Shadowing Practice: Limitations Exist Only in Your Mind – Brian Tracy - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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Interestingly enough, your thoughts, what you think about things and how you think, determines your values.
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Interestingly enough, your thoughts, what you think about things and how you think, determines your values.
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It determines what is going on inside you.
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Once they are stored away,
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your thoughts determine your feelings.
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It's how you think about something that determines your feelings.
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Whether you are happy or unhappy,
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whether you are scared or confident,
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your feelings then determine your actions.
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So we start off with the law of control saying
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that the key to success is to feel that you are the master of your own destiny,
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that you're behind the steering wheel of your own life.
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You're in charge of your life by taking full and complete control over your thoughts.
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Your thoughts will control your feelings,
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your feelings will control your actions,
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and your actions, remember, as always,
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your actions will determine your success or your lack thereof.
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So the law of control is important.
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Now, as opposed to the law of control,
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we have what is called the law of accident.
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Now, the law of accident is really a metaphysical principle.
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It is only a law like a traffic law
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or like a legal law to the degree to which we live by it consistently.
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The law of accident is what about 80 percent of the population live by, plus or minus.
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The law of accident simply says that by failing to plan you're planning to fail failing to plan
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Is planning to fail now the majority of people?
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Don't believe that they're living by this
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But if you look at their lives you see
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that that's true failing to plan means planning to fail These are the sort of people that say well,
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it's not what you know It's who you know it's being in the right place at the right time It's it's luck.
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It's the luck of the draw and so on
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These are people who as a result of feeling that their life is controlled by forces outside themselves
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Don't have clear plans don't have clear goals do not are not working
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persistently and consistently day by day toward accomplishing something they want
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and their lives just seem to drift
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and go around in Circle like a ship without a rudder
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now a person just like a ship without a rudder a person with no central plan
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Is a person who has very little control?
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It's a person who feels that in fact they are out of control of their lives,
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like they're falling through space with no place to stop.
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And these people are invariably unhappy.
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The reason why people are negative today,
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the reason why people are unhappy,
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the reason why people are sick and frustrated,
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the reason why people underachieve in life is most of them are living by this law of accident
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and in
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so doing they have no sense of control over their lives
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they have no sense of inner peace they have no sense of happiness
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and so on
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so we are going to show you how to free yourself from the law of accident personally
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or purple or permanently now the next law is what is called the law of cause
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and effect the law of cause and effect says
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that for every effect in your life there is a specific cause
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that everything that happens in the universe happens for a reason
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that nothing happens by accident that failure does not happen by accident
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and success does not happen by accident that happiness
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or lack of happiness are a result of cause and effect relationships
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that if we you have an effect in your life
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that you want to have more of more success more money
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more happiness better health you can trace it back to a cause
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and what you do is you repeat and duplicate the cause
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if you have an effect in your life
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that you want to have less of you have problems difficulties
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and so on you can also trace
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that back to a cause all progress in human life in
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human society stems back from identifying the causes of what we want more of
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or less of and changing the causes now the law of cause
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and effect of course is the iron law of the universe this is the law
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if you like that we can come back to over
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and over again and many of our laws are They're paraphrases of the iron law.
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It's also called the law of sowing and reaping.
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That's whoever you sow, that also shall you reap.
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But the iron law, the law of cause and effect,
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gives us a complete sense of control.
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If we believe that there's a cause and effect relationship,
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that everything happens for a reason,
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then we have a tremendous feeling of control in our lives.
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We can identify the causes,
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we can duplicate the causes,
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we can make our lives anything we want.
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The most important application of the law of cause and effect is this.
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It is that thoughts are causes.
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Thoughts are causes and conditions are effects.
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Thoughts are causes and conditions are simply effects.
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The starting point of everything is your thoughts about something.
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It's your thoughts about a job,
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your thoughts about a relationship,
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your thoughts about your health,
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your thoughts about your future.
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Your thoughts become causative agents.
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The conditions become the effects that if you wish to change any of the conditions of your life,
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you have to change the thoughts that precede those conditions.
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You have to change what is going on in your mind.
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Now, wonderfully enough, there's only one thing in the whole universe over which you have complete control,
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and that is your thoughts.
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So if you take full and complete control over your thoughts and keep your thoughts on what it is you want,
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make them positive causes, the conditions or effects will take care of themselves with the inexorability of a law of nature.
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Now the next law is what is called the law of belief.
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The law of belief simply says that whatever you believe with feeling,
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and this is the key,
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with feeling, and the more emotion you put into a belief becomes your reality.
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It becomes your reality because you will always act in a manner consistent with your beliefs.
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As a matter of fact,
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your entire reality right now is simply an outward picturing of your most intensely held beliefs.
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If you believe something that is positive or believe something that is negative,
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or as Henry Ford said,
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if you believe you can do a thing or if you believe you cannot, you are right.
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Our beliefs do form our realities.
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To the degree to which we believe anything to be true,
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our beliefs act as sort of like a screen.
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They filter out any information that is inconsistent with our beliefs.
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We have a deep down desire inside of us to remain consistent.
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So we're always trying to view our world,
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rationalize our world, interpret our world so that it is consistent with what we have already decided to believe.
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We develop what is called scotomas.
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A scotoma is a word in psychology that simply says that we develop blind spots.
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We do not see opportunities if we are convinced that there are no opportunities.
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We do not see possibilities for success if we don't believe that success is possible for us.
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if we begin to change our beliefs,
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we begin to change our realities.
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Let me give you an example.
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There's a story of a young man who came from a small Midwestern town.
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It's a true story.
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It was reported in the psychological journals a couple of years ago.
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He got straight A's all through junior high school and high school.
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At the end of the 12th grade,
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he wrote his scholastic achievement test to go to university.
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A few weeks later, he got back a letter from the university saying,
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you have scored 98 on the scholastic achievement test,
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and you're hereby admitted to the university for the fall semester.
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Well, he didn't know very much about scholastic achievement tests,
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and he thought that the 98 was an IQ score.
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Now, an IQ score of 98 is slightly below average and is about 20 points below what is necessary for college-level work.
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He was convinced, and he just discarded his entire high school career,
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all the A's that he's gotten,
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he was convinced that he could not do college-level work,
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but he went off to college in the fall.
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After the first semester, he was failing or nearly failing in every subject.
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His counselor called him in and said,
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what seems to be the problem?
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You did extremely well in high school.
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These courses are only one degree of difficulty removed from your high school courses.
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Are you having problems with girls or having problems with drugs, having problems adjusting?
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What is it?
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He said, well, sir, he said,
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I'm doing the very best I can,
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but you can't blame me.
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I've only got a 98 IQ.
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And the counselor had a smile in front of me.
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He said, what are you talking about?
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He said, well, in my letter admission to the university it said
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that i got a 98 on the scholastic achievement test he
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said son that's not an iq he said he said they said that's not an iq
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that is a percentile what that means is that you scored equal to
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or higher than 98 of the students in the country who wrote
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that test you're one of the brightest kids in this university
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well this young guy went out he checked on the scholastic achievement test he found it was true
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that the 98 was a percentile not an iq he went back to his courses
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and two years later he was in the top ten in a 30,000 student university.
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He was leading in all of his classes.
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Once he changed his reality,
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once he changed his beliefs about his intelligence, his reality changed automatically.
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Now an important point with regard to this is that every one of us has self-limiting beliefs.
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Every one of us believes ourselves to be limited in some way.
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Every one of us believes ourselves to be limited in intelligence, creativity, money-making ability.
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I can't sell.
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I can't speak in front of audiences.
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We tend to think that we are not capable of being on time,
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we're not mechanically inclined and so on and so forth.
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But exhaustive research demonstrates that talents are pretty evenly spread throughout the population.
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That most of the limitations we have do not exist in reality.
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They exist only in your own mind.
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And one of the starting points of great achievement is to start questioning those self-limiting beliefs
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and throw them off and act as if they did not exist.
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And when you act as if they didn't exist,
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lo and behold, they simply disappear.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice English speaking and pronunciation using concepts from Brian Tracy’s video "Limitations Exist Only in Your Mind". The focus will be on understanding how thoughts influence feelings and actions, a vital topic for personal development. This transcript provides a rich source of vocabulary and expressions that will enhance your English-speaking skills. By engaging in the shadowing technique, you will not only learn to replicate the rhythm and intonation of native speakers but also gain insights into effective communication methods.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Control - The power to influence or direct behavior.
- Law of Accident - The idea that living without planning leads to failure.
- Master of Your Own Destiny - A phrase denoting personal responsibility for one's life.
- Planning to Fail - A popular saying highlighting the importance of preparation.
- Inner Peace - A state of mental and emotional stability.
- Consistency - The quality of always behaving in the same way.
- Feeling Out of Control - A common emotional state when one feels life is chaotic.
Practice Tips
To maximize your English speaking practice, implement the shadowing technique with this video. Here’s how you can do it effectively:
- Listen Carefully: Start by watching a short segment of the video. Pay attention to how Brian Tracy expresses his thoughts and emotions. This will help you understand the natural rhythm of the language.
- Repeat Immediately: Play the segment again and try to repeat what you hear in real-time. This is key to mastering shadowspeak. Aim to match his speed and tone to improve English pronunciation.
- Record Yourself: While shadowing, use a recording device to capture your voice. Listening back can highlight areas for improvement, allowing you to refine your pronunciation and delivery.
- Focus on Emotion: Notice the feelings behind Tracy’s words. Emulating not just the words but the emotion can greatly enhance your conversational English.
- Consistency is Key: Practice daily, even if just for a few minutes. The more you engage with the material, the more natural your speaking will become, leading to better English speaking practice overall.
By incorporating these strategies, you will build confidence in your speaking abilities and develop a deeper understanding of how thoughts influence communication in English.
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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