Shadowing Practice: How to Win When Everything Takes Longer Than Expected - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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It's always harder, takes longer, and costs more than you think it will.
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It's always harder, takes longer, and costs more than you think it will.
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That is a reflection of poor expectations, not that reality is bad.
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And so it makes sense that it would be harder, take longer, and cost more.
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Because if it didn't, then everyone would have it.
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And if everyone had it, then it wouldn't be worthwhile.
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And so literally the difficulty of the task
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that you embark on is proportional to the reward
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that you ultimately get because you are the asset that you build more than the achievement.
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And so if it's hard, that's amazing because it will make you that much harder once you conquer it.
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And it will also make it harder for anybody else who wants to follow in your footsteps.
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And so the higher up the mountain you climb, the thinner the air gets.
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And the rarer the climber or explorer must be in order to get there.
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And so I don't know about you, but I would so much rather climb a mountain that
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so few people have been able to climb so that I can see a view that other people haven't seen.
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And so speaking of expectations, let me talk about the worst expectation of all,
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which is entitlement, which is the expectation of life or other people to give you something without earning it.
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And I think that this is a virus in today's culture, right now.
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And so there's the famous quote, hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.
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It makes sense that right now we have a lot of weak men because it's been pretty good times.
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The good news about that is that it's so easy to beat them.
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You just have to show up, be on time, prepare the night before, remember people's names, actually follow up when you say you were going to,
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and try like you mean it rather than trying like you want to get credit for trying.
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And I see this is this thing that's pervasive right now is
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that people will comment or they'll DM me and they're like, hey, I'm trying really hard as though I'm supposed to give them credit for trying.
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The world doesn't work that way.
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It gives you credit for achieving.
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And the reason that you want credit for trying is because you want it to cost less, take shorter time period and be easier.
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And so if you restate your complaint about the difficulty as, oh, I have false expectations about the ease or the price tag of this goal,
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then all of a sudden you realize that the only real problem was that you expected it to cost less.
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It's like going to the store and being like, oh, I've got these Jordans that I really want to buy.
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I got $50.
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I'm so excited to buy them.
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You go to the store and see that they're $300.
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At that point, you can just say Jordans aren't for me, or you can say, oh, I will have to keep working and keep saving so that I can afford this.
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And so it's a lot about affording the goals that you want to achieve.
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And a lot of things
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that we have to spend in order to get them is the time
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and the rejection of not achieving what we want on the timeline we originally thought.
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Like what makes success hard is that the expectation that society puts because we only see the highlight reel, you actually only see people after they finish the race.
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People think success is like watching a marathon, not running a marathon.
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When you watch a marathon, you look at the beginning and you look at the end.
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It only takes you a couple of seconds to see both of those.
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But running a marathon is four, five, six straight hours of breathing heavy, wondering when it's going to end, counting, starting to play games in your mind of like,
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okay, I'm two thirds of the way there.
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I'm two more quarters of that.
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I'm only one fifth of the, one eighth of the way there.
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And you keep doing this to play tricks on your mind to keep going.
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But the thing is, is that in a mile marker race, it's very clear to know how you're going to get to the finish line and how long it's going to take.
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The only difference with success is that you just have to keep running and you don't know where the finish line is.
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And people will only cheer you on at that finish line that they don't know where it is either, which means you have to get used to running alone.
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And so the difficulty is you have to start running and you have to keep running, but you just don't know whether you're running for a mile or 300.
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And so this is where the pacing is important.
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So a lot of people run really hard.
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They'll think because they only saw the beginning of the marathon on TV and the finish of the marathon on TV,
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that they can just sprint because both of those clips only lasted a couple of seconds.
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So they start their marathon of success of whatever it is they're going after by sprinting as hard as they can.
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And then they realize that there's no one around, and there's just a bunch of open road ahead of them.
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And they're like, how long is this going to take?
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And that's when reality sets in.
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And so I make these videos to say that a lot of times it's going to take longer.
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Real quick, if you are a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift.
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So my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had
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and what stages of growth they went through, and more importantly, where they got stuck and how they got past it.
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And so we broke it into these 10 stages
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and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of the functions of the business across product,
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marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources, and finance.
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And so no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it.
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And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free.
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You can go to acquisition.com forward slash roadmap, plug in your business information.
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And if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out.
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On the Thank You Bay Juniors, book a call with my team, and we will look at the business, see if we can help.
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And if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas, and we'll do this in person, live.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice listening and speaking skills by analyzing concepts discussed in the video "How to Win When Everything Takes Longer Than Expected." This session is designed to help you improve your English pronunciation while developing a deeper understanding of perseverance in achieving goals. By engaging in shadow speaking exercises, you will enhance your ability to articulate thoughts related to expectations and effort. This practice will not only boost your IELTS speaking practice proficiency but also prepare you for real-life conversations where such topics may arise.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Expectations: Assumptions about what will happen in the future.
- Entitlement: The belief that one deserves certain privileges or benefits without having to earn them.
- Achievement: Accomplishing or reaching a goal.
- Climb a mountain: A metaphor for overcoming significant challenges.
- Hard times create strong men: A phrase suggesting that adversity builds resilience.
- Running a marathon: A metaphor to describe the ongoing effort required to achieve long-term goals.
- Mind games: Psychological strategies used to manage thinking and emotions during challenges.
- Finish line: The final goal or achievement in a process.
Practice Tips
To make the most of your shadowing practice with this video, follow these tips:
- Watch the video first without pausing to understand the overall message. Then, replay sections but this time, pause after each sentence and repeat what you hear. This will help improve your English pronunciation and fluency.
- Pay attention to the speaker's tone and speed, which can vary throughout the video. Focus on matching their rhythm to develop natural speech patterns.
- Use a shadowing app to record your voice as you practice. Listen to your recordings to compare your pronunciation and intonation with the original video; this feedback is invaluable for improvement.
- As you practice, concentrate on key phrases, especially those related to overcoming difficulties and setting expectations. This vocabulary is essential for effective communication during your IELTS speaking practice and beyond.
- Finally, remember that learning requires patience and persistence. Embrace the process, just like running a marathon, where the journey itself is part of the achievement.
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.
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