Shadowing Practice: I Asked 1000 People About Their Biggest Regrets in Life and Learned... - Learn English Speaking with Video

Over the last three years, I have asked more than 1 ,000 people of all ages in more than 35 countries one big question about life.

What is a big mistake that you've made or a big regret that you have that you've learned a valuable lesson from?

And their answers have taught me more than any class or course ever could.

Now, in this video, we've compiled all of their answers

and we are sharing the most insightful and emotional ones that you absolutely need to hear.

valuable lesson.

Not telling my mom I loved her as often as I should have.

Yeah, I'd like to be able to go back and do that again.

She died in July.

I was really close to her and she died quickly of dementia.

So, you know, she kind of lost her sense of the people she loved

and the people around her and went downhill very quickly and wasn't pretty.

And it just kind of made me realize that the old cliche about You're here one day and you're gone the next, you better enjoy it while it lasts because it does not last long.

I voluntarily withdrew myself from seeing my mom for a while.

We had an argument and we got back together and it was the best ever.

And then I regretted the time I spent apart from her.

What did you learn about that?

We all make mistakes, we all have difficulties, and sometimes you don't realize what the difficulties of others are.

Until you're older and you start experiencing difficulties yourself, and then you say, "Now I see,

so maybe I should have been kinder." My father passed away in '89, and I wanted to leave comedy because I just...

I just loved entertaining him more than anybody else.

He came to every show.

And my mother is now in late stage dementia, so she doesn't know who I am.

devastating, but up until She did know who I was.

I never I never missed a day of talking to her until she didn't know who was calling.

I was like, "I'm going to die soon." I was 25 years old when my father died,

and I was not a kid.

I always worry about it.

I think I can do business.

I don't know if my father is yet.

I think I'm doing it repeat those things.

They're just great.

There are no bad ones.

I only wish I had more.

They were great experiences.

You're not going to share our channel with your wife, are you?

She doesn't know how to use YouTube, so.

That is a loaded question.

One that I would like to answer, but I'm not going to.

I'm gonna guess the relationship one?

Okay.

We hear that a lot, yeah? didn't know any better.

I invested too much time in a relationship.

I wanted to be married, move forward, etc, etc. You know, if all your friends are telling you that someone is awful,

maybe stop and consider about whether perhaps, you know, they have a point.

But you knew he was bad or it was more the commitment aspect?

Oh, it was more the commitment aspect.

Not bad, but completely wrong and you,

you know, sort of polish up the parts that work.

I think many people don't make that judgment.

They just keep polishing the turd.

I'm not okay with polishing the turd.

I would never get married when I was so young, because what the hell was my hurry?

I was 19.

I had a baby when I was 20.

What was my hurry?

I would have waited, because there are things I wanted to do, which I never did.

I wanted to be a singer.

I always thought I had a voice.

Do you regret not having gone for that?

I mean, a lot of people have these similar dreams.

They don't go for it.

It's done, it's over with, it's finished, you know.

Could have, would have, should have, it's over.

Probably the one thing that I regret was I got married early.

I was working and I didn't spend much time with my children.

I was always busy and my father was always busy.

I never had a relationship with him.

And I guess it came by me naturally and I followed in his footsteps.

I don't have any children.

Do you regret that?

Did you ever regret it?

I did regret it, of course.

I did feel that it's something that I should perhaps have done, but I wasn't cut out for it.

Were kids ever on the table for you?

Is that a regret?

Yeah, it is.

I think when I was much younger for sure, like, oh yeah, one day, one day, one day.

And I always put it off.

And then when I met my wife now, we were both older All these things happen for a reason.

So I don't question them.

I'm not a good person.

I had someone who had someone who had a job, so I didn't know.

I lived in my life only but I was a good one.

But I was really good.

So if you could go back in time and say you were 20, 25 and you could do it over, what would you do differently?

I would say 25.

I'm not a kid.

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I'm not a kid.

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I'm not a kid.

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I'm not a kid.

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I'm not a kid.

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I wrong ideals.

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Money, Money?

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Money?

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Money is important, but you cannot make money, you...

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Leader or your aim.

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Things aren't very important at all.

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Clothes, cars, houses.

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He earned gold.

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is to be happy.

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That's all you need.

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I think one of the best things in failing

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or going through ups and downs financially is you learn the downs are not that bad.

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Life still can be good.

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There's a lot of things you can do.

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So you realize that whether you have a lot or a little or in the middle, That's not the most important thing.

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I mean, he grew up extremely poor, hoping to get his next meal.

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So we know what it's like to

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Have nothing and have more than nothing follow your dreams and

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because the passion will get you over the finish line always Always I still want to make money.

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Okay.

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That was my job.

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I was in the finance business.

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I was there to make money It's not that important.

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You have to have passion to be good.

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I lost my passion and if you don't have passion You're not gonna make it.

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I'm not interested in making the last bucks You have more than you need to survive and take care of your family.

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That's enough.

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But just this habit to have it

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you guys watch our videos trying to get some life advice so that your life can be happier and more fulfilling.

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But listening to the video is one thing.

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What do you actually do with it once you turn the video off?

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This sounds quite dull actually, but it was taking the wrong job off for the one

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that had more status than the one actually I really enjoyed that was way more adventurous when I was young.

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That then I did what I was expected to do, the fancy office all that, rather than the really funky job that I really wanted to do.

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And that was selling satellite dishes in India.

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I want to become a stage performer.

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I never achieved that.

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I think, yeah, well, I'll keep that in mind.

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Yeah.

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How come you never achieved that?

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What happened?

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My dad, particularly, was thinking, you know, being a stage performer, you have very short professional time where If you study a skill,

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you can use until later time.

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So instead of being a stage performer, you did what?

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Well, I did accounting.

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Do you regret that looking back?

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I always think that will always be part of me.

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That's an aspiration that will stay with me forever.

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You never know.

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You might see me dancing one day on the stage.

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- You would love to.

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- For me, my biggest regret was I wanted to be an actor.

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That was my dream since I was in elementary school.

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I was in all the school plays, and I had a modicum of success like when I was in my late teens, early 20s.

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I was on a few TV shows, and I was sort of almost on the cusp of making it.

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I guess I got scared, and it was like, you know, I need to work, I need to support myself, obviously.

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I was the quintessential starving artist.

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I was sleeping on friends' couches.

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I was bartending.

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I was a server, whatever, doing what I had to do so I can go on auditions during the day.

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And I kind of like gave up on that dream and got like the typical corporate nine to five job.

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And that's my biggest regret in my life, because I was like 20, let's say 22.

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I should have really kept at it and pursued it, because that's all I've ever wanted to do was be an actor.

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And now I have some lame corporate job, and it's like, yeah, I can pay my rent and whatever, live.

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But what is the point at the end of the day?

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You recognize that time is so short.

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That's the only one thing that you can't get back.

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Sort of hyper aware of that now.

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You know, when you're 22, you think you're going to live forever.

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I got my whole life ahead of me.

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No, you have to do it then.

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try, fail, There's nothing to be ashamed of with failure.

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Just learn from it and then move on and just try a whole bunch of different things.

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That would be my biggest advice to a young person.

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I had a nice job.

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I was a New York City public school teacher, which many people think is a really terrible job, but I love more or less every minute of it.

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You have to really love what you do, and if you're not happy what you do, it's the worst miserable kind of thing in the world.

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You kind of hope and pray that the money will come through that, because of your passion, and you know, your goodwill to the job you're doing.

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But there is no guarantee.

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There really isn't any guarantee.

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I think mine was not feeling confident enough in myself to try something new.

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I started watercolor painting when I was 50.

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I should have started it way before that, but I just didn't come up as something I felt like I could do.

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And I was successful at it.

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What held you back?

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You said you weren't confident enough.

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What was-- I think it was just confidence, just shyness and-- not feeling like I could do it.

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My father always said, "If you're going to do something, do it right." I interpreted that if you're going to do something, do it perfectly.

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So if you're not sure you're going to be able to do it perfect, you don't try.

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That's not true.

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The big one is, A year from now, you'll wish you started today.

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I've always worried about the future.

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I can have enough money.

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Is it the right moment?

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Is something else?

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Should I, you know, take care of some immediate responsibilities, needs?

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I haven't, for the most part, been somebody who lives in the moment.

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I still would look more in the future.

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My wife was very much in the moment, so...

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I would, uh, I would say you got to strike a balance, right?

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Because if you're.

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too much in the moment, you might be screwed in the future.

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The other extreme, you know, you always living in the future, you miss out on all the opportunities it could have had in the moment in the day.

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What is a big mistake that you've made or a big regret that you have that you learned a valuable lesson from? So many.

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Judging people too harshly, too quickly.

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Judgemental.

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Not taking risks.

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You know, sometimes you see a road, you know, I talked about the road you didn't take.

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And you look at the things that you, the choices you made along the way and you think, oh, was that the road I should have taken?

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I wanted to be a lawyer, but I had it.

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A slight speech impediment, I felt that would be a handicap.

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But I got over the speech problems.

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Anyway, yeah.

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It's too late now.

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It's very hard, very hard for kids today.

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Get as much education as you can.

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Just make yourself valuable, but make sure that you're the best that you can be, and then your life will be okay.

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That's something I wish I had done.

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Then God knows where I could have been.

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When I don't do my homework and I play video games.

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Like he said, sometimes I am on my phone instead of doing my homework.

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So I lose a lot of time.

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Spending as much time as I do on my phone, because I feel like I should be doing so much more.

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And I'm just staying on TikTok for hours while I could be pursuing my passions.

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One big thing that happened like this year was

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that I like broke my arm and my hip in like a skiing accident.

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I was going like way too fast and I was like going off like a massive jump and I just lost control.

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I would just not do that.

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Expect less.

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My motto is don't expect anything from anyone.

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If you expect less, then you will be much happier.

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worry less about what others think and what other do.

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You gotta take risks.

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You gotta be willing to fail and get up again.

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There's no such a thing as a bad choice.

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You always learn something.

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It's painful to fail.

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That's why they put erasers on pencils.

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His life is just one mistake after another.

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They continue to What did it happen?

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I don't actually believe in mistakes.

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I believe in lessons that push you forward.

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Some people I've known allowed mistakes to actually freeze them in that moment of time, and they could never get out of it.

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The biggest one I guess I've learned is that to spend more time with people.

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Pay attention, listen to them.

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You know, it's easy to keep moving on.

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and being worried about the river flow, but I think you have to get off once in a while, just enjoy the shore.

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just enjoy what you're doing, you will be surprised by where you get.

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And I think life is short and you need moments of contentment when you're not thinking about what you don't have, when you're not thinking about what you don't want,

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when you're not thinking about what some other person you're seeing or hearing has and you're saying, I want that.

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I think you need to.

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You know, my grandmother used to always tell me, if you're not healthy, you're not wealthy.

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You know, success is just getting up and in the moment, not being aware of a pain, not being aware of what you have, just.

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And that's, this moment that you're watching right now, is success.

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Thank you so much for watching this video.

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If you have enjoyed it, guess what?

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This is part of a huge year for us where we're going around the world

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and interviewing people from all these different countries of all these different ages

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and giving you perspectives like this channel has never offered before.

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So if you haven't already subscribed, please make sure to do that.

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And we will see you in the next video.

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 Practice: I Asked 1000 People About Their Biggest Regrets in Life and Learned... - Learn English Speaking with Video

Context & Background

Top 5 Phrases for Daily Communication

Step-by-step Shadowing Guide

What is the Shadowing Technique?