Shadowing Practice: Let's Build Your Self Confidence - Learn English Speaking with Video

If you've been needing some tips on building up your self-confidence, I got you, baby.

Just keep watching.

First and foremost, you need to know that confidence and appearance are mutually exclusive.

And what I mean by that is, is how society perceives you is not necessarily in alignment with what your confidence level is.

I've known plenty of people that society deems very attractive that don't have self-confidence.

Confidence starts from within and no matter what you look like, no matter how society sees you,

you can be confident and I'm here to tell you how.

Firstly baby, you got to look at the people around you.

The people around you are either going to lift you up or they're going to put you down.

So you need to take a close look and an honest look at the people that you surround yourself with.

Are these people that are building you up every day or are these people that are belittling you and bringing you down?

If you find yourself having friends or being surrounded by people of any sort that put you down,

make you feel less than yourself and just you feel insecure whenever you're around them, you need to say goodbye to those people.

Getting rid of those kind of toxic people from your life will be the best choice that you ever make.

Remember, if you hear something enough, you start to believe it yourself.

So if you're surrounded by people that are constantly putting you down, you're going to begin to start believing those things that they're telling you.

So it's important that you have people around you that uplift you

and see you as beautiful and want to root for you

and cheer for you and see you as the glorious human being that you are.

Now, I understand

that sometimes we're put in positions where we don't really have much of a choice as to who we're around.

Maybe it's your family that puts you down and you have to live with them at your job.

Your co-workers put you down.

The things I'm going to say in the following are going to build up

that strength within you enough that you know that you let whatever people say to you just bounce off of you

because you know what your value is.

You know how good you look that you don't let their opinion affect how you feel about yourself.

So cut those people out if you can.

And if you can, we're gonna work on building that confidence

so strong within yourself that it doesn't matter what anybody else says, you know you look good.

All right, so all of us have a couple things

that just make us feel good you need to do more of those things more often.

And the less confident you are, the more you gotta do those things.

For me, I love to get my nails done.

I love to do my makeup.

I make sure my hair is looking fresh.

I like to dress well, like to wear heels.

And I truly do believe if you don't have confidence on the inside, there are things that you can do to build your confidence from the outside in.

Take yourself on dates.

Treat yourself like you are the best lover, the best partner that you've ever had.

Take yourself out to dinner.

Take yourself on a movie date.

Do things to treat yourself and feel good while doing them.

Imagine how good of a hype man you are for your best friend.

You need to be that for yourself.

Most of us say things to ourselves that we would never say to our best friend.

So think about that.

Next time that you're putting yourself down or you feel less than

and you just don't feel good and you're saying all those things in your head

that just bring you into a more negative space, think about this.

Would you ever say those things to your best friend?

No, you wouldn't because it would hurt your best friend's feelings.

So please remember that even the things that we say to ourselves, they start to impact us more and more every day.

So we got to cut.

We got to cut out dogging on ourselves and start to uplift ourselves instead.

Do things that feel good to you.

Maybe it's wearing a cologne or a perfume that makes you feel sexy.

Maybe it's wearing an outfit that you just feel good in.

Maybe it's going to places that feel romantic, like a candlelit dinner, and take yourself out.

Building confidence also has a lot to do with being able to rely on ourselves

and feeling good being with ourselves and by ourselves.

In order for you to truly be able to be in a healthy, loving relationship with somebody else,

You need to first learn how to just love yourself and be with yourself and enjoy taking yourself on dates.

Because then once you learn to enjoy that, then spending time with other people becomes even more amazing.

I truly believe that confidence also aligns with purpose.

When we feel like we have purpose and we are passionate about something, that is where confidence comes from.

When we feel like we are progressing in life and we are getting better and better every day, there's confidence that stems from that.

When you feel like you are fulfilling your goals and you are going after what you want to be going after, that builds confidence.

because then we feel like we can rely on ourselves and we feel like we matter.

We feel like we're worthy and those feelings also ignite confidence within you.

If you're somebody who's struggling with knowing what your purpose is

or maybe you're not really passionate about some things and you don't really know what you're passionate about,

this gives you a great opportunity to explore those things.

Because truthfully, I know, I know that each and every single one of us has purpose in this world.

And if you don't know what it is, baby, you just haven't found it yet.

And this gives you so much opportunity to go out and explore it.

Having things that you can be proud of and make you feel like you're progressing and getting better,

those things build confidence in and of itself.

Think about it this way.

When you're on a date, people want to hear about your passions.

People want to hear about what gets you fired up and what just is so unique about you.

So discover what those interests are for you.

What makes you unique?

There is such a wide range of interests in this world that you could possibly have.

Anything from cars to plants to makeup to anything.

There's so many things in this world you could possibly be interested in.

Those are just very, very basic things that I said.

So explore, get out more and see what things you could possibly be passionate about.

Because once you are passionate, then you feel as if you have purpose and then from that purpose builds confidence.

There's a lot of comparison in this world especially with social media being such a prevalent part of our lives.

More and more comparison I see surrounds me all the time.

Let's get rid of comparison right here right now because comparison kills confidence.

Let me be clear.

There is only one you, baby.

Nobody can be you, no matter how hard they try.

You have been uniquely created in this world to be exactly who you are.

There is nobody that can be you and you can never be anyone else.

So let's cut the comparison crap.

Can you imagine if we had a world full of billions and billions of the same exact person,

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that would be boring as hell.

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That would be so boring.

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There would be no flavor.

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There would be no individuality.

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Embrace who you are.

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You are so uniquely you.

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You need to be proud of that.

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You might be in a position where you're not happy with who you are, and that's okay.

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It happens to all of us at one point or another in our life.

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But building on your self-confidence, building on your passions and your purpose,

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these things will gradually, they all grow together.

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I have no interest in knowing somebody who is trying to be a copycat version of somebody else.

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But guess what I love?

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I love when somebody is just proudly and boldly accepting of who they are, no matter what they look like,

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no matter where they come from, no matter any of that, no matter what people try to tell them,

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they know who they are and they are proud of that.

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Embrace how individual you are.

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You were created to be exactly who you are, not to try to be somebody else.

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So scrap the comparison, be uniquely you, and embrace that.

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I'm so happy that you are who you are, and I don't want you to ever try to be or compare yourself to anybody else.

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They are them, you are you.

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Embrace that.

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So we already talked about how important it is to recognize the people you surround yourself with

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and what they say to you.

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Well, guess what?

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What you say to yourself is extremely, extremely important.

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You need to stop the negative talk.

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Now, I'm not saying you got to jump to being happy-go-lucky, hyping yourself up all the time.

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We're going to get there at some point.

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But first and foremost, you got to just go to neutral.

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You got to stop the negative talk.

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The more you down yourself, the more you belittle yourself with the words that you say, the stronger that truth becomes in your mind.

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So words are power.

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Remember that you got to be more cautious about what you say.

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Every time you say things that are dragging yourself down,

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you continue to build and build and build on that negativity around your appearance and just around your confidence altogether.

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So we got to stop.

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We got to stop with the negative talk.

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Believe me, down the line, I do want you to focus on positive talk,

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positive affirmations, being able to look at yourself in the mirror and be like, I'm a bad.

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I look so good today.

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Yes.

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Hype yourself up.

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Be your best hype man.

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But before we can get to that point, you got to just stop with the negative talk.

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Every time you catch yourself going to say something of a negative nature about yourself, just don't say it.

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It's better if it's left as a thought than if you speak it out as words.

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Eventually, if you stop verbalizing them as words, then they're not going to become thoughts as much.

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It's just the way that it works.

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So keep them in your head.

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Don't vocalize them.

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And down the line, I would love for you to start saying some positive things, but we'll get there.

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Okay.

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One step at a time.

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It's also important that I mentioned how much the media has twisted self-confidence into being too prideful and full of yourself,

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let's be clear, it's healthy for us to have self-confidence.

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It's healthy for us to feel good and think we look good and love ourselves.

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Self-love is so important.

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And yes, there's tons of people out in the world who will put you down for loving on yourself, screw those people.

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That is just their insecurities that are surfacing and they're trying to take it out on you.

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Listen here, I'm telling you right now, face to face, that you deserve to feel good about yourself.

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You deserve to feel confident and feel sexy and love yourself.

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And that is not arrogant of you.

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That is what you deserve to feel.

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Let's normalize self-love and confidence and feeling good.

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Right now, I feel like people almost see it as a competition as to who can feel worse about themselves.

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And that's not okay.

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Like that's not a vibe.

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We want to feel good about ourselves.

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We want to love ourselves.

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Let's make an active effort together to stop putting down people who feel good about themselves

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because it is already hard enough as it is for us to do that.

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So let's start within ourselves and build up those feel-good,

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those confident, those self-loving feelings so that no matter what the world tries to push against us,

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we have this just armor of confidence that can take any of that and not even let it faze us.

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Confidence is one of the sexiest qualities that a person can have.

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And I think we can all agree that confidence makes somebody seem a hundred times more attractive, no matter what they look like.

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Use some of these tips that I gave you today to start working on your confidence, because I promise where confidence goes, opportunity usually follows.

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And the more confident you are, the more you believe in yourself, and the more the world begins to believe in you as well.

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I love you guys so much.

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You are amazing exactly as you are.

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You are perfectly you.

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You are perfectly individual.

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And I challenge you to embrace being who you are

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and who you were created to be because I love you for who you are.

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Thank you so much for watching.

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If you've enjoyed any of these tips, please do give it a like and subscribe.

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And maybe throw me a comment letting me know what else you guys would like to see from me.

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Much love to you all.

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Until the next video.

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303 sentences

Building Confidence: A Real-Life Guide for English Learners

Imagine you’re in a conversation where someone shares practical tips to boost self-confidence—like evaluating your social circle, treating yourself, or being your own hype person. This is the scenario in the video, which not only offers life advice but also serves as a rich resource for IELTS speaking practice. The natural, conversational tone makes it perfect for honing your speaking skills while learning valuable life lessons.

Useful Chunks & Collocations to Master

Mutually exclusive: Describing two things that can’t coexist (e.g., "Confidence and appearance are mutually exclusive").
Lift you up / put you down: Phrases for positive vs. negative influence (e.g., "Surround yourself with people who lift you up").
Bounce off of you: To not affect you (e.g., "Let their comments bounce off of you").
Hype man: Someone who supports and encourages (e.g., "Be your own hype man").
Root for you: To support someone’s success (e.g., "Friends who root for you build your confidence").

Your Shadowing Challenge: Practice Like a Pro

Ready to improve your speaking? Try the shadowing technique: Play a 30-second clip from the video, pause, and repeat it aloud, mimicking the tone, pace, and stress. Focus on phrases like "cut those people out if you can" or "treat yourself like the best partner"—these natural chunks will make your speech sound more fluent. For extra practice, use a shadowing app to record yourself and compare it to the original. This shadow speech exercise helps with intonation and rhythm, key for IELTS speaking practice. Remember: The goal is to sound natural, not perfect. Do this daily, and you’ll notice your confidence in both English and life grow!

Grammar in this video

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

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	I've known · haven't found · have been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	being surrounded · were created
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	somebody who is · people who feel

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Let's Build Your Self Confidence - Learn English Speaking with Video

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