your life around in such a dramatic fashion
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and do it essentially through sheer will and being available when those mentors showed up from the early therapist.
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It sounds like that guy almost saved your life.
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He absolutely saved my life.
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He gave me the book, Wherever You Go, There You Are, the John Kabat -Zinn book.
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And he said, no pressure, but if you can develop a mindfulness practice where you can sit still for like 10 minutes a day,
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it'll serve you very well.
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So I started doing
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that like he could have told me
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he could have told me to hang out of a window
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by my ankles like what could i do each day from waking up to going to sleep
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that would serve my mental health
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and my productivity well right yeah i owe him a tremendous amount and especially
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because he wasn't just in the psychoanalytic theory
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he also was like cognitive behavioral he understood the power of practices not just discussing issues it's absolutely clear
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that the nervous system can change in response to experience so this thing we call neural plasticity is really that
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It's the brain's ability to modify itself in response to experience.
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So the brain loves to be able to just do things,
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pick up coffee cups and drink and walk and talk and do things and not put much energy into it.
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When we decide to focus, what the brain really does is it switches on a set of circuits and it's trying to understand duration,
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how long something's going to last, path, what's going to happen, and outcome, what ultimately is going to happen.
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So duration, path, and outcome.
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And so the brain can change in adulthood and it can change provided that there's an emphasis on some perceptual event.
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So in other words, if you want to change your brain as an adult, let's say you want to be less anxious,
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you want to learn a new language, you want to be more functional in some way, presumably.
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The key thing is to bring focus to some particular perception of something that's happening during the learning process.
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And the reason for that is that there's a neurochemical system involving acetylcholine
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and it comes from these two little nuclei down in the
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base of the brain called nucleus basalis all day long you're doing things in a reflexive way
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but when you do something
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and you think about it very intensely acetylcholine is released from basalis at the precise neurons
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that were involved in that behavior and it marks those for change during sleep or during deep rest later
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so for people that want to change their brain the power of focus is really the entry point and
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the ability to access deep rest and sleep
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because most people don't realize this but neuroplasticity is triggered by intense focus
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but neuroplasticity occurs during deep sleep and rest
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and we can talk about how to optimize those different brain functions right i mean this idea of flow is
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so much in the vernacular now and my sense is
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that people are trying to measure their level of engagement against
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some sort of theoretical idea of what it's like to be in that flow state.
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And if they're not experiencing it, they feel like they're doing it wrong or they feel guilty or they beat themselves up.
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And for me, a lot of it is just hard work.
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Like right now, I'm trying to finish this book
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and I should have been working on this book for like the last nine months, right?
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And I just couldn't get it together.
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And then about 10 days ago, we had a meeting and we established this deadline at July 10th to turn this thing in.
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And it was like a switch got flicked and I went all in and it's all I can think about now.
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And in fact, everything else feels like extraneous and a distraction.
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I just want to get back so I can focus on this thing.
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And 10 days ago, I couldn't get myself into that position.
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And it's made me think about what is going on in my brain that it's such a drastic state change.
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And what did I do to switch that
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while a deadline was imposed upon me? and whatever happened neurochemically with that set in motion,
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like a chain reaction of events that got me into the chair.
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And once I began the project, for me, it's all about like momentum, right?
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It's like to start getting to the starting line and beginning is so hard.
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Like I will just go forever without doing it.
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And then I'm in, and then I'm all in 110%.
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And I'm like, why can't I just, why can't I be that person who just worked on it,
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you know, an hour and a half every day for the last three months.
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None of us would expect to walk into the gym and do our PR lift or performer, go do something without warming up.
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The brain also needs to warm up and start to hone in which circuits are gonna be active.
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And it's unreasonable for us to think, oh, I've got an hour, I'm gonna plop down and write beautifully for an hour of my best work.
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We need to accept that there's a period of agitation and stress that accompanies the dropping into these highly concentrated states.
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And it's incredible, because if you think about sensation, perception, feeling, thought, and behavior,
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actually the way to control our nervous system and feel the way we want to feel is to run that backwards.
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Behavior, thoughts.
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So if you change your behavior, then generally your thoughts, your feelings, and your perceptions change.
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And everyone tries to come at it from the other end.
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And I really think that if neuroscience has anything to offer, it's some understanding of what the underlying chemicals and neural circuits are.
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The human species can start to understand that our feelings and our thoughts and our memories and all that is very complicated,
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but that when behaviors are very concrete and they are the control panel for the rest of it, I don't want to relegate feelings.
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Feelings are extremely important.
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I don't want to relegate perception.
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They're extremely important.
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Like it's easy to say, like, just move.
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You got to take the action.
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But a lot of people still, despite understanding that, intellectualizing that are unable to,
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you know, basically act as if.
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Yeah, I think we're dealing with two general categories of people who have problems with motivation and focus.
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And we think, well, I need to calm myself enough to move forward.
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And then other people say, well, no, you need to kind of ramp yourself up to move forward.
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Here's the way I conceptualize it based on the data that I'm aware of.
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Some people are just hypo aroused.
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They're just not motivated enough.
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Some people are so agitated, the monkey mind, they've got too many things going on and they're thinking, okay, they're trying to sit down and write.
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I suffer from this.
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And I'm feeling like, wait, I've also got this person I need to connect with.
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And I'm kind of being drawn off course by not being able to put the blinders on.
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For people that have that issue, I think learning how to calm the nervous system is very powerful.
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A lot of people talk about dopamine as this thing
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that you get when you publish the book or when you get the book deal or when something wonderful happens, like your child's born.
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And that's true.
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But dopamine's main role is to be released anytime you achieve a milestone or you think you're on the right path.
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And when the dopamine system is tethered to a particular pattern of focus, remember duration, path, and outcome.
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So it's like, okay, sit down, maybe you don't get much text out,
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but then the next day you get 800 words of really solid text and you feel good.
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Like, I'm into this.
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So my colleague, Carol Dweck, who popularized this theme, growth mindset, It's again a very misunderstood concept.
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It's the idea that we can change, so that's built into that.
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But the discovery of growth mindset was of these kids that actually really enjoyed
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doing problem sets that they knew they couldn't get right.
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But for them, they would get this like dopamine release from just focusing on the problem.
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They like doing puzzles they couldn't get right.
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It sounds crazy, but inevitably those kids are very good at puzzles
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and very good at math and on these kinds of things.
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I believe it was sort of a neuroscience lens on growth mindset would be
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that the agitation and stress that you feel at the beginning of something
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and when you're trying to lean into it and you can't focus is just a recognized gate.
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You have to pass that through that gate to get to the focus component.
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And then if you can reward the effort process, you really start to feel joy and low levels of excitement in the effort process.
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That's that buffering of adrenaline.
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That's that feeling like, yes, I've got a lot of adrenaline in my system, but I'm on the right path.
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It feels good to walk up this hill, so to speak.
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And I think the misunderstanding around how these circuits work has led to this idea that there's some secret entry point,
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maybe marked flow on the door and there's a trampoline up to
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that door and you just open that door and you're gonna be in it.
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And nothing could be further from the truth.
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And anyone who's done well in any career or athletic pursuit knows this.
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But unfortunately, there's a kind of obsession with the idea that it's all supposed to feel good.
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And it does feel good, but there's a whole staircase in which it feels kind of lousy.
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Yeah, I mean, the feel good aspect of that experience is very subtle.
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And I think in a kind of global way, what you're talking about is falling in love with the process.
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Like you have to push this gate open, which might require more effort than you're comfortable with.
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But once you push through, it is about, you know, that daily, the daily rigor and the tiny wins that you get from that.
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Rather than, you know, it's easy to, you know, you set a goal, but that goal becomes very abstract, right?
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And it's those tiny little things that you're getting done every day
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that bring you that internal satisfaction that are like calibrating that plasticity.
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Is that what you're saying?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Carol Dweck has talked about this, that positive self -talk is not the same thing as growth mindset
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because positive self -talk is almost always linked to the ultimate outcome.
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If I'm losing badly in something and I tell myself I'm doing great, I know that I'm lying.
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But the idea that you can self -reward the effort process is extremely powerful
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because what it means is that if you can recognize agitation, stress, and confusion as an entry point to where you eventually want to go.
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I do think that just that, even just mental recognition can allow people to pass through it more easily.
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Well, the why has to be deeper than that.
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I mean, the thing that I kind of always default to when I hit that breaking point or,
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you know, I'm training or I'm racing or whatever, and I'm at that stage where it's just like, I can't go any further.
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The first thing I do is I reflect inward on why I'm doing this to begin with.
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Like, what is the, you know, what is the value system that I'm trying to tap into?
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What is it that I'm trying to express?
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Like, what got me to this point?
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So it's a reminder.
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And then I just set, like, I just say, well, I'm just gonna get to the next lamppost or I'm gonna,
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you know, get to the next intersection or whatever it is.
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I break it down into the tiny, I'll quit after that.
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Like, the more I can just root myself in the present moment and distill it down into the tiniest of digestible chunks,
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that's the only way I can continue to move forward.
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And I've learned over time that the more I do that, then suddenly I'll find myself in a different mental, like it will shift, right?
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Just because I feel that way in that moment is not determinative of how I'm gonna feel 10 minutes later.
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And so to put this simply, one of the most powerful things that any person can do is to learn to control this idea of duration,
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path, and outcome and attach an internal sense of reward, just that you're doing well.
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To reward yourself mentally, just say, I'm doing well.
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I'm actually on the right path.
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To do that inside of the demands that come from the external world, the more often that we can self -reward some aspect of the process,
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provided it's in the right direction of what we're trying to achieve, the more energy we're going to have for that,
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the more focus we're going to have for that.
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So when I think about how to recover, I actually don't think about recovery as its own thing.
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I think about recovery as giving buoyancy or improving my ability to focus.
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So sleep is a turning off of these brain circuits that are thinking about what's happening next.
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The other thing is that just merely going into panoramic vision, say between a meeting, instead of looking at your phone,
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maybe you walk to the kitchen, just two seconds of what what I call deliberate decompression, where you just kind of let your mind go broader,
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will allow you to reset your focus much more intensely when you return to that book, as opposed to if you'd looked at your phone
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or engaged even in some other kind of deep duration path outcome type function of the brain.
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So when you start thinking about meditation, it's also valuable because a lot of meditation involves focusing on your breath.
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I actually think a lot of people are.. are spending out this ability.
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They're working too hard in the activities that are designed to reset them.
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Being just very adamant about my meditation practice.
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That's right.
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Because it's a letting go.
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We're so programmed to like force ourselves to do things or to like dive in with intentionality.
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But so much of this is more elusive than that.
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I mean, I didn't have the power of concentration.
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I hadn't read all the good books that gun high school students read growing up.
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I had to learn how to speak properly.
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I learned how to think properly and really learn how to commit to something
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that was very linear and at times was very painful.
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But over time, I got pretty good.
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And now I can do long stints of work without any breaks.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Train Your Brain to Enjoy Hard Work”. This video has 232 sentences and 3132 words to shadow. The speech runs for 15:45. The speaker talks fast, about 199 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 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 |
|---|---|---|
| outcome noun | /ˈaʊtkʌm/ | That which is produced or occurs as a result of an event or process. |
| circuit noun | /ˈsɝ.kɪt/ | The act of moving or revolving around, or as in a circle or orbit; a revolution |
| reward noun | /ɹɪˈwɔɹd/ | Something of value given in return for an act. |
| perception noun | /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/ | The organisation, identification and interpretation of sensory information. |
| duration noun | /dʒʊˈɹeɪ.ʃən/ | An amount of time or a particular time interval. |
| mindset noun | /ˈmaɪn(d)ˌsɛt/ | A way of thinking; an attitude or opinion, especially a habitual one. |
| gate noun | /ˈɡeɪ̯t/ | A doorlike structure outside a house. |
| meditation noun | /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/ | A devotional exercise of, or leading to, contemplation. |
| adrenaline noun | /əˈdɹɛnəlɪn/ | Epinephrine, the hormone and neurotransmitter. |
| aspect noun | /ˈæspɛkt/ | Any specific feature, part, or element of something. |
| involve verb | /ɪnˈvɑlv/ | To have (something) as a component or a related part; to comprise, to include. |
| confusion noun | /kənˈfjuːʒən/ | A lack of clarity or order. |
| deadline noun | /ˈdɛdˌlaɪn/ | A time limit in the form of a date on or before which something must be completed. |
| puzzle noun | /ˈpʌzəl/ | The state of feeling confused or mystified because one cannot understand a complicated matter, a problem, etc.; bewilderment, confusion; (countable) often in… |
| mentor noun | /ˈmɛn.tɔː/ | A wise and trusted counselor or teacher. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| move forward verb | To cause to make progress. | |
| sit down verb | To assume a sitting position from a standing position. | |
| warm up verb | /ˌwɔː(ɹ)m ˈʌp/ | To become warmer. |
| work out verb | /ˌwɝk ˈaʊt/ | To calculate. |
| draw off verb | To remove by using a siphon. | |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| get back verb | Return to where one came from. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- I didn't go to parties.
- I felt, oh, here's my dad.
- What am I going to do?
- Is that what you're saying?
- What is it that I'm trying to express?
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 | is released · were involved · is triggered |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has looked · has led · has talked |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | guy who has · person who just · people who have |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 95 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, you're, gonna. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/, athletic /æθˈlɛt.ɪk/, athlete /ˈæθ.liːt/, thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, theoretical /ˌθi.əˈɹɛt.ɪ.kəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: perception /pɚˈsɛpʃ(ə)n/, duration /dʒʊˈɹeɪ.ʃən/, meditation /mɛdɪˈteɪʃn̩/, confusion /kənˈfjuːʒən/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: adrenaline /əˈdɹɛnəlɪn/, complicated /ˈkɑm.plɪˌkeɪ.tɪd/, recognition /ˌɹɛkəɡˈnɪʃ(ə)n/, essentially /ɪˈsɛnʃəli/, experiment /ɪkˈspɛɹ.ə.mənt/
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 outcome, circuit, reward.
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.