Shadowing Practice: I can't get over the fact that I've wasted my teenage years - Learn English Speaking with Video

I can't get over the fact that I've wasted my teenage years.

I've wasted 1,368 days of my life.

I calculated it.

It's going on almost four years, and it started the first day of my freshman year in high school.

Until now.

And maybe not all of those days were a waste.

I mean, maybe it's a bit of an overestimate, but I'd say maybe 95% of it.

at least the experience of 95% of it was a waste.

And it's so disappointing.

And I have so much regret.

And I just wish, I don't know if I wish I could go back because those years, probably the worst years of my life,

but I wish, I just wish I did better.

I wish I tried harder

and yeah there's a lot of things I would have done differently

and it's not it's not good to to regret

but it's almost like a lesson I wish I just stopped

I wish I stopped telling myself to do the thing

and I wish I just did it I wish I stopped trying to plan it and I wish I just did it.

I wish I stopped trying to make up for not doing it and just did it.

And that is the biggest thing.

You know what?

That cycle of being in this debt, feeling like you have to make something up, feeling like, you know, you wasted all this time.

So now you got to work faster, work harder.

And then that is what's going to make up for all that lost time.

And by thinking that, I never did anything.

It just put a lot of dread on me.

It put a lot of just this distress and it amounted to absolutely nothing.

And here I am now.

I'm 18 and I have a couple years, maybe a year and a half left of my teenage years

and I don't know it's just maybe even half a year

I'm not sure how you want to look at it

but it's it's weird to think about

because I never thought I'd be in the position I am today based off my age

but also I didn't really have any expectations I look back

and I think my eighth grade year was kind of this finality.

The last time I felt normal and since then life has changed a lot.

The way I look at things, the way I perceive and what I want and what I do and it's like it's like this rabbit hole.

And part of me thinks, you know, maybe if I took action back then,

maybe it wouldn't have been as good because, you know, it would have led me down a different path.

Maybe that's also just cope.

But one thing, one thing I can't say is what I want now is completely different than what I wanted

when I was 14, 15, 16, 17.

And I think back to the person who I was

and I think maybe to some extent it's good that I didn't take action.

That sounds bad.

And like I said, maybe it's just coke.

But it's like, here's one thing that I wanted.

That sounds so stupid and like maybe egotistical and prideful.

But what I wanted is I wanted a Porsche.

And when I say that, I don't mean like, okay, I really wanted this.

I better get it, you know.

It's not like that.

It's just like this imagination, this sort of like dream, right?

Like, man, if I got a Porsche, I'd be cool.

I'd drive it around and then people would look at me and think I'm something.

I wanted to be an entrepreneur and all that.

And for some reason I cared about that stuff.

And to anyone, I'm not saying it's bad to want a Porsche.

I'm not saying it's bad to want nice things.

A Porsche is cool.

I still think a Porsche is a really cool car.

But I don't care anymore.

And I think the person I am now would be like, I could never justify spending $200,000 on a vehicle,

even if I was like a millionaire.

I don't know if I could get myself to do it because I just, I'm thinking of all the other things that would be better or how I could do something,

you know, more real or helpful with that money

but I look back at that person of myself and I think

if that version of me got what they wanted then me now would be would just be shallow

or less of a person or just not good

because although I don't want that anymore it's like even the person I was

that did want that it's it's like misaligned

and it wasn't good you know it was just rooted in in wanting

and desire and in ego and in insecurity as well

so it's like okay I didn't take action I didn't get a Porsche

or whatever I didn't get that towards the ideal yet over time I realized

It's not what I want at all matter of fact, it's it's kind of shallow and it's

It's for me personally as a person just me personally if I were to do that I would be like I

would in some sense be like

Like I would hate myself for doing that Like

if I saw myself like that the person I am now if I saw that I'd be like dude, you're so lost so It's it's it's a mix of things.

It's like

you could have taken action

and let's say you were like successful you got what you wanted at

that time then maybe you know who would you be today

and it's it's a lot of things but also it's like

I in my mind I was like ambitious like you know

I want to learn all these instruments I want to learn

multiple different languages I want to do all this stuff I want to learn calisthenics

or whatever and honestly these things are still stuff I'm interested in

but looking back I wonder or even now I think how much of that is vanity?

How much of it personally do I actually want for myself, for my own personal fulfillment versus how much of it is just like,

man, if a person was like some type of profile and I read that profile, I would be like, man, that guy's cool.

Like, is it just so I can seem like someone interesting?

Is it just so I can, you know, it's like a party trick

and where like wow this guy's intelligent this guy's smart like

or do i actually want it because i love languages

and i love culture and all these things

and like i just wonder like worrying about not accomplishing those things is like a wonder

because what did i actually want it for what did i

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want it for did i want it for the love of the thing itself or for the love

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of attention or this desire to be seen as established

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or intelligent or something like that so although i still do want to learn

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and explore these are things that like are inherent

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and i do genuinely want for meaning's sake back then it was like hmm why Why?

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And if the why is not a good one,

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then getting that thing isn't as satisfying or as worth it.

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So that's something I've learned.

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To be really more conscious of your why.

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What are you doing this for?

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And to what end is it supposed to fulfill or meet?

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And throughout those years, I felt really just lost.

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I felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life because I wasn't.

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I just, you know, I'd wake up, I was like super insecure.

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I just went to school.

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I didn't have any friends, you know, and it was school to me was just like work.

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And it's, it's, it is, um, it's a privilege to be able to go to school and get an education.

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But like for me, school was literally just school and I hated it.

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I hated it so much because that it wasn't a place where I felt at home.

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There wasn't anyone that was like, hey, school's bad, at least I got these people There wasn't that,

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it was just, I got myself And I can't rely on myself, hardly, even today, you know So,

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it led down to a spiral of inaction And,

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I guess, mental deterioration but you live and you learn, right?

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That's what I hope.

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The only thing I can say is at least I'm still young and I've come to this realization

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maybe earlier than most people do or maybe not.

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I don't know.

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But all I can say is the person I am today is the culmination of all those things.

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All those nights where I just like couldn't sleep because I was thinking so much.

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All the time in school where I just like was so anxious.

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Even, you know, the great times.

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The times where I was like really able to appreciate life a lot

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and come to these new realizations and meet new people.

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it was

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it wasn't maybe it wasn't all a waste cause life you can't

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you can't make you can't put life in that box this was a waste you know guess you just gotta

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chalk that over there that was a waste of my life whatever

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because like how much of it can be a waste like

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if you didn't learn absolutely anything if you stayed the same exact person

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then then maybe so but i'm totally different now i'm not the person who i want to be

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nowhere near it heck i'm like barely barely out of the negative like

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if you look at like how i perceive myself as like like there's the base

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and like below zero

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and then there's like the top like you've grown yourself it's

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like I was like all the way down here like you can't even see it

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and now I'm starting to get back up to like this

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area that's just this baseline of the person who I want to be

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and I'm just just climbing back up and that's that's where I've been

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and maybe maybe it's just like a part of it because the more I look back I realize maybe it was necessary

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Maybe I had to go through it.

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Maybe not all of it.

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Maybe a lot of it was self-inflicted I could have treated myself better or looked at things in a different way, but also I didn't know that It's like this quote.

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I'm not sure how it goes exactly, but it's like You have to forgive yourself for not knowing what only time could teach you

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And It's that's all I can sum it up as

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And if I if I continue to try and make up this time debt,

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the 1,368 days, then I'm going to be making it up for the rest of my life

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because it will never be fulfilled.

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It will never be repaid because it just keeps stacking up, just living in the past,

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trying to repay what doesn't need to be repaid, what doesn't need to be justified,

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what doesn't even need to be relived, you know, because living in the past,

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that is the worst thing.

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That is what will keep you down.

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Because all throughout those years, that is what I was doing so much,

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looking back and wishing, wishing I could live back in that year when I was in eighth grade, where things were so simple.

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You know, when I had friends, when I had things when when I was more social

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and I felt like you know maybe even I was like kind of popular

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or whatever but it's like holding on to that

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that is exactly what kept me it kept me in

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that place it held me back it's the worst thing you know nostalgia nostalgia is the killer of dreams

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and And if you...

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Okay, I'm running out of storage.

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This video is already too long.

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But like I was saying, the nostalgia is the killer of dreams.

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And if you can't let go of the past, and this is something that I've learned.

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I mean, people say this, but you don't really realize it until you've lived through all of this.

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If you can't let go of those things that seem so great, then you won't see the opportunities that are right in front of you.

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You won't see what's new to come.

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and during this gap year that I've been on, so much has happened.

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So many different things that I would have never guessed and it's like there's things I've wanted so badly,

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so badly and they didn't happen because I wanted them.

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They didn't happen because, you know, I was just like, I was just wanting it so bad.

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That's not why it happened.

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I think, I think ultimately it was God

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and there's a lot of things in the works and I don't know what's going to happen with them.

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I could ultimately still fail but it's like all those years, the past three and a half years,

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those 1,368 days, although it seemed like a waste,

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it took all of that to get to today, to this culmination.

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It was the culmination of all that experience, all those thoughts, all that time.

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And if it weren't for that, then I wouldn't be here, you know, recording this video.

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And I wouldn't be the person I am.

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I'd be completely different.

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If I remained, if I was back in 8th grade, and if I stayed that person, if I remained that person,

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I, version of me right now, I would hate that person.

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I would be like, wow, you know nothing.

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And what are you doing?

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You're, you're so out of touch.

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Why?

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Like, I would hate myself.

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I would hate that version of me.

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And although I do, I also hate the version of me who did absolutely nothing.

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It's like that person who never, like thinking of the person who never changed.

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That is scarier than the person who did nothing yet still somehow ended up doing something.

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And that is the biggest thing.

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I have to, I have to all let this go.

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Like, that's why I make these videos, because I've been thinking about this stuff, heck, even for two years, I've been thinking about how much time I've wasted,

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I've wasted my teenage years.

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But you just got to let it out.

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You have to externalize it, put it out into the world and and once I do

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that it doesn't hold me anymore once I do

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that it starts to make more sense that's what this is for just some sense of healing

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and that is that is what I need to do

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that is how I'm going to continue to grow and learn

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and realize because that's all you can do just get better learn from your mistakes

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and try to try to have enough knowledge and perspective

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that you can stop yourself before you make that next one

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and it's not easy but I think I'm getting a little bit better at it

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so we'll see we'll see what the future holds entails I

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think there's great things to come I'm optimistic I really am

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and I know that I know that was it was all for the better it really was in the end

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 can't get over the fact that I've wasted my teenage years - Learn English Speaking with Video

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What is the Shadowing Technique?